skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75"

Sympathy suitably tempered. I don't want to see anyone's house burned to the ground... but if it's going to happen to someone, I'd rather it be the guy who was knowingly freeloading than someone who was paying their way.
Yes, if you're building a B2B company, these skills are invaluable. But you're probably not going to find all of them in the same person.

If you can find a business co-founder with half of the above _plus_ an insane drive to master the remaining half, you'll be better off than most startups.
Couldn't agree more. If the .com is not available DON'T DO IT!

I heard about http://wordoid.com/ here on HN -- it's a wonderful little webapp that lets you generate domain names that "sound natural" in a select list of languages and that (optionally) contain specific words.

In the "more options" you can filter out domains where both .com and .net are unavailable (it would be better to just filter unavailable .coms but it still saves a lot of time).
This is a fascinating hypothesis but I predict a big caveat: Much of Apple's quality derives from standardization. Everyone with an iPhone 4 has the same iPhone 4. You can design a case, a bicycle mount, a Twitter client or a learn-to-juggle app for the iPhone 4 and know that everyone will have the same experience.

Consider the world of free software, for example, where we have DIY manufacturing. Everyone can write their own Drupal, Wordpress, or Rails. But the market is not moving toward such bespoke products. Quite the opposite: customers want something that is based on customizations -- as minor as possible -- of a standard product.

Part of the problem, actually, is that you underestimate the effort of design. When you can turn a blueprint into hardware overnight, you'll still have to sweat over every line of that blueprint, and document it, and support it.
Hey, good luck with that! To all: Benjie is awesome guy and so are Anybots! And he has great room in MV available on Airbnb!

To Benjie- ping me with reqs for that position I might be able to recommend someone!

-Vlad
I'm not sure if this is a real change to the nic.ly policy or not. It's tricky. They say it was adult content. While vb.ly might not have had any, it was co-owned by Violet Blue, who while she is many wonderful things, she is not islamic.

Violet Blue's Website: http://www.tinynibbles.com/

It's not just Libya, the US govt which has ultimate control over .com, .org, .net, .us, .gov, etc... also has some crazy ideas. Just look at how the senate last week wanted to start revoking domain names willy nilly.
Helmets: bad; Naked head: good; Wheel-scythes: awesome.
I'd say 99% of Apple's target market were fine without multitasking plus it's a nice battery saver.

And this is coming from a hardcore Android fan with a Nexus One.
Have a checklist of "stupid" health maintenance stuff, not directly related to the problem at hand. Neglecting these may cause poor mental performance. Here are some example items:

- Be aware of how much you sleep, avoid chronic sleep deprivation,

- drink enough water that your urine is clear,

- watch out for blood sugar crashes from eating irregularly or eating refined sugar, these can mess your head,

- go running or to the gym, this will kick up your metabolism, and being in a better physical condition might provide more energy for mental work,

- try some basic dietary supplements, some omega-3 source, multivitamins and calcium seem to be commonly used
Paul Graham wrote a while ago about the "Trouble with Segway" http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html He writes:

"The Segway hasn’t delivered on its initial promise, to put it mildly. There are several reasons why, but one is that people don’t want to be seen riding them. Someone riding a Segway looks like a dork."

The obvious problem with the new transportation capsule is that it makes you look like a cockroach in a glass jar.
I agree, but command-line skills were something I didn't consider learning explicitly - not really knowing how useful it'd be. I know a lot of developers with just a sketchy understanding of a tiny part of them!
The math is actually really easy. Every two objects exert a force on each other of (mass 1 * mass 2) / (distance ^ 2). Pseudocode to step gravity in a simulation would be something like:

foreach(object as o1) {
foreach(object as o2) {
if(o1 != o2) {
force = (o1.mass * o2.mass) / (o1.pos - o2.pos).length
o1.vector *= unit_vector_from_o1_to_o2 * force
}
}
}

Obviously this is O(n^2), which is why it's so slow when you have a lot of objects in the system, but it's pretty straightforward.
Available on Steam for Mac and Windows for $9.99: http://store.steampowered.com/app/29180/

I picked up Osmos during Steam's xmas sale, the game is a lot of fun and really original.
> registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of hoops, and is more expensive to boot

This is quite interesting, because in Germany we have the exact opposite. Here, .de domains are preferable to .com/.net/.org, because .de domains are cheaper, registered more quickly with less bureaucracy and provide better data privacy for the domain holder.
I still don't get the recent trend of startups branding their businesses around .ly and .io. I suppose it's similar to any "hip" trend, such as gradients and rounded corners, but it always seemed legally risky to me.
This strikes me as bizarre. In investment banking it's common for people to invest with a salesmen and not even know who he works for. If he switches to another company he just has them sign some papers to move their account and that's that. At least that's how it was explained to me by the European senior executive who was bitching about working with the US because of this.

EDIT: tightened up the wording slightly
Where Is the Female Steve Jobs?
530, really really close :o
Calculate the Average Salary (without revealing individual salaries)
dude, I know.

I played the demo on my PC a year ago.

I did only buy it for my iPod Touch though. It fits the touch platform really well. I played through every single level except the last arcade level which I can't seem to beat. Damn gravity!
Thanks! Yes - this sounds like exactly the sort of situation that we built Yobiz eRetail IPS to solve. Not only is pencil/paper and excel ineffective if you have multiple warehouses, but imagine if you also have multiple storefronts - trying to keep the sites updated with the correct stock levels is a nightmare.

We're just about to launch our Yobiz app, and we'd love to have you in our trial / alpha. It would be free during the trial period of course, and allow us to learn more about customers like you so we can make sure to have the right features / benefits.

I don't want to be overly self-promoting here, so just check out the site and if it looks like something of value, register and we'll be happy to help!
I found precisely the opposite. Because it was relatively quick to get something impressive working in Rails, it didn't matter to me initially which bits were Ruby and which were Rails. That all came later.
That's great thanks, actually the industry I was most interested in reading more about
Well, I don't know such an app.
But that can be done pretty easily, by installing an FTP server on every machine (or setting up a CIFS folder) and configure manually every computer to backup on the others...

Then, if you provide more information (environement, OS, hardware, number of machines to backup, volume of data), maybe someone would come up with something to help you ?
Everything in business has a risk associated with it. Domain names are not excluded from that analysis.

The risk with .ly domains has been discussed before. This is just evidence that the risk exists and this evidence should be used to recalculate that risk.

As mentioned in a similar reply in this thread a Plan B should be considered. Any sufficiently large website or business should have some disaster recovery plans, regardless and this is just another page that needs to be created for that plan

What a Plan B for a domain name is? I'm not quite sure but, del.icio.us delicious.com is an example.
It sounds like you don't have any particular goal in life, or that whatever goals you had have been reached. Knowledge and intelligence on their own aren't enough. You also need a mission.

Much of the coding which I do tends to be oriented around a particular kind of goal which I'd like to reach, and which has remained elusive enough to keep me trying and learning different things.
So, I guess that makes 2 prize this year awarded to carbon-atoms related discoveries !!
In nl the TLD admin is called SIDN, which officially stands for Stichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland, but the situation was/is so bad that they got the nickname Stichting Internet Dominatie Nederland which stands for something entirely different.

How it can be 'more quickly' then typing in a name in a form and clicking a mouse is a mystery to me, what do you mean by that?
For what it's worth, I liked the original much better than the proposed replacement. People aren't idiots, if you give them a good explanation they appreciate it even if they don't fully understand all the details or implications. Think of it like going to the doctor - if I have something wrong with me, I want my doctor to explain it to me in a way I can understand, not just tell me that I have something generic wrong.
I'm not sure, really. There is still the issue to be able to (safely) store your bike at both ends, while here it appears to stay on the 'circuit'.

I studied a bit what happens in Paris with their "Velib" bike rental service (see visualisation here http://blog.logeek.fr/2008/3/31/data-visualization-with-ruby...) and it appeared to be a real issue.

An automated system with only identical devices and a circuit that goes in circles could solve this more efficiently I believe.

Plus if 45km/h can be achieved with specialized, well maintained devices, this could be really interesting.

In short, it's a somewhat crazy idea I wouldn't be surprised to see becoming successful :)
> 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'

No, he's warning others that because Libya control this particular TLD, and police it using a set of laws that aren't available in English, it's to be considered unsafe for those who do not read Arabic.
Thanks for this. I've been studying Diamond Way Buddhism since a few years, and your writeup matches my understanding exactly.
So if someone posts a cartoon picture of muhammad, and shortens it through bit.ly, will Libya pull the domain, and in the process break millions of other shortened URLs?

http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad
"Within just a few months, the pound had lost nearly a third of its value against the dollar. This produced the desired effect: The British economy recovered quickly."

Isn't that just economics for simple minds? I don't know why the economy recovered, but it seems dangerous to assume it was just a single factor.
Is it ok to email buyers of my Android app?
I'm a new Android developer and have released 2 different apps. RealMirror is free and I released it about 6 weeks ago. It has done, in my opinion, well with over 10,000 downloads.

Monday, I published my first paid app, mySoundboard. With no downloads at all for the first 48 hours, I was very disappointed.

Last night I had 2 downloads. I am very happy and more than just a little grateful. I don't have their real emails, but I do have a Google Checkout anonymous email address that I can use. Is it ok to email the buyers and say thank you or would that be too creepy?
500, based on eyeballing the number of big numbers (between 15 and 20, I took 20 to adjust for the small numbers) and eyeballing the average value of the big numbers (25, I took a number slightly lower than I estimated because I knew that the 20 was probably too high). Giving the estimate 20*25=500.
I think it's typo, "Google'ish" became "Google'shit".
How does one change his domain name without losing hits?
Commercial Photographer Hampshire
After reading it I began to research Sogyal Rinpoche and came across the allegation that he had abused his position and assaulted a woman.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6...

Definitely tainted the advice presented in the book: "Do as I say, not as I do", etc.
I simply noticed that the bottom two rows had numbers clustered around 30. So I did 30 * 20 = 600. Not as close as your guess, but close enough :)
A very sweaty glass jar....

Give me a bicycle and appropriate clothing any day.
It's not just people from the US who read English, you know. Here in Europe, you often find people from two different non-English speaking countries conversing in English because it's what they have in common.

I think it's ultimately a bit of a caveat emptor situation though: if they're not going to publish their rules in English, it means you're likely to get screwed.

Which is to be expected from a dictatorship run by a guy who dresses like the Beatles on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band.
Apple data center means $1.7 million for house
Disabling SSL renegotiation is a crutch, not a fix
I think that this advice only applies to commercial sites. I have several personal domains such as Richard.sDoma.in and Richard.sMyNa.me which are far superior to any .com domain name.

Personal users are only just starting to get into having a personal URL to hosting their own id and blog etc. and with over 2 billion internet users and only around 140million registered domains, I think attitudes will change quickly. At least for the personal user.
Despite all this every time I sit down to code my brain turns to mush, somehow, and nothing gets done. I can always give my managers an intelligent explanation of why progress is so slow...

Oh, so this happens at work...This exact same thing has happened to me many times and here is what I figured out...

The problem is NOT with you, it's with the work.

Like you I have scored excellently on interviews and tests and have written code so cool I even surprised myself. So we have to believe that we are as good as we think we are. That belief is what enables us to take on the hard projects. That belief is also what turns our brains to mush when our work is too many levels below our capabilities.

Sure, we all do work below our level every once in a while; we have to, that's the nature of the beast. But when you're doing low level work for too long (like at many jobs), you lose energy from the lack of stimulation. We then mistake that lack of energy for many other things: our skill, our commitment, even our health.

Here's what I've done in situations like yours: build something cool on your own time. It will get your juices flowing and you'll be your old self in no time. Of course, you'll want to work on your own project instead of your employer's, but that's another problem.
Do you like what you do? You said you have passion, but that isn't always the same. Programming can be very hard if you aren't actually interested in the work you're doing.
the message, not the messenger.

you didn't gain anything positive from the book?
Big sales jump for Android
Actually, I think the author meant "Google's hit" as in "successful".
It should be noted that all vb.ly links still exist but do not function at this time. We have the database intact, and will restore your shortened URLs momentarily with a suitable domain.

It's nice that they're doing that but it's essentially worthless. The url's in the database have no value, it's the ones spread all over other people's servers, and the work that went into doing it that have value.
It seems like a fantastic business opportunity for someone inside the country to "represent" the domain owners, and to deal with all the legality, technicality and resolve any conflicts that arise.
You can be depressed without realizing it. Part of you can think that you like your job, while another part of you hates it. The best way to detect burnout isn't to ask "do you feel burned out?" but to ask "can you get the work done?"

I was stuck in the code mines a few years ago; I'd always find some way to convince myself I was happy about what I was doing, but then I read this blog about SEO and started dreaming about making my own web sites that make money...

At that point my mental health really cracked and I couldn't focus on 9-to-5 work at all anymore. It was a sign that I had to change what I did, and gradually, that's what happened.
You're absolutely right, but the original point is (I think) that Nintendo do things differently to their competitors, which I think you illustrate rather well.

The analogy of the original GB hardware with Apple products (say the original iPod) is a pretty good one: Nintendo delivered what customers actually wanted (portability, near-indesctructibility, great battery life, low cost) at the expense of certain extra features, which it turned out were less important to the customers that Nintendo sought. The iPod was exactly the same: it was worse in many respects than the competition, but sold amazingly well because of all those "other" factors.

Nintendo are also similar to Apple in that they're willing to try something completely out of the box once in a while. People deride both the Wii and the DS (and recently the 3DS) because the hardware specs don't match the competition, but what differentiates both of those products is the originality (and in the case of the 360, the hardware quality!), which is comparable to the way that the iPhone has trounced all comers by re-inventing how people use a phone.

First-party software is an incredibly important part of Nintendo's successes too, and again they differentiate themselves from the competition with a focus on quality, which is obviously not unlike Apple either. That's not to say that Nintendo aren't guilty of churning out some bad games, but they're never buggy, at any rate...

Nintendo's industrial design isn't a patch on Apple's though, and that's definitely part of what the article's about. Things like the DS Lite and Wii are both better than the awful N64 and GameCube designs, but they're rather derivative of Apple products.

Of couse both Apple and Nintendo have made some awful decisions over the last 2 or 3 decades, but there's always been enough of a difference in each company's culture for them to be able to standard apart from the others around them.
Yeah ok you're right. I apologize. It must have been a bad day.
Why is GCC better? It's probably not that easy to answer, but does GCC have a better register allocator? Better IL optimizations? Better code generation?
> While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing.

Agreed, it's their privilege to put the rules up in just their home country language. After all, if you're a foreign entity you will have to abid by the local customs, and part of that is the language.

What's more stinging about this case is that it seems to me that the 'rule change' to limit two letter domains to 'locals only' is arbitrary and was created with the specific idea in mind to recover this domain.

Another red flag for me is that there is apparently plenty of adult content on .ly domains: (NSFW)

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A.ly+porn

So in all I think he has a point, but the real lesson here is to simply not bother with such domains and register them in a place where you have a fair expectation of respect for your rights and where you can actually read and understand the rules.

If some entity would try to take ww.com away from me you can be assured I'd put up a fight and given that it would be in a jurisdiction that has a legal system that seems to work (for the most part) I'd be fairly confident about the outcome.

If it had been a .ly domain I wouldn't have spent $.10 on it.
Despite it being shorter, it seems more awkward to type and sometimes seems more prone to error. Not to mention how it might affect your standing with search engines.

Remember when http://delicious.com was http://del.icio.us When I first saw the product, I thought the name was "icio".
Its a noble sentiment but i think it does risk creeping out the people the who did download it which would rather defeat the object of the exercise.

Why not include a "Thanks to everyone who downloaded v1.0" message in the About screen in the next update of the app or the app info screen on the Market?
Possibly. I'm not sure if I have more trust in Verisign (which was willing to put wildcard records into .com TLD (a long time ago, yes, but…)) or the local cz.NIC, as an association of czech ISPs and registrars with open policies and membership.
Why? Given that in 2010, nearly a decade after 9/11 and almost 7 years after the invasion of Iraq, the US military, State Dept, domestic law enforcement agencies and presumably intelligence agencies still have a severe shortage of Arabic-speaking staff, why do you find the statement stupid? The UK before 9/11 was much less focused on terrorism than the US is now. Developing robust foreign language capability in large organizations is very hard. That's why we often fail at it.

Plus, in my experience, Arabic is a difficult language for people who grew up speaking romance languages to learn. Perhaps not as difficult as Japanese, but still much more difficult than German or French.
Is a rented friend a real friend?
Meet RatCar, a small vehicle hooked up to a rat's brain
Surely a service like that would have to charge an absolute fortune in order to actually provide that level of support?

Is .ly really such a hot internet property that it's worth all that? It's trendy right now, but that won't last.
Indeed. Something to be said for line oriented languages like Ruby, Python, shell-script, xBASE, BASIC (I said that?!?), et al.

This is how it is, now use your time to understand the bigger structure, not punctuation.
+1. One of my previous companies had a .jo domain (Jordan). One day some Jordanian internet agency had a major outage, and the entire .jo root DNS went offline. We had a 24 hour outage we were completely powerless to resolve. (Maybe we could have dived into the non-authoritative DNS servers and set really long TTLs or something.)

I tried calling up the Jordanian firm that sells cutesy domain puns to Western companies, and after half an hour listening to hold music on an international line, I was told that nobody could talk to me because it was a holiday, and they would look into it tomorrow.
Neither the DS nor the Wii is really an exception to the "more power" rule, though the difference between a GC and a Wii is obviously minimal.

The N64 controller was a much "wackier" step than you imply too, in my opinion. Nobody else had the idea of sticking an analogue stick on the controller for a 3D-oriented console. Nintendo did it, and now everybody else has copied.

The Virtual Boy is another contradictory example, though a failed one.
Trying to put something on a lagrange point of a 3 body system. No luck yet though.
I just loved this idea. Imagine this public transport system in a small city. Very very efficient. Governments doesn't invest in places where there is no revenue. So getting a feasible public transportation system in small city is almost impossible. This gives a hope. Ameen
I don't really follow these things - is Android not the most popular smartphone OS outside the US?
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The Spotify app requires a premium membership and Apple has no problems with that. The British Airways app requires a British Airways Executive Club membership and Apple has no problem with that. Requiring (free or paid) membership is only a problem in the App Store if it's unreasonable, e.g. the core functionality of the app would work without a membership.
Internet Keeps Growing Traffic up 62% in 2010