skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because not transmitting that information doesn't get you much. You only need 30 bits of identifying information to track a billion users. With basic stuff like IP address, time zone, screen size, user agent, and supported plugins, you're pretty much there.

The web server asking the browser "do you support X?" increases latency and doesn't help anonymity. Bad web servers could just ask, "Do you support X, Y, Z, and what's your screen size..." If each of these questions prompts the user, it's a usability nightmare. If the browser's answers are configurable, why not make current browser information configurable instead of inventing a new standard?
I guess RIM went to the Oracle school of business. They're going to find out exactly why this is a VERY bad move. They're going to have an awful time trying attract developers for their platform.
I think it's pretty different. - It doesn't have a public application process.

Why is this a good thing?

It doesn't give you $15-20k for 6%, but instead matches your annual salary with caps at 90k, 140k and 190 if you are a 1, 2 or 3 person team respectively.

In NYC, I'd expect three competent software engineers to be making ~400k. That's a 50% salary cut (it's livable, but certainly leaves room for competition). In other parts of the world, this would obviously be different... maybe you should adjust it for cost of living?

HackFwd always gets 27% equity, and you are required to give away 3% to advisors/referrers.

So your valuation of an idea ranges from ~$330k to ~$700k, based only on the number of founders? If the % equity is constant, doesn't that encourage an applicant to always come up with three founders, even if one of them ends up dropping out and not taking any equity?
Hmm, really? This position basically describes me, and I've been debating lately how I can best pitch myself to a company as I continue to move through my career. Although like you mentioned, I'd most like to be a co-founder with a company when I make my next move.

I can get around in Rails but I'm strongest with just pure Ruby at the moment (and a bit of C, Java, PHP, etc). I understand social networks and I've done quite a bit of published research on that front. I understand customer needs and how to reach them. Analytics, datamining and split testing are fun. I like beautiful code, user accessibility, and feel that good SEO is a natural result from good coding practices and practical sense. I know how to structure advertising campaigns and what works and what doesn't. I understand how to shape a product and make decisions for building a strong infrastructure. The key is having a good product with a clear message. User data privacy is important to me. I look good in a suit, and VCs seem to like me. I can learn anything needed, and I'll love doing it. I don't mind working long hard hours and enjoy being challenged to the degree that I get bored easily if not challenged. I'm good with people and can lead a team effectively. I've got experience from working with a handful of companies now. I'm young and have few prior commitments, enabling frequent traveling when needed. I thrive off networking and knowing everyone in the room. I like taking risk. I have solid references.

About the only thing holding me back a little bit is that I've recently moved to Columbus, Ohio and I'm committed to being here for the next few years while my girlfriend finishes her PhD. At the same time, I've worked remotely for several companies and it rarely poses an issue.

Yet, I see many startups looking for a CTO or lead programmer who is the kung fu master of the code. I can understand any code you show me, but I'm more of a hybrid of marketing, business and development than just a pure developer.
He wasn't complaining about having to wait 4 hours. He was complaining about the lack of respect they have for customers (not specifically him, but in general), and he was comparing his experience between Virgin and United.

With one, he was surprised by an unfortunate, not-well-known policy and OFFERED NO HELP, versus the other where they went above and beyond what he expected from them (sell him a ticket to get home).

I think this is a great example of how some companies "get it" and are going to keep and grow their customers, while other companies don't "get it" and it will lead to their demise.
Google Editions E-Book Store Coming This Month
"Phosphorus is a key element in all known forms of life. Inorganic phosphorus in the form of the phosphate PO43– plays a major role in biological molecules such as DNA and RNA where it forms part of the structural framework of these molecules. Living cells also use phosphate to transport cellular energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Nearly every cellular process that uses energy obtains it in the form of ATP. ATP is also important for phosphorylation, a key regulatory event in cells. Phospholipids are the main structural components of all cellular membranes. Calcium phosphate salts assist in stiffening bones."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Biological_role
Not everyone is aware the mob even exists.

Is there a meta-business that keeps track of customer perception on the internet for you?
Search and Download free mp3 Darius Rucker - Come Back Song
That's an exaggeration, but it is extremely hostile.
whose inky waters are death to mortals

And yet you can swim in the lake. Snorkeling there is supposed to be quite the experience.

If you want a really scary lake, try Lake Karachay:

According to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based
Worldwatch Institute on nuclear waste, Karachay is
the most polluted spot on Earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

Also: http://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contami...
Ubuntu's Unity interface: What to expect
I've always been rather surprised as to why all UK universities don't give free access to all of their IP produced through taxpayer funded research to all and any UK taxpayers.

Even better, do the research publish the results in the appropriate forums and let anyone anywhere do what they want with it.

Of course, if the research is paid for privately then that's completely different. But for publicly funded research - make it public.
ironically, i might not because the hyperbole was so great; i'll always remember it as the canonical example of an over-hyped announcement.
After discussions with jailbreakers, Microsoft opening up WP7
I just wish it didn't sync with Google.
Ask HN: Which android phone to buy?
I am thinking about buying an android phone, but deciding which is a surprisingly difficult task right now (to someone to knows little about the history/future of the phones). I have seen this come up on HN here in the past, but since the Android market changes so quickly, I think it is appropriate to rediscuss.

Points I am considering:

-I prefer Verizon, would settle for AT&T, and I may be able to make an argument for T-mobile if the monthly rates are significantly less (for Nexus One only)

-Don't like physical keyboards

-Must be upgradeable to android 2.2 today. Also, how will phones today deal with upgrade to 3.0 in the future?

I don't need this phone in the next week if you think waiting another 1-3 months will make a big difference.
Care to link me?
If you are using sass, you might as well use http://compass-style.org/ Awesome piece of software that brings together sass/scss and css frameworks (blueprint, 960). It also has a built-in list of commonly used mixins.
How would they track which people chose not to be tracked?
I realize the title isn't the same as the article, but I hate the title of this article, I'm fairly sure that some random coders didn't force Microsoft to make a major change to their new platform.
New York, NY

Gilt (http://www.gilt.com/), Gilt City (http://www.giltcity.com/), Jetsetter (http://www.jetsetter.com/)

We're hiring in many areas to support our rapidly growing businesses.

* Software Engineers!
* Creative/Designers
* QA
* Businesses analysts

And more :)

The company is growing very rapidly and killing it in the market. And there will be a lot of opportunity for new businesses as well : http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/30/flash-sales-site-gilt-group...

Software stack consists mostly of Ruby, Java, Postgres.

https://careers-gilt.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searchCa...
It would be really nice if the website said or showed what it is you're actually looking at.

And the initial login screen? If it wasn't for HN comments, I wouldn't even know you're supposed to put in your Google credentials.

Good times.
Steve Yegge on Scalable Programming Language Analysis
It helps. In watching videos from previous years, it did appear to be more product oriented. When selecting companies, what else do you look at? Readiness to take on investors? size of the market? prototype of the product? or is simply based on how interesting the presentation is and how comfortable the speaker is in making it?
The standard example is supreme court vs Bundesverfassungsgericht. The chief difference is in spelling.

I had a phase, where my German looked much more English---I put spaced inside compound words and did not capitalize all nouns. I should try capitalizing all Nouns in English one Day.
If you just need get-current-char and go-forward-n-chars operations, you can get those cheaply by having heavyweight strings implement an iterable API. (Yes, I know you also need the ability to iterate backward for Boyer-Moore, but that's also fairly straightforward.)

This is not an argument against heavyweight strings, but an argument for better programming languages.
Mac vs PC: Precision Makes the Difference
The 'Nexus S' is rumored to be unveiled this month, Gingerbread Android (2.3) Samsung device.
Before invalidating kik's keys, they removed kik from the bb market once before, claiming battery drain as the problem. If that was honestly the problem they had with it, there wouldn't be a lawsuit now, or there would've been one earlier. This is most definitely an evil attempt at keeping bbm relevant which began with a pretty sneaky excuse.
We don't think of language as a technology, but it's actually the most important one we have.
I got the Desire HD earlier this week on T-Mobile in the UK and it is AMAZING!
Is there a web site where I can learn the pronunciation of words like Ajax,OAuth
English is not my native language. I am studying CS and spend most of my time developing web applications. I learn everything about web development from internet. But when it comes to talking about them with my friends, we always have a hard time pronouncing some words. Some of them are abbreviations like oauth or ajax. Pronounciation web sites like forvo.com doesn't help either. For example there is two different (us/uk) pronounciation for the word python but I want to learn how you guys pronounce it. My current solution is checking the online video tutorials but sometimes it just wastes my time.
Actually, I don't find flying particularly frustrating. Waiting on the runway, getting kicked off my flight because it's overbooked, getting stuck in the airport - it goes with the territory, and I am okay with that. My grudge with United (and subsequent love affair with Virgin) was about the way they treat their customers.
In terms of new hires, yes, they should absolutely be trained. Getting hired at a new company, I am always lost. There's so many things that you don't know about the existing code base. Thus, the solution of FB's two week boot-camp to get employees up to speed is IMO what every company should do.

But for start-ups my experience has been that everyone is learning and teaching one another and developing simultaneously. The whole process of being in a start-up is itself training.
I stopped reading here:

"I ended up skipping my the flight from SFO to LAX because a friend of mine was driving down the night before; I figured I would keep him company on the drive, and I would get to spend an extra night in LA."

In my experience, that basically canceled his set of flights ,and he was no longer a customer. That's been my experience for at least 10 years of flying.

I didn't read the rest of the article, but I presume he discovered, the hard way, on a thanksgiving weekend - that he had no ticket whatsoever and was SOL.

That's really nothing to do with United, and to call it Customer Service, when you aren't actually a customer, is stretching it.

Now - My story of Taking a Greyhound Bus from Reno (Amtrak was sold out), (I had a ticket for the 9:50 AM, but they oversold it, and I didn't get on until 12:45 - after arriving at the Greyhound station at 9:00 AM in the morning) could have been negative, but, I'm traveling freaking thanksgiving weekend! I figure it's even odd's I don't even make it back home Sunday, so anything better than that is an Epic Victory. :-)
link appears to be broken
From the context: Take an article from raw data to something a human would like to read.
Should you use Profounder to fund your startup?
I'm fascinated with crowdfunding of startups/projects/etc. So I had the founders of Profounder and Crowdrise on This week in Startups

The roundtable starts about five or six minutes in (if you want to skip my banter with Tyler about turning 40!). Thanks to .co and sendgrid for sponsoring this episode!
Self Destructing Paper
Men want Android, women want iPhones
Nothing. I think non-ASCII symbols are a net loss in mathematics too. While they're powerful (taking succinctness to be equal to power), they come at the expense of accessibility. With great power comes great power consumption; there's a reason most people don't have jet engines under their hood or read mathematics: doing so is very expensive. I believe the cognitive cost outweighs the expressive benefit.
Twenty Billionaires Who Started With Nothing
Don't want to sound like a broken record (see my other comments) but really happy with the Dell Streak, and it's huge 5 inch screen.

Does everything that you ask, though 2.2 will be out this year, so 1.6 at the moment (2.1 here in the UK).

It meets the min specs of the 3.0 (or 2.3 if you believe the latest rumours) but not had the word from Dell that is will def get this update yet (same for nearly all current phones).

Any questions let me know - but in all I am really happy with it, and barely use my home PC any more.
I'm always astounded why so many companies seem more willing to lose a loyal repeat customer than take a small hit on the bottom line for a particular transaction. Companies like NewEgg, Costco, and Zappos have demonstrated how being willing to take a small hit on some transactions can engender a fanatical customer base, but it seems most companies still prefer to be penny wise and pound foolish.
THANK YOU for mentioning this. I didn't realize it and the Tweetie style block list was one of the only things bugging me.
>Especially when the company has grown so large and sclerotic that developing new products has become a struggle against entrenched corporate bureaucracy

Out of curiosity, what do you have to support the claim that google has become this slow-moving monolith (yes, I'm paraphrasing) other than random articles from tech media? If you have first-hand knowledge I'd love to hear it because google is still a great company to work for in my eyes and I'd like to hear the opposite view.
While gunicorn isn't necessarily the fastest according to Nicholas Piël's tests, I like it for its ease of use.

It is very simple to get up and running and has some features like the ability to ratchet up and down the number of worker processes on the fly, or automatically reload them. When gunicorn's performance becomes a problem, I will re-evaulate and consider something like gevent.
> I'll happily play show-and-tell with the non-proprietary parts if folks want, after it launches.

I'd love to hear more about this, thank you.
I will travel, or be a volunteer or both things at the same time.

After I drop the college, I went to north Italy, bought abandoned house and I restored it. I learned a lot of stuff.

If you are from US, maybe go to Europe is quite expensive at this moment, and probably you can get more in south america for your bucks.

If you have an idea about what kind of experience are you looking for, maybe we can give better advices.
But in Firefox that's easy to fix.

Just type about:config, set network.proxy.socks_remote_dns = true.
I suggest that if anyone else finds themselves in Rich's situation then they call the airline prior to their first flight: Claim to be ill, tell them you'll make your own way down to LA in few days, and tell them you'll still need your return flight home. Sure, it's deceitful, but you have to play the game you're in..
Even if the email is real, and the guy is a bit of a head case, I don't see how that justifies people who have never done business with him posting reviews based on what are essentially rumors. Although I accidentally downvoted you because HN sucks on an iPhone, I completely agree that this is a scary mob mentality.
iOS and Android tied as consumers 'most desired smart phone platform'
I don't think anyone said to sink a life savings into an investment. We're talking about buying reasonably sized and priced homes.
What you call the "daft laddie" approach would be how I would handle it, rather than piling on enough sugar to give everyone in the room a toothache.

"What are the budget and staffing constraints for this project?" I KNOW the project is doomed, but I don't need to be the one to point that out - let the presenter handle it, if they haven't thought about it they can give a vague answer now and figure it out later, or maybe they have thought about it and have a solution I don't suspect. Either way, the focus shifts from "you haven't thought about X" to "what about X?"
This idea has a lot of potential, and thanks for including code samples!
It's easy to chalk this up to whining and ignore it since it comes off as a rant. The problem is that United and its employees don't consider service a priority, not that they have a policy about canceling flights when you skip the original leg. I've had this experience multiple times with United and have found them to be the worst offender of all the legacy airlines.

They are a mess and they are outright hostile to their customers much of the time. I realize that travelers get stressed out and yell a lot and it can be frustrating, but laughing at a customer should never be acceptable.
This doesn't make sense to me. Doesn't that mean, that Japanese (and German, and Indian and anywhere else in the world) markets are completely open to (and from a certain point of view desperate for) startups? I understand problems with getting funding or the right people, but can't you import those?
It's not just the fluffy stories either: http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

From the section "Suffer the Little Children": "...the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."84

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony."
How else would you resolve an IP theft situation? Asking nicely?
Why the downvote? I'm just asking questions I'm genuinely interested in.
Don’t assume you know what people will use your product for
You know, just because that's the way it's been done forever does not make it right. The lady next to my cube has a sign about tradition, which is what the bad flying experience has become in America:

http://www.despair.com/tradition.html
Designing Great Experiences: The Gap Between Activities
And women also tend to only commute by bike if the area's safe. Also note, younger demographics prefer the iPhone by just as wide a margin.

I'd say that this is largely due to the way Android's been marketed: just look at the Droid advertisements. The iPhone's been portrayed in a much less gender-specific way.

The iPhone's much better than pink-colored feature phones traditionally marketed to women, while removing a ton of the management necessities associated with a healthy Android phone.

Also, looking at the chart, there's no statistically significant reduction in iPhone interest, it's mainly taking away from "Not sure." I know a ton of women and men with Android phones, but only the guys have strong opinions.
Wild Pockets browser-based 3D game engine is now open source
San Mateo, CA

Guidewire Software - We do software for the P&C insurance industry, but we build a lot of cool stuff to let us build those systems (like the Gosu programming language, http://gosu-lang.org). We need people both to work on the applications and to work on our platform, including our web framework, our Eclipse plugins, and our ORM layer. The company was founded back in late 2001 and is still privately held, but at this point we're very stable and successful.

http://www.guidewire.com/careers

You can e-mail me directly (akeefer at gmail) if you have any questions or if you don't want to get lost in the HR shuffle. I'm the Chief Platform Architect, so if you end up working in our platform group you'd be working with me.
Personally, I'm not a fan. For generic content like this, I'd rather read it in a table or chart. The data is being encoded into natural language, and then when we read it we have to parse the important information back out.

This is a weird example, but look at Groupon. One of the main reasons it's so big is the custom, humorous descriptions that go along with each item.

If newspapers want to survive, they shouldn't be automating their content- it just makes it more generic and forgettable. Nobody wants to read an article that a computer wrote.
Some biologists have made a case for DNA replication evolving twice, independently:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC148579/pdf/27338...

Apparently you can also make a case for the evolution of DNA itself, possibly from a 2-letter alphabet:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.0445
Since when is selling you a ticket "above and beyond" expectations for an airline?
Amazing news - I wonder if this will give WP7 the lift it needs to compete with iOS and Android?

I saw my first WP7 mobile in the flesh today, and I was impressed - but without the backing of developers it could be a niche product.

Question to coders out there; Will this make a difference to you? Will you now have a go at coding for WP7 - or will you be waiting to see if the phone is a commercial success before testing the waters?