skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The necessary piece of information here that most people don't make explicit is that US persons (natural or companies) are liable for all income worldwide (incl. from foreign subsidiaries when they bring that cash back to the US); the thing Google is doing just deferring that day by holding the money offshore. In practice they can defer indefinitely, and use the overseas cash to finance overseas operations, make overseas investments, etc.

There are cases (Barbados!) where due to awesome double tax treaties, you can actually end up paying less US tax under a double tax treaty than in a zero tax jurisdiction subsidiary -- mainly by using the foreign entity in the double tax jurisdiction to recharacterize earnings as capital gains or dividends. There was a period where dividends were not taxed much. Even when magic loopholes like that only exist for one year, it becomes a big deal because these pools of offshore deferred earnings can all stream through during that window.
Ask HN: Visual Design for Hackers
Take a look at the Rails Rumble 2010 entries: http://railsrumble.com/

There's a whole stack of apps there, developed within 48 hours by small groups of people. They're not all beautiful, but there is (to my eye) a pretty high standard of presentation for most of them.

I am sure I am not alone in feeling like there's this chunk of knowledge I'm missing - in terms of how, and when, to go about making something beautiful.

I'm fascinated by the concept of optimizing user experience - it certainly has the potential to make or break an application's popularity. If you can spend valuable time tweaking code to make it more appealing to the compiler, why can't it work in the other direction too? Though I don't think it's reasonable to expect myself to be incredible at both, I'd like to be able to put together a prototype that looks nice. After all, I wouldn't show people code that I knew was bad and ugly.

Part A - I would love to know - how does this aspect fit into the flow of the project? At what point do you start turning things from black-text-on-white-background into a beautiful and intelligent layout? I'm sure it's usually incremental, but is there a specific point at which you decide to shift focus over to implementing your UI? I know I usually go through many notebook pages of UI ideas even before I've written any code. Is it worthwhile doing mockups in photoshop at this stage? Showing different designs to people and asking for feedback? Or do you usually do this after your core functionality is built? And where do you draw the line, say 'this is ready enough for now!' and release the thing?

Part B - In terms of user interface and usability, there's a lot of information out there. Much of it, however, is from the early days of graphical computing and the web. There are still great things to learn from stuff like Joel on Software but I'd like some good information about user interactions and expectations in the AJAX era. There must have been some more wisdom accumulated in the last decade! I'm looking for some shoulders to stand on - 'our experience showed us that you should never do <xyz> because users find it confusing'.

Part C - I've always been curious about how small teams of people manage to cope with the graphical elements of web application building. Does a team of 2-3 people in an early days startup usually contain a designer/artist? Is that something you can reliably outsource? Is it ever a good idea to have your design done by someone else and then shoehorn your view code and javascript into it (for a prototype/beta), or should it always be a closely collaborative process?

Part D - Finally - I'm interested in any of you people who can see BOTH sides of the coin. If you started off as a programmer and then learned how to make stuff sexy and usable - what put you on that path? Where did you start learning? What were your major obstacles, and how did you overcome them?

Looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say.

Dan
I'm interested. I'll need to slice it down for 100hours of a prototype. Let's take it to email, hit me up at messel at gmail dot com.
Same as Digg. Betting they'll be acquired.
Wow, even the print version isn't single-page
Do you know why employers would want celebrities?
Ask HN/Webdevelopers: Do you use separate HTML for mobile devices?
Hey, HN.

Do you use separate HTML for mobile devices like iPhone, Android etc?

I've been thinking of adding more rigorous support for mobile devices in a project I'm working on, and I'm debating with myself on whether to use "custom HTML" for these devices, or just use the same HTML as for desktop browsers.

Thoughts?
And yet, email (messages) is the best part about Basecamp - messages all get posted in one spot.
I can't believe I left out the finance and the HR and the office facilities. Those trash cans don't empty themselves. Those tax forms don't file themselves. And the employees that Twitter wants certainly don't recruit themselves.

Just sending your CEO out to raise money requires several people's worth of orchestration and supporting research and due diligence.
I'm not a recruiter, but my opinion is that 'experience' should mean 'commercial experience'. By saying you've got seven years (4 commercial) you look like you're trying to bump up your figures.

Page 3 is ridiculous. Shorten your borders and margins and get it onto 2 pages.

Overuse of bullets for my liking, esp when really you're putting paragraphs in. Bullets are for <5 word points ideally. Nested bullets are always ugly.

Tell people what they care about. Eg:

> Livenumber, a blackberry application...

Nobody cares that it's called Livenumber. Say:

> A blackberry application...

It looks a bit wall-of-texty.

Just my opinion though, don't take it for gospel!
"Twitter is often where the first draft of my serious thinking occurs"
I'm a father of three but I have no desire to join a parenting discussion group. I will pass on all my worldly wisdom here:

* A thin coat of diaper ointment works better than a thick coat.
* Breast feeding and early potty training combined will save you hundreds of dollars.
* Never force pants onto a fussy, kicking child. Have them kick into the pant leg.
* Never buy onesies or pants with inner-leg snaps - unless you like spending forever re-snapping them after each diaper change.
* Lay out the supplies for diaper changes before removing the diaper. (Think of racing pit crews)
* If your baby pees while changing a diaper, don't freak out. Just put your hand over it to block the stream. (and wash your hands afterward)
* Placing scotch tape over the speakers of noisy electronic toys will save your sanity.
* Most of the advice you hear will work for everyone else's kids, but not yours.
The Philippines also tax worldwide income. I think they and the US are the only which ALWAYS tax all worldwide income of their citizens/permanent residents.

Actually, a lot of countries tax worldwide income if you are resident in the country; it's just that there is a procedure to establish non-residence (e.g. for Canadians who are outside Canada for a certain number of months/years, or UK people), and then they are not liable to tax. A lot of other countries only tax some people on worldwide income (e.g. not taxing foreign income of new citizens in New Zealand for like 4 years), and others never tax foreign income.

International tax law is a constantly shifting swamp of lameness.

(there's also the Foreign Earned Income Exemption (around the first $92k/yr of income); i.e. why I have been on vacation for Q3/Q4 2010; it saved me more money to remain outside the US and work on my startup part-time while SCUBA diving and exploring Asia, than returning to the USA mid-year).
Agreed... It takes a highly technical subject and makes it wonderfully accessible. It reminds me of _why's work, or Scott McCloud's Google Chrome comic.

However, I was amused to read: "Continuations are such an awesome feature that they don't really have a downside." Personally, I find that continuations are utterly mindbending. While the comic says carelessly applied DSLs can make it hard to understand code, I think continuations can make it downright impenetrable.

I love this little continuation brainteaser: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/ftpdir/scheme-mail/HTML/rrrs...
The author of the Gervais Principle blog posts did a nice job of comparing Apple's marketing culture (we have the best stuff, come get it) against Microsoft's sales culture (personalized, i.e. Windows 7 was my idea). Thinking about it though, Microsoft has completely failed to connect with any customer persona despite their baffling product segmentation, other than personal vs professional which Apple is soon copying. Okay Microsoft, Windows 7 contains an everyman's idea, I'm genuinely interested, what is it? Not going to say? Vapid and inauthentic. Okay Microsoft, you're going to hack my attention with puppies and irrestibably cute things? Great PR stunt, but you failed to make any kind of impression about the quality of your goods. Now we get these ridiculous Windows Mobile 7 commercials.. once again, trying to sell to you at an individual level by appealing to your phone addiction problem. Decreased ease of use is a benefit? Well, I want the phone designed by someone who wants to use a well designed phone, not by someone who has to have a differentiated design for marketing reasons. Sell me that.
Balmer defends Windows as Apple gains
Wow Patrick! Thanks for taking the time to respond.

The site has been up since about September 1st with copy/structure for Google to latch onto, just not publicised or processing orders. Hopefully that will have helped somewhat.

But yes, earlier would have been even better!
CIA Invests in Online Fraud Prevention Startup
1 year after my first son was born I started my business. I was 23. 3 more kids and 8 (almost 9) years later, I'm still working for myself. My first son was my inspiration.

This year I decided to become an independent game programmer because I wanted to follow my dreams, and I wanted my kids to see that if you love something and want to be a success at it, you have to just DO IT.

And I did. And I'm having success with it. My kids will grow up knowing you don't have to just settle down and earn a buck, but you can do what you love, make a living, and make your own rules.

Oh and if you're wondering how your life changes. Well. I think there's only one word for it: completely.
Good point, updated submission title to reflect that.
I don't think you can compare rapid traffic growth and a traffic slump and call them the "same".
UberCab’s Masterstroke: Forgoing Buy-In from San Francisco Officials
I'm not saying it's a huge problem (I don't know) but it doesn't seem a good idea to risk it:

"There has been a fourfold increase in the rate of infant strangulation and suffocation in the U.S. in the past 20 years, according to a report released today, and the apparent cause (though hardly the definitive one) is the rise in numbers of babies who share beds with their parents." source: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/the-risks-of-s...

"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warn that infants should not co-sleep with their parents." source: http://www.marchofdimes.com/pnhec/298_29656.asp

"Adults sleeping with babies increases risk of sudden and unexplained infant death, inquest finds" source http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/adults-s...
Simplicity is key for these types of sites. Right now your site looks like a standard blog. The other comments have some good ideas on how to influence users to submit
But is it "voting and editing of old answers" what sells the service, or is it "finally, Q&A that doesn't atrophy over time, so it's worth investing your effort in making a great community"?

The difference isn't features vs lack of features; it is features vs BENEFITS. This is the thing "business people" bring to the hackerverse.
Was Microsoft ever such a big brand?

Google is, Apple is, Dell is, but with Microsoft it is more like many Brands: Windows, XBox, Zune.. I think the main things that people immediately associate with the actual word "Microsoft" might be mice and keyboards.

But, (at least in my perception) they are slowly beginning to address the problem of decreasing user numbers. See their marketing at "Colbert Report" and, recently, the How I Met Your Mother episode "Subway Wars", that was full of Bing and Windows product placement. Again, not promoting the Brand "Microsoft" directly, but rather its products. The shiny logo stands for Windows, while in Apple's case the logo refers to a whole company.
How To: Avoid Getting Fleeced By Firesheep
Des voitures et minibus en location à Essaourira
What's Wrong with Higher Education?
wow, didnt expect so much interest in that. I will do my best to reply to all people who commented/emailed.

Surprised to see that so many people dont know where to start with their projects. Here is my answer - just do that. Read couple books, watch screencasts and you are good to go! Thats a great thing about coding - you can always refactor it later! :)
“There are two industries which call their customers ‘users’...”
The message I got from the ad is that Windows Phone 7 would allow you to see if you had any updates on the homescreen itself, obviating the need for fiddling with the phone for a long time to access the same information.
You can speculate and create theories on the matter and bound some probability of them being true, but there is a fundamental property of news. There are lots of things we don't remember or care about, but we did before. These events? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009 What happened to the Haiti earthquake news? Haiti still needed help even before the recent Cholera outbreak. The Wikileaks news will die again like it did before. Heck, even Spitzer has a primetime show on CNN after his scandal.

Silicon Valley news isn't the only news with a short half-life.
I've heard the second sentence a millions times :)

maybe it won't make it, but the best part of it is i got many feedbacks including yours that'll help me in the future.

also i learnt much about erlang, ejabberd, mongodb, js frameworks, xapian etc. not that much of loss i guess :)
Good question.

I believe it's the credibility factor. If someone has a lot of positive exposure be it online, in print media or what ever the case may be, then that is going to attract attention to who the person works for.

Take actual celebrity examples; almost everyone in the world knows who David Beckham is and now most of those people know who LA Galaxy are. I can assure you, before he joined the team few people in Europe had ever even heard of LA Galaxy and now they are a recognised and respected brand purely because of their association with Beckham. On an infinitely smaller scale the same applies to certain industries in larger cities.
Really?

The XBox uses the web in the best way possible for a games console - on-line gaming. Maybe it's just me but I find a console a rubbish browsing platform - I've got browsers on my PS3, PSP and Wii and never use them. It is possible that Microsoft just don't have a browser in the 360 because it's not a great place to put a browser.

Microsoft own Hotmail, they've ported Office on-line, XBox supports on-line gaming, they make what is still the most popular single browser (which is under very active development), they produce web servers and a massive range of developer tools for the web from Visual Studio to Silverlight, they're working their arse off to get back into the mobile web market.

If they're not into the web they're doing their best to hide it with their actions and investments. They were, by their own admission, slow to get to it but I don't think that's a valid criticism now.

Now they're just all over the place but that's different to being anti.
I stopped reading the article after they wrote that the browser is almost more important than the OS, and then in the next paragraph said that Windows Phone 7 shows promise.
You could embrace email and build a super simple task system.

Issue commands via subject line.

Add / Update / Close Task

Assign / Transfer Task

Timesheet Task

Share Task

User could add whatever they want to save about a task in the email body.

Archive the emails centrally and provide full text search.

Hook into the customer database and tag the content.

Centralize knowledge in the organization.

Use a tool everyone already owns and understands.
Forbes Top Earning Dead Celebrities 2010 List
Who are the top-earning dead celebrities for 2010 and now importantly which dead top-earning dead celebrity won first place for 2010? Forbes magazine has recently announced their list of the top-earned dead celebrities of the year.
If you knew somebody who killed their baby by rolling over in their sleep on her, somehow I doubt "meh" would be your response.
It's also true that babies that sleep with their parents hasn't been a cultural thing in the US. I'd say that in the last 20 years, the number of people doing it has increased, which likely accounts for the increase in the numbers of deaths due to it.

Using this same logic, we should have abandoned the adoption of the automobile because as it became more and more commonplace, automobile-related deaths rose as well.
Parachute: Simple mass web deployment
I'd be interested in a breakdown of what contributes to those totals, sites like Youtube have a huge share in Video so it's not that out there to suggest that a single change they make could have such a huge impact internet wide. I know Youtube have been HTML5 for a while now so it isn't them, but it could be a similar site!

Edit: oh, I think I misread. They're counting individual videos, not sites. So while Youtube has HTML5 available to everyone not all videos support it. My mistake, disregard.
Android Wallpaper Template for Photoshop
I find the best way to start learning something new is to identify a fun but simple project that has options for expansion, and start working on it. You want the project to be one that is simple enough to not get discouraged quickly, but that is flexible enough to continue with as you get more proficient.

The reason I say find a project like this, is because if you don't have actual problems to solve, you won't know what to read about. You can read about rails routing all you want, but until you have a reason to use rails routing in any sort of complex way (resourceful nested routes, like a user has many photos => /users/1/photos) you can't really do anything with it.

Once you have a project and have questions, this is a great way to get help, however, without a project we are all flying in the dark with you :)
IE6+, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera.

Suggestion to avoid falling into the trap of wasting a huge swath of time on fixing stuff for IE: test often. Really often. Test your approach as soon as you can, so that if you find that your approach isn't working, you'll catch it early and can avoid using the same approach in the future and have to fix it everywhere once noticed.
White is the new black: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/blackberrybold/#!where-...
Digg used to be big and growing.
It's times like this when I wish Hacker News had something like subreddits (subhackers?).
As with vgurgov, I have a startup built on rails, and have been using rails to pay the bills along the way. I don't have much free time, but I am more than happy to field questions on AIM or with a quick phone call as long as the question has defined boundaries (not too broad, etc).
It really is a strange market niche to aim for... People who don't want to use a smartphone but want to own a smartphone... Is it even there at all?

I know people who don't like phones and they buy the minimum phone necessary to suit the need... A £30 handset on a top up based tariff.

I don't know people who will spend a lot of money on a phone they intend to use as little as possible.
Don't forget the FAQ that demands you acknowledge its existence. I'm fickle enough that the top bar alone drives me away half the time. I'm not alone on this.
Clickable: http://mrnoahc.com/2010/10/27/website-reviews-will-work-for-...
1) The state where you are physically going to be present is going to want to tax you. If you incorporate in DE (zero tax basically, some fees and such), but are physically running the business from San Francisco, you owe the CA Franchise Tax Board all income tax.

2) DE is basically the correct choice (and C Corp) if you plan to take outside professional investment, maybe sell the corp, etc. And doing it properly will cost about $5-10k; probably closer to $10k if some of the principals are non-US-Citizens.

For any other business, you could consider C or S corp or LLC in your state-of-intended-operation, to lower costs and hassle (so you only have to file with one state). If you base yourself in Nevada, you pay no tax and cheap filing costs; if you base yourself in NYC, ouch.

Of the "startup friendly states", I think TX and WA have the best tax situations, but both have a weird corp tax (basically, on your gross receipts, vs. profits), which can actually be worse for an R&D intensive business (negative profits for a while) or a low-margin business).

3) This depends on the specific country you're moving from (i.e. where you hold citizenship), the visa you're on in the US (if you're not a US citizen), etc. There are pairwise double taxation agreements between countries, and I think some EU-USA stuff. It also depends on the kind of earnings you have -- if it's wage income, for work performed above-board in the US, you'll be paying US taxes + medicare/social security, and probably crediting that against your possibly-higher foreign-citizenship taxes. If it's capital gains, it depends on where you are when you realize them, and what visa, etc. you have. It's complex.
How do I take my web app from running locally to being able to serve data to users? Basically the server admin type stuff to serve my Rails/Django/Sintra app. How do things like memcached and Varnish fit into the picture and when is it an appropriate time to start worrying about it?
If you didn't already, you might want to contact the people who posted the requests.
From now on, I'm using your method to post photos. Usually takes me twice as many steps as that.
Hi all, I am the author of the blog post.

It seems that the blog post got attention before it was correctly reviewed. Damn you guys are fast :-)

The idea was not to push TDD or promote it in any way. It was a rant to devs who don't do unit tests. Someone else needs to one day fix their untested code without knowing if changing something in X will break Z and Y.

Even the title of the post is changed now. Seems to be too late though.

By the way, your comments are great, they gave me many thoughts.
Filesharing software distributor LimeWire ordered to close by Court
Does anyone else here feel that the current iPhone and Android apps are just an in-between step to mobile-apps being simply websites in a mobile browser?