skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe we would have waited if I knew November was the month! We just launched http://globalfolders.com using Rails 3, and had a blast developing it.
What about a puzzle system system -- Companies can post/host questions and then review the answers. I've drafted a quick blog post if anybody wants to comment more directly... Maybe I'll make it this weekends projects (since my frid.ge clone was killed by Facebooks new groups).

http://bit.ly/b6GC6F
Bitbucket was a side project for me, and it was just acquired. I ran it for 2.5 years under my own wing.
Yesterday I launched my little project Rejose (http://www.rejose.com) it is still very basic and I am playing with different concepts and will release some improvements soon.
The Secret Life of JavaScript Primitives
Perhaps it just looks crappy on Chrome. I haven't touched the defaults.
Goldman Sachs if not in parity, very close.
Not me. I vastly prefer Netflix's content delivery system over Hulu's. Hulu's PC player is stuttery at hires, and has a "comb" like artifact in fast moving scenes, whereas Netflix's works fine on the same machine.
For more Interactive Fiction, including a mirror of the IF archive and Infocom game packages check out http://guetech.org
East Coast vs. West Coast: The Odio Brothers' Story
Sure, but Dell would love to have something to do with the process, and with phones, they can finally try their damnedest, e.g.:

http://androinica.com/2010/07/14/motorola-says-if-you-want-t...

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/G2-HTC-G2-Rootkit-Jailbreak-G1,n...

Android isn't really tied to hardware very much unless the carriers make it so. Hell, I can run Android on my Windows Mobile phone (Samsung Omnia II.)
SMU Researchers Find West Virginia's Just Leaking Geothermal Energy
The flip side of course is that it becomes dangerous if you rely on any of Google's free services. An extreme example, but what happens if GMail isn't profitable enough? Maybe Adsense for content isn't pulling it's weight any more (if it ever has)?

411 was a fairly useful service, and while shutting it down is probably the right business move, it pushes me more and more to move my primary email account and diversifying my advertising.
I like the first idea as specifically targeted towards the restaurant industry. we use to get snail mail discounts coupons from restaurants for your birthdays. those restaurants could be your initial target customers as well.

On a side note, I am looking for feedback on some of my ideas. would you mind recommending me something at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773435 ?
if facebook.is_async() and google_analytics.is_async():
raise WebmastersSalary("Awesome job!")
I apply a minimalist ethic to all kinds of things, including the amount of effort I put into designing my site ;)
Not as interesting as some of the others, but:

http://websitesthatdontworkwithoutwww.com - 'naming and shaming' websites that have a shoddy sysasmin, and a massive petpeeve of mine, but it hasn't been getting any traction so I plan on taking it offline.

Youtubetopten.com (no longer online) - daily top ten of youtube videos voted for by facebook users. Never got any traction either.
I'm in. Should we set a fixed date? I propose the 28th, last Sunday, so we have more time to iron out the last details and to check each other's apps.
I agree wholeheartedly, but also agree with jsankey's comment that "If communication is solved then it can work well" is a really, really, really big "if". It is absolutely possible to get good results from offshoring...

...however, getting those good results takes a serious commitment of time and effort on the part of the client, some of which has to happen before the project even gets started, and some of which has to continue throughout the project's lifespan. Ensuring that they (the client) actually know what they want before trying to tell somebody else what to build; establishing good communication, documentation, and development practices within their own organization before trying to collaborate with extramural contractors; spending the time and the energy to really dig into it with the providers, and keep them on the phone until you're 100% sure that both you and they are reading from the same page about what needs to be done, no matter how confusing their accents are to you (or yours are to them). These sorts of things are absolute prerequisites for a successful offshoring experience, especially if it's the first time that the client's tried it.

In my personal experience, the sorts of people who are turning to offshoring as a way to "triangle the circle" and get good+fast+cheap are not the sorts of people who are going to be willing or able to put the necessary time and thought into the project, its planning, or its management. These jokers are a big part of why offshoring gets such a bad rap, in my opinion. Of course, none of this is to say that the burden rests entirely on the clients- the providers, and the relative quality of their communication/management/etc. practices obviously have a ton of influence on how a given project turns out (or doesn't turn out, as the case may be).

However, I say that decent planning and project management practices on the part of the client are absolutely necessary (but not sufficient conditions) for a successful offshoring experience. When I hear offshoring horror stories, the majority of the time the problems had their roots in client-side troubles rather than provider-side troubles.
Magic and Software Design  (Bruce Tognazzini, 1993)
Give the copy of your landing page a plot! There finally might be a better landing page slogan than "The easiest way to ___".
The Road to Serfdom by Hayek

Great book
Any points for solving part 1 just scanning the text for something that stood out?

Seriously though, this is awesome. I'd love to know how you guys do in terms of # of applicants and the end-result (any hires?).
None of the ones mentioned here are still up:

(2001) gbafan.com -- A Gameboy Advance review site. It did pretty well. Had a staff of three writers and good amounts of traffic. I wrote the review submission system in PHP and it was my first exposure to web development.

(2006) saidsecrets.com -- Anonymous polling site. I can't for the life of me think of the name of that polling site that runs on the reddit engine, but it was just like that. I wrote it 100% from scratch using XMLHTTPRequest as a means to learn AJAX/JS before moving onto an AJAX framework.

(2006) fitaculous.com -- a Social networking site with a fitness theme. The idea was people would motivate their friends to keep working out/eating healthy. It tracked calories (or weight watcher points) as well as your workouts, BMI, weigh-ins, etc. At its peak it had about 2500 members. I did it with Rails.

(2008) -- Turrets iPhone game. I only had it in the app store for a 3 days and it made me $200, so I was actually pretty happy about that. I pulled it as my employer at the time did not allow that kind of moonlighting and I feared losing my job.
Can you play MUDs from the Kindle?
Now I know that Jackboots has to go through Fascism to reach Hitler, but Sam Browne Belt has a direct link.
I had a goal of launching 2 startups this year. I have launched my first (www.socialadmanager.com) and it is ramen profitable. I will be launching the next one around the end of november so this is really good timing.

I think we need a way to organize this such that we can offer assistance etc... to each other and at the end of Nov. everyone can reveal what the built kind of like a mini demo day. The new HN facebook group would probably be a good way for everyone that is participating to communicate.
Microsoft is also great at dodging taxes.
11 a.m. at the Old Union. We'll grab conference rooms as needed. The plan is to get lunch and brown bag it. Alternatively we can all go out together afterwards.
Perhaps you think that but I don't think they are or their shareholders see it that way. Microsoft tends to only deal with Linux or the open source world in an effort to avoid criticism. In fact, that's just too ironic of a statement and I think needs a little justification.
I'd love to, but I need idea(s), motivation and a lot more time to work on them.
A great point and completely agree. Updated post.
I still love this quote from the article:

Another more grandiose way of going about things is throwing your own conference. Alain from Fair Software did this with Founder’s Conference

Especially the "grandiose" part :-)
That's my primary reason today.

The other major one, which the article/study perhaps misses, is collaboration. I and others who modify the pages I track will sometimes contribute after someone gets the ball rolling with a change.

However, the study may have accounted for this by looking at the content of these "most sociable editors" user pages. Here's the working paper version of the cited study, which I haven't read yet: http://blog.mikezhang.com/files/chinesewikipedia.pdf
Count me in. I have plenty of ideas, but haven't gotten started majorly in any side projects lately.
That's a great idea.

I just discovered an innovative little app from Domino's Pizza here in Sydney: Firstly I was able to order the entire pizza online in a very intuitive interface (with a few issues), and then pay for it online. Once paid, a ticking clock appeared that showed the exact time that they received the order, started on the pizza, baked it, and when it was complete and ready for pickup. While waiting, in the same window they did a good job of trying to offer entertainment by showing movie trailers (not my cup of tea but well implemented).

Stuff like this makes a difference.
I think the Diaspora just worked in the SF office. I don't believe it was a project out of Pivotal.
I agree wholeheartedly. Not only is it far too easy to link dates to Hitler, but dates are also likely to be connected to other dates, thus getting even further way from a real connection to the original page and giving two chances at the heightened chance of a hit that dates have. I tried "Mark Zuckerberg", and the path from him to Hitler was:

December 5th -> 1889 -> Adolf Hitler

When there's a perfectly obvious connection at:

Jewish -> Adolf Hitler

(which did exist in October 2008, just so nobody else wastes their time checking)
Sally Menke - Tarantino's editor - Obituary
No JSONP?
Known to whom, exactly?

I know him only through his books; I've read _Clean Code_ and _Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices_.

They're both excellent. I'd happily recommend either one to someone wanting to improve their object-oriented design skills.
What if Microsoft Bought Adobe?
The announcement was timed to coincide with Microsoft's Open Enrollment period - which opens in November.
RxnStream - http://rxnstream.com - Allowed you to share internet videos with your friends and watch them while they watched the video. Thought it would be great for sharing shocking videos, but it never really took off. Site is still up, but I'm not actively pursuing it anymore.
Took < 10 minutes. The problems were very, very easy. If they expect people to take 1-2 hours and have trouble with this, then the message that I would take away from this is that their hiring bar is quite low.
Mike Cassidy: Speed as THE primary business strategy
Android is Google's attempt to destroy Apple's App Store model.
Python powerset() with max(), list.remove(), and sum() builtins made the last problem's solution ~5 lines long :)
Shopping Cart : DIY or Open source?
If Open Source is your way to go, which one?<p>I've beat myself over the head with this question for awhile.

Zend cart = blah!

If we're not making any money yet, why throw down money up front for store software?

Your thoughts are appreciated.
its stories like this which have been very encouraging in my own venture.

a comment on the cost of living in the united states, and how to do it cheaply. i live in oakland, california - in the heart of the san francisco bay area. my cost of living is incredibly low, my rent is $300, utilities are about $90 a month and that includes power and 1MB network connection. i ride a bike everywhere i go, don't own a car. i cook all my own food, i purchase organic produce for cheap at the local farmers market.

my entire monthly living expenses are less than 500 dollars, in a location where i can get to financial district of san francisco in about 14 minutes.

my business venture is based in my bedroom, my tech co-founder lives in mendocino county. we're currently in product development phase creating an analytical system for precision viticulture. we're getting ready to start our first adventures in funding.

reading stories about people buckling down, focusing on their ventures, and achieving success has (for lack of a better term) inspired me. hacker news and the whole entrepreneurial community in the bay area have been key to informing my decisions.
1-800-FREE-411
c / python
I would think that pencil and paper would be slower than writing the programs. But you're right that they are ridiculously easy.
The healthcare coverage was something that drew me in when I started work at Microsoft. It showed a pretty serious level of respect to their employees.
"Splunk, given its cost and complexity, is almost never right for startups."

Many, many startups would disagree with you. If cost is a factor, we're starting a program for startups. Feel free to ping me for more info.

We'll also have a new developer license for our next release, which will make it easier for cash-strapped developers to use Splunk.

And finally, I would just point out that using rsyslog, syslog, and syslog-ng do not preclude you from using something like Splunk. Many of our users use Splunk with a log manager, such as syslog-NG, because they like our analytics engine and reporting tools. YMMV.

Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion :)

-John Mark
Splunk Community Guy
How do we follow up?
One OS, one device (or a small handful of very similar devices), and one app store is simpler, but not necessary. What didn't work was the crazy panoply of design options of the windows mobile world, where screens could vary from a large HTC device to a tiny clamshell screen and where you could have a number pad on one phone, a full hw keyboard on another, and a touch screen on another. That degree of diversity is difficult to make high quality apps for. However, android is a bit better, there is less diversity and especially fewer giant gaps in capabilities. The amount of additional effort it takes to write an app that works well on a Droid 2 as well as a Galaxy S is insignificant next to the comparable effort for targeting both an HTC 8525 and a tiny clamshell phone with no kb, no touchscreen, and a 120px resolution screen. The desktop PC world manages this challenge just fine.

And ultimately catering to users' particular individual needs is likely to be a better market strategy in the long term compared to the "one true device for everyone!" ideal of Apple.
This really doesn't reflect a programmers skills in anyway. I managed to write ruby to solve the problems, but I approached it to do for fun. Brain teasers aren't going to weed out the good from bad.

Also, considering the instructions explicitly say "write code to..." I would say using tools that give you the answers is in fact cheating. It's like math test where you have to show your work.
Ask HN: Why does Quora require Username/Pass after a FB Connect Signup?
I'm working on a new web app and aiming to make the sign-in/sign-up as seamless as possible. I'm constantly stumped that sites like Quora, Plancast, etc that offer FB Connect as your primary account all require you to basically create an account afterwards.

It seems that the time saved is all lost by the time you've completed the sign-up process.

Is there a technical or business reason to require users to enter an e-mail/password after signing up with FB Connect? Or is it just a failsafe in case Facebook goes tyrannical one day?
I gave (naive) feedback how they should improve their work with their customers, improve hiring people, make sure employees are motivated and whatever.

The general manager even told me that most things I said were true but he's not able to change it. As the company is inside a large publishing group and they've some large portal sites running, they're quite job-save for the next 5 years I guess.
I'm hearing-impaired.
Classic: Rubber Duck debugging
I think there is a really exciting opportunity for a startup to write some simple desktop software that would allow novice users to root their phone (any android compatible phone) and then choose from a selection of fun, interesting or just more up-to-date os's.
I don't know why this got downvoted - Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon seems highly relevant to me.
Apple developed 7-inch iPad alongside current model
this might be an idea worth developing too. a way for independent developers to keep in touch and keep each other accountable on different products they are working on. probably closed system.
same thing here.

I'm probably caring too much telling Z-Players how to improve rather to improve myself to get a A+ player. As I love programming and this is my biggest "hobby" since school I can't really do mediocre work for a longer period.

Well, 3months is okay but everything that takes longer makes me emotional sad. The only option I know is to leave for other work.
Google News Experiments with Twitter Integration
I commute on a bike, go to the gym every day and try and get up every time i'm NOT in "the zone."
Oh my god, talk about relentless.

You know what would be interesting: a photo capturing your wife/girlfriend's mood at the time beside each milestone :-)
No, no it isn't.
I used Ruby, too. Nothing else required.

I think Clojure might've made things a tad easier (given all its sequence functions), but I'm just learning it, so Ruby all the way.

That said, finding the palindromes in Ruby took me about 12 lines of code (less if I didn't structure it using methods).
Facebook Complies Imperfectly With DMCA, Suffocates Fan Group
For the third problem, yes. But after solving the first two problems without writing code, I didn't feel like starting on the last problem.
I remember learning about the difference between static and dynamic friction.... so the fact that the force required to move two static objects exceeded what the coefficient of friction wasn't surprising. Have people forgotten this? Or is the reporter just physics-challenged?
Ask YC: How to learn the most programming possible in 9 months?
What advice would you give to someone thinking of spending 9 months learning programming full time.
Ask HN: Would you use a language other than Java for an Android app?
As part of my CS degree, one of my courses involves developing an Android application that helps new students choose their courses and generally familiarize themselves with the university. This is sponsored by Google.

It's recommended we use Java with the Eclipse IDE. I'm not a big Java fan, I know it's solid but I find development time slow.

However can I realistically use ruby or html5/css/javascript or anything a bit more interesting (which may also make me stand out)?

I have seen phonegap, appcelerator and ruboto but I don't know if they are stable enough or there is enough tutorials/documentation to risk my course on.
I think there should be some error involved here. My calculations show that it is not physically possible:

minimum theoretical latency = d/c = 42.5 ms
(EDIT: thanks for correction, ArturSoler!)

c = 300000 km/s, speed of light, http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs...

d = 12761 km, distance between San Francisco, CA and Bangkok, Thailand http://www.travelmath.com/flight-distance/from/San+Francisco...

By the way, speaking of locality, here in St.-Petersburg, Russia, now that I'm connected to the new Ethernet internet provider, I get 3 ms to google's servers, which means they are in the city already (they are; 8 hops). I haven't got such low latency to any Russian site yet. I actually decided to traceroute them when I read about a new Google's data center in Kotka, Finland and read suggestions that it might be used to serve Russia too. Good guess, but Google already does better than that, which shows their attention to maximizing quality of service.

Those latencies are achievable with a good Ethernet provider. DSL will add 10..20 ms, depending on modulation. Radio will add hundreds.
TubeMogul raises $10M for video platform
> Could anyone explain what this paragraph means from their FAQ:

I think that's a joke.
The rumor I always heard was that 411 was only around to stress-test their voice recognition backend. It really wasn't delivering ads or anything of revenue to them.
I made this huge-ass .NET version of digg which died really quietly. Spent months on the code base, did all kinds of cool stuff like converting links to images/videos/etc from specific sites (eg youtube) so you could view them in comments.
http://www.fantasymonsterapp.com/
I'm making a living based off of my iphone app Fantasy Monster, which I did as a Master's class project and released on the app store 4 months ago. It is currently earning more per month than my wife and I are at our full time jobs combined (I'm a s/w engineer she is in HR)
Why not set a minimum price per hour, and if the customer can't afford you, then say good-bye with no hard feelings?

He is not evil and toxic, he just needs someone cheaper and may need to adjust his definition of "good" and "fast" accordingly.

There are good reasons to take work for less than your normal fee. I do it to learn sexy new technologies I would not have access to otherwise. (i.e. if you have Exadata and need a cheap, good and fast DBA send me and email!) As long as you know what you are getting out of the deal, all is good.

Calling someone a douche-bag, evil and poison because he asked for reduced rate? Giving a condescending rant about it? I don't think its professional and I'd never treat potential customers like this, even if I disagree with their way of doing business.
First off, good luck! I would pick a language like Python or Javascript, and start reading code. diveintopython is very good.

Once you are familiar with little bits of code, pick something big that you want to make. My first big program was a metasearch engine (given a search query, issue queries to several search engines, parse the results, and combine them into one set).

Once you are happy with it, maybe 5-6 months in, write the same program in another language, say Ruby or Javascript. This is now called a "kata", I think. I wrote the same metasearcher in 5 different languages over the course of about 14 months. Attacking the same problem gives you a good vantage point from which to compare languages and techniques.
if you've DSL it depends on "interleaving". It's something lik "ECC" and takes usually ~20ms. This does only affect latency not performance.

Here in Germany some providers even charge you on a monthly bassi to deactivate interlaving which they call "Fast Path" then…
Thank you for putting this up! I have a goal to launch http://privio.net by the 18th. It's nice to get that out there - feels... official.
While MS's health care coverage had been very "generous" previously, make no mistake: this is a pay cut for every MS employee.
Nope, the changes don't take effect for two years.
Oops; I wrote my comment under the assumption that dschoon was with greplin, and in retrospect I'm not sure why. Sorry about that.
on the open source side Magento is getting lots of traction

Another option is Interspire Shopping Cart (http://bit.ly/9z96cl) - which is not open source but give you full access to php code base, design flexibility, a steady stream of updates, support, and new features.

Interspire also makes BigCommerce (http://bit.ly/bxyds4) which is a hosted shopping cart with solid front end flexibility.
did you see http://www.ebookprice.info/

not trying to discourage you...theres a lot of room for improvement in the UI