skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I started both Gravatar and GitHub as side projects. I sold Gravatar to Automattic after several years (though it was never profitable and became quite painful to run during the last year that I owned it). GitHub has been profitable since the day we started charging money (6 months after we started working on it) and we are now up to thirteen employees without having taken any funding.

In both cases it was the viral element of the idea that made it possible for me to turn what was once a side project into something more. If you can't spend all day every day working on it, you need something that will grow even when you're not watering it.
Filezilla's silent caching of user's credentials
That's awesome. Congratulation.

Can you talk about your marketing and sales effort? It's always difficult for technical folks.
Said: Don't worry, you're boring
Implied: Don't make this news, we don't want the public to know us thugs harass any kid off the street for no reason.
Sure, and if you're sued and the courts spell your name in all capitals you're not bound by the judgment, either rolls eyes.
I can't test the UI dynamics, but the static appearance may be the nicest I've seen for a mind-mapper on any platform -- nice work.
Not to add insult to injury, but it is very hard - next to impossible - to believe your version of this over the nic.ly version or vice-versa given the available evidence.

We didn't receive any prior warnings. If you're, essentially, saying you don't believe me then that's your call.

I'm not sure what more I can do. Sad.
You are not a code monkey. You have read TOACP thrice. You love programming in Python. You love networking/sysadmin/build and release stuff. If all the above is true, there is really no value in doing Red hat, cisco or juniper certification. If you love programming, contribute to open source. People will notice you when you work on open source projects. Then by the time you finish college, you might get some consulting work as a freelancer. Once you are get some money doing consulting, try to do some simple paid webapps. You would also be familiar with what people want by that time.
Interesting/Inspiring Talk by Jason Santa Maria on Print vs. Web Design (Video)
There's lots of reasons Public-access TV no longer makes sense, not just YouTube. Here's an essay I wrote on the issue back in 2005 - http://garrickvanburen.com/archive/add-cable-public-access-t...
We've released a response to NIC.ly's statement, available at http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/our-response-to-nic-lys-...
I love Apple's products and I buy almost everything they make, but they do not
understand the internet.

then maybe that's not the issue, maybe we (as internet denizens) are critical of the wrong things that are actually worth understanding (for example, moving industries to a new platform in way those industries feel comfortable doing).

Not to ride on the article, I totally agree with what Thomas is saying, and it's sad seeing a tech magazine like Wired not get it either.

Articles like this are necessary to explicitly outline the problems, but it's also worth saying that stepping stones are better than the prospect of never getting there.
google would be a good fit. analyse the youtube library and sell the stats to the companys. but i guess they're already working on something like that. if not someone in mountainview owes me a beer.
I'd argue that, yes, nuclear weapons are inanimate objects, cannot think and therefore cannot possess the concepts of good or evil.

A better way to argue this would be to say "murdering" is a profession and can be neither good nor bad. Sure. Fine, granted, murdering is evil but it's also a loaded term.
Reflecting today I believe Jim's inspiring message to us is to live life to the fullest even if that requires participation in extreme sports.

Jim did not write a letter. He was the "author" of the sentiment (according to the speaker) by the way he lived his life.
Shouldn't be allowed either, since there is no difference between that and the stuff browed the same way just across the border.
I'm not behind China firewall. I'm in Russia (near Moscow).
DNS services allow you to use a nice little interface to set DNS records. Some registrars (like GoDaddy) have a built-in management system that lets you specify A and CNAME records within your web browser.

Short of this, however, a lot of people would rather use a service that implements similar functionality than have to manage a BIND server themselves. Other than possible dynamic DNS issues (not really a problem for professionally hosted web sites), there aren't really any features that DNS services offer; it's a pretty simple concept in general, after all (host name request yields corresponding IP).
I don't know... I want Hulu to succeed, but I really don't think they stand much of a chance unless their Plus service improves. Netflix is annihilating them on that front.

Not that I very much doubt it will improve. Just that it should've done so sooner rather than later.
I wish I could click your screenshots to enlarge them. I can't see the one on the right very well
What did you learn in the process? What would you tell your older self?
Ask HN: Has anyone been losing texts more often recently?
It seems that many people (approximately 8) in my social circle have been getting lackluster texting services where they lose text messages or do not receive them until hours later, typically multiple at the same time.

I have occasionally found this problem in the past, but this seems to be a recent spike in affect people, and I was wondering if anyone here is facing the same problems or perhaps shed some light on what may be causing this.
Some really good points about this whole fiasco here --> http://saint-rebel.com/2010/10/06/feigned-outrage-ly-domains...
At that time it was also considerably more expensive to get servers, so hardware scaling of any kind was less desirable. The cheap virtualization we enjoy now only came in around mid-decade.
One important thing to keep in mind is that progress doesn't always feel like progress. Trying something that turns out not to work might feel like a waste of time, but it's actually progress: now you know this doesn't work and you can try something else that is more likely to work. As long as you remember what didn't work and don't end up in loops where you keep trying the same non-working thing over and over again (which is harder than it sounds) you will sooner or later get it to work.
> If the owner of the car on purpose destroys the agencies property, he is legally liable for those damages.

Prove it.

> Secondly, I'm not sure what you are imagining that the absence of a warrant means, in theoretical and practical terms. In our country, illegally obtained evidence will usually cause at most a small reduction of the sentence. A complete dismissal is quite rare.

That is a structural problem with your legal system. Besides that, I've done nothing wrong as far as I know (other than maybe dropping your GPS unit on the back of a truck bound for Afghanistan) so much good luck in prosecuting me.

Here (.nl) cases that rely on evidence gathered in illegal means get thrown out with some regularity, even if the rest of it is ironclad.

Not that long ago a bunch of car thieves was apprehended and in a first sitting convicted based on information taken from a license plate scanning experiment. The case was rock solid, except for one little detail, that data should not have been in the hands of the police, so the whole thing was thrown out without a chance for a 'do-over'.

Tainted evidence is the last thing the police here wants in their cases, and throwing out the whole case keeps them sharp.
Thanks - I'll fix that.
Here's my basic maxim:

"Share as much as you can. Not as little as you must."

What matters most is not what you share, but how you share it.

For example, you can be transparent with bad news, but it's best to present that bad news as an opportunity or at worst a challenge to be overcome.
No body just dumps all 75,000 in one transaction. The order is filled over a period of time. W/R didn't dump either, actually further analysis shows that they sold the majority of their contracts after the crash

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/refuting-secs-lies-core-fla...

The blog here is zerohedge, but the data is from nanex.
I don't know if www.bitkeeper.com qualifies or not (it's the inspiration for git / mercurial / bzr / etc), but it's happily supporting a bunch of people in the US and Canada. Turns out people are willing to pay for this sort of stuff if you do a good job.

Speaking of which, we're looking for a really good web / designer type. If you can stand getting paid for non-open source send me a message. Thanks.

Forgot to say, email in my profile.
http://notarycrm.com and http://mailfinch.com are doing pretty well for me. Still side projects but they're both profitable and steadily growing.

My rule of thumb: if you see a business using spreadsheets to manage something, there might be an opportunity there
Sal Khan visits the Gates Foundation
Technorati was a side project for me.
> Trademarking regional products is a big thing in Europe with its many centuries-old food traditions.

They're like trademarks, but geographic distinctions are technically a legally distinct concept in most parts of Europe. Sounds like that's not the case in the US, which seems odd.
A great way for small businesses to learn how to use technology for profit
Why was this written? Seems like it would have an interesting story behind it.
Champagne is not a trademark, it's a geographic distinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Status
Great comment. There are probably many, great, socially beneficial things for technical-entrepreneurial people to do in healthcare (a field I worked in for a long time), education, and poverty. But "industry" is the wrong level of analysis for social benefit -- the analysis has to go to specific problems and impact.

Ten years ago, one would very frequently come across essays decrying the alienating nature of the internet, how it dehumanized us and isolated us. They would argue that online relationships are inveterately shallow but displace our fraying real-word relationships with friends and family. But: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. alongside broadband, wireless, cell-phone cameras, etc. seem to be doing something very meaningful to reverse the (real, though possibly exaggerated) problems those essays described. And by correcting these problems and strengthening the social fabric, we may be indirectly reducing problems in healthcare, education, and poverty.

Again, the problem with the article is not really misprision of social networks, the problem is analyzing social impact at a level where Twitter = Zynga = LinkedIn.
I use DNSMadeEasy because an IT guy I really respect suggested it to me, but as a developer these are my benefits:

- Ability to do 5 second TTL

- Almost 100% uptime (until a few months ago it was 100%)

- Ability to change registrars and hosting providers without worry.

- Registrars can be slow to transfer a domain DNSMadeEasy Never is (unless you set a high TTL).
With the relentless XSS attacks against large websites, including the Paypal XSS the other day, and the recent Twitter XSS attacks, why are there any techies left not using NoScript?

The web is not safe to use without NoScript.
I don't know if the fact that the Wired app sucks is Apple's fault. Rumor has it that Steve Jobs cannot stand any of the magazine apps in the app store.
There's a free version in the market, check it out.
Sure,

So when we were finally able to email directly with NIC.ly (post deletion) they said that the domain was removed because they didn't like the 'scantily clad' lady on the front page (and only page) of the site (which was Violet, in this photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dotben/3674835644/)

They're essentially now changing their tune for PR reasons.

The site's purpose was NOT to shorten pornographic urls, it was described as a "sex positive" url shortener in line with Violet's work as a best-selling author and academic in this space. being "sex positive" is not the same as saying "shorten your porn here".

However the wider issue, as I've stated at http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/our-response-to-nic-lys-... is why is a domain registry asserting editorial control over a website that uses its domain. People should be very concerned about that.
I have been developing a GTV-specific webapp for it. I have not seen any native apps yet, other than Chrome itself and one for Amazon. It's problematic because webapps are meant to be a big part of the GTV ecosystem. I had to greatly cut back on many several features of our app because of performance hits with js. My 2-3x number comes running sunspider on my iPhone and the GTV hardware simultaneously. In some instances while browsing the same sites, it felt that my phone was faster. Another issue I completely forgot to mention is the abysmal performance of Flash. Yeah, GTV supports it. The Flash runtime is, typically, the worst part of the user experience yet again.
Great to hear! I'm also curious as to what your business is.

Congrats on getting to a better place; hopefully you can go further and expand more!
There are microscopic pixies that hold onto the wing and beat their little wings really fast.
No, what I'm saying is that for an outsider it is impossible to know the truth, no matter who you would want to believe or who you care about most. Personally, I think you should be able to do whatever you want with domains that you register in your name and that you paid for, so I'm sympathetic to your case.

But the time to move on is NOW, not three weeks from now so use your 15 minutes of fame to relaunch your service on a new domain while the media hype lasts or you'll have to start completely from scratch. You might even be able to turn this whole thing to your advantage, I'm not a fan of URL shorteners in any way, but if you're going to do one then make use of this, turn a disadvantage in to an opportunity.

I'd never even heard of vb.ly before, I have now, and I'm sure that a relaunch on a very short timeframe would still get you some media coverage.
I know that at the least, NES, Super NES, and Sega Genesis games were nearly all programmed in assembler. I don't know much about the next generation of game systems. Whenever you want to feel impressed, go back and play some old school classics.
I like it -- very useful.

A few questions:

* Why only blogs? I'd love to use it on other types of sites. (For example, maybe a wiki.)

* I like the keyboard support. (Search, hit down, press enter.) However, I'd like to be able to hit Esc to return to the list -- without using my mouse. It's pretty standard for Esc to close modal windows.

* When I click to see an entry full-screen, I'd rather it just open in the current window rather than a pop-up.

* If you don't mind, I'd love to hear a little about the backend. Is it Lucene?
Ars examines Chrome and Firefox bookmark sync protocols
Ask HN: Review the project idea for Android
I am thinking of doing some project on android platform. Right now, these are the thoughts on my mind.
People carry smart-phones 24X7 with themselves so, there is a lot of scope for interaction between these devices (through wifi, bluetooth or whatever). For example, I may want to sync my device's music library with my friend's or I may just want to copy recently added pictures in my friend's device.
So, I am thinking of developing some kind of back-end and interface to communicate with all the devices that are present in the range of my device. It will create opportunities for new apps that target sharing between mobile devices.
What do you guys think of this? All suggestions are welcome.
I had a look at Oracle prices the other day just out of curiosity. Back in the day driver support used to be solid for Oracle and touchy for everything else I used so that's the context in which I know it.

I went to the store, then clicked oracle database, and found myself looking at licenses of Oracle database Enterprise for just six hundred pounds. That's a lot cheaper than I remember it being. I added to cart to see what would happen. When you do this, it adds a "first year support" line as well that's not quoted on the page but does contribute to your bottom line. I found that deceptive.

My link is here, it may not work for you:
https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=ostore:2:0::NO:RP,2:P...

Then I had an idea about what might be going on. I dug further to find the yearly cost of support for the database. It's far more expensive, and back to the prices of the old days. So I assume that you buy it at a merely expensive price, and then if you want fixes to their bugs, you'll have to keep paying money for it at a higher rate on a per-year basis.

Digging further, I found a link for Oracle database standard edition that was far more expensive and quoted on a per-processor basis. £11,730.00 per processor. Ouch.

https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=ostore:product:144910...

I must have missed something. Does anyone know how this works?
What is going on in the brain when we experience deja-vu?
Ask HN: Hardware/Robotics Forums? Need Some Help Here.
I am looking at prototyping a device (to help alleviating symptoms of a certain medical condition), and I could use some pointers into a robotics and/or hardware hacking community.

Obviously not the PS3 re-soldering kind of hacking, but something more involved with building miniature physical gadgets with moving parts and sensors. I have substantial background with software development and can solder my way through a multivibrator :)

Any pointers as to where I should look?

--

(edit) Probably it wouldn't hurt if I describe what it is I am considering building. It's a pressure sensor array of the size of the palm, relatively sparse (a dozen of sensors for starters) and a some component that could replicate the pressure input in a tactile way. Either some sort of array of push-pins to prickle the skin, or electrodes to run weak currents, or something else ... and this is basically the part I am currently very fuzzy about. Need to understand what is available and could potentially work and to just bounce some ideas off other people in general.

All this is for personal use, this is not a start-up or an academic research. Consider it a hobby project that could benefit greatly exactly one person if it works out.

--

Thanks.
Awesome rule of thumb Paul.
Should we panic about US health spending? Yes.
Should we panic about US health spending? No.
I don't know if I want to agree or not with the premise of this conversation thread.

If everything about A is the same as B except for where it was made, shouldn't A be allowed to label itself as belonging to the same category as B? Yes.

On the other hand, if this were allowed (and location were the only difference), the following is possible / likely:

Champagne becomes "Genuine Champagne Champagne". Or "official" champagne becomes a commercial entity, with a different name, and the category itself is left to go wherever it will. All we've done there is lose the specificity that Champagne had, as well as the ability for new wineries in Champagne to make Champagne (because now "official" champagne is a company's brand name), and for what gain?
U.S. Transportation Secretary Wants To Outright Ban Phones From Cars?
The govt. is intercepting your messages, tweaking them and sending a safer version to your friends.
Having money doesn't mean that trade embargoes or tariffs won't hurt a country at the margin. The goods that are available to them to buy with that money through international trade will decline in number, which is a clear loss. You can't live on oil alone.
I realized I had lost an important file (a letter of recommendation from my university co-op placement). I no longer had the e-mail it was attached to (this is prior to me using webmail), nor the e-mail program. But what's this? I still have the mailbox files. Well, I know python has some multipart utilities... maybe I can copy and paste the relevant parts out of this message and into a script and have it write out the attachment sub-message. After a bit of fiddling, it worked!

I was elated. It was by no means a very challenging thing to do, but I would have been totally fucked if I didn't know how to do software development.
Check out http://www.sparkfun.com

Groups on LinkedIn have been helpful for me as well

If you have specific questions, I might be able to answer (my background is embedded development) or point you to more specific resources.
As for their regulations being only available in Arabic: http://nic.ly/regulations.php

Yeah, did you read ALL of the regulations? Including the bit about your content needing to stay within Libyan law.

Try finding ANYWHERE on the Internet that outlines what Libyan law is in English.

And I say English not because I expect the Internet to all be in English, but simply because as you point out the official NIC.ly regulations are published in English.

Without that, it is impossible to put together a complete set of the regulations (the NIC.ly regs + the Libyan law).
What was it before 1992? I'd imagine it was still controlled somehow.

edit: Also, it says it covers:

>These laws protect the names of wines, cheeses, hams, sausages, olives, beers, Balsamic vinegar and even regional breads, fruits, and vegetables.

These are different from, say, a blacksmith's creations how, precisely? Or batteries? They're consumable too. Or a city-named drug, which would probably be able to claim more loose definitions than a patent could, blocking far more competition? It seems an arbitrary distinction to be made around certain kinds of foods, when you really can't define "food" in any hard-lined, legally-acceptable way, without endless bickering about what is and what isn't food. Which is kind of the point of the disapproval of protecting the words in the first place.

edit again: and that only covers the EU. How does the rest of the world see / enforce it?
No joke: When it comes to enterprise software licensing and pricing, a lot of the time I find that even the vendor's salespeople don't know how it works.
Too many dependencies upon the cable companies, which impact the product. Wouldn't put my money in right now or ever, until I feel comfortable that this isn't an issue.
In this case maybe.

Adobe, just like any entity, deserves a true projection.

If I sat on HN bashing Adobe I'd have much higher karma. Good thing I'm not here for karma.
Now that I think about it, I think you planted the seed about that idea through one of your blog posts last year. Thanks! :)
iTeleport http://www.iteleportmobile.com started out as a side project while one of our founders was getting a PhD.
People Who Say Money is Evil Just Don't Know How to Make It
These kinds of stories are definitely cool to hear :)

Maybe you can tell us more about what you did right, and what your business does!
would you be willing to divulge details on your app/business and country you reside in?
Does this income sustain your family?

$300-400 usd seems very little to get by. At the time of your posting, it seemed like a "student" in need of the cash.

It's pay back time - your experiences,lessons learnt will be appreciated.
This place is becoming just like Reddit...

In a great way! People helping people. And in a very Hacker News sort-of way, helping people get a business off the ground! He's the master of his own destiny now and that's awesome.
Forgot to mention Howcast
This doesn't have anything in particular to do with C/C++. It's how IEEE floating point works. Anything that provides access to an IEEE 754-compliant FPU will display this artifact. The author is confused and thinks this is some feature of C, betraying his lack of knowledge.
Ha, really? This post I'm assuming: http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/microsoft-excel-is-the-wo...

TONS of Micro opportunities here.
chinese family names can have multiple syllables. Not often, but they do exist. Most times it's caried from ancestry that's not han chinese but there are so many ethnicities and so much intermixing within china that family name no longer carries any signifiers to bloodline, etc