skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are two levels to consider. First, and I mean no disrespect, your idea is not unique. It's not worth anything on its own, without execution. Other people probably had, have, and will have the very same idea. The only special thing about it could be the timing. So if you think the timing is right, the idea is good, and you can execute well: by all means go and do it!

Secondly, yes, there will be backlash. People will accuse you of things. You say it was your idea, but you'll be surprised how selective everybody's perception is. To minimize both fuzz and sabotage, you need to make a clean cut. It needs to be a surprise, and there must not be any transition period. Whatever code and other stuff you created at your old company, do not take it with you. Do not tell anyone details about your plans. If you shared financial commitments, you should compensate those people now, before they have a chance to complain. Do a clean shutdown. Be guarded but truthful.
I think non-continuous maps also illustrate the point quite nicely. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dymaxion_map_unfolded.png

Other examples are welcome.
This spooks me a bit. I'm a big fan of Chargify, but for their prices to jump like this and totally remove the free plan is scary. That will make it much less attractive to brand new web apps that don't have a proven business model.

With the new pricing scheme your setup cost for accepting credit cards are merchant account, gateway (ie. Authorize.net), and $99/mo for Chargify. For most brand new web apps that's going to be significantly more than you pay for server/hosting costs. That's a bitter pill to swallow when you're not even sure if anyone will actually pay for your service.
The website mentions nothing of pricing. That's a little off-putting because it either suggests to me there is a hidden charge or they are doing something nefarious with access to my email account (like reading my email to send me targeted spam or something like that).
I am a big fan of the UI. Snappy and minimalist. I know that Windows Phone has music enabled in the background through the hub api for apps like Pandora and Slacker, etc. All it needs is Copy/Paste (early 2011) and reasonable multitasking capabilities atleast for certain apps. I think the most use of Multi tasking for me on the iPhone right now is to toggle certain settings or to do certain stuff during navigation. I don't really use it beyond that and it's reasonable that most of the multitasking is done this way.

I've also played around with the Google Nexus One and the HTC Incredible. While they're great phones in their own right, the touch screen experience leaves a lot to be desired (atleast on those units) in terms of response time and accuracy + the camera on nexus one is nowhere near the iphone 3GS, forget iPhone 4.

Disclaimer: I have been using the iPhone since the past 3 years and currently on the iPhone 4. I think it's time that I tried a new platform because I'm simply bored of how the phone looks and how it operates (launch an app, exit an app, etc. for everything). I like the way multitasking is implemented and how well the camera performs. I've always had the craving for a hardware keyboard and it seems like the new Dell phone with WP7 is a good replacement for my phone, probably early next year.
You can find far better, "usable" cheap VPS deals at http://www.lowendbox.com
I've been meaning to build one, especially since I recently bought the 20" version (I have the 8" version at work). No way I can justify spending twice as my keyboard on a keyboard holder though.
Most Indians also live on <$1/day (nominal) in pretty terrible conditions. I know it's possible but I don't want to bare the inconvenience for what is, for me, not a significant amount of money.
I recall a similar service a few years back which went a step further and encoded the text into an image, which allowed the sender to revoke the entire message at a later time.

Google is not finding anything; maybe it's gone now.
Just from looking at the litmus site I can't tell what "very clever" tricks they use, and I don't want to spend money signing up to find out. Thinking off the top of my head, perhaps they could be requesting a CSS stylesheet or an CSS3 font from their server to track reads without using an image. But that is all I can think of right now.

Could you tell me more about the "clever tricks" they use Eli?

Edit: I just thought of another trick: using the background-image or list-style-image CSS property to request an image from your own server. I found a chart that shows CSS support in major email services. Gmail looks like it would be the hardest to implement tracking in. In many other email clients it would be trivially easy:

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/downloads/documents-tools/Cam...
Leaving off Alaska is pretty significant, indeed: http://www.usmarshals.gov/district/ak/images/alaska-small.gi...

I assume that the numbers to the left of the image (area of USA) include Alaska, so I think your comment actually is pretty accurate: the unallocated gray area and the area of Alaska must be pretty close to the same.
Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US War in Pakistan
The real question is, is this the next Xbox, or is it the next Silverlight?
Fortune Tech: Facebook Groups: You saw it here first
Jonah Lehrer: Why Are The Effects Of Marijuana So Unpredictable?
We don't grab the first names on signup, but sometimes it's readily apparent from the address. In those cases we try to personalize.

Agree about the 'please respond' totally robotic. Will fix.
A Pattern of Deception
I care. Competition is always good, regardless of whether I'd ever buy one or not.
http://github.com/benpickles/js-model

A JS ORM that can use localStorage as ... storage.
Cofounder of Triggit on Winning the Venture Game
I boosted my desk and now stand up. When I feel like sitting down, I have a stool. Having no back to your seating will improve your posture if you consciously think about sitting up. I was on the crew team in college and working out my core muscles every day did more to improve my posture than anything I've ever done.
Because...

"The things that you own end up owning you."
Tyler Durden
Ask HN: What Python web programming frameworks and tools are you using?
I'm interested in hearing from the community about what tools you are using for building web applications in Python.

This was last asked about half a year ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357925) and
2 years before that (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=153487), but things are changing fast, especially with the recent popularity of NoSQL, so I think it's worth bringing up again.

So, what tools, databases, web servers and frameworks are you using for your latest Python web application projects? Or, if you've abandoned Python, what language have you moved to, and why?
Good argument.
Apple doesn't need competition to motivate them. They've shown that by reinventing the iPod every year even though there's no competition to speak of. If anything, Apple is obsessive about innovating.

There's a major new version of the dev environment underway, Xcode 4, which developers can already try for themselves:
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/tools/whats-new.html
Bhopal Water Still Toxic Twenty-five Years After Deadly Gas Leak
Once you sign up you can find an upgrade page:
http://img.skitch.com/20101011-jgpkhbquapptemp64ggajwhuxx.pn...
you might be able to use local-drive backup software, a drive at your friend's home, and a pogoplug device to access the drive remotely as if it were a local drive.

http://pogoplug.com/

and you could use TrueCrypt to add an additional level of security.
So this is basically a self-propagating virus started by someone indeed offering Free Public WiFi, now kept alive by hopeful XP users clicking on the network?

That is so wild. It's like the ad-hoc wifi equivalent of a chain letter.

Edit: Thinking about it, it's even crazier... Because the bug only happens when there aren't any available networks, it springs up in situations when there are a lot of people looking for wireless, but there isn't any— on buses, conferences, etc. The exact sort of situations where people are most likely to try out "Free Public WiFi", so the virus is more likely to propagate.

Furthermore, the name is important. In order for it to become a widespread phenomenon, it has to be a name a lot of people will click on. But we can imagine that a lot of people have set up ad-hoc networks with different names that wound up being temporarily duplicated by the bug. Some of those with attractive names may have caused further duplication before finally disappearing. The more attractive the name, the more likely it is to be duplicated before being overwritten. In effect, the name "Free Public WiFi" has been selected for.

I'm calling it: This is the first (global?) distributed wireless network that evolved on its own. Unfortunately, evolution doesn't require that it actually be useful to people :P
Thanks for the link to the blog post. I got the 'tone' you were referring to. Point Noted.
It's articles like these and the responses they engender that I'm very glad I grew up working class, and lived my 20's punk rock. I can appreciate the finer things in life, but I've also got the skills to survive a near-apocalypse.

Getting rich has never been my motivator for being involved in technology, and to be honest, I'd probably be happier if the industry were de-funded (hopefully in favor of something like biotech or alternative energies, instead of url shorteners like bit.ly), and it cut the fat out, of all the people who prefer schmoozing to hacking.
Have you ever gotten a bad reaction from these emails? Presumably the user had just expressed that they don't want anymore emails and they're getting another one :)
I think there are a few. BigString was the most popular I heard about.
> The things you list are not "this is why automatic driving is impossible". They are just "here's special cases we have to make sure to catch".

You are exactly correct; this is actually all I meant to express in my post. I suppose I should not be surprised that my comment was taken to be espousing one of the prevailing extremes! Sorry about that--I should have been a little less terse.

> most drivers would not detect a blown head gasket until the car simply stopped functioning, and the engine was completely destroyed anyway.

Ironically, this exact thing happened to me at the end of last year. That's actually why I included it in my list... not because I think it's un-doable, but because I really really hope it's an edge case they cover! :-)
> In particular, the US Congress has power over almost all commerce.

And, post-Wickard, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn , all potential commerce.

That case involves Wickard producing wheat for his own use. The court decided that his wheat growing can be regulated because he used that wheat instead of buying wheat.

A lower court has upheld the Obamacare individual mandate tax on the same basis. (Since Obama says that the healthcare legislation is one of his significant achievements, Obamacare is giving him credit.)
Reminded me of http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...:

"It's modeled on the early successes I've witnessed at Geoworks, Amazon, and Google, all of whom had one thing in common: they hired brilliant seed engineers."
Scott Adams: The Imagination Interface
McDonalds and Domino's everyday for less than $3 a day?
- TextMate

- Google App Engine

- http://www.tipfy.org (GAE specific framework)
If you append a source param to the URL it will always work (I'm familiar with the CMS):

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16291970?source=tupac4eva
I've heard WP7 has no compatibility whatsoever (so it's unable to run even WM5/6 apps)? If that's true — am I understanding properly that MS is introducing almost completely empty platform, which requires software to be written yet?

I don't know whenever they will succeed or not, but it seems to be a hard task to enter the market when all rivals already have quite strong positions (including lots of software).
I don't have an iPad so I can't play with the software, but it looks nice from the screenshots =)

As far as the site goes, something confused me. The top navigation bar with the "About Us", "Blog", etc, etc doesn't follow you down the site. For some reason, the design (how it seems to shadow and raise above the content) made me think it would. I normally don't like sites which have a bar that follows, but in this case it might be a nice touch.
Riak 0.13 released, includes full text search
There's probably a correlation, and it might even be significant, but I doubt that it's particularly strong.

I wonder if there'd be a stronger GRE*success correlation?
In other news: Neither Europe nor the USA are at the 'center' of the world. Nor is there a particularly compelling reason for north to be 'up'.

All this and more, from critical cartography: http://www.acme-journal.org/vol4/JWCJK.pdf
This is especially true since you develop for WP7 on proven and well-known technologies (.Net-ish, C#, XNA). A great many developers are already intimately familiar with these and will have little or no barrier of entry with WP7.
I use a swopper chair at home, and at work I stick a bunch of reams of paper under my monitors to make sure they stay up.

Next on my home list is to buy either a laptop stand or get a good monitor+stand.
I've done security assessments of outsourcers providing this service before. One was mostly aligned with credit card companies, one was an company that offered this in conjunction with travel insurance. Interestingly, all agents in both cases were in the US. (It's possible some call QA was offshored, I don't recall in these instances but that's very common.)

In my review, the providers had little familiarity with the data security controls of the credit card industry (aka PCI). One was PCI certified, one was not but 'working on it'. The one that had been certified had somehow convinced their QSA (the PCI auditor) to not review the systems their agents used, only the core infrastructure.

The provider with home-based agents let their agents use their own computers to service callers, and it was quiet possible that the agent had never met anyone from the hiring company face-to-face.

Now, as a matter of course, probably only 1-3% of the calls actually required the agent take a credit card number (to order something for the customer). Most of the time the agents were just answering questions. Most of the agents would never see the caller's credit card number from the issuing bank.

From a information security point-of-view I wouldn't have any problem using the providers I reviewed (although, even as a frequent traveller, I've never had an occasion where it seemed like it would be useful), but I'd stop short of giving them my credit card number.
Hey Apple, See If There's An App for This
They generate a unique image for each email and track when the image has been accessed.

As others have mentioned, many email clients automatically block image downloads by default. So this way of tracking, at first glance, seems pretty limited.
I built the search engine, then I bought a crappy website which had 20,000 visits per day. It was just a form which redirected to Google.com and it looked like this: http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1602/pl_playlis...

Then I launched my version of search engine on the same domain, the new version ran on our own platform and looked like this: http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/images/shareminer-file-search.p...

After launch of new version, I was able to grow the traffic organically and with SEO.
Somebody please write a blocker for this. Do we need something special, or can we just add some rules to AdBlock Plus to work around these antisocials?

Good job funding this garbage, PG.
I think the best advice I ever got from my parents about weddings is that you have to have really good food. Nobody hardly remembers anything else, even the bride's dress, but if you have incredible food, people will talk about it for a decade. This may be biased, being from a southern Italian family, but I think it's good advice.
Well I think you're mixing your terms. If you want to be good at building linux distros, learn LFS. If you have got nothing else to do, learn LFS. Otherwise, learn whatever the thing is that you consider a power user is good at.
Just thinking out loud:

I wonder how feasible it would be to pre-compile the Javascript to machine code before distributing it? Maybe someone determined enough could probably hack one of the existing JIT engines to emit executable machine code to a file?
An excellent point, I agree.

Would you (or anyone) care to coment on a difference of situation based on lifestyle choice?

That is, have yous seen co-founders who are very similar in "class"[1] background and current earning potential but whose financial situations diverge? I'm thinking along the lines of choosing to start a family versus being single.

This may, of course, not be an issue for founders freshly freed from school, but I keep reading that YC has older participants, too.

[1] Mostly the "economic" part of "socio-economic class". Even this may be without much meaning in the US.
What the Beatles Can Teach Us About Starting a Company
I agree it's rude. If I received what would otherwise be a text email from a client/coworker/etc except now my mail client is saying "Images have not been downloaded", I'd get a little suspicious.
> Until now, you’ve been the person with the least control over your emails because, after you send them, they can be stored and scanned in more places than you can imagine. Do you want anyone to permanently store your messages? Do you want your words to possibly live in infamy without your knowledge?

Um, isn't that kind of an accepted risk when giving someone something? This whole thing sounds very fishy to me, actually.

How does it work? Their about page is very very vague, and uses some double-talk to make your message seem incredibly secure (specifically, the hard-to-print FAQ entry: http://www.bigstring.com/info/faqs/answers/printed.php)
Also relevant:

http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/11/14/the-worlds-most-super-de...
A winning solution for SimCity
That secret key is not the one in our production repository. We overwrite our development settings in other files.

Regardless, the Django secret_key isn't used to control systems or access data :-)

-Adam Nelson
"I’m absolutely stoked that my post made it onto two of my favourite sites- HackaDay.com and TheRegister."

Congratulations, you've now made it here, too.
Just use: "There's an app." It's much shorter.
I am confused as to what you are suggesting to get or how it works based on the picture.
framework: web2py
Postgresql
Blueprint CSS
Linode
JQuery
I think if you're "certified" with ReturnPath, certain webmail companies (Hotmail, one other?) will autoload images in your email.
- Django

- Vim

- django-extensions

- fabric
The developer was a friend of mine. The agreement was that we pay him and also provide him with equity.

I know the difficulties that can arise if you don't pay.

Please do not paint me with the brush of the prototypical non-tech with an idea. I have a strong knowledge base in the area we're working in. This project could not move forward without my knowledge base.
It appears that one of the features this site offers is the ability to find e-mails you've sent that need followup because they haven't been responded to. I'd love to have that feature built into Gmail (and it seems like something very doable). Does anyone have a search/filter setup that allows you to find these "need to followup" e-mails?
As others have pointed out, Gmail and other mail clients are designed to specifically block this kind of thing.

How is an apparently viable business based on such a non-platform?
They're both successful projects - Silverlight's adoption is still increasing. I'm not sure what your point is?
I think this is changing.

Corporations are not the blind, mindless creatures that people seem to think. They do see their own problems, and do want to change them. They are starting to recognize the needs and desires of a younger workforce, and changes are starting to occur. They also have been hard hit by the recession and cannot waste their energy on their own politics.

I would predict that in 10 years, corporate culture will be more like the startup cultures of today, but with some added discipline to meet the risk tolerances and business continuity needs of a large company.
I make this little app some time back to compare the size of various countries/continents - http://mapfight.appspot.com/

So, for example,
http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-europe, http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-cn, http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-in, or my favorite http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-gl
Please review this Software startup. Better touchpad gestures
Right. I was trying to think of clever tricks to get around image blocking. Some techniques, such as list-style-image look like they can get around most email services.
Why do Africans have to have everything bigger than the rest of us? :(

:)
Unfortunately I don't think I could. If speakers knew that even notes from what they said were going to get published, they wouldn't be so candid. I talked about that here:

http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html

What I do do though is incorporate their insights into the general advice I give in essays. That's not just based on my experience with YC-funded startups, but also on things I've heard in talks at YC.
I couldn't help but notice Django's settings.py file. You should probably change your SECRET_KEY since the whole thing is clearly visible. From the looks of your blurry INSTALLED_APPS i'd say you are also using pinax.
Do you pay for electricity, internet, mobile bills, car EMI, entertainment, eating out, shopping and thousand other expenses? All these things can cost upward of $500 per month.
I use an old ppc mac mini and openvpn to do remote timemachine backups. It works pretty well and was pretty easy to setup.
All I see when I read about this tool is the forthcoming lawsuit from Oracle.
I agree with rjett about not having anything to lean on. It really does improve your posture.
I sit on a balance ball at my office, and have consistently for about 10 months.
It's really hard to slouch on a balance ball. It's improved my overall core strength considerably, and I don't think I ever slouch.
Since HN only allows 80 letters in title.

* Windows only, downloadable only

* Pre revenue, just launched.

* My Friend's startup
Most EULAs are atrocious. I shouldn't need to hire a lawyer to buy a consumer product.

The people making these products probably don't want them heavily enforced either. If things actually got to that point nobody would buy their products.

I think they like the current status: you technically owe them your first born but still buy their products. If you do anything they don't like, they can stop you. But people still buy their stuff. Its the best of both worlds for them.
I agree, I'm working on a SaaS that is hopefully going to be deployed in a month where I was planning to use Chargify, but the $99/month seems hard to justify when I can just use paypal.
Most smart people I know also got a better than ~1400ish score on the SAT, but a disproportionate number are also in the near perfect range (~1570-1600). I can definitely tell the difference between a 1400 and a 1570, and can usually tell the difference between a 1570 and 1600.
I had never heard of Riak before (shame on me!) and it looks like the exact thing I would need for a project: does anyone care share success|horror stories?

What about price? There is a free version but the prices of the commercial version (with support) are not disclosed. This makes it look like it's targeted at big companies...?

How does it compare to S3?
Also bitmaps. There are a lot of bitmaps at the system level denoting, f.ex., used and unused inumbers and blocks. (Though it is easier--and more common--to initialize bitmaps to 0 than to initialize bitmaps to 1).