skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No doubt it changes your life. Less sleep, less time for your self, basicly your life resolves around your kids lives. The good part about kids if you are trying to start your own business is that it adds a constant to your live. Your business is a wild roller coaster ride but no matter how bad your day was or how big the disappointment your kids are there at the end of the day. It makes you realize on a daily basis that there is more to life than a business a product or a job.
Richard Stallman on Education and the Free Software Movement
Canada generally uses GAAP like the US so theres no problem there. Also, accounting isnt going to be a serious issue when a company wants to buy you. This is more like an afterthought. If the buyer gets a tax benefit then thats icing on the cake but the accounting wont make a big difference unless they see that your books and records are complete shit and totally messed up. Then the buyer might get scared and think you're cooking the books. But, thats the only situation i can think of that would make a big deal.
Will it matter if Your Startup didn’t Exist?
Dr Telle Whitney,CEO Anita Borg on Success & Technical Women
Coffee grounds, balloon, vacuum source ==

Robotic hand that can pick up:

An Egg

A shock absorber

An LED

A coin

Simplicity Rules!
Or maybe you'd like to build the next Skype?
Really I just need pure feedback on each iteration. Need help coming up with a todo list of what to work on next. I've got big features in mind, but I want to nail the little stuff before I start on the next big feature. Don't think it really fits the Offer HN thing though.
This. The most important part of any project I've been involved with has been showing it to other people. You can see how they are going to try to use the product and what you might be missing. Even more so, I've had people I show it to come up with better tag lines and branding than I ever could have myself.
> Also consider that the sudden infant death thing stems from the cold world of modern medicine.

The term does. The phenomenon is hardly new. Infants probably have died suddenly and without quick explanation ever since there were infants.
What problems are your products trying to solve?

Why don't you list a few here, and maybe we can help you refine your pitch.
DRM Is Toxic To Culture
Me too. I blogged about it the other day, in a fashion: http://www.adrianoconnor.net/2010/10/the-bad-news-about-your...

I believe there are two highly valuable skills you need to run a successful business: 1. The ability to create amazing products (either yourself or through motivating others) and 2. Ability to get your message out and get people interested.

I fail badly at #2. I guess I need to find a partner who is naturally magnetic and can sell dreams to people. The thing is, once you're over that hump you'll get momentum -- you can ask for feedback, you can engage with those people, and, hopefully, they'll hep you spread the word. Alternatively, you can throw ad-dollars at it and work on the conversion rate, but advertising is mostly owned by people with lots of money so you'll drown before you manage to even start swimming.
No one knows what SIDS is caused by, but that certainly doesn't mean your pediatrician can't have any useful info on it.

There are many studies on what reduces the occurrence. For example, the "back to sleep" campaign saw SIDS incidence go down by 50% in just a few years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_Sleep
On this point: "it's too complicated, there's no order"

An important element of useablility that is often ignored and misunderstood is familarity. In many ways it just does not matter that MSWindows or Facebook is clunky, or violates important useability or is just wrong or broken. When the environment hits a critial mass of familarity the only way to co-exist with an entrenched community is compatibility. As galling as it is to use a windows file picker look & feel, it's what folks are familar. Changing the visual paradigms does happen (review the history of the web) but fairly quicky a new normalicy (see web pulldown bars) gets established. Show some examples and/or look for a design partner.
Fanbox.com is a Real paying site not spam (proofs)
Care to post your project?
That's a great idea--I'll see what I can do.
Hi fogus -Sorry I couldn't make it to Clojure Conj... liked your slides.

My philosophy of marketing is that you need to do something different that no one else has done before to attract attention. There wasn't a programming book with a music video yet, so I exploited that fact :)

But of course, there's still plenty other ideas that could be used to market other books/sites...
Huge List of Quality WP7 Development Tips
Inside a transparent car factory [video]
In tax, its all the same generally speaking. The only difference is where these costs enter the equation. Apple is similar to the situation above where they are accepting money and transferring a large portion of it back to the developer as a cost of sales.

In the ad business above, the transfer of 70% income is a cost of sales that leads to gross profit.

I havent looked over google's financials, but i would expect that the traffic acquisition cost is an expense and not a cost of sales. Expenses enter the calculation after gross profit.

Sales - Cost of Sales = Gross Profit - Expenses = Net Income
I built http://isshort.com because I wanted to promote healthy link shortening, and created an API so that Twitter clients can use it. I promoted it on reddit, HN, techstartu.ps, Quora (in response to a question) and by emailing the people who were an inspiration for it (simon wilson, the people responsible for rev=canonical and rel=shortlink).

I've been completely unable to gain traction for isshort.com, with 43 visits to the site in about 5 days.
That's Jay-Z and Biggie covered, the real question on everyone's lips is what Tupac had to say about it all.

</cheeky comment I hope people don't take seriously>
Luck is certainly an element in everything, but we need to be careful to not let the existence of luck blind us to all of the elements that actually are under our control.

For example: you can't, really, have two equal bars. They are going to be in two different locations, and one of those locations is likely better (even if only slightly) than the other. This can be enough of a difference to create a critical mass of people to get the "Cool, this bar is always hopping" effect.

"Zero distinguishing differences" usually just means you haven't analyzed deeply enough.
Slightly off topic, but seems as good a place to ask. How hard is it for foreigners (read Canada) to get a DoD or one of the big military contractor gigs?

Wanting to get into aerospace (any part of it) here, and Canada's aerospace industry isn't exactly big. Being barred from US Mil aerospace seems like having another big glob of jobs put out of reach. Thanks!
Sure: http://www.fridgetofood.com

I've posted it as a link before and got some good feedback. Not sure what the rules are on reposting after an update are.
Jason Shen's Rejection Therapy Challenge – Week 2
I'm actually interested in that too, not sure why this got downvoted?
Amen to that. I've gotten the "how nice, babysitting duty?" thing a lot, which I find really insulting. "No, this would be daddy duty" is my usual response. I tend to get it especially when I'm dual-babywearing (Ergo carrier in front, Cocopak carrier in back) at the grocery store.
What info should be on Realtor profile pages?
Everyone we know who used "attachment" techniques around bedtime had long-term issues with their childrens' sleeping habits.

We let both our girls (now 1 & 3) "cry it out." It was quite hard for a couple of weeks, but they both now have very good sleeping schedules. And, as far as I can tell, no psychological damage!

Sleep with your baby if you find it emotionally gratifying, but I'm skeptical that there's any significant benefit. It didn't work for us - my wife still wakes up occasionally from disturbing "baby in the bed" dreams.
Thanks for the quick reply! I feared as much. I will try making everything gray/black.

re: Numenta -- certainly shoot me an email (snikolov@mit.edu) and I'll see what I can answer (if I am allowed to answer it :-)) If I can't, I can direct you to people who would be a lot more knowledgeable.
It's the other way around. Java has good IDE support because it's too annoying to write Java applications without an IDE. Java needs IDE support.

On the other hand, python is so pleasant you can develop big applications without any IDE support, just good old vim with ctrl-p word completion.
No big ego: check.
Ships: check.

I don't see a problem.
One thing I would like to ask about is how my employment history looks - returning to my previous position.

Chronologically (earlier first) it went like this:

Company 1 (1 year)

University (1 year)

Company 2 (3 months)

Company 1 again (nearly 1 year)

Does it raise questions that I left Company 2 after only 3 months, and that I went back to Company 1?

(not listing company names here so it doesn't get into their search results)
"they" usually don't come.
We had someone talking about a similar situation a few days ago. Being able to produce a product is nice but it won't sell itself by merely existing. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" If you release a product and no one knows will anyone buy it?
"I've been in the "build->launch->move to next project" loop for some time."

You seemed to have missed the "guilt everyone you know into using your product" phase. I've met very few startup founders that didn't fight tooth-and-nail for every single early user. You have to do whatever it takes to get those users on board. It won't be scalable, but you can worry about scaling user acquisition later, after you've gotten some feedback.
1. Use <input type=submit name=submit value=submitbuttonN>. The server side will then get this data submit=submitbuttonN.

2. Yes. Just make the form a single big form with two submit buttons, so they look like two forms.
What? You can ride on I5? Even if it were allowed it seems really scary.
Ask HN: good designers that do html too?
I really want to find some good designers that deliver html/css, not Photoshop. I regularly have design work and I've never been able to find anyone that's good. I'd love personal recommendations of freelance designers you've worked with :)
KF| YCom|   Funktionsjacken 
www.jeansundmehr.de |
Funktionsjacken fuer Damen und Herren, auch in UEbergroessen. Ab 49,90€
"A strong word called consignment, strictly for live men, not for freshmen, if you aint got the clientele say hell no, cause they gon want they money rain sleet hail snow" -

In other words, don't take outside money unless you are ready to deliver, cos the ANgels/VCs will want their money back.
I have 3 kids - 6 years old, 3 years old and a fresh one at 5 months. I would strongly recommend sleep training them from day one. My wife is a strong proponent of her own good night sleep and our kids were sleeping through the night at 5 weeks, 7 weeks and 8 weeks respectively. If you can get them sleeping, that is half the battle. After that, it becomes a scheduling issue but it is not that bad. My wife is a big fan of the book "On Becoming Baby Wise" but don't read too many books. Just use your best judgement.

You will also discover yourself doing things that you had never dreamed of - like a 3 year old yelling to you "Dad, come wipe my bum!" or calmly dealing with a child projectile vomiting and having a bowel movement at the same time. Children amplify the highs and lows of life. The smallest things they do become huge triumphs in your life (look! the baby smiled!). It is wonderful and I could not imagine it any other way.

You can still accomplish anything that you want to - my wife got tenure a week before our second child was born. I have started 3 companies while having kids. You get better at time management and it helps to have a little staff. We use a maid service and have a full-time nanny. The older kids now go to school and so we have a little structure (and I have the time between 8:30 and 11:30 in peace and quiet). You learn how to structure and delegate. You can't do it all yourself, so you have to figure out how to manage time and people. Once you get these skills, then you can actually get MORE done than you could before.

For anyone concerned about doing a startup and looking for a partner, have a look at the kid. They may not bring much in the way of technical expertise, but you will never ever want to let them down, no matter how rough the going gets. Each day when you get home and those bright eyes ask you "How was work today Daddy, what did you do?" you will find more accountability and support than you could ever believe. When they get a little older, you buy a Lego Mindstorms and start making projects that move and do things and this gets fun in new ways - teaching your kids to program/hack whatever. You can get them going on Python Turtle and watch their little minds expand once they realize that they are controlling the movements. And as someone else noted, you get a lot of baby-focused startup ideas.
Quick note, if you are selling a standard software program and then tailoring it to an enterprise user, then you'd still be paying sales tax on the "standard" portion of the code. The customized portion COULD be non-taxable but it would have to be a substantial change and not something minor.
And as an example of a design that I like: http://ohlife.com
If you have a conditional or some other piece of code that would act differently for t >= 946684800, then per TDD, you'd need a test for it to be true TDD. If you don't have a conditional or different behavior that would occur with a value that large then you don't need a test, per TDD. However, if you find that values of t >= 946684800 cause a bug, then per TDD you'd write a test for it, then write the logic to handle it.

I'm not promoting real TDD, btw. Real TDD is fine as a ideal, and is achievable in many circumstances and even may make perfect sense even in an ongoing basis in some environments, but it isn't practiced to the percentage overall that the OP (in the linked post) stated, and developers that heartily promote TDD usually don't fully understand its implications when practiced fully, or what doing true TDD really involves. I'm not against writing tests, but at some point, you need to relax.
Project A:

TDD Team: 6 people, 24 man-months, no legacy code, 6 KLOC;

Trad Team: 2 people, 12 man-months, no indication whether it was a legacy project, whether they used unit testing at all (and if yes, what their coverage was).

Project B:

TDD Team: 8 people, 46 man-months, no legacy code, 26 KLOC

Trad Team: 12 people, 144 man-months, 149 KLOC, again no indication whether it was legacy, used unit testing etc.

The report mentions that they were comparable, because both teams reported to the same manager (Not too surprising for Microsoft).

I hope that there's more info about this study and that I'm a bit overreacting, but just given these tables, I wouldn't agree that we're talking about comparable teams and projects here.

So does this test unit-testing? Does it test TDD? Does it test development without legacy code vs legacy code? And even if you would get results, would it be the same for people with different experience levels? (Which is a problem for academic studies)
Are there statistics on what demographics are more likely to click on an ad?
Just wondering if that sort of information is out there somewhere. Im working on doing some ad related stuff, and was curious if certain segments of the market generate more clicks than others due to the demographics of the market. For example, I would think that a site that deals with highly technical information and targets a more experienced user, might generate less clicks, then a site that targets a demographic that is less technical.
Dunno what you call a good designer but here is what I did in Photoshop & THEN HTML (WordPress + THesis) http://www.kingsidharth.com

It has more links to more of my sites that I did. Just ping me if you like it. My mail: http://scr.im/kingsidharth (yah that's mail)
Good comment, but what makes you believe StackOverflow is "incredibly more complicated" than Facebook?
Agreed. There is no way I could explain to my past-self how parenting would change my life. In fact if I did a good job of explaining it then I would have been terrified of becoming a parent ('what do you mean I can't go to a bar any night of the week till 5am!?').

However there is nothing to be afraid of. Priorities shift. Things that were important to you beforehand, things you thought defined your sense of self, or you couldn't live without - no longer matter as much.

You find a new focus, a new center. Until that point you're still the center of your own universe in a large sense. After a baby is born you're in orbit around that center.
If your users are telling you that they can't see what problem you're solving it's very probable that you really aren't solving any of the problems you think they have. Also you probably also underestimate the need for goodlooking visuals and good usability. This things are paramount if you want to get some sort of traction. Why not include someone with design sensibilities on this projects of yours?
Good list!

Potential errata: crunches may damage your spine[1], fish may be full of heavy metals and corexit.

[1] http://www.prevention.com/hurtyourbackhabits/list/5.shtml
http://www.rainbowskill.com/health-secrets/best-exercises-fo...

[2] http://faculty.virginia.edu/metals/cases/nelson2.html
People complain about link shortening on sites like HN, then turn around and use bit.ly because it's easy, just works, and gives cool real-time analytics. You're solving a problem people _say_ they have, not that they _actually_ have.

Healthy link shortening is a 'nice to have', not something most folks will go out of their way to us.
That is a question!
I love HN community, joined thx to my awesome cofounder and I have a little 11m son:) This may kill our YC application (we would definitely move to CA, but can a cofounder work as much his a. off with a baby? etc.) but don't want my son be the elephant in the room ;) Here is the answer I can contribute:

Fear - I used to be firefighter but before the birth of my son, I did not understand what it really meant. "On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear" Cautious Man/Bruce Springsteen. My "treasure", I know I can lose it all. Like I never was, I am all in.

Taking a stand - It is a big responsibility. You want to make money for his security, have a stable life to take care of him... but on the other hand you want to show him an example for his own life later on. Who will be his father? Sbdy hiding in a comfortable well paid corporate job, sitting on the side of his dreams? or sbdy who wants to create sthg of value, who takes a calculated risk (this comes with age;) with costs (eg. time to take care of him), but shows him nonetheless what he believes in by what he actually works on. I chose the 2nd. It broke my relationship with his mother. When my son is born, the cycle of life was in front of my eyes and in a strange but positive way when was looking at him I also saw I will die. He changed that I had to be harshly true to myself (I am still working on it). You can lie to yourself but not to your child. This "not to BS yourself" burns (at least for me). I had to make a decision. All in.

Wonder - Children are the greatest miracle and wonder on Earth. Sthg I kinda knew got clear and more existential, the rest not important anymore. His sheer existence gives me inspiration and focus: to give a tiny bit of this miracle/wonder/awesomeness back, share that wonder fire with others. I now orient my life on 2 things: 1/ truly caring for people (they were also babies;), to listen to them, their own story when you can, and make sthg of value to them, never to take them only as means for your own interest 2/ focus my work on sthg for a minimum of 10 000 hours. (10k h or 10y. rules) (necessary to achieve wonder results, not sufficient). My co-founder and I we build a service for that. Walking the talk, eating our own existential dog food. Something that could help people achieve wonders (doesn't mean big) by doing things, practicing regularly over a period of time... We build it for us and, why not, I really hope my son one day will use it too. This sense of wonder in life, impersonated by my little boy, is what fuels my engine, that's what gives me focus and perspective. I want to build wonder machines which help others to create wonder machines. Might fail, but thank Life, my "whole" is in ;)
Can Boston Become the Silicon Valley of Marketing?
Anecdotally, I've heard it was announcing digg v4
No problem, that idea actually has 4 major multibillion dollar companies competing right now. Lexis/Nexus, Westlaw, RIA Checkpoint and CCH basically TRY to do this but honestly there's no way to make these laws easy.

I'm a professional that uses these legal research tools and I cant even rely on them. I have to basically do all the work because their conclusions are not reliable when ur client is audited.

Tax, law and etc are just weird areas where you cant automate it on a level higher than turbotax. I think it'll always require a person on the other end to do it just cause its such a labor intensive field that is never the same result on a consistent basis.
Ok I've got a request that you can bang out in less than a couple of hours. Can you design and task me with a problem that you'd like to see a web app for that can be done in 100 hours or so and would highlight Rails 3.0 features. I'll keep the code on github (victusfate there) and push the live version of whatever it is to heroku.

Basically I'm asking for a homework assignment that would help ramp up my rails skills and maybe be of use to the community. I worked on and helped complete a rails project between Oct '09 and March '10 but I ended up preferring Sinatra/Datamapper for light web apps. Now I'm looking to get back into Rails 3.0.
Dolphin Smalltalk had (has?) this as well.
FreeBSD cloud servers and ZFS from CloudSigma
Either the people that would be interested in it haven't heard about it yet (and you need to promote more), or it's just not interesting to almost anyone (and you should just give up).
AuctionRoulette is Live - Watch random, hot auctions with live bids
I was going to say the same thing. I tried org-mode (I'm a heavy Emacs user) and it didn't stick, I think the simplicity is what makes this doable. Also I have a nice history of tasks and it isn't tied to my computer or mobile device. I don't have to worry about syncing or backup or files piling up never to be read again or any of that garbage.

If you have tasks for managing your todo list on your todo list then it is too complicated.
How to improve conversion rate on your landing pages?