skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Where to find partners for side-/bootstrapped projects?
Is there a resource out there for technical people to post ideas/projects/skills/passions and peruse the same for others looking to work on side projects while we keep our day jobs?

I'm not looking to pitch a VC or angel investor with a idea and a deck. I want to work on side projects that may become bootstrapped, self-sustaining businesses that earn income on the side and (maybe eventually) become a full-time job.

Ideally I'd like to work with people face to face. Live interaction, pair programming (gasp), etc; remote collaborations don't interest me as much.

Is there a good resource out there that would help me find like-minded people in my area (NYC)?
Second this. I'm doing the same thing. Static site using StaticMatic on a VPS (Slicehost). My profile page links to Github, Twitter, posterous, etc.

I learned a lot setting up and administering my own Linux server (I have a Windows background), and use it to play around with various setups / tools.
I'm not a big fan of the 30 day trial because I think it adds extra friction to the signup process. Especially when a credit card is required.

Isn't it better to offer an unlimited, resource constrained plan? Note: you can still let them use all the features but with limited resources.

Advantages:
1. You get permission to send them product related emails.
2. They hit the resource limits quickly thereby encouraging them to upgrade.

We do something similar at Trafficspaces and it works well for us. Unlimited free trial but with very low resource usage.

Just my 2 cents.
No regrets, really. Just thankfulness for the times I lucked out.
> People do a lot of Google searches from their iPhones.

You have it right there. Google already has 'win'. As long as the #1 search engine on mobile devices by a large chunk is Google, the have 'win'. Extra-bonus if they make some dough out of some Android plus Ads scheme.
If you know python, go Google AppEngine. If you know Ruby, go Heroku.

Both have free options and can host everything you need.
My sense is that he was trying to understand modern life as a classicist would understand ancient times. Trying to create that heighten state of fragmentary deep meaning, etc. -- but mapped to the disillusionment he felt in the present.

Normally a classicist is involved in the function of:

Classicist -> immerses in ancient literature

Eliot's 'trick' is that he would attempt higher order functions and map the whole technique to the present:

[Classicist -> immerses in ancient literature] -> immerses a Classical understanding of the present,

which makes the present seem Classical in importance. Nor is that the only way to go. But I think one of the greatest things that Eliot offers through his poetry is this challenge to become more sharply critical (the same way philologists must rise to the level of their material, after translating, etc.). Hypertextuality helps a lot. But, as I think Tycho sort of hints at here and in other comments, the goal is to engage the whole approach.
My favorite take on that one is more for compiler and embedded folks:

There are 1 kinds of people in this world. Those who know how to save bits. The rest are the default case.
Shutl seems to be in an interesting position to expand into what I thought was an obvious idea but logistical nightmare to actually execute: Why don't delivery companies sign deals with Dominoes/Pizza Hut/other big pizza chains and use their excess delivery capacity to do package delivery? If Shutl is taking care of distributed multiple-company delivery maybe that's something they can expand into.
ACID in Theory and Practice
I didn't say it was just a webcam. I said it should cost in the ballpark of 2x of them. Adding a $1 LED with hundreds of little holes in front of it doesn't change that.

Note: I'm not making any statement about the possible awesomeness or lameness of the system. All I'm saying is the parts aren't expensive.
I agree. I thought it was interesting to see all the products in a graphical format but didn't like what was insinuated with the negative tone.
You could've at least replaced Reddit by HN.
I think what you are describing is employees market, where I am used to employers market.

Why should employer pay more, when they would find students wanting first job so hard, that they would work for 800$ a month?

Are in states salaries in every city the same? In Poland we have 100% differences between Warsaw and Lublin.
Update: How They're Blocking Google TV (with Screenshots)
I think that when most people talk about income inequality, they're not actually trying to get at either of those things directly.

I think the implication is that if we could somehow take the labor that went into the wealth of the top X% and redirect that labor toward things that benefit the bottom 100-X%, everyone would be happier in aggregate. Whether or not that's true or possible isn't clear, but it seems intuitively reasonable.
Cool but it is still 500 million dollars with the rocket.

The X prize teams are potentially going to do it for <50 million.
In the PC market, they still have less than 5% on a worldwide basis. Their share is higher in the US

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.....

> "Some believed Android would win because the iPhone was chained to AT&T"

Again only true for the US.
USPTO lowers standards for obviousness
You might take another look at the second half of the article, as it directly addresses the "perceived...tradeoff between equity and economic growth", and why income inequality is relevant.

I personally wouldn't go to an op-ed column for analysis on this kind of issue, but Kristof certainly addressed the matter.
Here's the docs: http://pages.github.com/
Yes, I could have, but forgot that was in there.

Didn't want to retype that, and having just found HN I figured I would repost it here.

And now it's gone.
> 2. SMS upon delivery failure or address confusion.

Amazon actually just started offering SMS upon delivery failure/success, at least in the US.
My samsung vibrant is running 2.1, and is less than a week old.
An earlier submission on this story:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1817237
> I would love to see it replicated by other groups (.e.g Mythbusters) to confirm or deny the results.

Why not confirm it yourself? He posted his method, and it's probably not outside your realm of competence.

That's one of the best things about science: anyone can do it!
I don't really see much point in filling out that survey, seeing as I don't use bookmarks much anymore (the four sites I go to regularly I can always remember, the rest I just type into google, or even googles search locally feature), the couple I have left is mostly as a scratch pad/reminder or bookmarklets.

But one thing hit me on your pricing page, you highlighted the most expensive plan - sure it is cheaper in the long run, but as consumer 5/6 $ is below my threshold of caring(if I wanted to use your service), whereas spending $40 means I have to consider it to a greater extend (and I am a lot less likely to buy it).

Since you make more money from the $6 plan, I would suggest you highlight that, or spell out how much I will be paying a month if I choose the other deal.
For what it's worth, I took just one look at the front page and it told me pretty well what the product is. But then, I've spent years working in this exact field, so it might be a case of a blurb aimed at those in the know.
Perhaps a graphical representation of how things work?

Fill the front page with images of the leader boards and all the other services you offer being taken care of on your servers.

Show a picture of the ONE LINE OF CODE they add to their game.

Show everyone smiling at the end.

Make the text really really big.

Have arrows connecting it all like a flow chart, so I know where to start reading.

Have the flow chart end with the "SIGN UP HERE" call to action button.

(at least that's my "gut reaction" recommendation based on what I hope for and what I like on signup pages.)

please make sure that it's roughly one line of code :)
1. If you're in debt because of your startup, then when you get acquired you use that money to pay off your debts, and keep what's left over (after taxes, and all). If you're deeply in debt, then it may occupy a large sum of your money.

2. When your VCs and board own most of the company, they have the right to fire the CEO regardless of his founder status. This can be avoided as long as you keep the majority of shares. Influence varies from VC to VC, but I'd say their influence is proportional to the amount of the company they own. They only take as much as you let them take.

3. Being bought out and/or burned is probably the top reason why founders leave or sell out. When you've been doing a startup for several years and you're ready to move on, and someone offers you a big fat check for your company, it's hard to turn it down unless you're really passionate about your startup and are still willing to push it forward yourself.
For those interested in a related Wikipedia odyssey, check out Water Activity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity>, then hit the "shelf stable" link and move on from there.
Fun thing how that is completely the opposite for me (7th district in Vienna) - the Austrian postal service is most reliable - always arriving 8am straight. GLS/DHL/TNT vary, depending on the driver.
Why Power Users Hate Fancy Web Design
Rawkets - A massively multiplayer HTML5 space game (canvas and WebSockets)
Alternatively you could make storing a snapshot a premium feature, and only offer it on the paid plans, or do as dropbox does and offer full restore only for paid users (the others gets the newest version, and the ability to restore any version that isn't more than 30 days old).
CarTel: Driver Data Project
I read it in http://isbn.nu/9780375503665
5 Torrent Files That Broke Mind Boggling Records
Let epsilon < 0
My first thought was "I wonder if their Largest Torrent category counts the lossless Touhou torrent?[1]". Turns out they didn't, though some commenters mention it. It measures in at 848GB (790 GiB), which is incredible considering its content (indie video-game soundtrack remixes). The companion album-art torrent[2] is an additional 20GB.

[1] http://www.nyaatorrents.org/?page=torrentinfo&tid=167750

[2] http://www.nyaatorrents.org/?page=torrentinfo&tid=167751
Not a terrible article as far as this political junk goes, but really has no place on HN. This is reddit/r/politics fodder.
It would be useful to take "wealth" into account as well. One can have a big income and quite small wealth and vice versa.

The "income inequality" is irrelevant only if we assume that the income is not related to the resources. This assumption I find rather weak.
The most amazing browser-based game EVER made!
Agreed. I appreciate Stallman's efforts even though I do not always see eye to eye with him.
We realise that, and that's exactly why we offered the discounted yearly rate. Another reason is that payment services charge too much for payments of $2-3, so we save more money with an annual rate and can pass the savings to you.

Of course, there's the old "one in the hand, two in the bush" aspect as well, which gives an added reason for a discount.
>> I've recently read stories of startups that became successful and were bought out for large sums, but the founders received little from the transaction.

It depends on what startups you're talking about, there are many reasons as to why this could happen.

>> Also, how do cases like Steve Jobs and Harry Osborn occur where they are removed from their own company? Do VC's and Investors really take that much of the company? How much influence do they hold over a company they invest in?

Apple was a public company at the time, and Steve Jobs was forced to resign by the board, just like any other employee can be forced to resign for whatever reason (unless they're in control of the majority of board, ala Mark Zuckerberg). He still owned a large share in Apple after he was fired, which I believe he mostly sold off.

>> Why would a founder continue if they lost their ownership? Why would a founder give up ownership of their company in the first place? Isn't one of the prominent appealing aspects of the start-up world to own your own company?

Most good founders don't want to give up ownership, but if you want to receive funding from investors, as far as I know there's not really any alternative to giving up equity in your business.
Why am I the one bugging him? mechanical_fish is the one making pie crusts with vodka.
Yep, that makes sense. We're actually just implementing this now, hopefully it will solve our problem (it looks very promising, from some initial data crunching we ran), and is very easy to implement.

We plan to send an email one month after the user's last activity, and then delete the documents (just the documents, not the account, just in case) a month after that.
I didn't realize all pages were cached. I figured they were indexed and either discarded or tossed into storage
As much as anything else, this advice seems to be more on "how to build a good working relationship with another entity" than it is anything in particular about competing.

In fact, it seems straight out of Dale Carnegie, and I'd guess that we could accurately summarize these points as "Build a good personal and professional relationship, and then see if that becomes a good business relationship. Even if it doesn't, maintain the personal/professional relationship."

His points about using the services/products of the entrepreneurs you're interested in and about not leading with a term sheet are all about humanizing the relationship into an actual relationship, rather than one more item on one's investment portfolio.
I would never ever hire you after this post. Basically, basing on this text, your only good side (proved by some reference), is that you read HN.
(Dummy) Democracy and (Crony) Capitalism within the context of Global Economy is not suitable and scalable. Hope somebody finds a comprehensive solution.
That would probably cut down on our usage a lot, but we think that that feature is useful enough to everyone that it should be a core feature, and we'd have to index the page anyway so it would consume a bit of data (not as much as storing the entire page, but still).

I think that, by lowering the free limit to 300 and culling inactive users' data, we won't need to worry about cost again. We are already in the green (very much so) from the great support we have gotten from paid users, but this will allow us to focus on improving the service rather than worry how we'll scale all that abandoned user data.
That's true. I was careful to say "They won't work on curves that aren't smooth", which doesn't mean "They will work on all curves that are smooth", so I think what I said is still correct.

And as long as we are going for perfect rigor, the function you describe is undefined at x=0; you have to make it piecewise and say "if x=0, then this function is 0". (And I could say something about "you want natural curves, not this artificial pieced-together stuff.")

Also, I believe the Taylor series for that function is well-defined and accurate at all points other than x=0, so you can just pick one of those points. Are there smooth functions whose Taylor series are wrong everywhere? I doubt it. And one might argue that it's pretty problematic that, e.g., with the function "0 if x≤0, e^{-1/x^2} if x>0", a Taylor series at any positive point will be wrong for all negative numbers, and a Taylor series at any nonnegative point will be wrong for all positive numbers... well, I dunno, touching half of the entire range of a curve is still a lot (an infinite amount, in fact).

One could imagine a bunch of functions pieced together to make a smooth function (e.g. "e^{-1/x^2} * e^{-1/(x-1)^2} for 0<x<1, e^{-1/(x-1)^2} * e^{-1/(x-2)^2} for 1<x<2, ...") whose Taylor series are all accurate only over a small, finite domain. I guess that kinda answers my question. But at this point I would apply the "natural curves" objection. I wonder, are there smooth non-piecewise functions whose Taylor series are all wrong like that? (Absolute value is a piecewise function, so I'd probably reject anything with absolute value.)
Agreed, no relation between the two. The poor have a chance to make it, work hard and be successful, especially in America.

Most don't have it so bad either with flat screen TVs, Internet, food to eat and a roof over their heads.
I've heard that diapers.com's warehouses are fully automated. If this isn't already how amazon's warehouses are set up, is this infrastructure (and the know-how to reproduce it) part of the reason behind the acquisition?
I think it's necessary to stick with your intuitive thought to a degree... at least until rationality takes over. Keep in mind that anything, taken to the extreme, can become unhealthy. I think you've hit the nail on the head in saying that "decisions and actions based on intuition usually end up having a rational explanation" and while I've found this to be true more often than not I feel the need sometimes to act purely in rational thought. It's something that, for me, needs to be decided on the fly. I can't plan when I'll act rationally, nor when I go with my gut. It just happens.

I don't think it's in our nature as human beings to act purely in a rational realm, but some degree of it has to exist or we'd never get anywhere. When I focus on matters of personal finance and productivity I need to think and act rationally or I lose objectivity (and ultimately much more). However in my work and much of the rest of my life, intuition goes hand in hand with experience and I find myself relying on what I "feel" to be the best course of action given whatever situation.

Again, this intuitive process that makes use of my experience (and that of those I've entrusted my thoughts to) is something I've given myself over to on a rational basis. If my experience-based intuition has served me well in the past, isn't using that to my advantage the rational thing to do?
> I can only conclude that many scientists are not confident at all with their theories, or they are purportedly cheating.

That's really not an insightful conclusion. I think it's rather a question of pride and effort: the code probably needs to be cleaned up before release, and the reward for investing that time is very low (career-wise). Researchers are going to publish their source code when it becomes required by most major journals and conferences.
You, the person waiting for your package at home, are not the customer.
This is a good wake-up call that I had not considered. The suggestion by samstokes above for Shutl seems quite interesting, hopefully it is viable.

Also it is strange to me that a pizza is delivered 100% of the time yet a package success rate is much less - they seem to have the last-mile problem solved. Maybe all HDNL and the like need to do is pick up the damn phone when they can't deliver!
Aaron's point around "building simple software takes vision and discipline" really resonates with me. I've seen countless enterprise software tools that are overcomplicated and cluttered with too many features, doing most poorly.
One of the big things I know about is the being "in love with the technology". Founders get replaced in their own companies because they focus on improving the technology, rather than revenue. There is a balance, but part of the reason VCs and investors get shares is because their financial interests should be represented in the company. If as a founder you aren't representing their financial interests, then of course they will replace you.

There are big dramatic forced resignations, but often there are simple restructures. A founder will be removed as CEO, but stay on as a VP of development, for example. His ownership stays intact, but the executive leadership will be more aligned with the interests of the investors.
Have a blessed coming-winter..
any HNers with experience w/Amazon "price bots"?

When Quidsi launched Soap.com in July, adding an additional 25,000 products to their lineup, the site was strafed almost from the minute it went live by price bots dispatched by Amazon. Quidsi network operators watched in amazement as Amazon pinged their site to find out what they were charging for each of the 25,000 new items they initially offered, and then adjusted its prices accordingly. Bharara and Lore knew that would happen. "If we put something on sale, we usually see Amazon respond in a couple of hours," says Bharara.

Or as Rohan puts it: "A price bot attack truly is the sincerest form of flattery."
This was incredibly well done, but it appears that the webhosting account was just suspended.
Punks do have something in common with education: sniffing glue and sitting around waiting for a handout from the taxpayer...
On a weekend, I taught open source skills to CS kids. Thoughts?
Surface area required to power the whole world by solar power
An engineer and a mathematician went out for a drink. On the other side of the room, they spotted a gorgeous woman.

"I wish I could work up the courage to talk to her," said the shy mathematician.

"No problem," said the engineer. "Just walk halfway over to her, take a sip of beer, then walk halfway again, and do that over and over until you're next to her.

"But then I'll NEVER get there," said the mathematician.
Places to Intervene in a System
Reminds me of Continuum:
http://www.getcontinuum.com/

Although that's a thick client and was a pain to get running on Linux through Wine last time I tried.
I make it 6 :)
Whitehouse.gov should be a hyperlocal blog
a work of art...
Why won't it give me the time of the day without signing in with twitter first?
Yeah, just had that happen to me too, after I got to level 46.
Well it has happened - just not with home computers like the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64, per se.

I'm thinking specifically of the Atari Flashback 2, which was a single-chip reimplementation of the Atari 2600 (even has cartridge connector solder points on the board). Then there's also the innumerable NES, Super NES, and Sega Megadrive/Genesis clones that have been produced recently...
It's not a tor-based system at all, though it can be used within the tor network.

It does have an active forum community, exchange markets, and the like.
There's the classic rule of thumb from Brooks' Mythical Man Month: turning a project into a product takes 9x the effort.
"The application Rawkets by would like the ability to access and update your data on Twitter. Sign out if you want to connect to an account other than ________."

Not _necessarily_ damning, but it certainly does look suspicious, doesn't it?
I'll contact USCIS then. Thanks for your help!
I will be staying in Hyderabad for 6 weeks in Jan and Feb. It will be my second time there, and I'm definitely interested in plugging into the hacker scene there. Any events/tips to know about?
Heard a talk recently from Marc Bell, CEO of Friend Finder Networks. He ran a tech company previously called Globix. An interesting tidbit from his talk is that Friend Finder Networks (which runs over 30,000 sites) actually creates most of the amateur content themselves and lowers the production value so that people believe it is real.

They also run BigChurch.com, which is a christian dating site. You cant make this stuff up.
A rating system could work in theory. Putting it into practice would be hard though.
There are, or nearly, I don't recall their name offhand but my bank has used them to get a card to me. I never needed your point 2, but point 3, they said on the phone, where are you, we'll come find you, and the courier just wanted to see my passport before handing it over.

I don't doubt they cost considerably more than Amazon delivery costs (GBP 49/year for unlimited deliveries to any address in my address book). Ultimately there's nothing I buy online that I care that much about that I can't wait a few days for Amazon to re-send it and hopefully randomly choose someone who isn't HDNL or Citylink.