skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> A phone OS which allows the networks to be totally supplanted wouldn't be marketed positively (by the networks).

This is so backwards that it hurts. A Network which wont support the latest and greatest phones with the most awesome features will lose out customers.

Around here where I live (Europe) you chose the phone you want and you chose the plan which fits your needs. Two entirely different and disconnected things.

I can't believe you Americans let the telcos boss you around like that. Didn't you believe in freedom of choice, and all that? Why do you put up with this? Vote with your wallets. Pay whoever gives you choice. Don't let Apple's (or Google's) latest shiny toy fool you into choosing serfdom, just because it's (currently) only available on a few (or one) carrier.

Where I live, the iPhone was launched (US-style) exclusive to one operator. This is totally Alien here, with a capitol-A. People had to go to a lower-quality network operator to get the first iPhone 3G. The market didn't like this, data heavy users didn't like going to a network with a reputation for being sucky on data. They waited it out.

Voila. More operators got it, because Apple figured they could sell more by not being exclusive. It's not that hard.
Wikileaks Shows US Entertainment Industry Wrote Spain's New Copyright Law
NextGen Cluster Monitoring
JavaScriptMVC 3.0 Released
I really dislike post-statement ifs, like "do_something() if condition?". They seem to be used particularly often in Ruby. I don't know how dependent clauses ("if x then y" vs. "y if x") work in Japanese, but Ruby coming from Japan may be a factor.

"if (3 == x)" doesn't bother me so much, I tend to think of it like unification in Prolog.
That's how consulting pricing works in a vacuum. It's not how consulting pricing works in the real world. Scope abuse is absolutely an issue in enterprise consulting.
This series of posts should be labeled "things to avoid in C". There is nothing specific to C++ there.
There is a school of thought that once Nazis are invoked, the argument is automatically forfeit by whomever issued the remark.
Ask HN: Review my REST API and Website (api.seqcentral.com)
Fellow Hackers,

I'm working on a new REST API and corresponding Website for SeqCentral (found at http://api.seqcentral.com) and would greatly appreciate your feedback from both technical and UI perspectives. As you may know, once the API is "live" it's very difficult to change.

From a technical perspective, I've taken aspects from a wide variety of sources including Twilio, Zencoder, Twitter, 3Scale, and AWS. There are a lot of "best practices" but some conflict. For example, should the API version be in the URI? If no items are available should it return an empty array or "null"? Should authentication be done through cookies? digests? OAuth tokens?

If you don't have interest in evaluating the REST API itself, perhaps the greatest help could be undertaken in a couple of minutes by evaluating the UI of the API documentation itself: http://api.seqcentral.com/index.php/api

Thanks for the help.

-Jeremy
I think it will become a bubble if a lot of these companies start to IPO (presuming that investors pile in at those valuations).
Can you walk down the street while typing a SMS message or entering a street address without looking at the phone? That's pretty much my "is a soft keyboard good enough" test.
On the flip side, I've seen founders cling too tightly to control. Sometimes the guy that is really good at getting a version 1 out of the garage is not the same guy that is good at calling the shots once it's a 60 person company. Taking the stance that "I want to retain control," is obstinate and egotistical. The proper stance is, "I want to retain control until someone better comes along." That may be never. But it's the right attitude to have. In the end, it's not about who controls what, it's about who's more likely to make all the time and money that's gone into the company worth more.
I didn't have any problem doing this either, but I also went in with the pre-release G2 and the salespeople were just about peeing their pants :)
Being a good athlete is only part of what he did.

He also created a brand around himself becoming far and away the most marketed sports figure in history that generated billions of dollars and boosted sales of many brands he was affiliated with. That doesn't happen by just optimizing your ability to play a game.
That's not what I see at Ben's link - the results I see are completely relevant:

Machine learning - Kai-Zhu Huang, Hai-Qin Yang, Irwin King

Machine learning techniques for multimedia - Matthieu Cord, Pádraig Cunningham

Advances in machine learning applications in software engineering - Du Zhang, Jeffrey J.-P. Tsai

Machine learning in cyber trust - Jeffrey J. P. Tsai

Machine learning for multimedia content analysis - Yihong Gong, Wei Xu

Data analysis, machine learning and applications - Christine Preisach

Machine Learning and Data Mining in Pattern Recognition - Petra Perner
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/10/18/130654483/starchy...
"VCs will still be able to convince; they just won't be able to compel. And the startups where they have to resort of compulsion are not the ones that matter anyway. "

I excepted some sort of footnote for this one. It's not immediately obvious to me this is true.

Hypothetically, the founders are the ones that know their business the best, and hence tend to have a longer term vision. Given that the founder executes on the long term vision, those are the companies that matter. Is that the line of thinking?
Given they are not paying the homeowner for their "experiment", I wonder if the homeowners insurance will payout for fire damage? Will the homeowners insurance have to pay out for any damage to neighboring property, etc?
Your wording is somewhat misleading, as the flooding was entirely accidental in all of the incidents mentioned.
Considering that not all YC companies who want VC funding get it, it would be surprising for all of the YC companies that do get it to be above average in whatever metric drives board control. I think this has to be a trend that goes beyond YC.
I have a N900 (you have to buy them straight from nokia at full price). I walked into a T-Mobile store, and asked for a plan. They said:

(1) Cool phone!
(2) Sure, here you go.

I'm paying about $20/month less than I did on my AT&T/iPhone plan. It's nice.
Indeed. Espresso isn't necessarily higher in caffeine than coffee, either, once volume is factored in.

For that matter, a 100 mg caffeine pill may have less than a big mug of coffee. There's too much variation.
ojbyrne already answered that, you shouldn't put fingers in your ear so much ;)

"institutional investors, namely pension funds, university endowments, etc"....I am betting at least one invested in Facebook.
lots of good stuff on the author's blog as well:

http://steveblank.com/
Dirty? That's a fairly loaded wording. How about varied or heterogeneous?
I think you are probably right, or at least I am willing to admit that you sound like you know better than I do. I had the impression that there was a distinction being drawn between distributing the documents themselves, and disseminating the information contained within - and that was why you never saw the full documents in the papers and only abstracts. I can't find any evidence of that being true, though, now that I've looked.
The stock photo with the Live Chat button. Please get rid of it, thanks.
More expensive than rails? There may be good arguments against this system, but this is not one of them. Unless you are talking about building a railroad in the desert the cost of pushing a pipe in the ground (which can even be done without opening up the street for a small diameter) is certainly much lower than acquiring right of way alone, not to mention building all the support infrastructure such as bridges, etc.
I've always felt Prolog was a massively underrated language. I've been going on a bit of a retro fest looking through languages I dabbled with as a child. I think the only thing I liked more as a child than MicroProlog was possibly Forth.
SSH and rsync? Or even better, use hg/bzr/git to maintain a version history of the files and then just sync across devices (it's uber easy with Mercurial, not sure about the other two). I personally use the latter (Mercurial).
You should design some shirts and submit them. Don't wait for users.

http://www.invincibilitee.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=88

Empty page.

When Reddit was starting out, one of the founders was submitting stories all day for a couple of months, under different usernames. Just saying.
This is still in invite-only phase, and while I do have an account, I'm not actively using it yet for my primary files because there are still some features it lacks over Dropbox, namely:

* can't choose where local files are cached, it assumes where you want them

* no way to back up more than 1G to their "cloud", ie, no paid plans yet, which I would really like to have at least for my most unreplaceable files

* no way to share individual directories with other users, you must share entire "libraries" as they call them, which are basically top-level folders on your aerofs drive

* no way to make files publicly available for download

Other than those points, I think the service is a fantastic idea, and I do eagerly look forward to being able to switch from Dropbox for my photos, documents, etc. However, the above limitations mean that I can really only use it for a few extra things that I don't have room for on my Dropbox account, eg, music.
This is how a lot of financial commentary goes. There were people predicting a bubble and a downturn Real Soon Now for internet-related companies by 1994.
Offtopic, but I can't find chopper defense in the app store, how come? (or is it only for the iPad?)
Balanced against the constant, nearly-infinite, breathless hype that is pumped out by the bucket-load by the tech blogs, a little healthy skepticism is a good thing in my opinion.
abebooks is owned by amazon.
At that point, why not use SparkleShare to simplify it?

Either way, hg/git/bzr don't work for a lot of cases, because they are extremely inefficient for synchronizing large files, such as music, photos, video, etc.
thanks for pointing this out! we'll investigate this further and may increase the key length as necessary.
Isn't a dozen a small percentage of total YC companies?
Try Prolog in a Browser
Incidentally, for those that are interested you can try the examples in a browser at the article linked from the HN post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1976397
It is easy enough to author .mobi files compatible with Kindle, but Amazon doesn't let others create their own DRM'ed ebooks.
While I would like to believe it's because YC-funded startups are better, the fact is that for any startup to raise Series A, the VCs have to believe they're so good they could one day go public. So my guess is that the reason so many YC alumni have been able to retain control is that they are so well connected. They have the other alumni (many of whom are very sophisticated about fundraising) to give them advice, they get hooked up with the best lawyers, etc.
Poll: Linux Desktops/Window managers
Which window manager or desktop does HN use the most ?
Openbox/LXDE
Other (write in comments)
Can you defame someone with a hyperlink?
Ask HN: Have you ever used logic programming in a recent project?
By logic programming, I mean Prolog or variants. I would like to know how it made your life easier compared to using other more conventional programming paradigms (OO, functional, imperative). For which situations is it the best tool at hand?
Contrary, only armchair commentary has plateaued.
So its not terrifying to be put on a public list of people who, if killed, will damage critical American supply chains?
Startups and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
10 years ago, we had a "2 VC, 2 founders, tiebreaker CEO" board structure that I think was probably more common than simply "conceding the board to the VC". (I'm aware of the pitfalls in that structure, too).

My sense of it --- and someone with more recent experience please correct me if I'm wrong --- is that the shareholders agreements matter as much as the board structure does. Point being, you wouldn't want to see "founder control" becoming cosmetic, a fig leaf around the real power the VCs wield.
Appointment Reminder: Patrick's new startup launches
NSPCC denies involvement in Facebook cartoon avatar campaign
It's a large percentage of those who've done series A rounds though. Around half.

And practically all the pre series A companies still have board control, because most startups do at that stage.
Here you go: http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/appointment-reminder-pa...

Hope you like it :)
But both the title and the summary claim that it secures your 'internet connection', not your 'firefox connection'. That's my big gripe with the article. And of course you can setup SOCKS5 proxies for all apps, but it'd be nice if the article mentioned it.
> I figure that any company that offers free food woudl be willing to listen to employee suggestions.

Listening to, and stocking based on, employee suggestions isn't enough. You have to provide the food that I want, even if I'm the only one who wants it.

Stocking based on employee suggestions will miss about 10-15% of the employees.

Yes, I understand why that is, and I'm not suggesting that companies change, I'm pointing out that it's a problem.
XML 2.0: Thoughts on a new version of XML
Must...Resist...Team America...Reference...

goes off to reddit
How to test a random number generator [page 17 onwards]
I changed my facebook icon to a picture of Craig Shergold. He's a poor English lad, dying of kidney disease, and if you send him the pull-top rings from aluminum cans, you can help fund his dialysis. He's trying to set the record for most pull-top rings received.
(I posted this comment on the blog as well)

The poor performance of Turbo Boyer-Moore might be due to cache locality issues. If you jump from checking the end of the needle to the start of the needle, then there's a good chance that you'll cause a cache miss - which has the same cost as several hundred instructions. A modern Turbo Boyer-Moore would probably work backwards within the same cache line before jumping to the start of the needle. A couple of carefully chosen cache-preload instructions could make Turbo Boyer-Moore. For a good overview of cache effects, google "gallery of processor cache effects".
Yes, an NFC Reader application only supports reading. The chip on the Nexus S supports reading and writing[1] so, assuming the OS allows it, you can write an application to swap contacts or whatever.

1: http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/06/google-nexus-s-review/
What The Heck Are You Actually Using NoSQL For?
Google TV unboxing by Chicago Android.
Well, I'm yet to be convinced that they're unnecessary. Besides, if I'm gonna start regretting every unnecessary consumable I've ever paid for I should probably start with, say, tequila or croissants which have additional deleterious effects.

On a risk/reward scale, giving up on shampoo and soap just doesn't seem to cut it. The best I'm going to do is save a few tens of dollars a year, while the worst I'm going to do is have everybody who encounters me react subtly worse to me, perhaps without even knowing why.

I'm willing to pay the cost of the soap just in order to have the peace of mind of knowing that if people do dislike me then at least it's not because I'm filthy.
Or use unison, which is similar to rsync, but works 'both ways'
Minor typo: resort of compulsion --> resort to compulsion
This essay makes VC's seem like a necessary evil that founders have to tolerate through gritted teeth, as opposed to something more benevolent like, say, YC.

Do I have the wrong impression?
> We have fairly healthy food.

I know what it takes to keep my weight in check and it's a small subset of what is considered "healthy".

> One of my coworkers lost 60 pounds since starting.

Good for that person. Untill I'd done it, I didn't know how hard it is to do.

Yegge says that the typical experience at Google is +10. Is he wrong?
actually all of them are on our todo list--three of the four are already implemented but yet to be exposed to the user :)
I still don't get it. Why can't I drink a full can of Red Bull? The article doesn't say anything about drinking a full can versus a part of the contents.
or sell your own branded T-shirts based on the posters they want via a provider like this:
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/api
Redesigning Instagram
Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and the Multi-Touch Thumb
> "It certainly would not be a detonation that would level a neighborhood," Newman said.

Oh those words would be terrible indeed to rue...
Many other aspects of the service become more expensive

Can you elaborate on this, specifically what extra fees or services they charged you for?
> This an awesome step for Grooveshark. [...] I already coded new ad remover for my self.

Shhhh... Don't make them regret doing it. :)
I am continually pleased with the quality of the work coming out of New York hackathons. Here's to keeping this quality of work going for a long time!
I'd also like to render my thanks for an awesome OS and phones. I feel bad that my T-Mobile experience is squatting at the top of the comments, and I don't want people to get the wrong idea-- I still love my Android phone, and my next phone will also be an Android-- probably a Nexus S. :)
It's might be backwards, but it's an unfortunate truth.

I live in Europe too .. but go to any phone shop, and you'll see that carriers pick specific phones to support. People traditionally buy phones with contracts - and a lot people shy away from buying a phone upfront (although this trend seems to be waning).

Also, a large part of the massive amount of money that's spent on marketing comes from the networks. Without their support a phone platform would be dead in the water.

I don't think the iPhone situation was an example of market forces creating pressure, I think the intention was always to allow other networks access .. in the UK Apple had a specific business relationship with O2 which must have been profitable for both parties. I think restriction to one network, was an example of clever (devious) marketing.

The situation will continue to change - but for the time being the power of these carrier networks is an unfortunate fact of life.
I have the same Chrome version on WinXP Pro (SP3).

It looks perfectly fine.

Are you sure you don't have some bad plugins installed?
They mention how 'open' it is, however I want to know about the DRM of it? IMHO you can't be fully open with DRM.
Maybe you are discounting these guys as not being sane, but I just recently found out that Virgin Mobile USA (a Sprint owned MVNO) has recently added a smart phone no contract option with an extremely reasonable monthly fee - $25/mo for unlimited* (5.5gb) data, unlimited texts and 300 minutes - and tops out at $60/mo for unlimited minutes. It's far from perfect, though as they don't allow non-VM phones and their only android choice is the decidedly mid/low end samsung intercept (2.1 eclair, evdo rev 0 only) for ~$150-$200 but I still thought it was impressive to see any sizable dataplan for $25 all in. They also offer no contract usb 3g for $40 - $20 less than sprint charged me for years on contract, and $10 less than I recently paid for a verizon backed MVNO no contract usb data plan.

They apparently have legendarily bad customer service though.

On the subject, does anyone know if there are any high end sprint targeted phones that are exploitable to the point of being able to change whatever UMTS/WCDMA uses for identifying numbers that you might be able to convince a hardware specific MVNO like this to enroll a phone that wasn't their own?
Ya, I'm certainly no expert either - this is just based upon what I've read. I think it falls under the same class of protection as the Pentagon Papers did. What Ellsberg did was illegal - but the New York Times wasn't prosecuted for publishing the information. However the New York Times did only publish excerpts like you're saying and not the full documents so maybe there is something to what you're saying? The full documents were not made public until Mike Gravel published them in the proceedings of the Senate using an interesting legal loophole.
Sure, but the actual amount of real money which has ever changed hands for facebook stock is tiny compared to the $50 billion valuation.

Besides, even $50 billion is only equivalent to a fifty-buck-a-share swing in the price of AAPL, something that seems to happen every couple of months. So the total amount of money floating around in this bubble is tiny; nothing to be concerned about unless it's your money.
There will probably be a rider to the law that states that you can't discriminate against users that select "Do Not Track". That will be added by the Trial Lawyer's Lobby so they can ensure a class action lawsuit is filed.
If an investor disagrees with a founder so much that they are willing to take actions that force that founder to act against his/her own will, then things must be in pretty bad shape. When a company is doing great, nobody picks fights with its leaders.

On the other hand, there may be cases where a generally positive opportunity, such as a possible sale, is valued very differently by a founder and VCs. I'm not sure how common these cases are, or whether there are existing rules about the board's obligations to shareholders that reduce the likelihood of conflict.
I hate to write this... But I've seen a few of these "most upvoted" StackOverflow questions posted to HN in the last few days, and, although they are good articles, they are very easily accessed (by which I mean, all you have to do is go to StackOverflow and click on questions, and then on most voted; likely what anyone new to it would do. As programmers, I'm pretty sure most us have visited SO at least once), and hence something most of us would have already seen.

People will see this phenomenon and it'll catch on, and HN will end up like Digg, with the only content posted being "top tens".
"The Noah principle: predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does."

-Warren E. Buffett
Is it really possible to get VC funding when all you have is a version 1 out of the garage? I was under the impression that investors wanted to see traction before putting in serious money.
W3C [...] 3 or 4 years; don't hold your breath.
Ask HN: Selling with powerpoint but without product
Myself and a friend were discussing the possibilities of selling a somewhat complex software product, which would be specialized toward a select few clients. The product does not exist, and such I argued that we couldn't sell it. My friend, who is a long term sales guy, argued that we could: By designing how it would work and present this to the potential clients.

I have tried this scenario before where I had only a prototype, and a very enthusiastic sales person went out and sold it to multiple clients. In this case however, we're talking about not a single line of code being written.

Personally I think it's a bit dodgy, i.e. It's a bit too much pie-in-the-sky to sell something that does not exist in any form other than as an idea. I have a hunch though that it is more common than I'd like to think.

I'm wondering if anybody here on HN has any experiences with non-existing products being sold purely on presentation? When it happens, is it an oddity or is it indeed pretty common in the IT industry?