skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Friends and Family offering large amounts of money, what do i do?
Ok so i know to some this will probably seem like a dumb question at first, but let me give you a little background:

First off, I just applied to YC W2011 and was rejected. During that waiting process I had told only a few close friends and family of my idea.

After being rejected on Tuesday night and filling in my Dad he made an offer to give me $100k for 10% of the company. This morning another close friend of mine made an identical offer (I did not tell my friend about my fathers offer, it was just a complete coincidence).

I have no prior experience in this particular field (online commerce) though I do have one relatively small software exit ($1M) in database technology.

So I am asking, what should I do in a situation like this one?

I guess it is always easier to take someone's money who you do not know. If it was my money I would gladly spend it in pursuit of this idea, however when it comes to close friends and family i just do not want to disappoint anyone or lose their money.

It is a tough position for me and I would really appreciate any helpful advice of those who have been in similar situations.

Thanks in advance for your help!

EDIT: I should probably also point out that I do not come from a wealthy family, however my Dad owns a company which is doing very well now and he certainly has the money for this particular offer, losing it would not hurt him in any significant way.

My friend who is offering is basically a trust fund baby who simply wants a way to become insanely rich. We do NOT share that sentiment, I do what I do because I love it and cannot imagine doing anything else, however when i was in college he used to give me money to go play poker with and I won him thousands of dollars over the course of about 6 months or so and he seems to enjoy that rush he gets from taking the risk? weird I know
What are php nested functions for?
The same applies to academic research groups too.
Could still work on Windows (which is the bigger market anyway) whitelabel it and sell a version to Dell,Sony... you get instant traction and the vendors are happy (percentage of proceeds) but of course you have to sell it to Dell, HP, and Sony...
I've come across things like this before. I’d say it’s part of localisation as well as UX design.

We were making a flash sales page, it had red stars on as part of the key GUI design. The sales and marketing team loved it, it worked well, was straightforward to use. However some of the representatives in some Easter European Countries objected to the red stars, and associated with communist regime, for those regions we changed them to green stars so not to be insensitive. We never even considered the red stars being bad, but to some of the Eastern European users it would have been offensive.
EPIC Lawsuit to Suspend Deployment of Body Scanners at US Airports
The whole "I don't watch TV" thing is a bit of a joke nowadays, where people just watch online.
You won't be disappointed. The WoKings was a bit odd at the start. He dumps you right into the middle, and I was somewhat confused by everything changing so fast, but you quickly realise this is in a way intentional, and works well in the long run.

Also, if you haven't read the Mistborn trilogy, I highly suggest it. It's a great, unique setting, and I had a great time with it.

Finally, his other books are great as well. Elantris and Warbreaker, each different, and great for single novel stories. I'm a big fan of the long arcs of great epics, but these one-off's were well worth the time invested.

Basically, he's an author that will require me to buy everything he writes for as long as he's writing.
Your idea reminds me of this story from 2006.

Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/606142...

Kip Hawley was the head of TSA at the time.
"I was going to guess nickels."
Thanks, Basho.
I know of one industry that is STILL using Dpaint to create graphics and animations for a certain type of dot-matrix display. It's crude, but nothing works as well. Also, they have a bunch of tools to read the LBM format and nobody is available to upgrade to newer stuff.
We also weren't made to run on asphalt and concrete. I agree with thin sole for trail running, but don't you need some sort of artificial cushion on hard surfaces?
I suspect given that google are one of the people pushing it that it's almost certainly a "common carrier" defence for copyright infringement which would protect websites from user uploaded copyright violations.
You mean like how Facebook has been buying up Google engineers?
I don't see where I said it was spaghetti code. Sometimes a goto in C can save quite a few running cycles. Write a quick Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg integrator without it.
For a good book on this, take a look at the commissar vanishes. It is a pictography of soviet photo editing to remove the undesirables.
The funny bit is that it's easy to find that there are already two different Fluid apps for OS X today. The other one is a screensaver.

http://www.concepthouse.com/products/Fluid/
I like Kohana much more than CI, if only for tossing PHP4 support.

However, but I've found that there is lots of fragmenting in the community/documentation. See the differences between 2.3.4 -> 2.4 (lots of breaking changes) -> 3.0 (almost entirely different framework). Which is kind of a bummer when using it for long-life projects (we have a few projects are stuck on 2.3.4).

That said - Symfony 2.0 looks fantastic, and very much like the next "Rails-like" PHP framework.
Skype for Mac 5.0 beta released
Very true, I would like to see the same comparison by someone who has lived and worked on both the East and West Coast.
There are so many bad-but-funny scenes missing from this list. Most notably:

1. Hackers (1995)
2. The Net (1995)
3. Terminator II

The only hacking scene I can remember that is more realistic than simply bashing on some keys while improbable windows filled with illegible code or fancy 3D worlds whizz by is in The Matrix.
I really liked the example by the OP. I think that it's a very strange language quirk where you have nested functions that are both globally scoped and locally defined.
This is very interesting, though somewhat tangential to the specific problem I am giving voice to. That being said, the master thesis I have set for myself is exploring the use of open source tools used by mathematicians so the blog post you have referred me to is surprisingly relevant to a different part of my life so _thank you_ :)
Benevolent message, but .. far more people than you can imagine have "quit TV". In fact, my entire twitter graph, people on IRC, social networks, even the local pubs I frequent, and everyone who responded in this thread have all quit TV. Stories of triumph over the tube are abundant, and the reasons nearly identical. People have been unanimous on two things: 1) their disdain for TV, American or otherwise and 2) their love for puppies.

Just from 4 days ago, front-page:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1850998
Behold The Battle for Java Earth (Elli-Sauron and the Orc-acles)
Ask HN: Anyone else here struggle with the alcohol?
Gents,

I thought it might be worthwhile and somewhat cathartic to ask this question here. I'm a long time, accomplished techie and a bit of a serial entrepreneur. I also wonder if I might be a bit of a functioning alcoholic.

I've been drinking regularly since my early teens. In the area of the country where I grew up it was about the only thing to do. I drank too much in high school, college, and grad school, and the initial stages of my PhD, all the while still managing to ace most of my coursework.

Fortunately, I married a very stubborn woman, and she's cut down my drinking substantially. However, I still drink at least 4 times a week, and each night on average 3-6 high alcohol beers.

Even still, I'm not a violent drunk or really a drunk in general. I have developed a pretty high tolerance, so the drinks I have just place me into a comfortable mood, not a stupor. I'm a loving, affectionate husband and father; I just find that alcohol takes the edge off my life. I've quit at times for periods of a month with no sort of withdrawal symptoms, so I don't believe I'm physically addicted. I've always had a bit of an addictive personality, so I think my dependence is largely psychological.

The problem is, my drinking is impulsive. I'm in a senior leadership role by day and I work on my entrepreneurial endeavors by night. I wake up most mornings telling myself it's going to be all work on my ideas when I get home that evening, but by 7 pm the stress of the day makes that beer (and couch time with the wife) so much more appealing.

I'm worried on too fronts: a., the things I'm not able to accomplish because I procrastinate through alcohol, and b., health problems.

Regaring a., how much could I have accomplished if I didn't impusively give in and drink a beer or six? I've had at least one project that's dragged on now for 3 months and I attribute at least some of that drag to beer. If I'm honest with myself, a number of my other projects have suffered because of this same drag on productivity. Hangovers and the general malaise the day after make it very difficult to keep up and focused at times.

Regarding b., my blood pressure has become borderline high over the last two years (I'm in my late 30s), and I am guessing that alcohol has a lot to do with it. If marijuana were to become legal, I'd definitely be open to switching to that, but as it is my wife is totally against it because of its legal status. I've used it in the past and found it to be a wonderful alternative to alcohol. Again, I'm not addicted to the feeling alcohol gives you, but to the edge it takes off my life.

Anyway, I'd love to hear from other HNers regarding insights or tips. I've read that substance abuse in general tends to be common in those with higher IQs, so I imagine there are at least a few of you who have been, or are here, with me.
And most people aren't exercising any anywhere near the level that they need something more than water to stay hydrated.

Mind you, it's amusing when you see unhealthy people drinking them thinking that they're better than any other sugary drink.
I just view it as a sort of standard disclaimer to preempt the usual criticism that dissenters are somehow ignorant, unreasonable, or un-American.

Basically: "I'm an otherwise reasonable person in full possession of my faculties."
It was only when an enthusiastic amateur (myself) reproduced the algorithm in the paper that the bug was discovered.

But that's the actual problem, that nobody else tried to verify the data themselves before accepting it into the field. If you could reproduce the algorithm in the paper without the source code, why couldn't they?

And while it may have meant that the Met Office's code would itself have been fixed faster, I don't buy the idea that having the code available necessarily would have meant the errors in the resulting data would have been discovered faster. That would imply that people would have actually dived into the code looking for bugs, but we've already established that the people in the field are bad programmers who feel they have more interesting things to do. Why isn't it just as plausible that they would have run the code, seen the same buggy result, and labored under the impression they had verified something?
The trick to being nice is that you have to do it even when it seems like a bad idea. This isn't because suffering losses is virtuous, it's because you lack the ability to tell when it's safe to be mean. If you have an extraordinary ability to predict user backlash, which you may well have, by all means go ahead and piss some people off. But don't scold people for having the humility to know that they personally can't get away with it.
I don't think I would. There have been whole months where I didn't watch anything and didn't miss it. When my wife and I do watch a movie, it's generally more about the experience (of having a movie night, making popcorn and drinking soda [neither of which we otherwise consume on anything approaching a regular basis]) than the movie anyway, in the same way that going out for drinks with friends is more about the conversation than the beer, however delicious beer may be.
Note the use of the word 'had' in my comment. In normal english usage that represents an 'if' statement.

The english language is a wonderful instrument, too bad there are so many deaf to it's charm.
I went through O'Hare recently, where they've installed a battery of these devices. The way they had it set up, it was used as the secondary screener for people who got called out for random searches.

Guess who got called for "random" searches in the machine? Pretty much every hot chick in line. Now, this observation was purely anecdotal, so take it for what it is. But the coincidence was not lost on me, or on anyone else in the line. It was disgusting behavior on the TSA workers' part.
Flawed Kinect Offers Tantalizing Glimpse at Gaming’s Future
Like we choose to have our PDF's under pay walls. I don't even have printed copies of my paper, because the publisher does not want to make the expenditure. And if I were to lose my password, I would have no access to my own paper for download (and I don't have access to the rest of papers in the same issue, of course).
I hear you and I'm sorry to hear that. A (naughty) little part of me is happy that I'm not alone in this boat, maybe the answer given here can help you as much as me? Chin up :)
The comments about Portland OR really remind me of my own experience with spending time there. It really was the first time I was visiting a place and think "I'd really like to live here!".
What really sold me was the quality of the food available for a city of that size. How walkable the place is. How friendly the people I met in the street were. How going out in Portland was fun. And the scenery around the city is just amazing. Plus it really seemed like a good place to raise a family (The latest criteria I have) because it was generally inexpensive and has all the community advantages of a smaller town.
Live sports are not the last stronghold.

There's a whole slew of shows which would whither and die without a cable subscription model.

Think Food Network or Discovery or any show which isn't a serialized story model. Would you actually buy a season of Mythbusters?* I watch those shows all the time, but usually when I'm just browsing. I'm not sure I'd actually buy them ala carte.

BTW NFL and NCAA aren't holding out on streaming. The rights to internet broadcast games are tied to their traditional cable and broadcast deals with cable providers and the Comcasts and TWCs of the world are locking in those restrictions. MLB is the only one who kept their streaming rights.

* Note I'm not saying no one would - but I don't think enough people would
yes. languages are tools. use what you need to get the job done.

if you know PHP and C, it'll be much easier and faster for you to build your startup with PHP and C, instead of toughing it out learning RoR enough to get things done. perhaps RoR is "faster" and "easier", but it won't be faster and easier for you until you're competent with it, and that takes time.
You can sue them, it is copyright infringement and your moral rights are probably more important than any commercial rights in this case.
Taking others peoples content and using it commercially without asking ... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840481.

Interesting comparison in the reactions from HNers IMO.
> In the case of groceries wouldn't you only be as fast as the slowest line?

That's a pretty good summary of Amdahl's law. Even a computer with an infinite number of processors can't run a program faster than it takes to run the slowest sequential part.
Despite what the security and media apparatus would have us believe, it simply isn't easy to convince people to go on murderous rampages. Most people are not monsters. Let alone suicidal ones.

When you realize the inhumanity required to follow through on a terror plot is the limiting resource, their targeting and methods make more sense.
But not what you'd necessarily be looking for in someone who critiques code
It's not denial, it's ignorance combined with stubbornness. The editor said she's been doing it for years, so obviously she's correct and Monica is mistaken.
I totally agree... Especially impressive when you consider the size of Cambridge (~7 sq mi) VS the size of an area like Silicon Valley (~450 sq mi).

That's a pretty amazing amount of nerd density.
>My suspicion is that this place has far fewer founders (or people who will make the jump to becoming a founder) than it does just plain old smart people looking for intelligent discussion.

I'd tend to agree.

I'm still not going to take the described transplant seriously.
Good for you. (You're right about your initial assessment - coding for a monthly paycheck is not the issue here as being my own boss through the lean times and seeing stuff through from conception to the drawing board and beyond.)
Geert Wilders is not Liu Xiaobo | berfrois
Yes, that's a much better one, thanks.

EDIT: submitted as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1869080. If you feel this is karma-stealing, I'll delete it.
I personally don't like this. On reddit for example, I find I have to spend an inordinate amount of time uncollapsing comments and threads to see if there's something interesting to see. Most of the time there isn't, but if it wasn't collapsed I could quickly scan and see that. One of the things I really really like about HN is that comments are not collapsed.
The biggest thing about city knowledge is knowing which fucking streets are one way and in which direction.

> The other problem with all the distinct areas is how spread out they are, having a car is critical IMO to get around.

Busses are horrible, but bikes are still better than cars. I can actually beat a car from Downtown to Shadyside around rush hour...
From my experience, a good way of weeding out the 50 horrible php programmers, is to ask about (even simple) OOP.

Then to differentiate Junior from Senior just ask them what testing tools they use (testing is not [as] ingrained in the PHP community [yet]). If they can talk intelligently about PHPUnit, mocking, etc. they are more than likely senior level, or at least passionate enough to learn more than most PHP developers.
News Corp. warns Myspace
14 Outstanding Sites to Help You Find a Great Domain Name
Good domain names are getting harder to come by thanks to speculators and squatters who think they are going to strike it rich. While this is frustrating don’t let it discourage you.
I know, it does seem the default for "delete on terminate" is wrong. Most people use EBS root volumes in an attempt to gain persistence and a level of protection against accidental termination.
"Not to seem crass, but one would think if his goal was to change games, he might have spent more time actually making them."

He did. He was trying to develop a new form of game. It didn't work, but he tried. At least he was following his vision rather than trying to churn out vapid, ephemeral clones of Angry Birds or Doom or whatever, chasing after money.
My evidence, like the evidence in this thread and the presentation, is just personal experience.

On the contrary, I was referring to the work of Dan Pink and others on the science of motivation, which was mentioned elsewhere in the thread.

I don't usually discount personal experience but this is one area where the empirical findings are surprising. A pretty important one, too, considering the implications for good organizations and happy lives.
FTC settles with Intel: more docs, interoperability
Deeply disturbing fact. The main researcher in our group works in cutting edge numeric simulations, and although he does not publish his code (mostly because "you can code it yourself! It is really easy, listen" and go on for 3 hours), if you were to ask, he would give it to you without any problems.

But according to what you say, this means that he (still programs in Fortran) would need to start caring about versioning, cross-platform stuff (fortran, remember), readability (well, it's fortran, for me it is always unreadable) and maintainability. In addition to his usual duties of "doing research", giving lectures, answering students, advising PhD's and asking for grants.

The problem is most likely to be solved when everyone in the field can code the algorithm in the paper. If the peer reviewer can write a program following the algorithm and applied on the data it validates the results, this ends up working well. I doubt (very profoundly) that giving the source will result in better peer reviews. The peer reviewer may have the code, but he will most likely compile, run and check that the numbers are the same.
How is mirroring geocities and/or supplying a torrent of the content using it commercially? Reocities even responds to takedown requests.
Sounds like you aren't that confident if you think you are going to lose it! Really though, the main consideration is this: can your dad afford to take the hit - and is he investing because he wants to help you or because he really believes in the idea?

If he is investing in an idea he believes in, then you are doing a favor letting him invest. There are not many good opportunities for people to put their money to work in this economy considering the state of the stock and bond markets and the potential for inflation.

OTOH, if he is investing because you are his son, then I would not take his money. I have heard horror stories of family and money from several close friends, and I know that your relationships are worth more than any investment. When it goes well it can make your relationship better, but if it goes south the downside is huge.
Does anybody else wish that Microsoft will open Kinect to PCs?
Guide to Finding a Good and Safe Company or Product Name
The Battle of Phase 2 vs The Shiny Object
I had to google him to find out who he was. That is not someone who is committed to his craft.

What!?

Google is in many ways a measure of popularity and relevance, not commitment. Chris and the games industry have gone in completely different directions. He is no longer interested in writing games for the same reasons that I no longer play games.

He's off writing what he loves. Saying that others have contributed far more is a lot like comparing DHH to _why and suggesting that DHH has contributed far more to Ruby than _why. Yes, of course, but how does that diminish _why?
Tim Ferriss: 8 Exotic Destinations You Can Afford
Follow @CoworkCharles on Twitter - there is a group that coworks at least once a week. We meet up at Bohemian Coffee House, Koffee Therapy, Caribou Coffee, and last night on the way back from a Baltimore startup happy hour we were talking about City Cafe as we passed by it so probably there next. We had two python guys, several Ruby on Rails guys and a PHP guy there the last time.
I thought it was supposed to be a parody of real job adverts / application forms, which are usually quite arrogant and ridiculous and almost never evidence of 'excellent interpersonal communication skills.'
really? I really have to explain this? You don't remember the breach of data, the emails, and all of the universities that came out and admit that all of their claims were based on the same data?

I figured everyone would know what I was talking about, but I guess some people don't pay attention to the news as closely as I do.
Windroplr - Droplr is now for PCs, too
The implications on life extension are interesting. If people could live forever, would we just faff about? There's always tomorrow, after all.
I usually go to the HN Readers Group http://www.meetup.com/JoinHNDC/ and DC Ruby Users Group Meetups http://www.meetup.com/dcruby/ meetups. Both meet regularly and usually have 30 to 50 people attending.