skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
i dont really know where you got that aquisition idea from, but thats not what they want to do. The core message is that they want to help Hackers build a business, without them needing to worry too much about setting up the business and giving them good advice over the course of a year. Problems/Changes etc are discussed in quarterly meetings, foudners get high quality feedback and can work on their product.
The goal is still getting another round of financing if the concept proves to be successfull but with that amount of money some startups will even have the chance to walk on their own without further funding.

I dont see whats wrong with that, and i also dont see much difference with Angel investing for example. In fact many successfull angel investors work together with their early stage startups to make them succeed, thats exactly what HackFwd does, just on a bigger scale. If you need more funding, they will prepare you for that, if not, fine.

Potential startups still have to have a good prototype, have to deliver a good pitch and ultimately get accepted which is how it works for any other investment vehicle basically. It is much harder to get early stage funding in Europe, so the existence of companies like HackFwd is a great thing for the tech economy imo.
That can still easily be gamed. "Oh, sorry, the receipt printer is out of order today, Mr. Pissed Customer!"
The probability of me picking up girls just increased...
Flying internationally just amplifies this: was looking for tickets during the Christmas season and it was 50% cheaper to fly Brussels - Amsterdam - Kampala than Amsterdam - Kampala.
Well now I know. thanks for the clarification. Something about the Chamber of Commerce in the US shouldn't be considered common knowledge. Had I asked who is Steve Jobs, then I'd assume that was common knowledge HERE.
Poor example. Implies you being forced to do things you would otherwise not have to do, which wasn't in the original example.

Better would be: If you rented me an apartment and I didn't move in right away. It would be unfair for me to demand a refund for the time I didn't move in, but it would also be unfair for you to rent the apartment to someone else if I already paid you for it.
That's just copyright law. Patents are the real issue/problem, I think.
In the Era of Now the salesman still needs to wait throughout the sales process
Not approving the app in the first place into their store, wait till they are popular and a threat.

If they are stealing IP then RIM should not have let them onto the store to begin with. RIM should know what their IP is.

I would say that if they RIM already reviewed their app and let it onto the store, that is a tacit implication that they approved the app with RIM's (alleged) IP in it.
seems like delivering happiness, by tony hsiesh, the ceo of zappos is getting a lot of buzz. although i haven't read it.
Doesn't everyone start with nothing?
Ask HN: review my startup ironode.com (simple/automated security testing) 
http://www.ironode.com

Hey guys, please checkout my MVP security testing app (ironode.com); it crawls your site for open web exploites (sql inject, xss, xsrf etc..).
I've allocated 30 free accounts for HN users - I'll add more as we finish the scans for people.

Questions:

1. Would you use this service?
2. Would you pay for it?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks guys!
I'm not sure, I've passed up moderate savings ($70 on a $400 flight or so) to go on an airline I prefered. Delta has been a PITA every time I've flown with them, where Southwest has been my airline of choice for over a decade, it's an easy decision to give my money to the people who don't cause pain for me every time.
Enough people do so that's it's not a set of something small like 10.
> Will you help us set up something like Y Combinator in our country?

> Actually, the seed funding business [is] international.

From the YC FAQ.
Audio: Chris Matthieu of Tropo on PhonoSDK and Telephony apps
Who is Building Linux Now? Mobile Developers.
Living room furniture
living room furniture look so modern and contemporary style.
I have said this before somewhere, but Google as the new MSFT has the classic MSFT problem - die if you do, die if you don't.

They are a cash machine, which, sitting idle in the bank will invite ire from investors. If they invest in something, they will still get hell, since, there is a valuation bubble and anything worth picking up will wind up with them overpaying for it.

In Google's case there is little that they can pick up in their core domain - they already slurp up most of the decent emerging talent related to search even as their dissertations are being drafted. The online domain has very few companies that even justify a billion dollar valuation even in adjacent domains that Google makes its living off.

p.s: I'd love to have this problem.
Well, in their mind, he's an evil guy that's trying to game the pricing system that they broke by allowing it to be cheaper to buy a round-trip than to buy one half of that round trip.

So if they let him keep his return flight, they wouldn't really be preventing anyone from doing that.
Kinect Sex: Coming Soon To A Console Near You?
It's at least the only major consumer electronics company to know that "shrink it and pink it" isn't an assured way to get women buying.
The Samsung Galaxy S is the new kid on the block. After purchasing the Galaxy Tab and seeing the craftsmanship that went into it, I would say that the S would be my phone of choice, but it lack one feature that I want and that is a physical keyboard. I am a big guy with broad fingers the onscreen keyboard is a pain for me on small devices. But I would say if the quality of the S is a good as the Tab it is probably the highest quality Android phone on the market. It is already at 2.1 and they say it will be upgradable to at least the next two versions of Android.
Despite downturn, Texas still major tech exporter
11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011
REALLY like that saying about 50% problem 50% distribution.

I think you hit it spot on. I see Groupon, yelp, foursquare, all as going after the local space. Some people saw it as a tech problem, some people just looked at it as a distribution problem.

GroupOn found the low tech extremely scalable solution, and is reaping the benefits.

Companies like Foursquare are probably a couple of years away from having enough businesses do self service on their tech solution...
Wikileaks Website, Pummeled by Attacks, Loses Home
This is a grenade launcher with programmable air-burst ammunition. If the enemy is hiding in trenches you can set it to go off over their holes, if the enemy is hiding behind a wall you can set it to go off behind the wall, etc.. It also has uses in more dynamic firefights, since unlike most grenades it doesn't have a timer, you can fire it into a group of enemy soldiers running at you and set it to go off amongst them. Overall it's a pretty potent weapon.

A similar weapon technology was developed by the allies in WWII, it was a radio fused artillery shell called the "VT fuze". It allowed artillery shells to detonate at a specific distance above the ground (or in proximity to an aircraft), instead of on a direct hit. This dramatically increased the effectiveness of artillery (by nearly an order of magnitude), the shells were considered so important that they were only used in situations where they could not be captured and fall into enemy hands.
Previous submissions ...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1955782 - singularityhub.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954815 - foxnews.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953309 - ctv.ca

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1952077 - businessweek.com <- this has comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948235 - guardian.co.uk
In summary, they can game us but we can't game them.

The asymmetric information barrier that airlines have setup is going to disappear soon. There are plenty of site working on breaking it down.

In the case of the author of the post, he now has a preference for an airline. I bet he would now pay extra for a flight on Virgin. When is the last time someone became a fan of United AA or Delta?
1) It's a 404 page. The main information here is "your link doesn't work". No detailed diagnostic is needed.

2) This default 404 page can be customized to match a site layout and styling and possibly have search boxes, etc. to help you find the page you were looking for. You even helpfully get a comment to let you know to keep your page code over 512 bytes.
Unrelated to the content of the site, the design is beautiful. Does anyone know who's the designer behind it?
Vote for EatDrinkit in Global Startup Battle
New Startup to Participate in International Entrepreneur Competition

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – At the Indianapolis Startup Weekend event, November 12-14, seven entrepreneurs co-founded a new mobile web application, titled EatDrink.it [pronounced eat-drink-dot-it ], a meal review service based on location. The application helps answer the
following question at any restaurant: "What do I want?".

EatDrink.it will now participate in the Global Startup Battle Wild Card competition, in which the public votes to decide a winner. They will be competing against teams formed in 23 cities, spanning 10 countries, for prizes to support company advancement, such as support from well known entrepreneurs and investors. Voting for the competition is now live. Visit http://bit.ly/VoteEatDrink to vote for EatDrink.it.

The application accomplishes both a personal and social function. First, the application allows you to easily review any restaurant meal and then quickly recall your personal review during your next visit. Secondly, EatDrink.it provides instant meal recommendations based on the meal reviews shared by others at specific locations. The application automatically detects your current location, providing you both your previous personal reviews and those left by other restaurant goers.

Registration for the application is currently available by accessing www.eatdrink.it from either a mobile web browser or a desktop browser.

For more information, connect with EatDrink.it at any of the following:
www.eatdrink.it
www.twitter.com/eatdrinkit
www.facebook.com/EatDrink.it
http://eatdrink-it.tumblr.com/

Tech info: the application is built using the latest mobile web technologies. It leverages HTML5 location tags to pull back locations from foursquare within location compatible mobile browsers like those found on the iPhone and Android devices. Eventually the company plans
to move forward into the mobile application market with entries into the Apple App Store, Android Market, Windows Market Place, and Palm App Catalog.

Read what others are saying:
http://www.indygeek.net/2010/11/14/eatdrink-it-provides-fresh-look-at-local-dining/
System Engineers are Software Developers
The press is incredibly lazy. It isn't limited to just PR fiction that gets repeated as fact, it's just gross sloppiness that multiplies as each layer of the press cites the other as a source or an authority.

Shilling, but related - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1958746
It's curious that so many of them are 70+ years old, which means they were the right age to benefit from the huge economic boom that occurred in the United States after World War II.

Seems to support the hypothesis that success is equal parts smarts, hard work and timing.
It is worth remembering how airlines price tickets:

Pricing is not based on how much it costs the airline to get you to your destination (i.e. distance and fuel). Airlines long ago figured out how to extract the most money for various flights based on where they fit in the big picture of WHY someone is traveling.

This is why a round trip that includes a Saturday stay over is usually cheaper than a round trip leaving on Monday and returning Wednesday. Airlines know the second traveling is most likely a business person and willing to pay more.

I was recently planning two trips. I needed to go to Las Vegas on one trip and to Atlanta on another (both from Virginia). On the same day, the Las Vegas trip was twice as expensive as the round trip to Atlanta and back, EVEN THOUGH, the Las Vegas flight had a layover in Atlanta. Could I have just booked a flight to Las Vegas when I wanted to go to Atlanta and just not gotten on my second flight? I could, but then the airline would cancel my return trip. They would say its because they assume I never made it to my final destination and didn't need my return flights, but really, it is because they want to prevent this sort of thing.

Airline prices are not logical (to us). They are based on extracting the most amount of money from a schedule.

(of course, this doesn't excuse crappy treatment, but, just so we're all clear...)
The main reason is really to try to maintain their market segmentation by prohibiting people from buying tickets other than exactly the ones they choose to fly. If they allowed this, it'd be impossible for them to charge more for one-way tickets than round-trip tickets, as many airlines do.

Other prohibited things include: buying a one-stop "A->B->C" ticket and then getting off in B, because you really wanted to go A->B, but it was priced higher; and buying two opposite-direction interlocking round trips, in order to make two short trips appear to be two overlapping longer trips (thus avoiding the "short trip" fare penalties).

Basically airlines are trying to run a purposely inefficient market, and as always happens in such markets, market participants attempt arbitrage strategies, and here the airlines are attempting in turn to prohibit the arbitrage strategies.
Logged. http://lg.gd/46
Auto Transport Tuscaloosa, Alabama
I'm curious if he's ever flown much before. Missing the first leg of a discount coach r/t canceling the entire reservation has been standard since at least 1980. Yes, their online systems should be better at explaining what happens once you've missed a flight, but fundamentally the web apps for airlines are dirty hacks layered on top of mainframe systems, and don't handle exceptions particularly well.

Airline pricing is incredibly complex because...it is a complex product. It's a perishable product, and they are trying to price discriminate multiple classes of people, dealing with competitors, etc. It is very common to have the case he considers rare (XXX-YYY-XXX costing >2x what YYY-XXX-YYY costs -- especially international, where different currencies, taxes, etc. apply). XXX-YYY often costs 4-8x the cost of XXX-YYY-XXX or YYY-XXX-YYY r/t, too.

There are certain routes which are run as "air shuttles" -- you can buy a ticket, and then walk on and get on any available flight. SIN-KUL, IAD-NYC, etc. Some airlines have very simple routing and fares (Southwest, for instance) and can more easily be used for flexible travel. First Class or Full Fare Coach tickets are also used by businesses or other travelers who demand extreme flexibility -- the $170 r/t SFO-LAX-SFO was a discounted coach fare where price discrimination in terms of restrictive terms applies.

Additionally, airlines are highly regulated, some by international treaty (read the back of a ticket jacket sometime).

As for "not screwing a major customer over", a frequent flyer would be 1K or GS and worth $50k+/yr to the airline, and would probably have been able to easily get his ticket changed. Yes, price discrimination and market segmentation sucks when you lose the game, but it maximizes revenue for the carrier.

Btw, the "hacker news" of "airline hacking" is flyertalk.com. There are people who craft amazing itineraries and maximize frequent flyer points in ways which seem absurd (scheduling 4 r/t back to back flights across the US to Hawaii just to get miles, or flying SFO - Taipei - LAX for the cost of SFO-LAX to get huge extra miles).
How about "only pass user-sourced data in parameters"? So anything that isn't a parameter is coming from the app, possibly as a response to user data, but not actually from user data. This statement seems just as powerful as the original. Anything misleading about it? Somewhere you can't use parameters and can't simply use app-supplied query pieces?
A second point would be that the time you spend automating tasks has other payoffs, in the form of learning and inspiration.

For instance, I suspect that part of the inspiration for Appointment Reminder came from Patrick's own realization of how valuable the automation of small tasks can be (chasing down missed appointments, in this case).

---

To go off on another tangent, this is akin to eliminating technical debt from your workflow. By taking time to "refactor" certain tasks by doing them in a more efficient way, you get a net savings going forward. You can increase your ability to take on new tasks by increasing the efficiency of existing ones.

In keeping with the refactoring theme, if you have tasks that don't scale well, you may need to spend more time on them in a crisis. For example, in the event of a site outage you might suddenly have a deluge of support emails. Having support tickets be automatically created would save you n*60 seconds of copy/pasting.
It's a default page provided by web hosting management software. You use Plesk to manage multiple web sites, which may not be related to each other or even use similar backends (for instance, if you're a web host with multiple clients).

The people managing the code and content of the site in question are responsible for customizing their error pages.
The new Y2K scare
While you can patent a game, or game materials, you can't patent a game mechanic.
Computer-Generated Robots
He already paid for the product. In fact the delivery of the product came in 2 shipments.

For the first shipment he basically said to throw in the trash, now you as a business could throw it in the trash, or resell it since it's going to waste.

The customer was there for the second shipment yet you were not there to deliver.
You can't lose you patent by ignoring an infringer you know about. However, there are potentially bad consequences for the patent holder.

1. There's a thing called "laches", which basically makes it so you can't recover damages from before the time you file the suit if you waiting too long to file the suit. There's a rebuttable presumption that six years is too long.

What that means is that if you find out about the infringement and wait six or more years to file, you will get no damages from before the date of the suit unless you can prove to the court that there was justification for waiting so long.

If you file before six years, there is no presumption of laches, but the plaintiff can try to prove to the court that your delay was unreasonable.

Note that even if the plaintiff gets no damages, he can still get an injunction to stop continuing infringement regardless of how long he delays. Thus, in a case like this where RIM's likely goal is to kill the infringing product rather than to collect money for past infringement and perhaps license the product going forward laches is no problem.

2. I believe in some cases, the courts have used "equitable estoppel" to prevent the patent owner from taking any action against a particular defendant. For this to happen the patent would have had to do something that reasonably gave the defendant reason to believe they had permission to use the patent and the defendant would have had to rely on that.

Equitable estoppel doesn't necessarily involve a delay in suing, but a long delay would be a factor I'd expect the court to look at as it provides at least some support for the claim that the defendant reasonably thought they had permission.

An example of where I'd expect equitable estoppel to play a role would be if Microsoft ever decided to sue over the parts of Mono that are not covered by either the Community Promise (which covers the ISO/ECMA version of .NET) or the Apache license (which they have released much of the mobile .NET stuff under). Microsoft has ignored the potentially infringing parts of Mono for a long time, and has actively encouraged the Mono project as a whole and even made changes on Microsoft's end to make some of their stuff work better with Mono. I think the Mono people could make a good case that Microsoft's action gave them a reasonable belief that they were OK, and Microsoft knew that the Mono people thought that.
Business Lessons from 37 Signals $1000 Master Class
I'm against naming software anything where your first mental reaction is "turn into a cockroach".

It looks like a good software tool with a real use case, though, naming aside.
By outdoing them in features, performance, installed userbase. You know, competing.
Good point. This makes more sense as a default 404 page.
With at least three ways to change it to tabs on bottom.
I disagree.

First, I'm very surprised that you were not aware of the policy that if you don't take the first part of an itinerary, you won't be able to catch up half-way. I guess it's something everyone learns very quickly.

Second, your proposal that United should fix their prices is disingenuous. They would if it didn't mean bankruptcy for them. The reason they do that is that most of their income comes from business travelers who can expense expensive tickets in economy class. The way to detect a business traveler versus a tourist is whether they spend the Saturday at their destination. The business traveler flys on a Tuesday and return the next day or so, never stays over. So they get charged 3X more.

If United just "fixed" their prices, it would be a complete collapse. A handful of airlines have chosen the "per-segment" price approach (Southwest, JetBlue, Virgin).

So recognize the cool hack for what it is: Saturday night stay equals deep discount.
San Francisco, CA.

TechCrunch is. We're looking for an intermediate-level Rails developer to help us out on CrunchBase (the versioning complicates a seemingly simple product quite a bit). We are doing a back-end rework of the existing code base and this needs to be deployed soon. There are also interesting features that are planned after the deploy.

I reckon majority of your time will be spent working on CrunchBase. Since TC runs on the WP platform, some portion of your time would be spent on operational stuff as well (at least until we find a dedicated person for that). Additional PHP background could be put to good use here as both operational requirements/small new projects keep coming up from time to time.

We are understaffed currently (I'm the only in-house Rails Dev/Tech everything person) and we definitely need a smart, hands-on, motivated person.

Contact me directly (email in my bio).
According to this, Wikileaks is no longer available on Amazon either:

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP90b4520b2a9b455ea6e9d8d66fae...
The same thing happened to me on Delta/North West last winter: I missed my flight and booked a new one without telling customer service. Seems pretty par for the course overall. The difference is I was able to apply what I had spent on the canceled round trip to book my flight home once I found out that they had booted me.
Because it's a default error page intended to be customized.
This sounds wonderful.

However the "What is Gamification?" is a much better first page than the home page is, with respect to explaining things.
It's Scotland and it's the public sector - I don't think anyone worries too much about "wasting money" unless its for actual services that people care about.

If you want a laugh/cry consider the ITIs:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2002/12/2753

£450 million for research is a lot of money in country of about 6 million - they have been going for a long time now and what earth shattering innovations have we had?
Mobile Internet rearranging the tech landscape in Austin
Ah, well attacking the comments I agree with. Since you posted on the main thread I assumed it was targeting the article itself. Ad hominem is still pretty ineffective around here, though, even when it's patently deserved for the quotes you picked.
Making AIDS a memory on World AIDS day