skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
thanks for that. We do realize for deeper market penetration we will likely need an active sales team. We are happy with healthy online, technical user, adoption at the moment though as we establish our base.
Good feedback.

Setting up tenants for an online account is optional. Heh, I wouldn't want to create more work either. However, if tenants are setup w/ an online account w/ rental collection online, the amount of paperwork would be slashed to a fraction. Every thing would automatically be digitized and collected, and your staff that normally collects the 800+ checks a month (400 units * 2 tenants) will have more time to sit at the local starbucks and browse hacker news :). Oh, and that is for non 'turn' months. 1000+ unit managers spend weeks during turn. We can turn those weeks into days :)
Putting Apps on the Web
The big bang is an extrapolated theory with possibly one piece of evidence: the cosmic microwave background. The CMB may be interpreted in other ways. Not believing in the Big Bang is far removed from being a young-Earth creationist. Many more things have to be wrong (perhaps logic itself) for young-Earthism to be proven right. The field of cosmology is still pretty young and the theories supporting it are much more likely to be changed. But the general idea that the Earth (and the universe) is old (billions of years at least) has many different and unrelated pieces of evidence supporting it.
Well, knowing Richard Dawkins, he thinks more or less any religious person is "barking mad." It sounds to me like he is just advocating for discrimination against people with stupid beliefs (where "stupid" is up to the employer to decide, I suppose), on the grounds that just being stupid is enough to put the quality and honesty of someone's work in doubt.

Personally, I think his position is barking mad itself. I mean, this statement

"Moreover, I would regard his equanimity in holding two diametrically opposing views simultaneously in his head as a revealing indicator that there is something wrong with his head."

is completely absurd. I'd love Mr. Dawkins to point at the human who has a full set of rational beliefs which are completely consistent with each other and consistent with his or her day-to-day life. If I were hiring a manager, I would discriminate against Mr. Dawkins in favor of someone who doesn't reject good workers on a whim.
Let me test your theory - PM me your details.
Or, tenants like a nice place to live, and landlords don't like providing that?
Oracle retains the Hudson name and IP, community considers fork/rename
The tech bubble is real.
Congrats on the launch! A few people here aren't sold on the concept but that's fine. There are obviously others that are.
So you think assuming a less likely position makes people better scientists? I'd like to see a calculation that a system of optimization that proceeds with that assumption actually does converge...

Of course one should be open to other possibilities. However, ones openness to a possibility should be related to the likelihood of that possibility. If that's not the case, you are disconnected from reality.
It looks great, however the first thing I thought of is Scribd. The NYT Dealbook uses them extensively: http://www.scribd.com/DealBook

I don't mean "They did it don't bother". It might be that your are making a non-profit Scribd focused on social news, and you'll be better because _________.

There is a need for this. There is a general distrust of media, and people want to make their own decision -- your empowering them.

PS. I like the design.
Interesting work is done outside of main campus, absolutely, 100%. Not every office works on every product, but every office has some pretty major stuff going on.
No, see: http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html aka "How not to write factorial in Haskell".
Is wanting to put Demand Media out of business a noble goal?

By creating a service with better content of course.
This is very helpful and appreciate it.

I think one of the most important skills to have in business and entrepreneurial pursuits is realizing when things aren't going great. You develop the tendency in life to whitewash things, to always think in the positive.

But this isn't always necessarily good. I read a fascinating piece which said that depressed, pessimistic people were actually more accurate in their analysis of some things than happy optimists.

Being able to think/accept that you have room to improve is a good thing. It's when the real improvement/learning takes place.
This is also how your units end up with leaking sinks and tens of thousands of dollars in repair costs. It depends on how you want to run your business. Many companies WANT work orders, and with the system you can read over them, prioritize and determine if you need to address or dismiss. You also don't have to take the call or deal with any of that, they just come into your feed.
My current apartment complex has a portal where one can pay via eCheck and it's pretty awesome. Do you have a "convenience fee" for paying by credit card? How well do you advertise it?

> I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.

Kinda sounds like a place where I don't want to live. How are your ratings on ApartmentRatings.com?
http://web.archive.org/web/20091027023413/www.apple.com/
For every example of well used Java, I can easily come up with a dozen counter-examples of insanely complex, unreliable and unmaintainable messes I have encountered in my professional life.

It's not worth it.
Great article.What I like most is that for each point there are quality examples."Seeing" it done right was the most helpful part for me.
I personally like fixed monthly or yearly. It is easy for me to budget for that. I would hate for me to run out of credits and my site stop working, and on the same token, I would hate to get a $1500 bill and I was only expect $30.
Maybe, but how does that make his critique any less valid?
Property owners are a diverse group. They range from boneheads with no high school education to college professors. This service is clearly intended for those who like to use web services, which is still a big group (and growing).
Honestly, I don't think the politician's sexuality, open or not, really matters there. Either the legislation is good or (in this case) it isn't.
Apple’s iOS Maintains Enterprise Edge Over Android
So basically what you're saying is this tool actually solves the tenant's problems, and not the landlord's...
What happens when Xserver is not installed and you don't have the permissions or don't want to install it?
In my opinion the Economist provides some good in depth overviews of events, such as those currently taking place in Tunisia.
Take a look through their blog- they had a year of end user involvement- testing, evaluation and so on.
SEO on a Budget Tips
Though I'm an atheist, I'd disagree that a good scientist should be agnostic. The reason is segmentation, along with a widespread belief that religious beliefs are beyond measurement in the physical world.

That said, I disagree with your assertion that the burden is on science to prove the non-existence of the god(s). In fact, there's a distinction often drawn between "strict" and "soft" (or empirical) atheism. A lot of people confuse empirical atheism with agnosticism, since it does not contain a positive belief in the absence of a god, but israther a default position against the existence of got in the absence of compelling evidence. This second type seems to be what the OP is getting at. For instance, when medical researchers say "there is no evidence that silicon implants cause autoimmune disease", this often sounds to the public like equivocating. However, scientists will say things like this after tracking 8,000 women, half of whom have had implants, and discovering that they develop autoimmune disease at rates that are, statistically speaking, indistinguishable. "We found no evidence..."

Prior to a study, I suppose a scientist might say "I don't know" if there is absolutely no literature on the subject and a very compelling hypothesis has been advanced. They might even say "I'm inclined to think this is true, research is underway." But obviously, scientists don't accept the hypothesis by default until someone disproves it, even when the hypothesis is very compelling.

Religion can be different, I recognize this, in that to some people, the hypothesis (god exists) is extremely compelling (they feel this is true deep in their core, they've had a revelatory or mystical experience, or they believe that the universe simply couldn't exist without) and impossible to measure. So maybe they see this as a 50-50 proposition, with an equal burden of proof on both sides?
It's not so much the beliefs that people hold, it's whether or not they stick to those beliefs in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. If they do, then their reasoning is not based in reality, which makes any other reasoning they do that is also purportedly based in reality suspect.

A Creationist can not perform what he thinks is correct science without performing what the rest of the world is incorrect science. I agree with Dawkins that this makes him suspect as a scientist, because we should base our beliefs upon facts.
Interview with Doug Brooks - President, UltraCAD Design, Inc
> When I was writing a lot of Java I thought "Oh, you know, that actually makes some sense." Now that I've returned to writing Ruby full time, I look at it and think: "Hey, wait a minute..."

And thus you demonstrate using Java for prolonged periods may cause brain damage.
Media Federation opens it doors. Welcomes Clients
Death as a change agent
I'm reluctant to agree that a website with drivel like "does this synthetic life form point to intelligent agency at every step of the way?" proudly featured on its front page is intelligent.
The REST bubble
yep, and there are others too, even web based ones. This isn't anything new, we just think our service is and will be better.
Yeah. It was a nice full eraser and it really didn't wear much. There wasn't really a taste, or bits to spit out or anything.
Will online payment collection work with all U.S banks?
Check out the Motorola F3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3. It has an e-Ink display, so you can read the clock without having to push a button and the battery life is awesome.
Are you thinking of making this internationally available? The whole concept of 'rent collecting' and 'checks' or 'paying rent is cash' doesn't exist in Europe. Rents are paid by bank transfer, usually automated (with rental contracts stipulating that the tenant needs to set up this automatic transfer or otherwise there will be a rent hike).

Re: pricing, I agree that a smaller or freemium plan would be nice, but for people who don't need anything from you to do automatic collections (i.e., everybody outside of the US ;) ), it would be quite hard to see how you could make money off them.
That change is pretty clearly pre- and post-Jobs' return/launch of the iMac. It's kind of crazy that they've maintained such a singular focus and style for so long, especially after the painful decade of constant reinvention and flux that preceded it.
Yeah, I was reading that going "Scala, Scala, Scala, dynamic typing? #$(^(*@)#$" I'm pretty sure that the NBL will continue to be whatever large and influential organization wants it to be.
Naming things is surprisingly difficult - we all have our own mental models. This is an area where pair programming helps. "What should we call this?"

Side note: there's a typo in sentence one, paragraph two: "changnig" => "changing"
I've seen multiple variations on this article over the years--it usually seems to be directed at Java, and it usually involves solving a very simple problem with the "full stack" of Java (anti-)patterns.

I've coded professionally in static and dynamic languages, and enjoyed myself in both worlds for different reasons (I guess I just enjoy coding on a basic level). I recently came back to Java after a multi-year hiatus, and suddenly found myself back in a world where people tend to program in patterns such as the above. The funny part is, my experience has ultimately been positive.

I was recently in the position of having to patch and modify a very large Java library (written by some well respected Google guys) because I needed it to do something different from its original intent. The OP would have hated this library--when I cracked it open I found innumerable factories, strategies, observers, visitors, etc. etc. After studying the library for a while (which was frustrating because as a developer I wanted to just dive in and write some code), I started to realize that the patterns were well-utilized and built with anticipation of expansion. In the end, I was able to inject my code into the midst of the patterns at some key strategic points and make fundamental changes to the library. Most importantly, I did so feeling like I had the implicit blessing of the developers, and that the general algorithmic flow of the library was not impacted.

What I've found after my return to Java is that the language is so boringly, stultifyingly structured that an amazing thing happens--you can actually weave together an application with thirty dependencies on other libraries and have it work. Libraries aren't walking over eachother and behave in predictable fashions. Developers aren't dynamically injecting code into core libraries because they can't.

Now, the library I was patching was the kind of library that deals with real world server-side complexity (managing data across multiple stores, with support for testing environments, etc.). That's where these types of patterns shine. They don't shine in examples like the OP's. If a developer in my organization always wrote code like that, I would hope they would be let go. But if they wrote code like that where it was needed and useful, I would be quite happy with them! Conversely, if a developer thought such patterns were never necessary and were never useful, I would think they needed to learn their craft a bit more.

In the end, it's all about pragmatism and experience. Over the years I've been bitten for over abstracting and under abstracting. Over the years you develop a weather sense for how extensible a particular piece of code needs to be.
Ask HN: What's your competitive advantage?
We are asked this question, but were not able yet to craft an answer that was convincing enough without going deeply into technical details - and at the same time easy enough for investors to understand. I would be curious to get some good and short answers to this question by you - either for your own startup or for one of the YC startups.
I love the 'Unlimited Units' plan for $249 which is there just to make 'Unlimited Units' plan for $69 look like a good deal.
Offtopic, but why the hell are people still using cash/check to pay bills in this day and age?

What country are you in? Do they not have modern banking?
Another possible great moment in Facebook security and privacy - unpeel image URLs of shared pictures to see albums that are marked private

http://i.imgur.com/d44kb.jpg
3 videos that explain the "Game Layer" conversation
list of Saas companies/markets for inspiration
I'm also curious as to the technology behind the site.
> We are happy with healthy online, technical user, adoption at the moment

I think you'd be wasting your time to focus on anything but these people, ever.

Otherwise you'd be selling to the type of person that would find 10x the complexity from introducing a computer and the internet for every bit of simplification that your service provides.
Ok, cool. The title and the homepage made me suspect otherwise.

What's interesting to me is that all the people that I know that own rental properties have outsourced the handling for a %age of the rent. That may be a cultural thing though, but from what I know about the market typically landlords are interested in the monthly payment, not in dealing with the tenants, if they can afford it at all they'll get someone to do it for them.

Maybe that's the market this is aimed at, agencies rather than DIY landlords?
Are you implying that Darwin wanted to be a creationist, but couldn't help but publish what he stumbled upon; or refering to his position in the Church?
You might not. Its not about not fixing things when they break or keeping the place clean. Those things are legitimate concerns and are taken care of.

Its about when a tenant complains because he wants all new appliances because he thinks they use too much electricity. Its about when a tenant wants to get 100$ off his rent every month because he now has a sick uncle living with him. Its about when a tenant wants to have huge Christmas decorations in the front of his door but his neighbors dont like it.

-

Its easy for people on here to idealize a perfect "landlord and me are buddies!" dream, but its not how it works in the real world. A apartment building has costs, salaries and other expenses to keep afloat. If we listen to every complaint from a tenant (and as such, make it easier for them to do as such) we start losing money.

You might say "Well, it will be a better place to live then!" - Great, great for the tenants. But this is a product to be sold to land lords, NOT tenants. You will have a tough time selling me on "Make your tenants happier and make less money doing it" I'm fine (and they are fine) with the current situation.

-
This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off.

Just doesn't work like that in renting.
You're getting pretty defensive in the face of a potential customer. If I were you I'd take the opportunity to try to understand what WOULD make the OP's life easier. There is, often times, some easy ways to turn an initial detractor into a proponent. At the minimum it won't be the last time you hear feedback like this, so use it as an opportunity to understand the REASONS the OP feels the way he does. That way you can formulate a better response than, "if you don't use my product you're a shady property manager and have a crap maintenance record", because that's basically what you just said.
7 Twitter users worth following and why
Well, we have hundreds of beta accounts currently. I'd say that is something. Also, the interest has been quite high, not to mention, we aren't pioneering anything in this space, there are quite a few other competitors that do very well.
Ask HN: What's the best (crowdsourced) content filtering service?
I'm working on an educational project which involves users taking photos and uploading to our servers. They can then browse the site, looking at other photos. Since we anticipate people of all ages using our site, we need to filter the images for offensive or off-topic images.

What's the best service to use for this? We need there to be an API, and using crowd-sourcing rather than automatic algorithms (because of higher accuracy).

I'm looking at crowdsifter.com and socialmod.com but have no idea which is better or if there are other better options. Does anyone have any experience with these or other similar services? I'd prefer not having to write an mturk tool myself...
They don't have a lab feature for HTML5 Desktop Notifications, but you can build extensions utilizing it. Here is one I built to show notifications for gmail chat messages:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/phokmbaffndjgejh...

:)
We'll review this, thanks for the input!
The question isn't so much whether other languages have something they call "macros", but whether their macro systems approach Lisp's in power, flexibility, ease of use, integration with the language, and natural fit on to the language representation? Or is the macro system in question more of a Turing tarpit?
Young-Earth creationism is ignorance of physics, not biology. If Earth were created 6000 years ago, then there has not been enough time for evolutionary pressure to significantly alter the human genome yet. It's entirely reasonable for a YEC to believe in evolution, while simultaneously believing the current forms of most species are not the result of evolution.

Ignorance of biology gives rise to complete denial of evolution, which is a separate belief.
I sell A LOT of units (games) in the Android Market.

The 15 minute window has literally been a Godsend and has had no negative affect on sales at all.

I get far fewer people refunding minutes before the "refund window" is over AND I only received ONE complaint from a customer who thought they still had a 24 hour window a couple days after the new Market app went live.

You are still welcome to email the developer and ask for a refund if you don't like the game. I certainly refund money if someone hates my games, I don't want them leaving bad comments in the Market, and I don't want their money if they don't like my product, that wouldn't be fair.

"...where before I could buy something spur of the moment and then refund later that day if it's bad."

I believe this is exactly why it was "nuked". If it took you a couple hours to decide if the game is "bad", maybe it wasn't that bad and the ~$1 to ~$6 you paid for it was adequate for the time you spent playing it - whether you liked it or not.

When you go to an arcade, if you pump $3 into a machine, play for 4 minutes, and decide to get a refund, do you get it? Nope. The App Market is the new Arcade. BUT you get to keep the game to play over and over and over again for just a few dollars.

EDIT: I'd like to add that in-app purchases will be awesome.
I'm not sure where DanBlake is from, but paying rent by cash/cheque is still the norm in Canada.
No problem, now that I am on lunch, I looked up a few others.

Here is the Google guide I was talking about:
http://developer.android.com/
here are some tutorials from there:
http://developer.android.com/resources/index.html
They call these tutorials but you are really just copying and pasting but I bet you could reverse engineer simple apps from this starting point.
http://developer.android.com/guide/tutorials/views/index.htm...

Here are a couple tutorials, I have not reviewed them much so it is up to you to decide if they are any good:
http://www.activefrequency.com/blog/2009/ground-up-android-g...

http://www.vogella.de/articles/Android/article.html

These guys talk about their experience in app development.
http://www.kreci.net/
http://www.bryandenny.com/index.php/2010/05/25/what-i-learne...

Of course there is the App Inventor but when I did their tutorials I felt a little more like I was building a pre-fab kit rather than learning how to create:
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/
If that politician is truly representing his constituency, then he is not a fraud and is doing what he is paid to do.
Moving 6k customers in 2 hours while sustaining 1.4 billion DB writes per day
I can't think of a natural language equivalent for the comma operator, other than (maybe) incredibly awkward and confusing uses of parenthetical statements
I'm not trying to attack you personally, but your response is typical of the real estate industry, and exactly why there's a hole in the market worth billions. For whatever reason, customer service is almost uniformly bad in the real estate industry. It's so bad, people don't even realize how bad it is, because they've never had anything else to choose from. For example, this kind of attitude makes me really sad:

I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.

This is the same kind of disdain-for-customers attitude that leads web developers to build paid services that are really hard to cancel.

The marketing and branding in real estate are also a joke, but it's the customer service thing that really gets me. There's a huge opportunity here for someone to do it right.

Disclosure: I'm an active real estate investor with three small properties.
Couldn't have said it any better myself. That is really what it all comes down to.