skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
http://crimeletes.com/?watch=desean-jackson-gets-jacked-up

There's no way on earth that tackle would have been tried sans helmet.
NASDAQ offers Data-On-Demand Now
> That seems absurd by free enterprise standards and I am genuinely curious to know why refusing to do this would be called "evil."

When taxes come up, it tends not to be a well-thought, cohesive, pros-and-cons thing. It tends to be an emotional/identity thing. Some people think and almost always argue it'd be a good thing if companies gave more money over to governments.

Me, I think it's very good for the world on every level for Google to pay less taxes. They're hiring the best people, acquiring companies and giving liquidity to founders, run amazing free services (search, Gmail, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Finance, Google News, Google Voice, Google Reader, Feedburner, many many others). Also, they're internally investing in energy and robotics like the auto-driven cars thing, and their high level personnel seem to invest really well too (like in genetics research). Anyone who thinks that England would do a better job with the money than Google hasn't been to England, or hasn't thought this through very much.
The real killer is sparring, you don't go as hard but you do it a lot more than you fight. MMA fighters usually spar with boxing gloves, but since striking is only one part of MMA they can't afford to spend as much time training it as boxers.
First Flash, then Java.
Who would return all my down-wotes? ^_^
"Given all of this, I think that if you want to develop OS X apps without moving away from Ruby..."

I've written a lot of both Ruby and Objective-C/Cocoa over the last few years, and as much as I enjoy working with Objective-C Ruby really would save a lot of effort. It's not like I have a problem "moving away" from Ruby, but I'd like the option to sell apps made with it through their service.

If Apple ships MacRuby pre-installed in Lion, with Xcode integration and documentation, I think it would be huge.
If the price was right, I'd very much consider it. Server setup, hardening, etc. is just something I don't want to think about or spend time on. I'd rather spend the money for 3 hours of someone else's time than spend 2 days trying to figure it out myself.

Caveat: you'd have to have ballpark figures on your site. I have this thing about consultants/firms not saying what their rate/price is up front.
How Zoho rewrote the rules of office software: put engineers in charge
Ask HN: Need more ideas to attract investors to demo day (in Copenhagen)
I run Startupbootcamp in Copenhagen. I've been squeezing our network and trawling the web but would appreciate more sources and ideas.

I've reached out to the main blogs but I'm not sure all angels read blogs (in Europe).

I've also:

-downloaded the EBAN (European Business Angel Network) and (X)VCA (country X Venture Capital Association) member lists

-done keyword searches in LinkedIn

-tapped into our mentor and investor network for personal introductions

I am looking for more ideas to reach out to investors in Europe (and if anyone beyond Europe is interested in talking feel free to contact me, details in my profile).

Note that our event is open to non-investors as well, drop by if you're in the neighborhood.
Choreographer turned VC lives in a pyramid above Seattle
Maybe. It would really depend. I'm definitely up for not having to bother with server configuration issues. But I can imagine this not helping that much or introducing extra hassle unless you managed to do it really really well.
Life begins at 40, dude :)

Never too late, and frankly I think you've done good getting grounded in things like BDD/TDD. There are people I know with 10-15 years of development experience that don't know about TDD, much less use it. It's not a silver bullet, but I think demonstrates a lot of forward thinking.

Have you considered just being an independent service provider? Looking for 'employment' isn't going to necessarily get you all that much more than you'd get if you got your own short term contracts. At the same time, different people have different needs - perhaps you have some need for 'employment' in the traditional sense?

I'm sensing some independence though - travelling for years, went back to school - jumping in to a new arena - etc. You may not fit well in most traditional employment situations.

How are you making money right now? How are you getting by? Are you doing any web work for hire? Could you do more? Does that not appeal to you?
Ask HN: best way to (indirectly) invest in a startup via angel/seed fund?
Background of question:

I am in the fortunate position of recently exiting a business I co-founded in 2002 in the UK healthcare technology sector that sold to one of the top 3 US healthcare companies and I'm now on a short sabbatical to look at new opportunities and try new things - such as angel investing.

I remember one of the hardest problems we faced in the early years of my business was not technical related but fund raising as you would expect (obviously harder then due to domcom afershocks etc). So now, 8 years later, other than starting another company (or even joining another startup!), I also want to give back and invest in other startups but as I have only invested in my own I don't believe I yet qualify to be an direct angel investor as other than money I'm not sure what extra value I could bring as I mainly have very specific domain knowledge in UK primary care healthcare sector (I’m have a techie/developer background) and have limited connections outside this field.

In my research I have found places like angellist and startup funds like http://www.kimaventures.com/ but my question is how does one invest into a seed or angel fund as there is little or no information about how to go about it - it seems that either you know someone in this area or your outta luck? There is plenty of info on how to raise funds from angels and angellist describes an angels application requirements (3 previous investments for example) so how to do I get out of this (apparent) chicken and egg problem?

Has anyone on HN got experience in this particularly from the UK/EU that can input - like what angel funds in the EU/US are open to newbie angel investors.

I also think I would rather invest in US based startups unless others can recommend otherwise.

Appreciate any feedback on this topic. Thanks.
Is it ethical to avoid paying tax as an individual? Many would say no.

Do you mean avoid (by legal means) or evade (by illegal means)? Any government that uses tax incentives to affect citizens' behavior is saying it's ok to avoid taxes. If they promise your taxes will be lower if you do x rather than y, they're counting on your desire to avoid taxes to motivate you to do x.
Somewhat unrelated: I heard that learning NodeJS(right name?) for the server side is useful because then you can program in JS on both the server and client side.

But I can't imagine any cases where this is useful? Is it just the benefit that you don't have to think in two different languages or is there something more to it?
I had a hard time digesting this claim, I looked up on Google and found this:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

In 2008, GS's effective tax rate was 1%!
Of course, this pales in comparison to Ikea, the world's largest non-profit furniture retailer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA
Read Zeldman's "Designing w/ Web Standards, 3rd Edition". That book will give you direction and save you a lot of time.

The problem with HTML is that it is a pretty loose language and you can do a lot with it without getting your syntax right. On top of that you have a lot of confusion because of HTML 4.01, HTML5 and XHTML 1.0.

Because of all that you will find tons of HTML resources all over the web that may appear decent, but actually teach you bad habits and old hacks that are no longer best practice. Zeldman's book will give you some direction so you don't waste too much time and develop good habits from the beginning. If it's not the first book you read, it should at least be the second book you read.

I haven't read them yet, but Zeldman recommends the following JS books:

DOM Scripting: Web Design with Javascript and the Document Object Model

The Javascript Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

For CSS, the best resources are Eric Meyer's "CSS: The Definitive Guide" and "CSS: Pocket Reference"

The current edition of The Definitive Guide is a 2006 edition. I asked Eric about a new edition and although there isn't a date set, he expects a new edition covering CSS3 sometime in 2011.
Uh, that's a thread that asks "what's your most offensive joke". Using that as evidence for anti-semetism is like using Wikipedia's inclusion of Nazi emblems on their page on Nazism to prove that Wikipedia is anti-semetic.
How Allies Used Math Against German Tanks
It's not just Google who is evil. They're just getting called out on it, because they've pledged not to be evil. It's rather expected of other corporations because we expect them to operate with out morals in search of maximum profit.

But any corporation that takes advantages of tax loop holes, legal or not, is doing evil. By doing that they are taking money out of the pockets of every day citizens in every country who's taxes they avoid paying. Because those citizens have to either make up the difference, or cut vital services such as education, infrastructure, health care and the social safety net. And those citizens can very ill afford to make up the difference.

There are exposes like this done once every few years decrying how low the real tax rate is for some large corporation or other or group there in. Really Google ought not have been singled out by this round. All corporations that do this are being evil. But Google's promised not to be evil -- and for the most part has upheld that -- so they are being targeted.

Really, the most moral course of action here would be to pay the taxes and lobby for the closing of the loopholes. And if they feel the tax rate is too high -- the lowering of the tax rate.
Would Solaris containers or Linux VServer work as well here? One would need good management tools, of course.
Web developers don't hate Microsoft because they destroyed Netscape, they hate Microsoft because their proprietary standards and er...unqiue take on w3 standards has and continues to waste a measurable percentages of people's lives and retard the progress of the web.
I did signup for affiliate program with Racksapce. I had a brief chat with a customer support agent but he is not aware of anything to deliver my custom build machine image to other customers. May be I have to talk to someone else at Rackspace.
I'm not saying Antry Birds cost $10 million, I'm making a general statement on why iPhone developers might still want a publisher. Rovio didn't sell to EA at all.
Is it ethical to avoid paying tax as an individual? Many would say no.

They might say that, but their actions -- buying from duty-free stores, contributing to tax-deferred retirement accounts, filing jointly with a spouse, and claiming every possible deduction -- suggest quite the opposite.

There's a world of difference between illegal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance, and all indications point to what Google is doing as being tax avoidance. How many individuals went to the IRS and said "here's how I'm planning on reducing my income taxes; can you see any problem with this"?
Given that the author is interested in HTML as well, I imagine that he probably is more interested in JS resources that focus on the DOM and not on using JS as a general purpose programming language. However, I may be wrong about this.
I think CSP is often good but in a system language you need to share stat and with passign pointer you can only share state unsave. So you copy or you share unsave.
In Ireland, these kinds of tax breaks are one of the foundations of our economy. They aren't viewed as a way to give a hand out to the big companies, but as a way to create jobs. This article mentions that 2,000 people are employed in Google Dublin. Given Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, IBM and Sun also operate, there's easily 10,000+ people employed thanks to our low tax rate. There are only 1,000,000 people employed in Ireland (small country), so the loss of these 10,000+ jobs (~1%+ of all employees) would be massive.

Ireland has very little industry, very little traditional ways to grow the economy. We all know if it wasn't for the tax breaks these companies wouldn't be here, and that there'd be loads of people out of work.
One of the best reasons I ever read about why it happened only once is that if it had happened twice the newcomer would have been called 'food' at a stage too early to get much further up the ladder.

For it to happen twice the 'new' trail would have to be totally non-nutritious to the established kind.

I wished I remembered where I read it.
Shipping Smiles on the AppStore - Miguel de Icaza
You're not nuts, if that's what you want to do, then do it.

However, the truth is 30 is not young for an entry level developer. Most 30 year-olds are accustom to a higher income than a 22 year-old CS grad, and this might make some employers adverse.

Keep pounding the pavement. With your engineering background you should be able to find a good job. It might take some time in this job market, but keep at it, and try to pickup some freelance to pad your resume.
One thing you might have to do is price yourself to sell to get some sellable experience at which point you can start charging more.
In general I think he is right but he has to start use D not Go.
My Life as Tech Support (Dealing with support emails)
...and require a player to actually go through the uprights with the ball for field goals by way of strategically placed trampolines?
Not very significant as a target platform, I would think, but OS X is certainly a favorite development OS for many Java developers. Sun, for example, had been issuing MacBooks Pro to its engineers during its last few years.

It's unclear whether this is positive or a negative announcement. If another party steps up to maintain a JDK/JRE port on OS X, this will probably end up being a good thing, as Java updates from Apple had been infrequent.
I was going to leave a comment about corporate citizens not doing their fair share in America, but that got me thinking: should corporations pay tax? I'm not asking this rhetorically to make a point. Really, should they?

I would imagine that whatever profits are passed along to shareholders are taxed as capital gains. So, while it is a great headline to say Google pays 2.4% corporate tax, might it also be fair to say "Google shareholders pay 2.4% additional tax on top of the regular tax they pay on their income from capital ownership."?

Now, I'm not at all aware of how capital gains taxes and wage-style income taxes compare, and my inner liberal slant / desire for social justice inclines me to believe that those with the means should pay MORE than their "fair" share.

But I can't help but think that, at least at a theoretical level, there is someone, somewhere, who makes their living investing in corporations - lubricating the gears of capital society - but isn't phenomenally wealthy, and actually pays a total higher % of their "income" than a wage slave making a comparable amount of money. VCs? Angels? Wouldn't we as a society want to reward this behavior?

I can just as easily see the other side; maybe in theory this is right, but the reality is that capital gains are the domain of the ultra-wealthy, and corporations are frequently used as tax havens, pushing money around from holding company to holding company. If the corporation buys something and the owner uses it, that's an effective way to minimize your total "income" without losing the benefits of your wealthy lifestyle.

I would love to hear thoughts on this, particularly from anyone more familiar with tax law.
I don't have enough experience to get started, and I can't get started without experience.

Horsepuckey. Can you FizzBuzz? If so, you're experienced enough to get a job as a developer. What you need to work on is not your programming ability -- that is what professional experience is for -- but your competence at marketing yourself.

You will probably not be hired to fill a hole labeled "I need a developer who does RoR, jQuery, Rspec, and Cucumber." First, most of the people who need exactly that skillset don't have the budget to hire anybody. (No offense to present company who may use exactly that skillset.) Second, most developers start with semi-relevant experience and gradually learn more about the stack their current job (or project at the job) involves. I was a Big Freaking Java Web Apps dev for 3 years and I started not knowing SQL, Spring, etc etc. That was fine -- it just meant my first several months involved doing an awful lot of iterating over hashmaps (java.util.* is my second home) when not reading code and tutorials.

Now, in terms of marketing yourself:

1) Make stuff you can show off. This distinguishes you from the 90 out of 100 candidates who are incapable of making stuff. Making stuff is the core developer competency. (Actually, it might be #2 after communication skills.)

2) Polish your communication skills. See #1.

3) Start networking. "Send a resume and pray" is jobseeking for people who enjoy unemployment. Know the decisionmaker beforehand. There are a variety of ways you can get started on this today -- for example, start writing a blog about the kinds of problems you have solved or will eventually solve for the kinds of people who will hire you. This gives you something to talk about. Alternatively, talk about what other people are writing in the same field. This has a long payoff timescale but the rewards can be fantastic.

Also, don't neglect traditional networking: business cards, meeting people face-to-face in your local community, etc etc.
I don't think you are nuts, but be realistic in your expectations for your first job in the industry. There will be plenty of competition out there that could have a lot more experience - you just need to focus on showing why you are passionate about starting in this field and that you are not only capable but also willing to learn anything required to improve your potential within their companies.

If I saw this kind of drive I would (and have in the past) overlooked people's actual experience. Someone with a go-to attitude and very eager to increase their skills will always do well in an interview with me.

Good luck and don't let the current job market bring you down - it'll happen sooner than later.
YES.
Not every developer (or a technical startup founder) is a sys admin or wants to get deep into server provisioning/software installation issues. This is orthogonal to what they are trying to build (at least in the beginning). I believe your idea has legs. Pursue it.
I can't believe that's true; tackles from behind can only really occur when a player has broken the game line, which happens far less often than a player running into defenders on the game line.
I'd like to hear what's incorrect about it.

Do you think values should be escaped before output? Or that usernames don't include chars that need escaping in HTML? Or perhaps you'd add extra filtering to ensure that page cannot become ill-formed due to encoding error? Or perhaps it's incorrect to use PHP at all? ;)
For the web development subset of programmers, the Microsoft loathing may be inspired by Microsoft's disdain for web standards. Microsoft are, in a very real and palpable way, making client side web developers' lives a lot harder than they'd have to be.

I don't hate Microsoft or anything, just saying that this might serve as fuel for that kind of fire.
"The setup lowers Google's overseas tax bill, but it also affects U.S. tax revenues as the government struggles to close a projected $1.4 trillion budget gap."

It's a ridiculous notion that any single corporation's tax contribution will put even the slightest dent in the budget deficit. Government spending is like gas in a vacuum, it will expand to fill whatever space you give it.
Obviously we should always look at large companies with skepticism, but Google is clearly building a long-term brand and trying to generate goodwill by investing in massive R&D efforts. This is rare among large companies. Most seem focused on the quarterly report. If they were IBM or Oracle, who undoubtedly have similar practices, perhaps I might feel a little more betrayed. I still believe Google, for the most part, is not evil.

Thankfully though, we are a nation of laws. As much as I despise the practices of some businesses, I am perfectly happy that it's not any one person's single opinion that keeps these companies in business.
Gadget Patrol: Macbook Air
I promise I'll have my web site up this weekend. Hope I can push you over the fence with that.
I think there are a lot or reasons that MMA is probably safer. These include

- Flash KO's, leading to fast stoppages in MMA as opposed to standing counts in Boxing

- Less emphasis on head strikes and more emphasis on wrestling/control/submissions in MMA. Even cuts can stop the fight.

- Less rounds in MMA

- Different culture. More 'college boy' wrestling than 'street kid' boxing.

If you had boxing rules with MMA gloves you'd probably have more cuts but still a lot of brain damage.
A claim like this should always be backed up by some proof.
Optical drives are the modern floppy drive; too small to remain relevant. The iMac was the first PC to dump the floppy. USB flash drives and a good Internet connection are the future.

Flash and Java are really third-party products. It looks like Apple's handing the responsibility for them back to Adobe and Oracle.

Flash on OS X has been a slow, buggy disappointment. If Adobe is serious about Flash on OS X, it needs to do more.

Similarly, the Mac has a big enough market share that Oracle can do the work to port its Java to the Mac. Apple shouldn't have to shoulder that burden anymore.

Apple's plan would appear to be "move forward, don't get stuck in the past".
I read this as "MacBook Air ships without Flash [Memory]" as if someone got a MacBook Air without an SSD inside.
Watch Funny Video: 10 Best Mr Bean’s Scenes
>It doesn't require the purchase of a new player or optical drive.

To be fair, streaming video to a TV also requires the purchase of a player (AppleTV, etc).
Including others for comparison from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax), interesting to note that Vancouver, Canada, small business is taxed 13.5%, and to no surprise, there are many startups in Vancouver:

Examples of corporate tax rates for a few English-speaking countries include:

Australia: 30%, however some specialized entities are taxed at lower rates.

Canada: Federal 11% or 18% plus provincial 1% to 16%. Note: the rates are additive.

Hong Kong: 16.5%

Ireland: 12.5% on trading (business) income, and 25% on nontrading income.

New Zealand: 30%

Singapore: 17% from 2010, however a partial exemption scheme may apply to new companies.

United Kingdom: 21% to 28% for 2008–2010.

United States: Federal 15% to 35%.[18] States: 0% to 10%, deductible in computing Federal taxable income. Some cities: up to 9%, deductible in computing Federal taxable income. The Federal Alternative Minimum Tax of 20% is imposed on regular taxable income with adjustments.
> Is it ethical to avoid paying tax as an individual? Many would say no.

"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands" — Judge Learned Hand
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