skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because the list itself would prove pre-existing knowledge of the patents being violated, which allows for damages awarded to be much greater than an unknown violation.
$10-$15K + % ... wow! That's way outside of my price range and an order of magnitude higher than I was expecting.

Thanks for the Claude Hopkins tip.
The bigger problem is that a svn update isn't atomic, so you are going to be in an inconsistent state for a while. Capistrano with its atomic symlink switch is a much better approach although you have to watch out for caching issues and clear caches appropriately.
I wonder if this was one of the reasons Engine Yard doesn't use ELBs? Instead they use ha-proxy, which unfortunately can not terminate SSL, and due to unchangeable kernel settings on EC2 can not pass a direct TCP connection through. The result: you can't see client IPs on SSL requests on EY AppCloud! We got burned pretty bad by this due to the fact that we are a global VOD site that depends on geo location for film availability. It wasn't terribly difficult to workaround, but it's not the kind of thing you'd expect as a web developer.

I would LOVE to get on an ELB, assuming that failover can be handled gracefully.
Cloudkick looks nice and I have great respect for the tech team behind it, but it's seriously overpriced.

I don't mind paying for Saas (and pay many thousands a month for all sorts of services), but this is ridiculous:

https://www.cloudkick.com/pricing/

I love how the page suggests that the $949/month plan is somehow the 'default'. :)
In context it seems very clear that he meant "We Catholics."
They offer $500 for 6 months with $33.5 weekly payments.

So you will end up paying 33.5 * 52 / 2 = $871 ($145.16 per month).

Isn't it cheaper to get something like this on Prosper or Lendingtree?
Rumor: Android Gingerbread SDK To Drop Next Week
All those heroic 9/11 firefighters contracting cancer when the US Federal Government said the air at ground zero was supposedly"safe."

There's been too many lies from the US Government claiming some situation, like eating Gulf of Mexico shrimp now, was supposedly safe when everyone knew better.
APR is pretty irrelevant for payday loans. If my math is correct, even at the highest quoted 462% APR, a £100 loan for 10-days would have a fee of ~£5. Compared to ~£16 for the rest of the payday industry, that's not too bad.

In reality they're an awful source of funds if you've got other options, but that's the point, they're for people who can't get a traditional loan, and whom are most likely high-risk.
Http://webandrank.com/blog/5-tips-for-seo-beginners/
While certainly catastrophic, this is anecdotal at best, and similar anecdotes can be found for the companies with deep pockets using their lawyers to suck individuals dry. Unfortunately, these are the scare-type comments that keep any reform from happening.

If the US became a less litigious country as a result of loser-pay, then the system would be a benefit, IMO. The legal tax required to do business in the US is too high.
Health-insurance-for-small-business.mp4
This is often the story with the latest hardware: you have to wait 6 months for it to be supported in Linux :(

When I got my T61, the current Ubuntu (breezy, IIRC) didn't run on it. I installed the alpha of the upcoming version (gutsy) and it kind of limped along; all the newer versions worked just fine out of the box.
This is awesome work. I've been following these commits on GitHub and it's great to see AR being optimized.

Unfortunately there is not enough info in these benchmarks to tell whether for a large production app 3.0 might be 10 times slower than 2.3 for that particular find you are benchmarking. Or 10 times faster. Or the same.

Here's why -- for MRI the time spent on each GC run is a function of total process size/# loaded objects, which is mainly a function of your code size. In a trivial test case you can run GC in a few milliseconds. In a production app it's 100ms+. Simply by loading more code into the benchmark it's possible that we can change results completely.

When benchmarking ruby code it's better to keep runtime, # of memory allocations and size of memory allocation separate and report all 3. Meaning you run the test with GC off and patch the interpreter to get the memory allocation info.

Different users will have different tradeoffs between runtime costs vs GC costs depending on the app size, ruby interpreter used, GC tuning parameters, available RAM, etc. It's certainly valuable to also come up with general "5x" number, but that should assume and state some reasonable values for the above.
Here are a few articles I've read that you might find interesting. The first is NPR's brief look into the payday loan business as a whole and the second demonstrates the wild rate at which these loans are being issued (£1.2 billion issued in 2009 and estimates of £3.5 billion by 2014).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1272205...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h5YQz...
Which describes what I was dealing with perfectly. Unfortunately the guy before me was a rather brilliant python programmer writing rails code on an extremely short deadline. I at least had the luxury of having a short in person meeting with the person using the report which allowed me to clean up some misfeatures that had been implemented due to miscommunication over the phone. (Person using the report was out of state)
The "how will you make money" question got "banned" about a year ago (from my understanding) because it was getting asked of every company (which is fair) and given the amount of time presenters have, the on-stage answers were always really vague (ads!) or the revenue model should have been obvious (sales/commission). I don't think it's fair of The Economist to say that those questions are looked down on, it's just that given how little time is given for each company there are often a number of more interesting questions that could be asked and were getting pushed out. Plus, it had kind of become like a FIRST POST! type reaction that someone just had to ask.

I've always found that if you are really interested in the specifics of the company (especially their business model) it's better to ask them afterwards since you can actually have a real dialog with them. Also, the during the presentation questions always seem better when it's actually about the demo since they can often show it right there on stage.
I kinda thought they were always planning on Premium charges though, they just wanted to build some momentum first. My main problem with it is I can see 'the rights-holders' making a good new revenue stream, but only in the sense of people/companies that own massive publishing catalogs. The individual rights-holders, eg. the songwriters, I fear are being sold up the river.
aerosol cans?? rockets??
Your analogy with drug dealing is quite apt. Because what happens when people can't get what they want through legal channels? Black market. Loansharking. Broken kneecaps. Payday loans may seem to reflect the worst of our society but in actuality they are a step up from other alternatives.
Amazon Granted Patent for Salving Your Conscience
Won't work. Real life collaboration is hard enough.

Having said that, here are a few ways you can mitigate the problem:

a) require vesting. If a person does less than, say, 3 equivalent months of full time work in 2 years, they have no claim.

b) automatic time bomb. If no work gets done on it over 12 months continuous, the project files become open source.

c) automatic nagging.

d) Make sure there's room for advisers, who get compensated with stocks. These people may bring contacts.

Roles doesn't help in a start up. Read Steve Blank.
It's not clear why the author decided to compare a ZestCash loan with credit cart debt when they're clearly different products. And while ZestCash's rates of 242% to 462% are high, they are, under certain circumstances, competitive. For example, in Washington state, MoneyMart charges in the 300s.

Source:http://www.moneymart.com/MM/_includes/templates/StateRates.a...
Informative study of deal terms in venture-backed M&A
I've been writing web copy for 7 years, and, although the advertising guys referenced so far (e.g., Hopkins, Ogilvy) are great, their tricks focus largely on direct response (i.e., long form letters). Use those tricks for writing PPC ad headlines, etc -- but be careful on your website.

On your site, your copy should set a tone for your service; get your value proposition right; be scannable; and err on the side of clear rather than clever.

Tone can be tricky because it's easy to get carried away... but check out Mint.com for examples of how to stay light & friendly but also professional & credible. As for your value proposition, check out MarketingExperiments for their tips on writing a value prop that resonates --- and that goes beyond "save time and money" (which every company seems to default to, making that phrase totally meaningless).

Regarding scannability, that one's pretty straightforward. Short, snappy headlines. Bullet lists with 3-4 bullets; concise copy in your bullets. No paragraphs over 3 lines long. Bolding used only for things that will be important to users (not just things you wish they would care about). Great typography to help users see the words they're supposed to. Not too much dedication to the rules of grammar (keep the reading level at about grade 5 or 6; Word can help you run tests to see what level your copy's at).

As for clear over clever, that means writing "88% of our users saved 6 hours on payroll last month" rather than "Payroll, meet your match".

(SEO, persuasion, emotion, etc. can always follow after you launch.)

If all else fails, I'm happy to read over your copy and offer recommendations. I'm at joanna AT page99test DOT com. Good luck!
Your argument is that loansharking would be just as prevalent as payday loans, once payday loans are outlawed? You can get a payday loan within walking distance of most every block in the city of Chicago. You can't even legally be a loan shark.
I don't know. I agree that the game scores, roster data, etc. are facts but at the same time work was performed at some point to compile that data so I assume there must be some legality around not simply copying it and reusing it. Of course I don't know for sure it's just a gut feeling. Wish I could find a definitive answer without having to pay legal consultation fees I can't afford.
I'm not a security expert by any means, but why is telling ELB "dont trust cert X" any better than removing the compromised instances from the ELB via the API (or just terminating the instance entirely)?
It's not that simple. For people with no income, there is no ethical way to price a loan; the loan is going to blow up. Meanwhile, for people who do have incomes, there usually are better options than payday loans (credit union loans being an example). The problem is that they don't offer the convenience that a payday loan does; you can't walk into a credit union on a Thursday night at 11PM and get a loan.
Google, Publishers Discuss How to Profit From Selling Content on Internet
Who's watching the watchmen? How do you know that this blog has their facts straight? Have you read any rebuttals to this post? (Already, certain issues that seemed outrageous have been deflated by other commenters.)

*For the record, I feel like being "evil" means to prey on human weakness, for which it seems like the site in question and PayDay loans generally fit that bill.
i know we are not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but man does the ZestCash CEO look like a snake oil salesman: http://gigaom.com/2010/10/12/zestcash-judges-creditworthines...

also you know it's a scam, when the site's page rank, alexa rank and compete rank are set to private.
As far as I could tell, you "donate" $5 dollars a month to Kachingle, and they distribute this donation (after taking their cut) according to the sites you visit. It seems as if they are trying to "stop the paywall" by demonstrating an alternate way to generate the revenue, and in so doing convince sites that instituting a paywall is unnecessary. So, no, it seems no paywalls are being circumvented.

However, I don't get why they're sending the payment to the blog's email address and not the NYT (disclaimer: don't know how the NYT blogs work). It seems to me Kachingle would be better applied at the site level. Given my limited understanding, I can definitely see how applying it at this granular level would annoy NYT - their paywall solution would make money for NYT first (and trickle down later) whereas this seems to make money for the bloggers first, and not for NYT. At the very least, payment should be split between NYT and the specific blogger. (And if this is incorrect and the payment is in fact going to NYT - then why on earth do they send it to so many different places?!)

I like the idea of Kachingle for reading across multiple sites, but the NYT blog situation just seems weird. No matter what though - assuming my evaluation is even correct - figuring this stuff out took way too much digging and reading on Kachingle's site.
Connection overhead is small for both (if keep-alive is working on https), request/response overhead might be smaller for ssh but probably not terribly and they both use AES encryption (by default) for the transfer so they should be very similar in performance.
Are there enough HN readers in Northern VA to warrant a NOVA Meetup?
Convincing people to pay exorbitant amounts of money for an odorless, tasteless liquid is surely one of the most brilliant marketing ideas of all time.

From http://www.ttb.gov/rulings/97-1.htm:
The standard of identity for vodka was promulgated in 1949, in T.D. 5707, 1949-2 C.B. 252. The standard for vodka provided that it was neutral spirits distilled from any material at or above 190 proof, reduced to not more than 110 proof and not less than 80 proof and, after such reduction in proof, so treated as to be without distinctive character, aroma, or taste. Although no explicit definition of the term "distinctive" could be found in the hearing record, the testimony indicates that vodka is to be as tasteless and odorless as possible.
The ultimate cost of the loan doesn't simply reflect the risk on the loan; it also reflects a premium that the lenders are extracting for providing a no-questions-asked, 24/7 instant cash offering.

Free market purists point out that payday loan customers can't access "traditional" loans. True. Many of them can't, because they have no income or collateral. And those people can't be loaned money ethically anyways. Meanwhile, a large fraction of people who currently avail themselves of payday loans can access better loans --- but they have to plan ahead (and fill out more paperwork) to do so.
Or you know, it could just be for pleasure...
My understanding was that the first release of Windows came a long time after the initial announcement, but it was a little before my time.

Microsoft's usual strategy, that no one has explicitly stated yet, is to try and discourage its customers from buying a product by promising the moon 'just around the corner' for a couple years. Microsoft is seen as a better long term bet, and this depresses sales even though it doesn't actually have a product yet, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of the failure of its competitors.

So when people are angrily referring to Microsoft vaporware, that's what they're talking about.
Incidentally, if someone wants to brave formidable regulatory barriers, beat Paypalian levels of fraud, and spend their days dealing with the problems of the underclass, this is a multibillion dollar opportunity and you'd create more wealth for the poor than anyone since Walton.
It definitely seems that there must be an opportunity here to compete against STATS and others. But if (like you) you wanted to compete where do you legally get the stats in the first place or in an ongoing manner. What is the original source of the data? Do you have to pay for game tapes, watch them and compile the stats yourself?
Even 1 day paper uses annual rates.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/cp/

When your cost of money is 30000 basis points, it just means that you're shifting default risk from the landlord/doctor/drug dealer to a speculator, aka "loanshark". That's why it's not so predatory as it seems. Would you rather people shaft the dentist or some asshole?
"SWF, thirtysomething, seeks SM with LTR potential...boring but crucial basic facts about...first date."

Do tell!

All these threads read like so much 'startup porn'.
Lots of gems in here. One humorously self-effacing anecdote:

"At that time we knew that a talented engineer in a tough to get tech was worth about $1.5 million per head. Thus, I knew with relative assurance that since we were going to hire at least 70 people with our Series A money, that our worst case scenario was about a $100 million exit.

If anyone is paying attention, you are now saying, wait a minute! Didn't Powerset sell for $100 million to MSFT? .... Yup, we nailed our worse case scenario!"
Yes, but they're not calling it Go9.
How do you deploy your Django applications?
Hi, I just made my first Django application and am looking forward to deploying it. I have decided to use mod-wsgi.

I was wondering if I could try continuous-deployment; has anyone here tried that out? I am pretty well versed with Mercurial and practice code-review while working in a team so I guess continuous deployment should work.
I had opportunity to present at one. This was when it was in the IAC building. I definitely recall them stressing even addressing audience about the money question; saying you can not ask the following we are here to see new/innovative things in tech. I'm sure many wanted to ask me how do you make $.
2.3.5 does not attempt to gracefully handle the 'id' attribute when it doesn't actually refer to the ActiveRecord ID of a live association. That "feature" is what caused the bug, and it's as of 2.3.9.
Can you comment on my second argument?

These companies know that XX% (not .XX%) will default. They intentionally drive some customers in debt, and then profit on the rest. This isn't providing loans for people in need... this is intentional destruction of people's lives and credit.

There is a spreadsheet in ZestCash HQ with some truly despicable calculations in it.
Who's watching the watchmen? How do you know that this blog has their facts straight? Have you read any rebuttals to this post?

I can't answer those questions any better than you already have:

(Already, certain issues that seemed outrageous have been deflated by other commenters.)
As long as you have the skillsets that corporate require, they are mostly likely to hire you back. Not to worry, I quit my job some time back in 2006 to start a biz, failed, got a job, my pay was increased by 20%.

As long as you are young with no major liability like loans or credit cards debts, you should really just do it now! You never know, later on in life there will be family commitments, housing loans, insurance, etc. Definitely more restrictive.

I would definitely do it again. Soon actually... hibernate mode
This exact same argument says that Namecheap should lose its registrar status for "breaking the internet" when people don't pay to renew their domains.

Similarly, if Apple ever made the mistake of setting up an NS record pointing JROCKWAY.APPLE.COM to your nameserver, they'd be "breaking the internet" to change their mind.

The reality is that there is no technical difference at all between LY. and APPLE.COM.
Having watched hundreds of millions of users chat via AIM over the last 20 years, I'd say IRC was brilliant in comparison.

"Gee, if only I could chat with two people in the same window..."
Yea the charts are pretty cool. I think they're from Highcharts, which is what I use in my analytics software. Much better than AmCharts imo, which is what I used prior to Highcharts. Highcharts are printable too.

The Master-detail is one of my favorites:
http://www.highcharts.com/demo/?example=dynamic-master-detai...
The problem is with payday loans, that one party can not really be trusted. This is one of the reason the rates are so high, so many people default. People who can not manage their money are not the best of people to lend to.
Do you want to build it with me?
Hey folks,

I have been working on a consumer app that leverages our social graph. The idea has been validated by potential users, startup executives, and investments are beginning to happen in this space. So we can say that the need is real. Related startups in this space - BranchOut, Jibe, Identified.

Since I am non-technical (I carry business development and marketing skills), I took the help of hacker friends and built a working prototype. My friends cannot spend more time on the app - they have other commitments. So, here I am looking for 1-2 hackers to join me in building the app further, validating it with real users, and then applying to the next YC batch or seeking angel funding.

The problem we are trying to solve is complex and challenging, but there are ways to start small and make the system intelligent over a period of time - and that's the path we are taking for now. It requires expertise in graph theory, algorithms, and social network APIs. The current version of the app is built using CakePHP.

So far there wasn't any other competitor doing exactly what we're trying to do, but recently we learnt of another startup that has built a solution "just like ours" - they have a seasoned team, and just raised good amount of funding from VCs. That said, there's still a lot of scope for us to differentiate - this other company has gone in for an enterprise play, and there's good opportunity on the consumer side as well. Plus, differentiation can happen through user experience too - the other company hasn't done a great job on this, considering they have been there for a while.

The opportunity exists for a team that can execute! And there is room for more than one player in this market.

We have the startup incorporated in US, from funding and valuation perspective. I am currently based in silicon valley, US. Though I am moving to my home country (India) so that I can spend time on this startup - due to visa constraints I'm not able to do so while in US on my work visa (I tried part-time work options but that didn't work out). I can come back to US once we're able to raise funding (the startup will be able to sponsor my H1 visa then). The situation is not the most ideal one, we might be working remotely - which can be a bit of a challenge, but hey 37signals guys have demonstrated how remote teams can successfully execute.

If you are interested in the opportunity, drop me a mail at: lostincoding at gmail dot com . Do share a little bit about your background and why you are interested. And we can chat more then, and explore if there is a good fit.

Thanks.
I'm in NOVA and would come. Though, downtown is really only a metro ride away for most in the NOVA area.
Ask HN: How important is Salary when accepting a Job Offer?
I am a recent grad (graduated last Dec) and slowly all my friends have started getting job offers.

But one thing surprises me alot is, everybody judges their company / work based on how much he or she makes.

Is Salary really that important?
How to use Exploit | Complie Exploits | Execute Exploits using Cygwin
Thanks for the reply. I updated the post to include your objection and point here.