skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Others are saying you can't place a value. I don't buy that at all. People do it every day. The people that are truly capable of building a successful business are few and far between. An investor is lucky to find someone worth betting on.

From your perspective taking investment is a serious commitment. You're promising to to spend the next N years dedicating yourself to making the company successful. That's worth quite a bit if you're at all likely to succeed.

Just ask yourself how much equity would you sell and for what price?

I think a sane ballpark is something like 10-15% for $100-200k, 20-25% for $500k, or 30-35% for $1M. But again, that's just a ballpark.
Not so much mind-blowing as shocking -- when I first heard that the Europeans brought horses to America. There were none here before Columbus.
I've read somewhere that automobiles are typically created by the designer first - they draw up the prototype and then maybe make some 3d models of the vehicle. Then, once it's approved they move the project over to the engineering team and they're tasked with figuring out how to fits all the cars parts inside this new design (shocks, motors, drive terrain, etc.).

So for the case of automobiles, the designer is first, engineers second. Obviously the teams will work together to make compromises but it certainly gives merit to the power/value of the designer.
love love love Mixergy. Keep up the great work, Andrew!
Ask HN: Review my startup, LitLift.com
A few weeks ago I launched my side project; a novel writing application I call http://LitLift.com

So far over 370 users have registered to use the software, most of which are participating in NaNoWrimo. The response has been incredibly positive. The enjoy the simple user interface and the ability to create their ideas in any particular order.

Already I have managed to make the site profitable through a pair of partnerships that will be kicking off soon.

I know the design needs work, but I'm a programmer.

Any feedback on usability, interface and site structure are more than welcome.

Thanks.
Don't rule out the possibility that it is a bad idea that looks good (value < $0, you will lose whatever money you throw at it).

Or an absolutely fantastic one (probably still < $20,000).
On behalf of my single friends that I forwarded this to: "Thank you".

While I can't use this myself it's definitely helping a friend make plans for the near future.
Imagining a giant heat sink makes me think of something pretty dangerous... I picture any part of the heat sink sticking out of the water (I'm guessing it captures heat from the sun?) which becomes hot enough to heat several thousands of gallons of water would produce some really nasty burns for anyone unfortunate enough to touch it.

You don't have to explain your idea in detail, of course, but I'd be curious if you had considered a way to safely transfer the energy into the water. Perhaps there is a solar powered way to cheaply heat swimming pools safely... but I'd think the energy might need to be converted to electricity first, since we are already used to controlling and insulating that safely.
Why Node.js Is Totally Awesome
Right. Cuz the photons are the same temperature as the sun. That's why sun photons feel warm.
Tangent:

Not at all. In fact, I wrote this up because of a conversation I had a while back with a man buying a lottery ticket at the gas station. I was talking with him about how bad the odds were, and he fully admitted that he was getting terrible odds on that dollar.

But he figured that on the one in a million chance that he hit the jackpot, even if he only saw a quarter of that amount he could actually get out of debt and start making the power of compound interest work for him instead of against him, and after enough time with that money in the bank, the scales would tip in favor of spending the dollar on the lottery ticket.

Now, I don't think that argument really holds water, and I told him so (for several reasons, even apart from my skepticism that he'd actually put any cash he won into a properly managed account without spending a huge chunk of it first; the odds at the lottery are so hideous and the doubling time for a quarter million that you're also drawing money out of to live off of is very long, so it would be tough to make those numbers work out), but it got me started thinking about whether there might actually be situations where a losing gamble could be worthwhile, depending on the current situation of indebtedness.
Maybe her friends are sick of watching her gamble her last few dollars away whenever there is an emergency.
Here's a response from Rackspace (my employer):http://su.pr/2gCe3k

"Rackspace comments on changes to Texas Sales Tax Rules

Rackspace has been in discussions with the Texas Comptroller’s Office and its tax advisors to address the recent changes to the state rules governing Texas sales tax.

The new controversial language states, “A person is engaged in business in Texas if the person has nexus with the state as evidenced by, but not limited to, any of the following: [...] derives receipts from a rental or lease of tangible personal property that is located in this state or owns or uses tangible personal property that is located in this state, including a computer server or software;[...]“

The Comptroller’s Office has indicated that the language was not intended to be construed as so broad as to extend nexus to anyone using a server in Texas. William Hamner, Director of Tax Administration indicated that the agency’s intent is not to extend nexus to a person simply using a third-party server in Texas for an activity such as webhosting. However, since taxable items are subject to taxation in both electronic and physical form, the sale of data, such as music files, housed on a Texas server could create nexus for the owner of the data.

Because of the unintended confusion that has resulted from this change, we understand that the Comptroller’s Office will issue a new rule proposal in order to properly clarify the intent of the rules change and more clearly state agency policy on this matter.

We will continue to actively pursue a positive outcome on this issue with the Comptroller’s Office and will continue to monitor and report on any new developments that we believe to be important to our customers."
Same image as yesterday. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1780004
The catch here that the author was trying to tease out is that marginal utility is not always a smooth curve. Sometimes it is a step function, which changes the rules around the step.

Tax brackets are another classic example. Sometimes you get much more by being paid a little less.

Edit: The tax thing was a brain glitch and not true IRL. Check Matt's comment below. There may be true life examples where you come out ahead but they are likely to be scholarships or insurance policies or something with similar hard cutoffs that form step functions.
Hamburgers: The Economics of America’s Favorite Food
This is not two factor authentication, this is merely trading one factor (your password) for another factor (your telephone). In proper two-factor authentication, you should be required to enter your real password into your phone and THEN get a one-time password back out (your telephone is a trusted device).

My teenage friends trade phones all the time and they constantly nab them out of pockets, backs, purses, etc. for a few seconds. This change makes it trivially easy to steal someone's credentials.
It's on the way back to downtown from the baseball park; SF has done well this year; SF girls like baseball.
I loved the message conveyed in the talk, as it addresses a lot of my concerns about JavaScript's exposure to new developers - my primary one being the Google search results. My only real hangup was with Chris' presentation style and tone; it was almost a complete turn-off for me. JavaScript needs more enthusiastic evangelists like Christian Heilmann, not its own Martin Luther King Jr. JavaScript is not oppressed. It just isn't well represented.
Cover it with an insulated top when not in use. Your pool is colder than ambient because the top surface is constantly evaporating, leaving behind the slower moving molecules.

A solar heater would work better (if you have sun) because it will absorb more energy than ambiant air convected over the same area. And you would need a fan for a heatsink if its wasn't windy. http://www.amazon.com/SmartPool-SunHeater-Above-Ground-Pools...

A way for you to test it would be to do it on a small scale - maybe buy some copper tube and circulate an aquarium with the water filter pump.
He should disguise his invention as a social network for the energy industry -- BOOM! instant funding.
I started running debian back in 2000 or so, and was happy with it for a while, but now I've mostly converted to ubuntu LTS releases on the server.

I find that debians support cycle for stable is troublesome for long lived servers, as the support lifetime is unknown, other than it's a year past the release date of the next stable version. That means that the minimum lifetime before needing to recheck everything for stability is one year plus however long until they release a new stable.

In contrast, ubuntu is at 5yr support for their longterm releases, with a known 2 year cycle in-between. Which means that even if you install in the worst possible time in the cycle, a new install will be supported for three years.

I really like those extra two years of security updates.

(edit for iPad text entry)
Any ways to get this data indexed without contact with the shops? For example, maybe you could write a kick-ass smartphone app that can track your grocery spending by taking pictures of receipts and OCRing them. As a side-effect it would produce a database of locations and items.
I am strictly NSW, but you have a place in Sydney if you ever venture south :-)

(Sorry, we're a Cooper's household, so check the four-X at the door ;-)
The problem is if you save the CV to pass on to someone else, then you lose the cover letter. I think keeping them together is the best way to do it, for this reason. You can print them all out, and review the cover letter and CV at the same time.
It's my dad's credit card; He says he hasn't been robbed so how can he cancel the charge? Also, the wrong ticket I bought very clearly stated "This is a discount ticket, it cannot be changed or refunded." I feel lucky they even let me to change it for $150.
An intro to type inference and lambdas in C++0x
This is true, but also orthogonal to my point, which is that the grounding connector ("green wire", "round prong", or "ground") is not part of the circuit in US residential wiring.
Bronze Age Civilization Spotted in Old Photographs
Something which wasn't mentioned here is that many retailers don't want you to know - they want you to come in to the store. If all of the retailers have you come in to the store, there's an effective block on this sort of thing working.

Also, many retailers have "we'll honor competing prices on things but only if they're in stock" policies. This would make it too easy for people to play retailer X off retailer Y.

I noticed on milo.com that most of the items I looked for "might" be in stock. Well, of course they might be - I still need to call/drive.

A different approach would be a push - let me push out what I'm looking for, and have competing retailers contact me with replies. Have the service cost a bit for retailers to use - not a lot, but something to prevent rampant spamming. Build in location, so retailers are only getting requests from people in the area, and have retailers use the system on a regular basis. Just like someone should check voicemail every few minutes (30?) someone could check serviceX, and reply if they have the item in stock with the price, terms, etc. "Click here to hold the item from company Y for 2 days" etc.
no one taken, thanks for the feedback.
I mean that the buyers, designers, etc. that are attracted to a career at a stylish company like the Gap are, paradoxically, not particularly interested in selling the same old staples year in and year out.
It might be true that our political leaders will become less educated and intelligent over time, but that will hardly be the case in other areas-- areas where higher merit actually correlates with success.

The main effect probably won't be a real shift in the types of people with actual power, but rather an increasing marginalization of our public institutions, like in other countries with ineffective governments.
Hey Michael, I just wanted to say that this book is fantastic and has been my go to reference for rails 3.0 since I discovered it. Thanks!
C# is just like Objective C in that the vendor lock-in is in the API and resource formats rather than the code syntax. Info.plist is fine, but X/NIB is terrifying when mixed with four versions of OS X, four different CPU architectures and several Frameworks in a pear tree.
I like to pickup lotto tickets occasionally; it's basically a small fee to spend the week daydreaming about what you'd do with a sudden influx of money you didn't have to do any work to get. If I win back the cost of the ticket on a minimal prize I consider myself to have won.

Gambling where you get the results quickly (pretty much anything at a casino) has no appeal for me though, I see that as simply destroying money.
My dentist used to be located in a dentist ghetto (i.e. a strip mall full of more than a dozen dentists' offices). At one point, when I had no dental insurance I was told I needed two fillings, come back in a couple weeks, etc. So instead of just walking to my car I went down the side walk and got price quotes from about 6 more dentists for the two specific fillings I needed. Prices varied greatly!
I don't see this mentioned in the other comments, but there is almost certainly more going on here than meets the eye.

From http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq - people get to explicitly filter potential matches according to the answers those matches have provided to these questions. It is not a black box recommender system - people can mandate explicit rejection criteria.

This creates an incentive to lie on the questions.

It would make sense for users to try and make their profile statistically close to what they think the [type of people they would like to date] specify.

For example, Bob wants to go out with a 'good girl' (lets call her 'Alice').
Bob reasons that Alice, being a 'good girl' would probably want to go out with a guy who has never cheated; so Bob will neglect to mention his affair with Eve on his profile.

I would guess that users, even if they don't initially realise the strategic situation they are in, will quickly learn it socially and through feedback, and adjust their profiles accordingly.

The end result being that the answers given on the website, that provide the data being visualised here, should be treated with caution.

I imagine that certain questions such as 'number of sexual partners' comes with large disincentive to lie, due to social pressure.

As such, the conclusions here should be taken with a grain of salt - and that's even before discussing selection bias amoung the users of a particular social dating site.
Such services are adopted as they spread through the underlying social network; it is well established that social networks are heavily clustered, and rarely give representative samples until they get very large.

Its still very interesting stuff, but we should be careful about how strongly we interpret it.
Just to offer some counter points... I bought MonoTouch and absolutely love it. Mono is rough around the edges but they do manage to get it right where it counts. At runtime MonoTouch is fast, stable and runs great. MT is so much nicer to develop for compared to Cocoa Touch it's not even funny (I've released two iOS apps written in ObjC and consider myself pretty decent with the platform). Novell knows this and knows this is really the only edge they have, which is why they've put so much into MT and now MonoMac.

Yes Mono's future is shaky, but as a .NET developer I can adopt to Mono pretty much overnight. So if it goes belly up I haven't lost all that much.

Would I base a business on anything Mono? No, I wouldn't, you are right there. But despite all the FUD, there is value in Mono as long as you can maintain a realistic outlook on it.
No. The old one-click installer used VS6, and the new one uses MinGW and GCC.
It is not clear that he has been looking for investors .. from the article it seems he has been looking for government grants, which would have given him money without asking for equity in return.

Johnson may have initially wanted to fund his invention purely from his own money, keeping all the equity, but as the money started running out he has been looking for alternatives.
If anyone's interested with PostgreSQL tests on this kernel: TPS is 20% lower than the stock RHEL 2.6.18-194.11.4.el5 kernel.
I like your suggestions - is this something that you are already doing?

Being such a low-volume project with a choppy work schedule, I think that monthly payment option that we agreed on can work well for this project. I would like to start working on some standard agreement documents, contracts, etc, but I feel like this current project is so small and low-margin (I probably low-balled myself; that's another story) that it's not really worth the effort of putting together in such a short time frame. Do you think all of this is necessary for about $200-300 worth of work per month?
Not only that, but he's a huge supporter of science education for kids. He is a judge at the local Atlanta FIRST Robotics regional.
Lets say you're writing C. You're going along your merry way and all is well. Except that one day, your code doesn't do what you want it to do. Well, every day. But, this day is special. Today, your code isn't working because of a compiler bug, not because of a bug in your code.

Now, you can either ignore the bug, and hope that it gets fixed. You can work around it. You can use a different C compiler that may not have the bug. Or, you can fix the bug yourself.

Now, lets say instead of C, you're writing Java. Given the situation that Oracle seems to be attempting to make, the first situation won't get you sued, but it will leave you will a bug. The second choice is the best option. But, the bug still needs to be fixed at some point. The third choice might not be possible, because Oracle will have sued everyone else who has a JVM implementation and forced them to stop making an alternative, leaving you with the buggy Oracle/Sun JVM. And the last choice will get you sued.

And, to be frank, three of these four choices suck, and the remaining one isn't a joy to work with either.
This is not the Freehackers Union...
I drink because it helps me relax and stop thinking about what the idiots at work and in our government have done to my life.
Online Tool to request info on who actually owns your Mortgage
If anyone is interested in reading more about how exactly he invented the Super Soaker http://www.isoaker.com/Info/history_supersoaker.html
I would pay with a very significant part of my life and current resources to get my dream job - running a profitable business that would make enough money for me to experiment with more ideas that would in turn help me make more money :) (Gosh, I must sound greedy! got to keep it self-sustaining, right?)

Somebody out there who can get me my dream job? :)
Click-able: http://LitLift.com
Since they didn't call it two-factor authentication, it's not fair to whack them for not implementing two-factor authentication. It's "I'm at someone else's computer" authentication, and it's a fine idea.

Within the next 2 years, most everyone's phone will already be logged in to Facebook, as smartphones become as cheap as iPods, mooting the latter concern. Regardless, if you can't safely use the feature, you'd be well advised not to use it.
Zerohedge discussion here : http://www.zerohedge.com/article/here-your-chance-check-if-y...
I would wonder if anything is worth it for $200 to $300 per month.

For such a low volume I would ask for $1000 payment up front and that then gives them x hours to ask you to do stuff.

Hardly worth getting out of bed for that little money. What are charging per hour and what sort of programming are you doing?
This doesn't seem to show anything new that isn't already available in Android or iOS.. except that you get to use Microsoft web services instead. Hardly grounds for domination..
It depends on the company but here's a few things I've come across that have paid off. (several of these have been said):

Be genuine. Don't bullshit.
Tell them why you want to work for THEIR company.
Discuss why you'll benefit them or what you'll bring to the table.
Mention your skills.
Be conversational and convey a little personality.
If the company is a laid-back startup type, don't be afraid to show your quirky side.
Show enthusiasm.
Tell them why you're different.
Maybe the world would be a better place if going drinking with your friends on Sunday mornings were the sociological norm instead of attending religious services.
JustSpotted (YC S08): Celebrity Geo-Stalking In Real-Time
Good catch!

Will fix. ;)
Bumpr.net launches new social network to brings them all togehter
Bumpr is a social networking application that helps people manage communication and create lasting communities across multiple social networks. Bumpr combines your social networks, user generated news, and entertainment, enabling you to consume, create, discover, and share digital content in entirely new ways.
You need more people to manage 1,000 servers than you do for managing just 10. Sure, you can automate processes, but as automation becomes more sophisticated it takes more time and resources to build and maintain. So, yes, the number of devs does not grow linearly with the number of servers, but maybe it grows logarithmically, or even slower. But it does grow.
That reminds me of another reason I drink- atheists.
Just FYI, the US NEC requires each entryway of a room in a dwelling to have a switch which can control a light.

It is usually, but does not have to be, an overhead light.

An alternative that is also code-conforming is to have the switch control a socket (typically, the bottom plug in several duplex receptacles in the room) where a lamp is plugged in. Sometimes people don't actually plug a lamp in there, so the switch does nothing, and maybe that's what you've been irritated by.

If the wiring is done this way -- e.g., bedrooms and living rooms -- it can be quite flexible if you want to rearrange the room layout. You move the furniture and plug the lamp into the bottom receptacle where-ever it is convenient and sensible.
When I switch on, you will become a machine
Monster Truck Madness Still Available
The Australian Government tried this and it was a disaster. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/how-grocery-choice-was-ushered...
Haha I think you've got that backwards. It's probably better to make a social network look green and sell the carbon credits! How that for monetization?!?
I don't think this just applies to startups. I think most meetings, most products, most policies, are trying to solve the WRONG problem.

Mainly because solving the right problem is hard, and sometimes, makes people angry. If your problem is "That Luke guy is a dick. He blames the tools, others, and the language for his own failings.", then claiming you have a "no-blame" culture and trying to get people to admit fault and work out solutions isn't going to stop him being a dick.
Creating a Reddit AMI for Amazon EC2