skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So now you have just jumped straight into calling me a crook. I'm sorry that Wavee or whatever site you went to took your money.

I honestly didn't know (and still don't) if you can make any money doing an honest penny auction site. We are just breaking even with this one so far.

The fact is that every time an auction goes up we have more risk than anyone else involved. If I put up a $500 iPad it could go for extremely cheap. The lowest one has ever gone for is 64 cents. That means we made less than $64 and still had to buy and ship that $500 iPad. And we have never sold anything for more than $26 which still isn't the $2600 you think it is because some packages give you more bids per dollar.

The legitimate complaint is when sites cheat. Which I would guess alot of them do. Using Facebook is not some trick to get people to trust us. Its a way for people to verify for themselves that they are in fact bidding against other real people.

How can you say that its a scam? Do you think we are just out there creating all these fake accounts with fake profile and personal photos and relationships etc. I can see maybe if we had 5 or 6 or even 20 users. But we have 100's of winners. That's a stretch even for the most paranoid and cynical of people.

Not everybody wins every time. But the data we have so far says that the majority of users that buy more than just a few bids are actually the ones getting all the deals. Its the people who come in and spend $24 expecting to win a $1500 item then leave when they don't. Those are the people who are losing. The users who are logical enough to see how the system works are the ones who get far more than they put in.

And some countries outlaw all kinds of crazy things, some countries are considering passing legislation to ban homosexuality so I guess we should all agree that its bad now too according to your theory?
I would agree that the number is low too, but only for the reason that for a large segment of users, their iPad activity is centered on the browser.
Caring for your extravert
No real content here. Perhaps we'll learn more on Thursday at microsoftpdc.com
I can attest to this. I gave up gluten last year. I don't know if I was really allergic. I never had the blood test done. The result is that I pay greater attention to everything I eat and stick mainly to whole grains, vegetables, seafood and dairy.

But I eat a lot more dairy. Something about the diet makes me crave ice cream and creme brulee type things. I must be consuming more fat than I ever did before.

The net result is I lost about ten pounds, which is about 8% of my body weight.

If I wasn't allergic to begin with, I also gave myself a gluten intolerance, so it's not something to enter into lightly. But I feel like a new man.
Delhi-Street Business Stuff for Entrepreneurs
Starbucks CIO: Next version of Windows is “risky business” for Microsoft
I don't understand. Most things this article pretends are simply wrong : every application has NOT access to every file on a Linux or Mac OS X computer; Several people DO share the same computer using different accounts; obviously the writer's POV is distorted by her strange obsession towards virtualization and a (faked?) complete misunderstanding of the modern OSes security model.

I would like to be able to downvote this stupid rant :)
Big fan of Tim Ferriss too but the saying is much older.

Its attributed to Grace Hopper, a Rear Admiral in the Navy and a programmer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Murray_Hopper
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
I think you can go too far in keeping a language compact. If there are common patterns in programming then they should be captured in the language. It makes code easier to write and understand.
Leaving the other points which are valid in some situations and not in others...

> It's easy for a compiler to check that a function you're calling requires 3 arguments of type foo, bar and baz

No, it's not. It's actually impossible to determine, since you can reassign any function at runtime. Essentially you can do:

self.some_func = one_implementation
...
self.some_func = another_implementation

Those two implementations don't have to have the same types, can accept any number of parameters, can be wrapped in something else, etc. etc. Compiler cannot figure it out ahead of time.

On the other hand, it opens a lot of new possibilities that are not available in compile-time type checks. For example mocking objects in other modules:

def test_some_other_module(self):
tested_module.SpecificClass = Mock()
tested_module.SomeFactory.getBlah(1,2,3)
self.assertTrue(tested_module.SpecificClass.called_with([1,2,3]))
reload tested_module

Whether it introduces other bugs is a different discussion... Sure, it's worse than Haskell where things tend to work the first time they compile, but on the other hand I get more annoyance from Java-style types than they're worth in practice. YMMV
Reminds me of the famous "What is courage?" test answer urban legend:

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/oneword.asp
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Steve Ballmer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc
Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic
I think you're right about culture; also, there is a strong network effect to these services. The more your social circle uses them, the more benefit you will see from them. It's safe to say that my crowd just doesn't run with the over-sharing.
You're both assuming the point got across. Reading Damien's post, I got the impression he didn't really get to convey what he thought was the right points because he "kept getting sidetracked."

Doesn't matter how good of a hacker you are, if they haven't heard of you or what you do, you still have to impress. I've known a lot of gifted hackers that sound like buffoons when they get sidetracked and a lot of mediocre (but generally very successful) coders that don't get phased by anything.

I think Damien and crew can and will get their pitch down and find a funding source in the near future. My money's on this one being one of YC's shoulda's.
Actually, in this specific case, some of the practices of Wall Street were previously criminal. For example, up until 2004 there were laws that limited bank leverage to iirc 12:1 (or was it 14:1?).

Hank Paulson lobbied for that limit to be removed, unsuccessfully in 2000, then successfully in 2004. That banks and financial entities were levered up to 30:1, 40:1, even 60:1 on toxic securities when the crisis occurred grossly exacerbated it.

So essentially, 'gambling recklessly with credit' was indeed, for a long time, illegal. It was only Wall Street's increasing influence in Washington that got it legalized.
i apologize about not specifically addressing the question.

developing a rapport doesn't happen overnight. i don't have a great specific example to point to, but i'm confident the relationships that i've cultivated on twitter will prove fruitful when i need them the most.
Linear algebra is absolute basic stuff. It is part of the first and second semester in mathematics, and also taught in computer science, physics, chemistry and many other fields.

So all you need is a university that provides natural sciences. I can't imagine such a university being hard to find.
Electronic Life Make Evolving Automatic Art
If it weren't for people like you so many big companies will simply cease to produce any output at all!
HN - what days of the week get the most traffic on your site?
I've been curious to know what days of the week (and even times of the day) get the most user traffic.
The problem is not whether the latest version shipped with the installation disc. It's how quickly it got put up on Software Update. Lots of products have downloadable updates on the day it appears. Flash should have been a required update within days of Adobe releasing the new version.

There would have been no story if the headline was "Snow Leopard requires Flash update on install." I seem to remember I got my Snow Leopard late and I still had to go straight to Adobe for my update.
That's it, I'm sticking with Windows for life.
Is there a way I can input burritos? I entered my address, and nothing came up. There's a great hole-in-the-wall not to far from here that'd be perfect.
WordPress is the best Open Source startup I admire. Not only WordPress is the most popular CMS and blogging platform, it also helped Automattic to launch many more products: http://automattic.com

Automattic has a very effective business model and a good stream of revenue from several sources. Millions of bloggers, developers, designers and consultants make living through the WordPress ecosystem. Many large blogs and theme developers even make millions with WordPress.
If using Safari, turn on the develop menu, then in the develop menu, disable images.

(I have unlimited fast bandwidth, but sometimes like this anyway ... the text web.)

I also run Adblock+ on all browsers.
Favorite line: "... This is just the first in a long string of rejections I have planned."

This is going on my wall of inspiring quotes.
> Probationary statuses are generally considered a bad thing

As someone who was almost put on a performance plan for coming to work late, you don't ever want to be put on a PP. Basically, my PP would have been documenting my arrival times for 30 days and if a fair number were out of a 5 minute tolerance range, the PP would be used as a next step for being fired. Basically, a PP is something you sign that is a contract on your job. It provides legal immunity to HR to fire you. Fortunately, my boss and his boss convinced me to shape up and realize what a sword of Damacles a PP is. I started arriving early and realized how laughably bad it looked when I arrived at my whatever times. Not only do you stick out but you make your bosses look bad. In the land of corporate conformity, not following the rules leads to bad things.
Wow, this was... unexpected.
I believe activecollab started as "code a basecamp clone in a weekend" project on HN.
I don't think it's generational, you're old enough to be my father (sorry!) and I too share the same indifference towards them. I think it's a personal thing or maybe it's based on a persons social circle. For some people where socialising is their life it makes sense for them to share where they are when they're there, it allows friends (assuming they "follow" these people) to know "oh hey, they're at x I can join them!"

I'm not a social person who wants people to come join me when I'm buying stuff in real life and I'm sure you're not either, but there are people from every generation who are.
I believe Redpoint Ventures invested 2m in Couchio in 2009, the company Damien is CEO of.
Here's the bit I found most interesting, wherein Steve has a hard time selling the idea that "Windows" is somehow the same whether it's the Windows 7 variant on the HP pad or a WP7 phone. The interviewer wanted to know if the latter was coming to tablets, but Ballmer didn't pick up on that or tried to deflect the implicit fragmentation question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKB8XEXm3Oo#t=2m54s
It's about empathy.

Works both ways, too. If you don't know enough finance to understand a cashflow model or enough about writing to appreciate how to craft a pitch (or put together an effective landing page - whichever matters for your business), then you aren't a founder, you're an employee with a fancy title.

This is a high bar, but foundin' ain't easy.
"these were sold under false representations and warranties -- frauds"

Including the fraud politicians put on the American people: everyone should own a house, which came in the form of artificially low interest rates, laxed lending standards, and tax credits.

Here's what I have to say to investors of mortgage-backed securities, including Fannie & Freddie: caveat emptor. The ultimate buyer was the U.S. taxpayer, because those investors knew Fannie & Freddie forays into subprime were covered, why shouldn't theirs be? It's the American Dream, right? And sure enough, they got their bailout, aptly named TARP!

We all got TARPed!
I have lived with 1 GB/month for nearly 2 years. No images, no ads, no flash. Now on an unlimited bandwidth connection :)
Because I'm feeling pedantic today: you meant to say "a fault-tolerant system". A fail-safe system is one which fails in a safe way. An example would be a CPU that shuts itself down if it's overheating, rather than risk permanent damage. If anything, a fail-safe system may be more prone to failure because of its cautious approach to dealing with faults.

There are some pretty cool examples on the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-safe
1) Get closure first, then divorce. Most people don't seem to do this. They do it the other way around and then do all kinds of stupid, emotionally driven, toxic things during the divorce which just amounts to shooting themselves in the foot.

2) Stay focused on your goal. It no longer matters if the other person "understands" you and all that touchy-feely nonsense. That stuff matters if you are staying together, not if you are going your separate ways. So this means do not take any digs whatsoever at them. Bite your tongue. It isn't worth it (and not doing it is worth quite a lot of money as well as other improvements in quality of life -- an ugly divorce can really make life hard for quite a lot of reasons).

3) The seminal moment where we agreed to divorce set the tone for the entire divorce. We were having the same stupid fight for about the 200th time (actual estimation, not hyperbole) and I stopped screaming at him and quietly said "I don't want to do this anymore. I'm tired of hurting you. I'm tired of being hurt. I think we have both given it our best. If we could do this dance, we would have figured it out by now (we had been married ~17 years). I want a divorce." He was relieved and agreed, something he had not done on any of the occasions where I screamed and cried and shouted "I want a divorce!", which he had accurately interpreted roughly to mean "God, quit hurting me so much". So we agreed to divorce as the only kind thing left to do for each other -- set each other free -- rather than as a means to reject the other person. This means we both worked cooperatively to try to minimize financial damage and the like. If we wanted to make each other miserable, we could have stayed together. We were both very talented at making each other miserable.

4) I also had a class at some point on "Negotiation and conflict management". Getting to Yes and The heart and mind of the negotiator (or mind and heart -- never can keep that straight) were required texts. The first one is short, the second one a lot meatier.

5) Read up on the concept of "prisoner's dilemma" and realize that unlike actual prisoners, you aren't forbidden from talking to each other -- unless you lawyer up and have some lawyer whispering evil things in your ear about covering your ass and telling you to keep your mouth shut.

6) Realize this won't likely work in a genuinely abusive situation. My marriage was tragic, not abusive. Sometimes, covering your ass is the best thing to do.
You write:

"Note the headline: Put Corporate Criminals in Jail
Keyword: crooks, not failures"

My friend, it is up to us (the public) to define what a criminal is. That's the whole point of this conversation. If you want to reason from the headline of the article then you are engaging in a bit of circular reasoning: the title of the article says these people are criminal, therefore the article must be correct, because criminals are bad.

I think you and I can agree that criminals are bad. The question is, what do we want to define as criminal behavior?
All the cool kids are doing it. (Justin.tv, Scribd, Xobni, Heroku...)
I needed this as much as you did. Best of luck to you. In the face of death, all our pettiness falls away.
Yes, it was a penny auction site. I can't give the URL as it is not my website. I assisted them with development.
Skymarshall:

Yes, but in the old days, if a bank went over the leverage limit that the government had set, then the bank got fined, and was required to rapidly deleverage. No one went to jail.
Exactly right - though Google's innovation was not just in search, but in clarity of presentation and clean visual style. The web used to be so ugly. Now it is mostly ugly again, but like a sulky fashion model.
lolol @video. I wonder what he was drawing?
Not really the point here.
Ask HN: Commuting on a bike
I'm going to start commuting on a road bike about 15 miles a day between home, work, and school. Winter's coming on and I live in a place that get it's fair share of snow and rain. It seems like there's a lot of people here who commute on a bike in pretty wet climates - I was just wondering if anyone had advice or tips, like any equipment that makes it easier, etc...
I type code (and spoken language) pretty fast (upwards of 90wpm) using a weird style that isn't traditional touch-typing (I only use my index fingers and my thumbs) but also doesn't involve hunting and pecking because I have enough muscle memory and experience with different keyboards to intuitively know the distances between each of the keys I want to hit, and thus I can do it without looking down at the keyboard or even thinking about the process at all. So I guess I'm "fast enough" for the Atwoods and Yegges of the world that think you have to type fast to be a great programmer.

However... Having said all of this, I do my best programming in the the 20 minute walks I take after getting up and walking away from the code for a while, not while I'm actively sitting at the keyboard typing stuff in. At the point in which I'm typing, I'm basically just dictating my own previous thoughts into a text editor and while it might make me marginally overall more efficient to do this faster, it is not at all the bottleneck of my entire process, it isn't even one of the top 25 hotspots.

Given my own process, I've never understood why anyone could possibly attempt to make a connection between input speed and quality. I could type one line of code a minute and typing still wouldn't be the botttleneck to me creating great code and I find it hard to believe that is true of anyone else if they are really being honest about their overall development process.
Oh no...I finally learned to type around 1998. I moved to L.A. My roommate bailed on me and left me here. I discovered Yahoo! Chat to pass the time and somehow that's what finally forced me to become a better typist. Just tested myself for shits and giggles - adjusted speed of 71 wpm. ;)
You can have great product idea here. Ebook - how I ... etc.
Ask HN: What Are You Willing To Do For The Rest of Your Life? 
This is the central question from Randy Kosmimar's book 'The Monk and The Riddle', definitely worth reading. Share your projects, thoughts, feelings, and goals. This is the most important question for your daily productivity, happiness, and contribution.
I'm sure all those keyboards do wonders for him. Although people writing stuff like this should take into consideration that a 7Kg (15 lbs) $150+ keyboard that you can only order by mail sounds like elitist BS to some people, especially in some parts of the world. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that most of those keyboards ship only in the US, Japan and 4 other countries.

Somewhere in the links he provided there was a comment that went like "If you're a taxi driver how important is your ability to drive". Now what Jeff does is tell us all taxi drivers that we're probably driving a '99 honda civic while he drives and prefers his ferraris and vintage porches. And driving those kinds of cars makes him a more effective driver.

If you want a decent keyboarding experience without breaking the bank the Logitech illuminated is an excellent scissors switch keyboard. You can be pretty sure it won't degrade after 2+ years of heavy use.

A versatile mechanical keyboard that according to some is even better then DAS (and much more easy to find) is the Black Widow from Razer.
I disagree with his advice on not using game engines. Just about any finished game will rely on someone else's libraries or code at some point. It would be insane to duplicate all this effort from scratch, except maybe as a learning exercise. Ogre3D is a good engine for C++ and Unity 3D can even use javascript. I learn a lot about actual game construction and design while using these engines, while efforts at reinventing the wheel usually end in frustration.
Differences in Natural and Technological Evolution
Depends on the site, really. A lot of sites I've seen seem to go overboard with gratuitous Javascript. My school webmail works better if I turn Javascript off, e.g. it will then let me open an email in a separate tab (though for a quick email check between classes/meetings, I'll just use pine). Slashdot and GMail are the only sites I visit regularly that need Javascript to function well, and they're still workable without it.
I've wondered about things like this. I once bought a print from the Getty Museum of a painting by Gerrit Dou (done in the late 1650s), and the Getty had a copyright notice on the back. Obviously anyone can reproduce the original, but is the Getty trying to claim that no one can make reproductions of their reproduction?
Unlike the iPhone, you can comfortably do everything on the browser. Also, the apps they start you out with are enough for most common activities.
Chupacabra Mystery Solved
What?! Absolutely wrong. Look at Chart 6 in the survey they link to, which is even titled:

91% of iPad owners have downloaded an app, many of them have already purchased apps

I presume they meant to say 32% have never purchased an app, which is quite a different proposition.
In terms of pure words per minute, I agree with you to an extent, but I also much prefer to type on a keyboard when it is possible to do so.

My problem with touchscreen typing isn't so much related to how many WORDS I can type in a given time, but rather the annoyingness of the modality of the virtual keyboards combined with unintuitive chording for things like standard keyboard shift, ctrl, etc. (I realize the better virtual keyboards do have 'solutions' for the chording issues but I've tried them and found them all severely lacking).

Having to switch modes to do symbols, numbers, etc, is a real flow-breaker and ultimately means that while I can type informal texts and emails fine on a touchscreen, I find it excruciating to type mostly-grammatically correct English on them. I wouldn't even attempt to code on one for similar reasons.
Can Starships Survive the Journey?
Having disassembled a mid-2010 Mac Mini, the main limiting factor right now is without question the optical drive. The space required for an optical disk drastically increases its footprint. Replacing a 2.5" disk with a mini-PCIE SSD a la the MacBook Air would also free up valuable space.

They certainly could get the computer to within spitting distance of the new Apple TV, if it lost the optical drive.

Overall, I can't discount the current Mini's usefulness. With a Seagate Momentus XT and 8GB of memory it's a great development box (spinning up 4GB VMs with ease), great every day machine, and even plays games decently enough (including Starcraft II). Power consumption with a 23" display and external FW800 disk rounds out to 45-60W depending on the display's brightness.

However, the real "zero footprint" Mac is still the iMac. With the Mini, I still need a display, and the requisite display cable and second power cable.
Trees Eat Pollution Better Than Expected
> But I don't think it was the strategic reason for wanting to go to war; an unrealistic and naive (but profitable) ideology was.

The ideology of the neoconservatives who fabricated the war was plain and simple: America must the be the world's superpower at all costs. This implies backup governments that are friendly to American interests, regardless of their political affiliations. There is nothing naive about that, it is simply perverse and disregards all concerns for human life or regional peace.
nice big thick tires- something along the lines of a mountain bike- not something along the lines of a 'street' bike.