skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Turning client project into a business
A few months ago I was hired to write a web application for a client to manage charity events. I did the project and they loved it, got paid, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Just recently though, I started thinking to myself that if they had the problem and my software fixed it, there has to be other non-profits with the same problem that my software could help.

If I take the program, do some work on it to generalize it a bit (to make it more broadly applicable to others), and put a product site around it, would I be able to legally resell this? Also, let's say I wanted to make it SaaS or cut a percentage off of registration fees or something, what options should I look into for charging? Lastly, what are some other considerations here?

I'm currently working on another project that will take me a while to finish (started documenting at blog.spkto.us), but I figured I could have the event software ready to roll within a month, and maybe I should get that going first to generate a little extra income.

Thoughts?
If you're writing a link-bait article about if anyone cares about a device the day the devices are announced... that means people care. :-)
Well, it's even in France's law: if there is a strong slow down, you _must_ turn on blinking lights until the car following you does the same.
Because My Parents Are Immigrants
> it always strikes me as just a group of self-righteous bastards who revel in being able to say "I'm smarter than you"

I've always thought that really intelligent people solve real-world problems. Real-world problems are way harder than artificial ones because of their inherent accidental complexity, which you can't take away. If a man devises a problem, another man can solve it. If no man has devised it, however, are you intelligent enough to solve it?

EDIT: Hence, I would prefer/like to be "street smart" over "mensa smart" every time.
What happens during the AppStore review process?
This is a kind of polarizing answer. It seems like people that understand it, just understand it, and people that don't, don't.

But the answer is balls (or courage/bravery/confidence). I fail at stuff every day. If I let it affect my mood I'd be pretty F-ing depressing to be around. I don't want to be depressing to be around.

The one thing you have complete control over and costs you absolutely nothing is your attitude. So grow up, stomach your losses, and move on to the next project.

So you failed. Big deal. You still have a roof, clothes, and food. Time to get past it and keep moving.

I can't remember who said this, but I am going to do a hell of a paraphrasing job.... If you live periods of your life in misery, when you remember back to those times, all you'll remember is the misery. The misery robs you of great memories you could otherwise be making.
Oh god yeah, I've had a credit card in a permanently blocked state through that exact thing. The credit card provider told me they couldn't unblock it. Visa told me it wasn't blocked. Yet even in IE afterwards I still couldn't use the thing.

This was not good for the Credit Card company, but a great way of me getting rid of a balance.
I just saw a guy in the chat, I'm in my office. Does it mean there is someone else that I could know, that is reading HN right now ? (the guy just left..)
If all you have used so far is Ubuntu, then what you have learned is "how Ubuntu works", not necessarily how a Linux system in general works.

As another commenter pointed out, given the zero cost (other than your time) nature of trying something out, why ponder? If your pondering is that you don't want to mess up your current system, then install Virtual Box and run whatever else you want to learn from in a virtual machine inside VB.

The problem you may encounter, given that you say you've been only using Ubuntu, is that LFS may be taking a dive from the high platform into the deep end of the pool when you are not ready yet for that experience. You may want to ease into that just a little bit more.

My suggestion for you is to go download yourself a copy of the latest Slackware distribution, and start there. You'll learn 95% of what LFS will teach you just from Slackware alone, without also taking that high dive before you are ready.

And, again, if you don't want to kill your current system, then just install Virtual Box and then install as many distro's as you please (including LFS) as VM's. You get the same experience, without breaking your current working system.
Point taken! Ok, ideas definately can be bad!

However I'm pretty sure the idea of ethnic cleansing and mass murder was conceived quite a lot earlier than the second world war...
Most Indians live without AC, and even without electricity in 40c+ weather.
I still want to believe that, somewhere out there, there actually is Free Public WiFi...
Rural areas make up very little of the population. Although there's some improvement there--I live in a rural town that's quite navigable by bicycle and has a good bus system.

The real problem is the suburbs.
'"Learn You A Haskell" is very good, and I haven't seen anything like it for Common Lisp.'

It's actually inspired by Conrad Barski's 'Casting SPELs in Lisp' (http://www.lisperati.com/casting.html), which in turn was inspired by Why's Guide to Ruby (I think). Conrad Barski actually wrote a Haskell comic book tutorial that predates 'Learn you a Haskell' (http://lisperati.com/haskell/). Not only that, but Conrad's full-length Lisp tutorial comic book, Land of Lisp, is due to hit the shelves in four days: http://www.amazon.com/Land-Lisp-Learn-Program-Game/dp/159327...
There is also http://xkcdexplained.com/
That energy figure has me wondering, but this is a house rather than an apartment and it's open on three sides with lots of fields around it. The wind has clear access to three walls of the house and the roof. I've double insulated it and put a central heating in so it's a bit better now, the first year here I went through 250 euros of gas per month in the winter alone and it was still cold.
Microsoft's Kin failure is still in the back of my mind. What's to say they won't kill this one too? Why take the development risk?
Thanks man! It addressed my real-world problem at my parties so I figured it would help anyone who has a party. People kept wanting to add songs during the party. Now they can :) Now anyone can use it for their party.

I think you're right, about partymix or crowdmix etc. Unfortunately they are all taken.

Would you like to help me with this? I could use another pair of eyes on it. I've already built all the tech, now it's a matter of making it dead simple and social.

BY THE WAY:

If someone from HN thinks this site has potential and would like to come in and help me refactor it to the point where it's simple, popular and viral -- I'd be glad to make you a 50% owner of the project. Right now youmixer is pretty much just for me and my friends who "get it". I think the site is pretty close to being something everyone can "get", and I'd like to see this experiment through to the end.

Let me know if you're interested -- http://magarshak.com/contact
Yeah, noticed this too. http://www.whyprime.com/temp/yipit-key.png Whoops!
If I were in your shoes, I'd either get them to sign an agreement giving up all claims to the business/idea or I'd go find another idea to chase. Alternatively, you could sign a an agreement that says you EACH have full rights to pursue the business and don't have claims on each others efforts (i.e. effectively open-sourcing the groundwork you've laid to date).

That is, unless you are convinced that they wouldn't/couldn't sue you if you built a business worth suing.
Why the foreclosure mess could last for years
Learn Objective-C 2.0
The name of search engine was ShareMiner, it was very popular. The website is now dead, but you can read about it at:

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/shareminer-search-web-files/

http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/shareminer-com-search-t...

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2008/01/pl...
Cool, thanks, it's extremely annoying!
I read fiction.
Ok, your second paragraph puts this a little more in perspective. I think you need to do a better job of communicating that. It may help to have a videos showing how it works.

This would actually be ideal on something like the Apple TV (which doesn't have apps yet but my bet is that it will at some point). Look into what's happening with Apple's upcoming AirPlay.

Other set top boxes could be adapted for this. Roku, Boxee, Google TV. That sort of thing.

So what you need is:

1. Apps for the set top boxes;

2. Apps for Android and iOS; and

3. Facebook apps.

(2) is really really important. You need something so someone can pick a song on their iPhone and "queue it up" on your party.

The app running on the set top box would record what was played and publish it. If songs are skipped then don't include them. This way it's more of a living, breathing playlist.

I guess this part goes to social media integration: publish that list to Facebook. It might be useful if someone says "What was that song at the party last night?".

But don't underestimate the importance of a good app for the people at the: to say what's playing and make requests. Think of it like an interactive, distributed jukebox.

And there's an idea for making money from it: iTunes affiliate links to the songs played.
Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text
I'm not sure how you don't qualify the internet as being as world-changing as the rest of the inventions you've listed. Perhaps that being a part of the revolution it's caused has blinded you to it's dramatic influence on the direction of human progress?
Big differences. MS is betting big on this, whereas with Kin it was a small team that did it. Kin apparently had very little internal support. Kin wasn't pushed by MS, but had a contractual obligation with Verizon. That's why Kin launched on one carrier only. Apparently WP7 is launching on 60 carriers, with 9 or 10 different phones. The mobile, VS, Silverlight, XBox, Zune, and Office teams are all apparently very engaged.

MS won't kill this. I wouldn't let that be a factor on doing development. Now it may take a while for it to get consumer uptake. That may temper if you want to develop for it. But given that this device should sell moderately well with a good app store, it may have better ROI than the same app showing up in the Android app store, even with the larger number of Android devices.
i think all the points are good food for thought, but the pros of having a cofounder FAR outweigh the cons.

as long as you do a good job recruiting the right sidekick(s) and maintain a transparent work relationship, you should be able to avoid many of the disadvantages.

more than anything, you're bound to have highs & lows, and a cofounder will be there to pick you up & get you back to speed when things are not going your way.

plus, the journey is much more fun when you have others to experience it with!
I do not understand it. "If you want to be a hipster, you need to read xkcd, and if you do not get it, it is no problem, because we can explain it to you"?

Come to think of it, maybe recent xkcd panels would amuse me more if I did not understand them.
"The JavaScriptCore Framework is still private on iOS. So as it is now, I won't be allowed to distribute the game in the AppStore. But my understanding is, that if I bundle my own copy of the JavaScriptCore Framework (which is part of WebKit and thus freely available) with my game, I should be on the safe side."

This is true. You can compile Javascript Core and include it in your app. I have done this previously as an experiment.

However, there is one HUGE drawback in doing so: no compiled/jitted javascript code is possible.

This is because iOS applications are not allowed to create executable code in the heap or on the stack, so there is no way for JavaScriptCore to compile to native code when it is running as part of a third party application.

So unfortunately there is no good way to get this going at the same speed that you get when linking against the private framework.

Sad. This is also a major problem for other scripting languages. They all can only run in interpreted mode. Which might be good enough but is never the best you can get.
How do you know that your ancestors didn't have numerous orthopedic problems caused by constantly running down and killing animals, which resulted in drastically lower life expectancies than we enjoy now?
Did Microsoft Just Pull a Don Draper?
Looks like PLaneT for CL. Good stuff.
> Put something moderately sharp (but rather blunt still) on the edge of your desk

Like a Macbook maybe?

I've never understood how people work around those sharp edges for extended periods of time. Do your palms build some kind of protective layer after a while?
Google Group for those interested in Enterprise Software Sales
Wow!

Being co-located I would hope folks would have taken an interest and the Diaspora folks having enough maturity to ask for early feedback from the more experienced folks in the room from Pivotal or others.
are we nearing saturation of the social networks?
See my comment about not being able to use compiled/jitted javascript from apps because of code execution restrictions set by iOS.
At the end of the post, the author says he doesn't get the King Solomon reference. It's to the story of the king's offering to resolve a dispute about which of two women was the mother of the child by cutting the baby in two. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Solomon; http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1Kings%203:16-28...
Ha, when first formulating the argument, I realized that the husband could have been married multiple times, but forgot that when I wrote my post. Excellent point.

But it seems to me that if the whole reason for your group existing is that you're smarter than most people, you shouldn't have flaws in your exam like this.
The UI looks pretty cool. Nice work. Any reason you made it a native app instead of an enhanced web app?

Out of curiosity, where did you get these quotes from? I'm guessing you culled them from one of the numerous quotation sites on the web, but are you certain your list doesn't contain "fake" quotes meant to trap copyright infringers?

I'm not trying to scare you or anything, but with a product you are selling in the hopes of making a profit, I'm curious if you considered that and/or what steps you took to mitigate that risk.
Fastest Way to Lose Customers
From wikipedia: "Unlike most theorems in geometry, this result depends in a critical way on the axiom of choice". By "taking" the AoC the figure ended up making two pumpkins. Not really funny at all, I'm afraid.
For a couple of years, my lab managers would rely on my idea rate in setting quarterly goals for number of invention disclosures filed. Yes, we did MBO and OKR even in research labs.

Fortunately, I was able to keep my filing to disclosure ratio quite high (21/36) (even if it was never tracked officially). Agree that just because the company decides to file a patent does not automatically make it a good idea.

Eventually I got back to coding and went away from ideas. The gulf between ideas and implementation is not just time, its also mindset. I am learning how to balance the two.
Replace Outlook Webmail with Open Source Zarafa
If you can cut something into infinite pieces and then reassemble it into two of the same object - you obviously have a rounding error where you are "rounding up" each fraction when it should not be!

No?
Packaging Software Using Git
Depends on the contract you had with party - it all comes down to who owns the IP. If they own it, you cant sell it unless you have their permission.

Even if they own it, you can contact them and ask if they mind you selling a modified version of it.
I hope it succeeds at least enough to give Apple some competition in development tools.
I don't; it was just a thought experiment.

However, I did have someone with a Ph.D. in kinesiology (I think?) tell me that there's essentially no evidence of knee, hip, or back dysfunction in developing countries where people don't sit all day.
I think that's probably fine. Plain re-selling of the same code depends on the contract (probably you can't), but if you make lots of changes (and you would have to), it should be fine.
I worked through the LFS book in 2002/03. Can't say I learn't much - the book is (well, was - it might be different now) written as a HOWTO without much explanation of how and why everything works.

The basic process as I remember it was to bootstrap a system by making a new partition, setting up a minimal directory tree, building a new C compiler (& libs/associated tools) then chrooting to it and using it to build up the rest of the system.

It was a fun process but tiring and time consuming. I wouldn't do it again.
Hi devmonk,
Thanks for the useful reply. I actually did check with Boomerang guys during my undergrad days. Boomerang project has been there for quite sometime and it is great stuff. But as far as I remember the guys who worked on it eventually moved on to other stuff. I will have to check if someone is still running this project.
Yep, I'm aware of that, having spent a lot of time in Berlin. However, to convince Americans of anything, you have to first let them think it happened here first. :)
Best failed startup post-mortems
Such a shortlist may exist, but even if the guy taking over were as good as Steve, I doubt that the stock market would be smart enough to know that. So yes, the stock would take a hit.
For most people it's a huge waste of time. How many hours do you think you'll spend on this? Do you have anything else you'd rather spend these hours on? For example guitar lessons?

If you want to become a system administrator go for it. Otherwise probably no.
Made it native to learn a bit of objective-c and have the performance feel like a native app. Also so you wouldn't have to be online to use this.

I culled these quotes from the web, but you are right, I should get some legal counsel on this stuff. Thanks for the heads up.
I used LFS years back when it first came out. I found it extremely useful in terms of learning a large amount of how Linux works under the hood. If you goal is a weekend or evenings project that will help you understand how libraries work, how startup scripts work and how to customise things then LFS may be for you. If on the other hand you want a systems usable for day to day tasks, avoid it like the plague.

If you're thinking of a Linux power user as someone who lives closer to the bare metal, I'd highly recommend Arch (http://www.archlinux.org/). Some people recommend Gentoo, I personally prefer Arch. Arch is like LFS without (all of) the pain, plus you get package management.
Is this by the Kai Krause?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause
We didn't cover that in the contract unfortunately. I would assume we own the IP. Either way, whether I own it or not, I didn't know if it might cause problems if I rebuilt it to be more general and then charged a small fee to use it when they paid me a lot of money to build it originally.
May I ask which industy?
While I might agree that the Obj-C language is long in the tooth, iOS/Cocoa Touch is really a new platform that sprung from the ashes of the aging Cocoa.

The iOS folks got to start from near scratch, building on the foundation they already knew so well.

And I'd say they did a pretty great job.
EDIT : OK, just got it: I got the logic backwards: first, -1 is converted to uint. Second, -1 uint means UINT_MAX. Third, the binary representation of UINT_MAX is all 1s. The way I previously understood it, the -1 would be a signed integer which has some binary representation, and that binary representation would become the uint.

Weird bit of arcana. Below is my mistaken comment. (Notice that I pretended that UINT_MAX is not all 1s, which is silly. I suppose I made that mistake because I "couldn't be wrong" or something.)

As far as I know, your definition can't be inferred from the C standard. The answer itself acknowledges that -1 doesn't yield 0xFFFF… on every platform. The only guarantee is that it will yield UINT_MAX, which is not what was asked.

Otherwise, that would mean that C basically mandates a two's complement representation. Does it?
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Wishlist: Enrich Skype profiles and mood messages using ActivityStreams
Right. This is on par with Phineas Gage - considering that they both had something ridiculous pierce their brain, and shouldn't have expected to survive, they both did pretty okay.
"SPIN Selling" by Neil Rackham: http://personalmba.com/review/spin-selling/
The question itself is an implicit test of logical deduction to determine the most likely assumptions given the restraints imposed by the question.

Just because random things are possible (the husband had two wives!), does not make them the most likely assumptions given the nature of the question. If the answer was "Unrelated - Jane's dad had a harem of several women", the question wouldn't make much sense on any type of quiz designed to determine intelligence.
Learning Javascript with Object Graphs (Part II)
Here's what's going on with the Banach-Tarski paradox:

First, in case this wasn't clear from the explanation, you have to carve the pumpkin into some very specific pieces in order to be able to re-assemble them into two pumpkins. In particular, you have to carve them into some pieces that are non-measurable sets, which basically means that the carving is so exotic that it is not possible to define a consistent concept of volume for these pieces. This is sort of the heart of the paradox: you get volume-preserving transformations to disobey preservation of volume by using intermediate steps with undefined volume.

Non-measurable sets are not 100% legit in mathematics. Constructing them relies on the Axiom of Choice. I won't get into the debate about the Axiom of Choice, but suffice it to say that if you reject the Axiom of Choice, then the Banach-Tarski Paradox need not be true, and you can self-consistently reject the BTP if you are OK losing the AOC.

The biblical reference from King Solomon is probably referring to the parable of splitting the baby. Two women came to King Solomon, each claiming to be the true mother of the baby. King Solomon suggested cutting it in half, in order to observe the claimants' reactions. The fake mother was ok with this, and the real mother would rather give up her child than see it killed, . XKCD suggests that King Solomon was actually attempting to use the Banach-Tarski paradox to create two babies.
I don't think you can own an idea, unless you patented it.
There is pretty good GPRS cellular internets (and I hear faster now) in Benaulim, and presumably other beaches in Goa. It was like $10 a month and all you can eat. :)
More knowledge cannot hurt you, only help.

Go for it!
> It's disheartening that so many bloggers are dismissing this awesome platform simply because Microsoft is "late to the game", yet they forget how successful Android has been.

Not only that, but I recall dismissing Xbox because Microsoft was so late to the game for video-game consoles that I thought they couldn't possibly have any impact.

Boy, how wrong I was...
You should check out the freedom chair with headrest. I have 3 and love them for exactly this reason, though now that my daughter has taken over my home office, I never get to actually use them...

http://www.amazon.com/HumanScale-Freedom-Chair-Headrest-Fabr...
The Simpsons' Title Scene Secretly Created By Banksy
That's a pretty sensible idea - but it is hardly "open sourcing" the existing code, just giving each person an agreed right to use the code.
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