skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In no particular order...

1. Conscientiousness - ability to track details and be organized - huge predictor of success in most domains.

2. Grit - it is going to be incredibly hard. These people need to know how to persevere.

3. Interpersonal skills - tough to navigate/lead a small team of people. Person should be able to help people individually and collectively.

4. Willingness to GLADLY do whatever it takes

5. Strategy - ability to look at market and competitors and clearly articulate how your business is going to reach its objectives.

6. Finance - they don't have to be a MBA; knowing how to use quickbooks is good and to basically keep more money coming in than money going out.

7. Willingness to admit limitations and ask for help - this is really key. There are plenty of really smart people out there that want to help. This person should be humble enough to ask for help and to then be very thankful for the help they receive.
Sometimes, It Is Not The Pipe Size
The most advanced quantum computer today costs several million dollars and can tell you that 15 is probably equal to 3 times 5.

Don't waste your time.
There are multiple tiers of parachutes to decelerate the capsule, plus retro-rockets IIRC. The USSR developed and used retro-rockets extensively, including to land overweight armoured vehicles.
Looking here, I don't see the revision: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
I was a grad student in CS at Cambridge when this law was introduced. A nice man from the police came to lecture us about it.
We asked about proving that say the results from a Monte Carlo simulation, or even just a blank disc weren't encrypted - we were told not to worry the law would only be used against terrorists.

Since this was before 911 - the 'terrorists' in question were presumably the IRA, not sure they had much of an online presence back then.
But can it scale to a larger land size/GDP/consumption and still work?
This is about the UK, not about some banana republic.
There's plenty of startups in the music space that don't directly deliver music to listeners, what about those?
Shot down by whom?

There's nothing preventing someone from hanging a shingle as a recruiter.

That's what I was getting at.

Edit: Recruiting is one of those "make your own jobs" Ehrenreich describes in Bait and Switch.
have it ever crossed you mind that if someone as smart as David is casually leaning on a stereotype than there are some reasons behind the stereotype?
That doesn't sound feasible to me, because there are so many older people and non-technically savy individuals who don't know how to secure their wireless access point. In addition, some models don't support security that is strong enough to prevent hacking, or they are set up using default or easy to guess passwords. Lastly, many wireless points are deliberately left open so that they can be used by customers of cafes, etc.

So in summary, I seriously doubt that you can be held responsible for another person's use of your pipe.
> What do you think of these numbers? Do you think Groupon’s satisfaction and return rate is closer to Mason’s 97% or 60% as the survey says?

60% happy rate certainly sounds closer to reality than 97%, but am I the only person who thinks that's really, really good? Are there any forms of media/advertising that first time purchasers have above a 60% rate? I've tried different kinds of media and deals in the past, and had many things go abysmally bad. Print in particular. I think mature industries like newspapers, magazines, and TV commercials only have a higher satisfaction rate because they attrition'ed out some people who attempted that form of media. Once people figure out what businesses perform really well on Groupon, success/satisfaction rates will go up.

I'm thinking Groupon will work for businesses with high fixed costs and no variable costs (Chelsea Piers), businesses with insane margins (spas), and places that think they can replace a regular part of someone's life and get a returning customer (centrally located bagel shops, pizza shops, etc). Right now a lot of high variable cost unique experience type businesses are trying Groupon, and that seems suicidal to me, but eventually people will figure out what Groupon works for and what it doesn't.
Exactly. This story is more about finding yourself on the receiving end of the Federal government. It is a humbling experience to find yourself with several government employees working 8 hours a day against you.
There's always Facebook and LinkedIn. I suspect Diaspora users will just use those like address books, at least at first. Even if Diaspora never supplants Facebook, it will be a good thing as an alternative.
AirPlay Any App In iOS 4.2 Now – Here’s How
This is a very popular opinion these days, but since when do we have to win the hearts and minds to win the war?

What if the US just nukes every country with terrorists in it? There would hypothetically be no terrorists left, and everyone would work very hard not to be grouped in with those countires, otherwise they're going to get nuked too.

It sounds crazy (and I certainly don't condone that strategy), but realize that is one of the other options. For the vast majority of history winning wars didn't rely on winning the hearts and minds of anyone, it relied on the complete destruction and subjugation of the other faction.

You could say "this war is different", but it really is not. It is different than the West on West wars of the last 3 centuries, but it is no different than a lot of guerilla wars in the past. The Native Americans tried really hard to stop Americans from expanding into their land - and the US won that guerilla war by just excersizing extreme cruelty.

Trying to win hearts and minds is a losing strategy against an opponent who doesn't care about that at all. The terrorists are not trying to win our hearts and minds, they are trying to kill as many Americans as possible. That makes their goals a lot easier to achieve.

Can we really invade every single country that holds some people that want us dead and "meet them face to face". Hell no, that would require conquering the whole world, which is impossible even for the US. The other option is making an example of a country and dissuading every other country from allowing terrorists to exist inside their borders, lest they end up like country X or Y that was conquered by the US.

Unfortunately by bungling in Iraq and forgetting about Afghanistan, the US ends up just looking weak. The reality is that the biggest obstacle to total victory is the lack of support for the level of violence required to win a war like this. The American people just won't stomach anywhere near the level of damage inflicted on the opponent in World War 1 or 2.

Thus with "total domination" off of the play book, we have "ignore borders and start dropping hellfire missiles on people no matter where they are" as a the current method for dealing with people. Overall, I'd consider it far more humanitarian than the other options.
I very much consider Dropbox one of the very best when it comes to communicating and solving issues. Wouldn't worry to much.
There shouldn't be any legal hurdles, anyway - it's really just a backup system specialized for music.

I would not assume that.
The variance in Soyuz landings is pretty large, to the point that the crew has a survival kit in case the ground crew cannot find them fast enough. The survival kit contains a hunting rifle, not for hunting (they have rations) but for defense against wolves and bears. At least one crew used that, in the '60s I think, spending a night in cold weather, some -20 C, with wolves circling and stalking them - the wolves are extra aggressive in winter. Some other crews landed in lakes, but fortunately the capsule floats pretty well and has its own oxygen supply. What with being a space capsule and all.
Is this the same Jason Strober that worked on first adserver in 1995? "The first ad server was developed by FocaLink Media Services and introduced on July 17, 1995, for controlling the delivery of online advertising or banner ads. The company was founded by Dave Zinman and Jason Strober, and based in Palo Alto, California" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_serving
> Remember Microsoft

And Lala, and Walmart.
Let's hear one suggestion that will prevent such cases in the future.

Banks already listened to many suggestions and implemented them back in 2008/2009.

One very well known example, which wasn't specific to any individual bank: every US bank now has 2 contiguous weeks of mandatory vacation (i.e., someone not under your control will be managing your books for 2 weeks).
pg, thanks for mentioning me.

I will be revisiting these themes at my Startup School talk this year.
If they have physical access, then there is no effective lock-out mechanism. Presumably they can determine which encryption software is used, and can use the algorithm as many times as they want.
Inside Twitter's Link Ecosystem
> Look the homeless guy in the eye, tell him you can’t give him money (or maybe you can – your choice), but ask him his name

I tried something like this, and it just seemed to piss homeless people off most of the time. It's like, if you build a personal connection, then they really expect you to give them something.

I believe in giving money to responsible charities rather than to individuals, but I thought it'd be cool to treat homeless people with some respect and humanity. Unfortunately, trying to do that without giving change/food/whatever seemed to produce an undesirable reaction for all parties involved.
Just curious: Do you think popular music as a whole is a hopeless area or specifically companies that are looking to stream music? I agree in regards toward streaming music services, but there are a lot of startups focusing on other areas of music that seem to be successful:

- http://bandcamp.com/

- http://limitedpressing.com

- http://songkick.com/
Here's an idea - you could do consulting work and focus on startups. Metrics are becoming increasingly notable as an important part of running a startup. I imagine that your skills are useful to some folks who are on the fence or don't have the budget to hire fulltime staff for analytics. The experience you would gain from this would probably translate into the kind of job you want pretty quickly
Subscribe to his email list - you'll be pleasantly surprised. 1-2 per month right now and every one is deep and thoughtful.
All that and it ends with going down a slide too?
Scotland has a different legal system, based on Roman law (not Common loaw). Scotland is moving to repeal double jeopardy but it hasn't passed yet.

Note that double jeopardy still applies in all but the most serious cases -- rape, murder, and comparable -- and AIUI charges cannot be brought again unless substantial new evidence comes to light.
Perhaps I am, but why are we assuming he hasn't done any benchmarks? It seems quite likely that his opinion is informed by actual results. Does he need to draw up graphs and spend more time on a blog post to be taken seriously?
Your entire operating system can be a hidden volume. I don't know how "heroic" this is.
No - IIRC it's 5years for 'normal' crimes or 7 years for terrorist cases.

The whole law is ridiculous, it also includes unlimited spying by the security services with the bizarre Kafkesque part that you have to cooperate with the spys and it's a crime to inform anyone that you are being spyed on.

The law became a laughing stock when the government claimed it was necessary to fight international terrorism but then had to admit that there had been 1000s of intercepts by local school boards to investigate parents trying to get their kids into better school catchment areas, and city councils tracking cell phone locations to prosecute people for their dog's litter
thanks for the feedback... are you suggesting i give them access to some source code but not the complete code? or just don't use people overseas at all.
hee. I just got a job doing exactly with venter, executing his "plans to engineer microbes capable of producing clean biofuels?"

I dunno. I'm really not much of a role model. Look at me, I'm unemployed, sitting around scanning HN... Also, I'm really really bad at taking lab notes. And I'm one of the better ones. I'm not making up data, or overinterpreting my results.
Interview with Jon Stewart on NPR (44min Audio included)
Is it me or does Nokia smell of desperation?
google for: Annoying Facebook Girl Meme
Productivity [image]
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=calories+in++1+pound+of+whole+wheat...

Gives 1538 Calories per pound of whole wheat flour.

According to these folks an acre of wheat yields 42 bushels:
http://www.wheatfoods.org/AboutWheat-wheat-facts/Index.htm

At 60 pounds/bushel that gives you 2520 lbs. * 1538 Calories = 3875760 Calories / acre / year. We'll divide by two to assume you're mixing wheat with some foods that are a little less calorically dense, because you'll want at least some green leafy veggies and beans for iron and protein, and that gives us 1937880 Calories per acre per year, divided by 365 days in a year yields 5309 Calories per acre per day.

So, back to the original point, it looks like you can easily power a human using half an acre of land and photosynthesis. Possibly one quarter of an acre if you're willing to live on bread alone. (Whole grain being not so unhealthy as white.)
Gmail has this feature with + tagging.

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/08/gmail-plus-smart-trick-to...
That is a false choice. If we decided tomorrow to just up and leave in a week, would you describe the aftermath in Iraq and Afghanistan "peace"? Is "peace" when Americans aren't getting killed? Because the US would suffer far fewer casualities if we just bailed entirely and let the sects in Iraq duke it out amongst themselves and we let the Taliban run over Afghanistan again, but the people in those countries would suffer more.

Now that we're trying to get out of these countries, further US troops are basically trading their lives for some multiple of that number in civilians lives that would be lost if we just let the countries collaspe.

Take your pick, it seems to me that Obama (and Bush at the end) was choosing to lose US lives to prevent the anarchy and loss of foreign civilian lives that would result of an irresponsible exit.

Arguing that we shouldn't have gone in the first place (which I think is the case) doesn't change the fact that today we are already there.
I suggest that you're thinking of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickcheck
That's not something specific to the FTC, though; sadly it's basically how the whole legal system works. Even if you're right on the facts, your startup will have quite a problem if Intel sues you for patent infringement, or trade-secret theft, or something similar.
People who invite me to be in their mafia today, their farm tomorrow, their wizard coven tomorrow, their durg ring the next day... they need to go away.
But how can they prove that it was incriminating evidence?
You can always tell the people who have yet to experience a symptom of RSI.

"Splurging"? A one-time cost of maybe a thousand dollars? For an employee whose value is presumably somewhere north of $100 an hour?

If you can't raise the money for a decent desk by, say, the fourth month I think it's reasonable to question your company's future. Find cheaper office space, spend a couple of days consulting, pick stuff out of the dumpsters in back of a larger company, whatever, but get yourselves some decent tools.
I'll back that up from firsthand experience - it's completely clean, completely safe, with friendly, helpful and quick civil servants, perfect order, with the exception of drugs you're left alone to do almost whatever you want within reason, the quality of life is extremely high, an encouraging culture that values business, great infrastructure, high levels of technology and entrepreneurship, pretty good research, pretty good education, low bureaucracy, low taxes, low red tape, and the government programs they do have run really well and efficiently. Singapore might indeed be the best governed place in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore
Shot down by whom?

the company I was attempting to recruit for.

I've got at least one example where I offered a person I knew was good to a company that had hired me in the past. He was rejected without an interview. Being as I couldn't help the guy, I recommended him to an agency that worked with that company, and he got the job. Everyone seemed pretty happy with the deal, the guy stayed on for several years and finally left because the agency involved was incredibly sketchy.

Of course, I didn't get a commission out of the deal. I mean, I'm not complaining too much; when I recommended the guy to the agency, I knew from that point forward that I had zero chance of earning anything from the deal. Maybe that's how it should be? I don't know.

My point is that recruiting goes way beyond just finding good people. Honestly, I'm not sure exactly what the rest of the value you need to provide is, but I do know that I can provide good people, and that simply is not enough.
That's the risk you take when you own a third of a company that steals people's credit card information.
But isn't R is already a standard part in the curriculum of undergraduate social sciences degrees ?
I think that part of the issue is integrating programming not only in one course , but as a general useful problem solving technique, that one naturally thinks of using when faced with relevant problems.
Contacted both the EFF (parent of TOSBack) and Facebook to confirm.
Jason is hitting a low point. If he wants a cut of the Aol deal, would he then give Arrington a portion of the launch conf (because just like disrupt, it's a derivative of tc50)? He's a hypocrite and drunk for any attention he can get.

Plus, isn't sequoia peeved about him starting to invest + run a separate video network + new conference + playing poker? I hear a new product is in the pipe but their innovation has slowed since he got distracted.
Question: Why did LinkedIn succeed in the face of MySpace and Facebook?

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of getting people to completely switch.
> It's not a mass distribution mechanism where, for example, you could just add the UDIDs of all your users.

not it's not a mass distribution mechanism. But it's still a distribution mechanism, and one that is supported.

> but it's just meant for testing

That's woefully incorrect. It can be used for testing, but it definitely isn't just meant for that.

> Really? And what do you do when the customer wants you to start work NOW and they'll apply to Apple in the mean-time for their own keys ? Do you just tell them you can't email them a simple prototype because, well, you're too lazy to add some device IDs to your own list ?

No but that's a very different issue. You don't need to enable 5000 devices to test the application, and you will reclaim those spots later on.

> those links and your tone are mildly insulting.

Feel free to blame yourself.

> My point was that the developer account isn't really designed as a way to install your own apps for the masses.

Then you might have wanted to write that. And you'd have gotten a "No, really?" instead.

> (hence my examples)

You only gave one example and it had no relation to mass-distribution. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Same case. Look later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Boucher
Seems clear based on this self-serving account, in which he paints himself as a harmless engineer whose company's only fault was accepting advertising? I don't think that's clear at all. The government has extraordinary powers of persuasion, and whether they are "right or wrong on the facts" is the entirety of whether they're justified in exercising those powers.
Ask HN: where can I find interface designers?
I'm looking to hire someone to do the front end development for my web app targeted at small businesses.

I placed ads on elance, guru and vworker for UI designers but I ended up with a bunch of bids from web designers. I'm looking for the distinctive 'web based software' look-and-feel, not a static brochure site so the bids weren't suitable.

Can anyone recommend another venue where I might find a UI designer? I have a small budget of $1000.

thanks
ev
But better than Imperial Japan.
You are very grammar.
Yes, there was hyperinflation in the early 20s, but _not_ in the 30s. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_German_inflation for some information in English. If you speak German, or can live with Google translate, then there's lots more material available.)

Why do you keep mentioning the 30s?
That's what it's like here. Fortunately, you can just rename chrome.exe to not-chrome.exe, then everything works fine. The "protection" software works just well enough to get the contract, but not so well that you can't work around it.
Germany proves an excellent example of a "national rewrite". The government along with other elements (e.g. corporations) were completely changed after WW2. Seems to be working pretty well for them.
If I were you I'd contact a lot of the smaller startups you hear about on here and see if they need someone to take care of their Google Analytics, especially integrating Facebook Insights data, conversion analysis/funnel, short link campaigns (inbound from Twitter) etc. Propose A/B testing scenarios and work with their engineers to make it happen.

Produce real-world reports and suggest next steps. Be sure to "own" the data and branding by producing your own Excel spreadsheets that contain an amalgamation of all the different data sources, and understand their business enough to personalize it to their industry, i.e., ecommerce revenue vs. freemium signups lost to competitors.

Most importantly: be sure to budget your time properly so you can bill accurately.
But... it's the same password/encrypted data here.
That's interesting, thanks! Right now I've got title tags set for the icons. I will try to convert the icons into short text buttons. Keep the feedback coming :)!
A screenshot of one of Jason's websites is attached here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1761410

The FTC complaint is pretty detailed:

* Jason owned 1/3 of Swish, and was a company director.

* Hundreds of thousands of people were signed up for cards.

* Thousands complained to the FTC, the BBB, banks, and police departments.

* Only a tiny fraction ever activated the card.

* By Jason's own admission, the FTC went after Swish after Swish handed over a huge amount of information about their operations.

* According to the FTC, Jason's company operated the websites perpetrating the scam.

* The bounties paid to Swish for card signups were at many points the single largest source of Swish's profits.

* The FTC has evidence of Jason himself arguing to continue operating the scam, because "all the margin currently comes from this product".

* Swish operated 26 different websites, with names like "CheckCashCentrale.com" and "InstantPaydayMatchup.com".

* The bolded page headlines made mention of the payday loan terms, but not the (unrelated) VISA/MC signup.

* The home page had no statement that applicants would be signing up for a VISA/MC.

* The call-to-action buttons on the site, which read "Get matched for a loan" --- not "Buy this loan" --- snuck in acceptance of a VISA/MC offer (the FTC complaint goes into more detail than I will on this).

The only thing Jason alleges to be "broken" about this process is the cost to him of taking the case to court, even though his lawyers assured him he'd win. In other words, the "breakage" is utterly dependent on the alleged opinions of his lawyer. What, exactly, do you think the FTC should have done differently here?

Match Jason's account of what happened --- the innocent VP/Engineering of a company, a guy who "didn't have any control over marketing and advertising", getting taken to court over the actions of another company selling "a product" --- to the specifics of the FTC's complaint. Even if Jason could possibly have prevailed in court, how much credibility does he have with you right now?
Again, have you ever visited or spoken to anyone at a label? Next time you are in SoCal, email me.

I'm serious. :)