skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Great organizations are wonderful when they're effective at supporting the product or service. With a startup, it's hard to know the organizational size required because you usually aren't even sure of the size of the market.

Some companies look at early exponential growth, think of it as a nearly-vertical line, and build an organization that thrives on that growth. But at some point the growth will start to flatten, and the organization has horribly overshot the mark by then. If building organizations is hard, pruning them is ten times harder.
Think 'Step Mother' to her husband's daughter. This would explain why she wasn't the one rushing to denver and rather made it so the father could make it.
The storytelling isn't very clear, but I think the author meant she is the step-mother of the mother/daughter that lost the 3-year old son.
Not a big deal. You can make a DOM from anything.

In fact, the invalid case is exactly why you'd use this technique. If you use a bunch of regular expressions, you can probably make something that works on a subset of valid inputs. If you want it to work on everything, then you need to use a parser to generate a DOM, and then interact with the DOM.
Gawker makes a hash of non-ASCII characters in passwords
Living in the midwest, I always hate looking at national average salaries. My cost of living is great, but its always an ego hit to see numbers like that.

Either that or I need to get a better paying software engineering job :/
Sorry, by resources, I meant real resources building an implementation of H.264 and supporting that in an official capacity, and assisting Adobe's implementation of Flash. I'm pretty sure that the resources needed to implement H.264 was on a different scale then providing assistance with Adobe.

This all ignores the fact that Google's involvement was improving the plugin experience alongside Mozilla, and it wasn't just benefit Flash.

Even still, all this is to say that it's still Adobe's version of Flash that goes into Chrome. Google isn't writing their own Flash implementation. What this means is that someone could build and H.264 plugin for Chrome. Google just doesn't want to be the person to do this. Considering the fact that handling this plugin would likely cost them money, I don't see a problem with their decision.
Long file names were under Apple ProDOS Apple DOS was still 8.3 (I think).
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey: A Predictable Tragedy in Arizona
If you turned it into a wiki and allowed people to see other people's answers written out then maybe but no not in its current form.
This is from October, has already been posted here but I guess the anti-google frenzy that is happening on HN these days will bring it back to the top. Also if your read the article, it says Facebook, Microsoft and just about any tech companies do the same. What's wrong with legally paying as less tax as possible?
Historian? That blows my mind, who, besides academics, hires historians? I understand studying history is vital to being a competent executive/decision maker, but no one hires solely on that.
Tax avoidance is a perfectly legitimate tactic that every corporation with accountants and lawyers worth their salt employs. Not to do so would be to lose a large competitive advantage. The problem, of course, is the complicated tax code that can be circumvented.
Open source Java 7 for Mac code appears
“flying a banner of doing no evil, and then they’re perpetrating evil under our noses,” said Abraham J. Briloff

Paying the lowest amount of taxes required by law is certainly not evil. I wonder how much extra Mr. Briloff sends to the IRS, and I wonder how evil he considers that to be. If the law makers in the various jurisdictions didn't intend the tax code to be used in this way it's certainly in their purview to change it. Since this has not happened one can only assume that GOOG et al are acting in the manner which the law makers intended.

In my opinion persons such as Briloff who derive their income from schools which are largely publicly funded to teach people a trade which is largely only necessary because of the tax code are the people who should be paying extra because of what the tax code provides for them. (eg. their livelihoods)

If Briloff wants people to pay extra taxes perhaps he should encourage the gov't to provide services worth in excess of what they cost. Perhaps Mr. Briloff forgets that governments are instituted amongst men to secure rights and not to redistribute and destroy wealth.
A Guitar Amp/Effect Solution For Linux
I'm a dev for cloud files at Rackspace.

This is something that we are getting with Akamai. Content will be able to be served compressed or uncompressed based on the Accept-Encoding header. So you will be able to store your uncompressed content in Cloud Files and serve it compressed to users whose clients send the Accept-Encoding: gzip header.
Out of curiosity, who would get to decide who gets "additional attention"? The airline? If that were the case then you could expect to see an "additional attention in screening for only $25" upsell on airline ticketing sites within a week...
Ultimately I was thinking of math problems with perm URLs, and possibly blog style comments underneath. I wonder if a wiki would be better than inline user comments.
Saying that there is no such thing as a type system is like saying there is no such thing as an integer. Sure, your machine can only represent an integer (and not very well), but that doesn't mean they don't exist—they're simply mathematical constructs. Mathematical constructs can have properties, such as being prime or composite, real or transfinite, countable or uncountable, or, in this case, strong or weak.

> You'll find programming language theorists using the phrase "a sound subset" with no qualms.

It makes no sense, though. There is no sound subset of C, because C isn't checked anywhere. There is no amount of pruning you could do that would allow you to call the result "sound": only by adding checks could you assert that. The usefulness of the term "strong" is that a strong system (pure surjective digraph) is able to be made sound, while a weak system (impure digraph) is not.
My parent comment was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but as others, such as kenjackson and unexpected, have pointed out, the issue is in fact more complex than my comment implied.
Mythical 'iPad 2' caught on camera
Insiders Say Facebook's Goal Is To Be The First Trillion Dollar Company
Great job, I'd love to hear more about your architect to hear how you deal with this data.
They've been pretty key in advancing the state of the art^, so I don't know how you can say that. Maybe you don't have a sense of history.

^: I'm talking about search, mail, and maps specifically.
25%± 1%
I could see something like that being useful. Would be nice if you could select a category for "what kind of question" do you want. I'd also like to see immediate feedback after each question, including an explanation of how to solve the question properly (if the wrong answer is submitted).

I could see paying for a service like that. Especially if the scope of the material ranged all the way from high-school algebra through - at least - college level calc, diff eq, linear algebra, etc. I say this as somebody who's just now attempting to go back through his old college algebra/calc notes, refresh on calc, and then trying to teach himself differential equations and linear algebra. For somebody like me, a site like this could be really, really useful.
That is the biggest pleonasm I've laid my eyes upon this year.

Maybe you were being ironic. My head hurts.
Oh, ok, I understand now — that would work fine, then. It's actually a good solution, because it lets your translators customize strings right where they have the full context, e.g. in final templates.
How well does this system handle your second bullet point (transcription for conversation with the deaf)? I have a use for that but, not having an Android phone yet, I can't just try it out.
If you haven't read Greene's Yale Speech <http://www.powerseductionandwar.com/archives/robert_greene_y..., it's worth it.

"There are three types of people in this world in dealing with this social reality. There are, what I call, the deniers, the people who deny this reality exists. They almost want to pretend that we are descended from angels and not from primates."

"Among these deniers, you will find two types. You will find people who are genuinely disturbed by the politicking aspect of human nature. They don't want any kind of job in which they have to do that. You will find that they are slowly marginalized. They can be happy that way. They are never going to assume a position of great responsibility because it involves all of this."

"The other branch of the deniers are the people that are the passive-aggressors. ... People who consciously don't want to admit that there is any kind of manipulation involved, but unconsciously are playing all kinds of games."

"The second type of person besides the deniers are those who love this Machiavellian part of our nature and revel in it and are master manipulators, and con artists, and connivers and are very aggressive."

The third type is what I am calling the radical realist. It is what I am proposing that you adopt."
My thoughts are that it would be used by students for practice, and possibly by teachers to generate quizes.

Excellent feedback on the free-form text input, and rational answers. I was thinking about randomly alternating from multiple choice to free form. Maybe eventually adding a switch for the user to decide.
I get your points - they're valid. I'm a particular case on twitter because I have a very short username (@f) and actually miss many of my mentions when they happen at night (my account gets a huge amount of false positive mentions, some because of a regexp bug I reported to twitter years ago and that still hasn't been fixed). For people with very specific usernames (99.999% of users) that isn't an issue.

Mind you, with my comment I didn't meant to diss the service - It just doesn't fit my particular use. I'm glad it fits other people fine. Good luck with the product!
So far this seems to be the consensus of the comments here: Google is doing this legally (as are other companies), and that the article is misleading. Sure, it says that it's legal, but then it turns around and sympathizes for the US government that can't keep from spending money that it hasn't made (and has no hopes to make). I know everyone hates Wall Street, but they /do/ know how to make money - thievery or not.

Reduce costs, increase profit by increasing market by dropping taxes. Companies are moving away from the states, and law is remaining stagnant for a evolving market.
Ask HN: How do you explain the hacker's role to business types?
What do you tell people who approach you asking to "just build" a site for an idea they have?

We as a community denigrate these sorts of people. And I'm well aware it would be a bad idea to just quote a fixed price or hourly rate.

But I don't think there is active malice, just ignorance.

How do you explain to business types the role of a hacker in their business and the need to involve technology and user experience at all levels? How do you politely and helpfully convince them that you are not a commodity.

I would appreciate if someone could recommend a short book or blog post that I could send to these sorts of inquiries.
Medical Schools Must Pay Social Security Taxes for Residents
Google's Conversation Translation Looks Like a Gimmick
Become an entrepreneur.
Ordering Your Own Medical Tests
I agree with you, but I don't think that's what's happening here - the main content of the article is about an interesting and remarkable approach to customer service from a company that every business can learn from. The format for it is as from from "hn material" as you can get, but the content is there. I agree that you can find lessons in practically any story, but I think it's whether or not the core of the story is relevant to hn that distinguishes what's appropriate to post here, not how it appears on the surface.
Not sure what the market is for this, but if the questions were simpler, I'd play @ my desk while eating my lunch.

A few suggestions:
- find a way for me to challenge my friends so you get some virality and the game is more meaningful
- offer multiple skill levels. Start easy so you can get teachers to recommend it in their classes
- let us "boast" if we got a question right or a streak of questions right
20 Fresh Vector Character Designs
I absolutely love vectors. Vector graphics actually motivated me in getting started and experimenting with digital illustration. Many illustrators from all around the world use this popular method and create fresh, cutting edge vector art. However, while vectoring is a technique, character design is admittedly a quite challenging creative procedure that aims to express, communicate and consequently produce a visual entity that engages the viewer.
Arbor.js - HTML5 graph visualization library
I can think of worse things that could happen with that tax money than have it go to an innovative, highly competitive American technology company that pays huge social dividends.
misleading, the article goes on to say Google paid a 22.2% effective tax rate, the headlines 2.4% rate was only on a portion of their revenue, not all of it.
This might save you some time/money, but it certainly can't bridge the gap between different languages. Keep in mind that "to translate is to betray" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traduttore,_traditore
I don't see anything in the OP's comment that suggested a presumption of automatic female incompetence.

Design in many realms is not trivial work. At Google, at present, it is by no means trivial work. But one should bear in mind that consensus converges on Google's initial success as being predicated almost exclusively on relevance of results far more than any other factor.

Google destroyed Inktomi and AltaVista with a better search engine, not with a better interface.
Originally "flash video" was Sorenson Spark/H.263, in 2005 they added On2's VP6 which was their high quality option until they added H.264 a couple of years later. Each step improved quality but mostly by adding decode complexity so as computers have got faster people have migrated to the heavier-weight codecs.

I would imagine that today all but legacy content served via Flash on the web is a standard H.264 file that can be easily repurposed for serving via HTML5 to Safari and newer iDevices (older ones only supported the lower profiles).
This tool is for teachers not students. Then the real question is, how easy is it to create a page like that?
If a self-proclaimed hipster site turns out to be a pseudo-meritorious fad - is the start-up a success? Philosoraptor wonders.

This has to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Irony and all.
IPhone App Pricing Strategy
I'm almost ready to launch my first personally developed iPhone app. It has a strong value proposition (you scan the barcode of DVDs/BluRays and it adds them to your Netflix queue).

I had wanted to launch with a price of $4.99 and the applesque pricing anchor of "half the price of a DVD".

The app actually tracks how much it would have cost to buy all of the DVDs that you scan in as well.

Is it better to try and release this for free (for a short period of time) with the goal of getting on the "New and Notable" listing or does it make more sense to launch with a high initial price and then lower it for special promotions?
I could see this being useful, actually. Flesh it out with a bunch of options (no-variables, linear, quadratic, parens, constant ranges, number of terms, etc) and it could really help teach concepts. I remember my wife was studying for a math test and she kept getting tricked up on negative integer multiplication and division. I built something exactly like this on the command line (only in that small domain) and she was able to do 30-40 problems in just 5 minutes. It really made it all sink in and stay there.
That would be Computer Systems Analyst. #5 on the list.
Because people can only have a background in one language?

I think you're the one missing benatkin's point and proving yourself to be one of the language snobs he mentioned.

Good developers are good developers. In your own quote it says he has 8 years of PHP experience. Sure, he has a really good Ruby background but it looks like he has a really good PHP background as well.
Try translate.google.com

Ah, you mean it can be read as being reinstated after the crime last year? Sorry for being unclear, I was on the way into meetings.

The connection is that there really was a conspiracy where someone was misusing power and influence -- but it was political influence with a left wing government, because the psychopath claimed to be so politically correct...

Considering that Larsson was too left wing for the normal communist party, that was quite funny.

Edit: To back my claim about Larsson's politics, consider that Larsson was active with Eritrean guerrilla fighters. That regime he supported is much, much worse than even that rapist psychopath of a police chief...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/15/stieg-girls-with...
...and how do you know what changes need to be made?

Maybe someone should instrument the players so we can collect data and analyze the various situations that prove problematic, then extrapolate back from there to rule changes. Too bad the NFL isn't looking into that, since they have significantly more resources than any other level of football play.

...wait
Dimdim: The Risk of Using A Free Service
There's still nuances and subtleties that will be lost in machine translation (I'd assume it would still strong AI to have otherwise), so there is still plenty reason to fully learn a language. However, learning a language at the junior high/high school level of two years or so of minimal study probably can be replaced by machine translation in terms of being able to communicate basic thoughts.
Networked media | THINK / Musings
The products were designed to achieve financial objectives. They have been of mixed successes in this regard. Nobody was designing them so that commenters on the Web would say their "user experience" was good.
I was thinking about creating a paid service like you're describing. Free random questions for all, but a pro account would get explanations on how to solve the particular questions. Ideally in video format.
Who is this Marissa Mayer person? I've never heard of her before...
Well put.

And all great companies have great people, which is yet another chicken/egg question.
Agree with everything Andrew said.

If one could select an easier level, I'd push some nephews / nieces to that site. Then, I guess a bit of "challenge friends" could aid in them actually using it to improve their math skills.
Yep, that's true :)
Not if you're ironic or underground.
Fascinating read even though I never had the balls to program ASM.

One of the commenters said that he would buy a book of this story and more and someone replied that there is in fact a book from him already:

"Old New Thing, The: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows" by Raymond Chen

http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321440307
Development processes/setups for groups
I'm curious how others are handling the development setups for small groups...

It seems the 'old school' method is to have a development server, code is checked out there to individual sandboxes per developer and that is where coding happens.

However, I seem to be running in to more shops these days that are having developers running local instances (WAMP/MAMP/etc) and doing the checkouts locally.

I see benefits to both, but the main benefit I see to the old-school method is the ability to closely control the specs of machines and software between dev/stage/production environments.

Curious of other's thoughts on this.
If only every employee was so empowered to provide such a high level of customer service.
A feature I would like is for the site to suggest to me what my weakness is.

I answer ten questions, you tell me that I don't understand _________.
Perhaps link to/embed the Khan Academy videos for the topic if answered incorrectly?
Nice, I was thinking of building the site that contains every published math problems or algorithm to generate them.
khan has something similar http://www.khanacademy.org/exercises?exid=linear_equations_1
Seconding this. I'm running 2.2 and it seems any application (for instance Google reader) coming across a animated GIF, gets just that: An animated GIF.
10 Questions for John Gruber Regarding H.264, WebM
> But for some reason, I have this terrifying feeling that 3 months into the project that a company will have the exact same product and that's 3 months of work down the drain.

Most of my ideas are for things that already exist but I think all existing solutions suck.

So no, I'm not terrified. When facebook came out, there was myspace already. When tumblr came out, there was blogger already (not to mention wordpress). When posterous came out, there was tumblr already.

When Ubuntu came out, there was already debian and red hat and suse and tons of others.

I can't think off the top of my head of a single successful product whose success was solely based on it being the first to arrive to the market.
"Wakefield lied and is a piece of scum, and you are endangering lives by continuing to blindly follow his disproved and disgraced paper."

The fact that you are accusing me of supporting Wakefield shows your level of intellectual honesty here.
If you're going after students, have a look at http://www.mathletics.ca/ and http://www.rainforestmaths.com/

We signed up our kids for a year for ~$200. It was pretty good, but there are ways it could be improved, such as not using Flash everywhere. But there's a lot of activity on that site, and therefore a lot of money to be made.
On PIC microcontrollers, it's common to use a "goto $+1" instruction as a two-cycle NOP to save an instruction word (every word counts when you only have 256 words of ROM and 32 bytes of RAM). It just branches to the next instruction.

See http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist/codegen/delay.htm
While the font gives it a real math textbook like feel, they take forever to load. I reloaded a few times before giving up and going to a new tab. It wasn't until I went to close it that I saw something had loaded.

Additionally, the first problem I saw was 5x^2 - 2 = 0, all possible answers were really long floats. Intimidating if that's the first thing you see.

I could see it being interesting if there was a Help button that walked you through the next step of the problem (ie: it changed 5x^2 - 2 = 0 to 5x^2 = 2, then click help again, you get the next step, and on and on until the answer).

Also adding levels of difficulty, different problem types (quadratic equation for example), maybe some kind of completion thing. I don't know. Making it more of a game than a chore.
I hate that they may actually succeed - but wow, what a world is coming for my kids.

The future is going to be exactly like Cyberpunk predicted.

Personally, I will never have an FB account - but I can see it reaching 85% of the globes population in the next 10 years.
I know a reporter who can bust out 10 full-length newspaper-quality articles in an hour. 15 shorter pieces is certainly doable. You just have to be habituated to the sort of writing you're doing (and be a fast typist).
I fly Southwest almost exclusively because their policies make me feel like a human - particularly their no-change-fee / full-credit policy. Don't charge me $100 for changing an entry in your database!
I don't disagree, but who's "They?" who should have got him pushed through faster?

The airline doesn't control anything but the departure of the aircraft.

The issues with this guest getting TO the aircraft are in the hands of security and the airport itself.
Google vs. Bing: The Fallacy Of The Superior Search Engine