skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The example you gave is a degenerate case that isn't really representative of the real world situation. Making x to be an odd multiple of pi in your example is an excessive constraint on the problem. Real world problems requiring creativity exist in highly multidimensional spaces and their fitness functions often exhibit fractal behavior.

For example, let P be the set of all English-language poems of N lines, where each line is a semantically and syntactically valid expression in English and N>0. P is an incredibly huge set. We want to find solutions of high aesthetic fitness on the set P. Applying a few arbitrary constraints reduces the size of the search space but has little effect on our ability to find solutions with high aesthetic fitness. For example, we could arbitrarily restrict our search to the space of English poems with N=14, 10 syllables per line, an alternating pattern of an unstressed and stressed syllables in each line (iambic pentameter), and a rhyme pattern a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g in the terminal words of each lines. We've now drastically reduced the size of the search space such that we are now searching only the space of valid Shakespearean sonnets. However, even with our arbitrary constraints in place, we're still solving a highly unconstrained optimization problem and the arbitrary constraints we applied don't prevent us from finding solutions of high fitness.

We could say that the bumpiness of the fitness function is fractal -- the shape of the fitness function on an arbitrary subspace resembles the shape of the fitness function taken over the whole space, providing that the subspace is itself "large" in some sense. The point is that there's nothing special about the arbitrary constraints we imposed. We could instead choose to work in the space where N=16, the number of words per line is between 4 and 7, the first four lines are all questions, and the last line is constructed in the form of a direct object followed by a subject and a verb and a repetition of the direct object (e.g. "Yoda, you seek Yoda"). There are still many aesthetic and unaesthetic solutions in this space, perhaps there are even some solutions with greater fitness than any of the 154 solutions that Shakespeare discovered with his set of arbitrary constraints.
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I think you can be sure that Google tripple-checked everything

They may have. If so, just show me the paperwork. MPEG-LA has given them a great paper trail to work from. The fact that I've seen nothing from Google gives me nothing to go on.

One thing I've learned in business is if one person gives you a docket full of easy to follow evidence and another says, "trust me" -- I tend to go with the hard evidence. In both cases the proof won't be complete, but I can sleep at night knowing that I made an informed choice.

But that's just me. At the end of the day, each org will have to make its own choice. I think a WebM + H264 world is perfectly fine. Let the better codec shine.
One sentence: I love programming. If as an entrepreneur (i.e., a company founder; being an employee at a startup -- which, by the way, is great -- is not the same) I spend the same percentage of my time programming as I do when working as a software engineer, I'm almost guaranteed to fail. Software needs to not only be built and tested: it needs to solve a problem actual users have, be marketed, sold and be supported. A polished commercial product can't always be built by a one man team, so I'll likely need to spend my time recruiting others and raising money to pay them.

That said, I'm not against entrepreneurship: it's a means to an end. If the best way to bring a particular product to the market is through going on my own (and I've felt that way at multiple points in my career), I'll do what it takes. However, I have no interest in entrepreneurship for money's, status' or its own sake.
The flip side of this is that, while Internet Explorer probably won't support WebM unless Google indemnifies adopters, IE is almost as irrelevant as Opera in the arenas of both web video and The Future.

Internet Explorer still has a larger market share than Safari and iOS devices are barely a blip on the radar.
By your logic, only Firefox, IE and Chrome should matter.

I can't watch your idealism on my iPad for the duration of a 6-hour flight

Well, we're not talking about videos that you load and play and you're iOS device. We're talking about video that is embedded in web-pages. Are you watching those during your 6 hour flight?

And maybe more to the point web video does revolve around iOS devices, because iOS users watch orders of magnitude more video than anybody else.

I'm reasonably sure you're greatly overestimating how much web-based video iOS devices consume.
Thanks for your response.

Cash up front wasn't important to me. I was looking more for the longer term investment: work, take the note and convert it to equity at a low dollar/share, and hope they get bought out. I guess I feel fairness would be double the equity that was originally to be given, whether thats with a change to the firs note, or the creation of a second note. Problem is they don't seem to be willing to compromise and allowing me to convert my note at a lower rate than $2/share, since 3.5 months ago shares were $0.74. I just find it hard to believe the company is worth $2M. I've asked to meet in the middle at $1.37/share, but not sure that'll fly either. And if it doesn't, it seems my efforts are futile. Even if they 2X my note to $15K, thats MINIMAL in comparison to the big picture of things for them; or at least it should be.

I can only get cash if there's another round of investment, which there may/may not be, correct?

Trust me, lessons have been learned here. I'm trying to figure out my options now.
Facebook Shares Hit $28.26 Per Share, That’s a $70+ Billion Valuation
Dark and Wide user style for Hacker News
chromium.
Zotero Anywhere now available [Win/OSX/Linux]
No one cares about the desktop, not because of popularity today, but because of popularity tomorrow. And more importantly is the other point I made. On my desktop I have ever codec ever created. It doesn't matter what <video> uses. But it's all of my mobile (and embedded) devices that don't have support for every codec, and I generally can't install a new codec on them.

To put it another, if there were no mobile devices, this would be a complete non-issue.
Agree, very easy once I was able to git out of my own way. Haven't really done much with it yet, but this is what Azure should be in terms of a developer experience. I'll be interested to see the AH guys evolve the service and start to get some of the elasticity of heroku, Azure, et al. Great start though and great support as they build out docs.
> This whole debate is stupid and of course WebM exclusivity is the right way to go.

This whole debate is stupid and of course WebM exclusivity is the wrong way to go.

An "of course" is a really lame way to enter a debate, because it says that everyone take the debating so far seriously are idiots, which I don't believe the rest of HN are. The other alternative is that it's much more nuanced than "of course" allows, you just haven't understood the debate.

> The only reason people are complaining is that their iPhones have H.264 hardware acceleration

No, people are complaining for many other valid reasons. Like: the digital video world runs on H.264, it has deep, complicated, expensive internal toolchains to support it, legacy archives encoded in it, basically entire businesses built around it. The video production world is far larger and more complex than you're picturing it. A "script" isn't nearly enough to do what you're talking about; suggesting you just need to point ffmpeg at a hard drive of stuff has dramatically underestimated the scale of what's involved.

Or, reasons like: they want the video tag to succeed, and this decision essentially entrenches Flash for another five years at least.

In an h.264 world the video tag had the combined support of three major desktop browsers, iOS, Android, a tonne of shipping mobile and embedded hardware, a Flash fallback and crucially it was an easy implementation for all the video content producers, with no re-encoding required. That's plenty enough to give it a good beachhead and momentum away from all Flash all the time.

In a WebM world, you have the support of Firefox, Opera and Chrome. No shipping mobile support. No shipping embedded support. No shipping Flash implementation. No video producer support. No video toolchain support. And it's a small technological step backwards, to boot!

> I find the pointless hipster-fanboy whining to be pretty grating, personally.

I find underinformed freetard passive-aggression to have no place here, personally.
What the Heck is Shadow DOM?
Agreed. So that raises the possibility he may have a paranoid schizophrenic episode, which would certainly explain his disappearance. Hopefully he hasn't really left his apartment and is just hiding. Worst case, he is drifting aimlessly around the city as a homeless person.
Whoops, the code listing page should say 'WebKit browsers'. Firefox support is forthcoming.

I apologise for the inconvenience.
I think it really depends on your market. Sites like Facebook or Flickr depend on having a huge community, so offering free accounts makes sense. Others, such as the one described in the article, are hurt by all the resources it takes to support the free users when those resources really should be used to draw in more paying customers. Like all business models, I think you just have to ask your self if the freemium model is a good fit for your current product or not.
FreeBSD has kernel DTrace (off by default), with userspace tracing on its way (in CURRENT). ktrace is a better option there, especially if you want to support other BSD systems as well.

I've used ktrace to help create minimal jail environments, quite handy: http://www.aagh.net/files/mkjail
Hmmm... so controlled dielectric breakdown with lasers... Use E-fields from lightning to produce gamma rays via

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/lightning-antimatt...

collect positrons with a magnetic bottle. Finish with big jars of antimatter. I wonder...
By reading this email, the recipient acknowledges and agrees that all of the information contained herein is confidential

Was this unintentional humour? It's implied that by reading this "super secret" email that the valuation is meant to be secret, which of course it's not. It's no secret at all anymore that Facebook hired Goldman Sachs to pump and (eventually) dump it's shares.
Sorry - that should have read "10 smart people in finance and 10 smart entrepreneurs". I was being careful to stay gender-impartial and left a crucial word out as a result...

I must admit being a bit out of my depth regarding U.S. finance hiring. In Canada, Ivy or equivalent is not required, though of course it's not going to hurt. As far as I can see, it's one of the better fields when it comes to recognizing and rewarding hard work and ability and motivation (provided a baseline social/IQ ability). The luck component is still pretty important, but nevertheless much less so than in entrepreneurship.

Unfortunately neither of us have data here. I can't go digging for mine right now, which is a bit of a shame as I would like to continue this discussion. Some other time?
> The question is: Why would you commit (to a stable branch) when your code doesn't build or pass tests?

Because:

a) It's not a stable branch. It's my dev branch on my local box that nobody else can see.

b) I feel like it and there's no penalty. I can go back if something is wrong.

c) The next thing I'm going to do is risky. I should save where I am just in case I'm wrong.

> Why would you want to eliminate a state where you made something that worked?

Because it may not be meaningful and it may not work. In the above case, what value do you gain from the three revisions of that change that were incorrect? When it hit code review, there were problems with it. We fixed them. Why would you publish code that is known to be incorrect (since we figured that out during code review)?

> I don't see the appeal in modifying history.

I don't see the appeal in a history full of "Oops, I forgot to add this file to the last commit," and "build fix" and "The author wrote this on Solaris, but I need a small change in the Makefile for Linux."

If there's one logical change, having several commits where you just didn't get it right only adds confusion.

> If you just need to save some partially working state, etc. you can use patch queues- They make much more sense here.

Are you saying that because that's the tool you were offered or because you actually believe it's the best way to do things?

I used mercurial very extensively before I started using git (which I have also used very extensively). Most of my time was spent in mq capturing state of work in progress. That really sucked.

Now, I just commit whenever I feel like it, and then before I publish code, I update the commit messages, squash distinct changes that represent a single logical change that shouldn't be broken up, break up commits that represent more than one logical change that shouldn't be lumped together and just generally tidy things up so the reviewers and future developers tracking back bugs can make sense of things.

Then I test it: http://dustin.github.com/2010/03/28/git-test-sequence.html
You do realize this is peanuts compared to the amount of information the US collect on its own people today?
You are the creator of this "cubeduel" thing?!??

Wow... hadn't seen it, glad it stopped here or least hoping it did...

I really couldn't imagine a more pernicious effort to poison already strained interpersonal relations in America if I tried.

I don't think your project is illegal but it is clearly, morally, reprehensible. You should be ashamed of yourself. What you are doing is a "bad thing" - on a pretty high scale of "bad thing".

A while back yummyfajitas asked how Wikileaks would be judged if someone died because of their revelations. Can I ask you the same question? What would you do if one coworker initiated violence against another because of your rating site? What?

Not only do I want this to fail but I think it should rebound on your other projects ... hard. I don't quote The-Jesus much here but here, "Judge not, that ye be not judged" comes very much to my mind.

Seriously, this is so bad that you need to take it down NOW and apologize.
.net needs this so bad. The two paid hosting providers I've used in the past were beyond terrible.
We had a similar course at school (circa 1990) called "Computer Literacy And Information Technology". The "A" in "And" was carefully capitalised on all course material for some reason or other.
It seems to be called "Computer Science 101" to me.

Computer Science 101 is a 4-credit general education course designed to teach data analysis and problem solving skills using Microsoft Office 2007.
I think that the point is that after the explosive growth stage, if something is a bubble you end up in a (possibly) short period before the bust. While you can make money investing during the period, the risk is that much greater that you will miscalculate when the bust will happen and take heavy losses. So:

1. Explosive growth is over, you can't make money anymore.
2. That's not true, you *can* still make money.
3. But attempting to make money at this stage is riskier.
Good thing this is the internet and not your grandmother's tea party.
The point of github is being an easy place that you can point to to tell people "I hack, look here for proof". You can still point to other places or things. It doesn't have to be on github.

If you don't hack and are just in it for the career/job, don't bother.
To be clear, #startups is a hive of scum and villainy, but still entertaining.
Nearly everyone in the press and on the tech blogs thought the iPad was bullshit.
The use of "information highway" in your text is a bad idea. It's a cliché that makes your site seem dated.

Also, the UI on the search dropdown doesn't make sense. You select a field to search, but then if you start typing in the box you can't remember what field you're searching anymore. Maybe you should just use a normal dropdown instead of rolling your own.
I remember Garry, like me, arrived early at the Y Combinator pre-party. He had long hair, kind of like every other Asian friend I had so I figured he must be really smart. Stanford smart.

I shook his hand and he introduced himself as getting an interview slot too. Naturally we conferred and compared notes. Mine was something weird, a scheduling software--we haven't decided yet. His was a photo blog. Well like a photo blog, but easier, the kicker is you only manage it through email.

Oh, I said. That sounds... interesting. Since I was young that was go-to answer for any pitch. The less he explained the more compelling it was. Blogging for your grandma, blogging that anyone can do, blogging that's accessible. I remember asking how long he's been working on it, he said for a few months. I smiled and said he's probably going to get funded.

I didn't, it was my fifth try and became my last.

Throughout the years Posterous' engineering skills, design skills, and marketing skills have made the platform really awesome. Reading his blog, learning his thought process, and seeing the passion he puts into his work, it's inspiring. Very inspiring.

Blogging for grandmas is such a good idea, it's carved a great niche amongst giants WordPress, Blogger, and Tubmlr, and it's growing as a company.

Our career paths took really drastic divergence but seeing what you've done in the past three years is one of the examples of the immense potential working in our little crazy world.

Congrats and good luck.
Congrats, Garry! Could you please make the arrows here on HN bigger? I keep clicking the wrong one. Thanks.
I know Android supports OTA updates -- which I really love, btw -- but I'm entirely unfamiliar with the custom ROM process. Does it involve anything like "jailbreaking" your device, or are you able to simply install it.

What I'm wondering is if it's something I could have my mom do. That's kind of my litmus test for whether something is a mass-market solution, or if it's something only geeks will do. If it's not a mass-market solution, I'd argue that the chart designer's point still stands. Jailbreaking or rooting your device to support an upgrade cycle isn't exactly a solution for most people.
It sounds to me like they were giving away too much and the premium services weren't desirable enough for most people. Also, their initial target market -- "group and event organizers" -- are typically not the individual consumers he paints them as. Most of these folks will be organizing stuff for their kid's baseball team or doing something church-related or some such. In other words, they are basically charitable organizations, but often of the sort that has little to no funding. For an organization like that, coming up with $5/mo is a huge challenge.

And, yes, these types of people are frequently a pain in the ass to deal with: They typically don't have training for what they are doing, they are doing it "for the greater good" with little or no personal benefit (or vastly underestimating what they are getting out of it), they get no respect for the work they do and they often have a sense of entitlement based on the idea that they are giving their time and energy away for free so it is only "right" that other folks kick in something for free to help them out. If you have a business, they may well see you as a wealthy capitalist pig who is basically obligated to do some do-gooding to save your worthless greedy soul.

Trying to induce folks to pay a small fee when they don't have any money to give you is the thing that is "not a business model". That doesn't mean freemium has no place in the world.
Yeah it is a bit corny lol. Thanks, yea that can be confusing.
Nvidia's stock rises as it gains ground in battle with Intel
The Uzu app for iPad uses up to 10 fingers. It is a particle visualizer, only notable to me because it was reviewed by Ars Technica. The video linked from the review gave me the sense that it was a labor-of-love for the creator and probably fun to use for 10 minutes, but not enough to cause me to purchase it.

On further thought, if the Xavier Institute had an app for training its mutants that possess hand-borne energy powers, this would be it.

Review: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/07/uzu-for-ipad-is...
Better video: http://uzumotion.com/2010/06/uzu-video-demo/
So this is the norm now?

From the FAQ:

Can I delete my cubeduel page?

You can "deactivate" your account and it will stop showing up on cubeduel. Login, click on Your Rank, then click on Account Settings, then Deactivate Account.
Well, the RIAA uses Cisco gear...
Cool... so what are the current known issues with AppHarbor compared to Heroku (sans the witty -- "uses .NET").
I doesn't support MS Test in its testing process it uses during builds, but other than that I haven't run into any issues using it. It does support NUnit and xUnit though.
E-mail confidentiality statements are used more as scare tactics or to impress people. They have no or little legal standing.

http://www.snewsnet.com/snews/gt_upload/Fitness07_lawreview....
Yeah,

Providing "opt-out libel" when you're about to IPO is a great idea!
Link bait title, and the video was uploaded to youtube in 2006 - seen it years ago. Prototypes aren't hard - useful mass production is hard.
> We're talking about video that is embedded in web-pages. Are you watching those during your 6 hour flight?

Increasingly, yes, I am watching those during my 6-hour flights. But I'm not talking about video embedded in web pages exclusively; I'm talking about video delivered via the web.

> Internet Explorer still has a larger market share than Safari

No doubt. But if you re-read what I wrote, I was trying to refute the parent comment's statement that "of course WebM exclusivity is the right way to go" without playing the IE card. I think IE's relevance ("in the arenas of both web video and The Future") is extremely questionable, so I don't want argument built on it. But if you accept that IE is relevant, then "of course WebM exclusivity is the right way to go" sounds even more crazy.
Since when was it not a good practice to encapsulate, abstract, and decouple?
The three drivers of growth for your business model. Choose one.
The had the woman who wrote the book on NPR today, it actually sounds like a very honest and interesting book. It is funny that what people are responding to with so much furvor is the Murdoch cliff's notes version of the story.
Following your passion HAS to be better than following Mommy's socially-determined passion. The latter is, most likely, not even right for the mom, let alone the child.

But say we all became masters of the piano or violin. How could any of them make a living at it with such an oversupply?

I also wonder if the mothers of those who brought China its Cultural Revolution were of this superior variety.
Yeah, they have an agenda, but I had no idea about this until I came across the article.