skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Best of the Web Directory Listing Coupon Code for February 2011
I remember a quote from him, "I never cared much for driving a Mercedes around, but my wife sure did".
How To use Dropbox to organize your startup's documents
How is someone stuck in the poverty cycle different than a serf? Read about how difficult it is to break the $40,000/year barrier if you have children due to the escalation of taxes and scaling back of tax and other incentives. How is someone with the good luck of having parents who are attorneys or accountants different than a minor noble in 16th century France?

My father worked in public housing projects, and I used to go along with him to block parties and sometimes hang out with him at work in the summertime when I was young. I'd play with the kids hanging around who were 8 or 10 years old. You know what? They were all the same as my friends at home -- just kids. I didn't understand then that they were poor and I wasn't. Those same kids a few years later would have a harsher introduction to the world than I would.

It's amazing to me that you'd equate my perspective to an infomercial, than proceed to castigate people who dare to have a cheap telephone or complain about their miserable condition because they have water and foodstamps.

I'm not a proponent of the welfare state. I drive around my city past the idle factories and dilapidated relics of the prosperity of ages long past and get angry. Then I drive outside the city, away from the "welfare state" and past the new prosperity: sprawl shopping centers and subdivisions -- all artifacts of tax policy, loan guarantees and subsidy of infrastructure and get angry. (You probably wouldn't call that "welfare" though.)
Excellent, will send an e-mail tomorrow. I'm really excited about making an integral part of my day as up-to-date as the rest of my workflow.
2. There's no explicit way to merge groups, because it sounded like more of a hassle than it was worth. What do you think of avoiding the problem in the first place by suggesting existing groups as the user types in a group name to be created?

This is kind of a big deal, in an estimating-cost-of-website sense.

How are suggestions displayed? Inline, as-you-type, AJA* updating, or only
once you hit create?

Also, how do you determine if two groups are similar? Just based on the words
in the titles, or in the descriptions as well? What about synonyms?

It's a hard problem, and a perfectly reasonable answer for an initial launch
is: no merging, and no suggesting. If two similar groups are created: tough.
Deal.

4. Video: lets forget it. I've never done anything involving video uploading, and once I had a look at what a hassle it is to do, I don't think it's worth it for the amount of our users that will actually use it.

To be honest, I think videos would be extremely useful (though I'm not
a scientist), but a lot of work.

7. Captcha vs. email verification. I did think about this one a bit. I personally hate email verification more than I hate captchas, but is there some other reason to prefer one over the other?

No, not really, not until someone comes up with some hard data about the
spam-reduction rates of the various methods.

9. early on, many of the people who've expressed interest in the site wanted to use it in non-english speaking settings. since there is no "settings" page yet (not enough settings to make it worth having one) the languages selector goes on the top menu rather than inside a settings section. Changing it at the very least changes the language of the UI (assuming this isn't too difficult) but could also change which protocols are shown (this sounds much harder.) Not an essential launch feature, on reflection.

For the UI:

Who translates the UI? How do they do it? Who checks their work?

For the protocols:

Yes, this would be hard to get right. Very hard. What about translating
groups? Who owns those? How does a translator know when a group's "original"
description has changed and need re-translating? What if someone edits
a translated group -- who reverse-translates the edit back to the original
group? What if the original has changed since then?

12. DIY bio page: That is a group page. The different headings on the page are categories within a group. I'll put this into the data model as an example.

Somehow I missed the "groups have categories" concept. Sorry.
Evolution, hard at work. In this case a memetic-genetic interaction will lead to selection trials.
How much do you heart me? (From Adioso, YC W09)
Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm in the article, previously tried to create a market in box office futures:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/business/media/08futures.h...

Cantor is a brokerage firm at heart -- I dealt with them frequently when I worked on Wall Street. Their entire reason for existence is to match buyers and sellers, and take a cut of the transaction. More markets to do so means more money for Cantor.
"Don't care" in the form of getting out and proactively doing something, yes.

"Don't care" in the form of clicking a preorganised button ("sign online petition", "retweet this travesty", "join this voluntary botnet"), plenty of folk care that way.

If your engagement in the nominated activity can be fully completed before you finish your beverage of choice, the internet is full of caring individuals...
You've not linked to anything.
Ask HN: How to approach a potential buyout offer
Fellow Hackers

I've been running a startup for over a year now, and we've been growing a lot in the last few months. While there has been some interest in our business, we were approached by a group expressing interest in buying us out. The extent of the communication thus far is their initial email expressing interest.

While I do have a lot of startup experience, selling a startup is new to me. So what advice, tips, dos and donts would you guys recommend when we contact this group to start discussing a potential buyout?
"Schools are jails for kids." -- John Holt
"when I got to the bit..." actually sounds like pretty definite judgment.

Perhaps "my impression was..." would "sound" preliminary. This doesn't.
Meanwhile, in Australia......

The iPhone is the dominant smart phone.
(I heard a (unsubstantiated) rumour that it is now the dominant phone with > 40% of the entire market)

Why? Because it's available on every carrier, $0 upfront, and when you actually have decent networks -- Antenna-Gate becomes a non-issue.

That ATT exclusivity has really hurt Apple - it would be interesting to see how much they can reverse the trend.
Interesting. My intention was "as I was reading it, when I came across that part, this is what I was thinking."
The Top 3 Reasons Gawker's New Design Is a Disaster
Given the nature of how the government provisions work to contractors, they almost certainly do. Not being privvy to the task at hand, they likely had one of the following scenarios at play:

1) The Federal Government (hereby, "Fed") wanted the data. Fed puts out a request for proposal to qualified federal contractors to solicit work bids. Qualified federal contractors respond with work proposals, detailing the level of effort, the likely strategy to obtain the information, and establishing a cost and payment terms. Cost structure is either Time & Materials (T&M) or firm fixed. If it's T&M, they'll be paid for the time, effort and overhead required to have performed the task. If it's firm fixed, they'll be paid a set cost as established in the proposal.

2) HBGary had an existing contract for work with Fed. This contract may cover intelligence gathering, cyber intel, whatever. Fed creates a new task order for HBGary on the existing contract. Contract is either amended (if firm fixed, after the effort is quoted) or falls under existing task orders. HBGary is paid according to the terms of the existing contract.

To cut to the chase, there are other likely scenarios, but they all look similar to the above, and all involve HBGary being paid under the terms of the contract. Whether they're paid a flat fee or based on the effort involved depends on the terms of the contract. When they get paid depends on the terms of the contract. How much they get paid depends on the terms of the contract.

It sometimes happens that the government opts out of paying for things like this, and someone decides to buck the red-tape-brigade, but those matters usually end up in court as a contract dispute. Generally speaking, I think it's fairly safe to assume that HBGary is getting paid.

What I suspect a lot of people are overlooking here is that generally, if the government has contracted to buy something, EVEN IF somebody completely different comes up with the same good (tangible or intangible) for zero or significantly reduced cost, the government is not allowed to purchase unless there are provisions in their existing contract that allow for this.

The rules governing this process are the "Federal Acquisition Regulations", are set in stone, and are established so that both sides 'play fair'. The terms of the contract are always upheld unless there are exceedingly dramatic reasons not to, or failures of performance. If I contract to buy 10 servers for the government for $1,000 each, and somebody else then offers 10 identical servers to the government for $0 each, I will still be paid.

Since the cost of technology generally goes down over time, this prevents Fed from buying cheaper after the original contract was penned, and is allotted to protect contractors from the Fed, as well as the other way 'round.

It's complicated as sin, and yeah, there are loopholes out the wazoo (most of which relate to winning work,) but it's also defined, repeatable and ends up in HBGary getting paid.
What if it were charging your laptop/phone a la power mat?
It isn't about HBGary being competent or not, its about whether or not they were able to fulfill the letter of their contracted terms.

If the FBI believes that the company can still fulfill its contract terms, and in a lot of situations that comes down to providing the requisite documentation showing sufficient protocols in place, then the FBI will continue to work with HBGary.

Much greater incompetence has been rewarded by the government bureaucracy than poorly picked passwords.
http://webnumbr.com
Yes, I don't get it either. Ozzie's Groove was more revolutionary.
Yes we are creating more data now than in the history of mankind. However the ratio of (quality stored data / total data ) has gone down with the ease of storage. Most of the "data" is for entertainment.
I personally don't think that web email is targeted at teens. And since it's mentioned web email - does this mean email apps in smartphones and corporate email aren't included? I just love how the media is always trying to say something is dead based on some simple stats. Good times. Just like how everyone keeps mentioning the death of the web, death of Microsoft, death of Apple, death of Google...
It's a shame that every time I mention DEC to anyone, very few of them know what I am talking about...

I enjoyed using VAX/VMS and admire DEC's contributions to modern ComSci.

You will be missed!
Different, but related. A forensics company does not have the ability to claim ignorance of security issues - /especially/ if their role is digging up dirt on others. They should be fully aware of privacy and security issues.

Now if they were a company that baked and distributed cheesecakes, I'd give them a pass on criticism for having security issues.
Feel free to paypal me :)

http://webnumbr.com
I think the relevant announcement is at http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/download-over-million... .
Anonymous is not a political movement. Some of the causes it champions are for internet freedom, certainly. The ends, anyway. You have to remember it didn't begin that way. It began with childish 'raids' on Habbo Hotel, DDOS of Support Online Hip-Hop, etc. The first big movement for freedom was Project Chanology (mixed in with the childish attacks).

I think this tipped some folks off about how powerful Anonymous could be, if it was guided somehow. Or maybe, it was simply the awakening within Anonymous that it could be something other than a childish prankster.

I've always thought that 4chan was synonymous with the internet's "id;" now it seems as if Anonymous is the birth of the internet's superego. There may be people subtly playing with strings (the aforementioned - a few responses up in a different thread - inner circle of quite competent blackhats), but largely I think Anonymous has become self-fulfilling. A meme catches its interest, and it acts.

Hell, there's even a link to the "Stand Alone Complex" section of the Ghost in the Shell philosophy page. Not a philo-head myself, but it makes sense. Network intelligence together close enough, and a different kind of intelligence will probably emerge.
A short video, produced by Gordon College, offers a short history of Ken Olsen's impact and legacy. If not for DEC, the world of computing as we know it would not exist. The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6We6VDtyHY
More about Ken Olsen, and a quote from Bill Gates, can be found here: http://www.gordon.edu/kenolsen
Netflix's Worst 100 DVD & Instant
Netflix's absolute worst 100 movies. The few, the proud, the horrifying.
American sports wagering - Vegas in particular - has been pretty behind the times until recently. Vegas betting has been limited, partly due to software, partly due to it being "the way", to pretty basic betting. Handicap, head to head, totals, basic propositions.

In run betting is huge in Asia, especially on football (soccer). As the article mentions, sports betting has never been a focus of the casinos. New kinds of betting will hopefully change that.
Java is working on the CR-48 laptop
Creating the Founders' Dilemmas Course
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Shadow Mode Announced
That is a great story. Thank you for sharing!
Ah, ok. That makes a lot more sense.
This seems a little too much like bragging for my tastes. Not that my "karma" scores are terribly high, so maybe I'm just sore.
Listening to him describe the "follow" feature like it was revolutionary made me roll my eyes since Redmine has had this forever.
Go to http://adioso.com/search?q=A+hard+search+query in an incognito window or similar - you have to have not visited before. A bar comes up at the top of the page saying that the interface "can be a little confusing".

I have no thoughts on the interface per se, I just think that if you have to admit that your interface is confusing, you've already lost.
Google Paying For Chrome To Be In Pwn2Own 2011
hahahahaha this is frickin unbelievable, I get downvoted but the guy who says not to talk about the fight club is upvoted like crazy - so THIS is the FIGHT CLUB!
This looks really neat. I am doing web development for a lab that is pretty obsessed with open source, open protocols, ect, so I will for sure keep an eye out on this. Wish I wasn't so swamped with work, because this looks like it would be lots of fun.
Ruining actual lives. I've heard of a few government agencies who have some experience in that.

Karma's a bitch eh?
The Y Combinator Founder Video
So a friend of mine that runs a video startup contacted me and asked if she could do a video of my startup (basically founders talking + some product info) for free to use as an example on her site. We agreed to do it as a favor and because it was her idea, went in with no expectations/script and gave her total creative freedom. The video is a little over a minute (the Y Combinator app asks for a minute long video) and has a little bit of post production done, but totally unscripted. My Co-Founder and I just riffed questions/answers at each other and even were a little buzzed during it :). Furthermore the post-production decisions were made completely independently of us. I'm wondering if the little amount of post-production totally disqualifies a video from being used as one's video submission for the Y Combinator application. Thank in advance guys.
Short version:

A Lunascript application specifes a data model and a function from the model to the view or user interface, annotated with handler functions from user inputs to model mutations. From this the Lunascript compiler produces a functioning Web 2.0 application — the client-side JavaScript, the server-side SQL, and everything in between

Debugging can still be somewhat tricky, but we are disciplined about creating and improving debugging tools

We hope to release Lunascript more widely once it’s more mature
and seriously screw you guys downvoting me (sorry for being douchy) - but it is really irritating to get downvoted without being told why
Ask HN: Soon to be high school graduate with two full time job offers. Help?
So here's some background:

I'm a high school senior that's about to graduate in May. I'm currently working for a local (and damn fine) new media firm as the only iOS developer. I started as a development intern over the summer and got hired for the school year on a part time basis.

My life plan had basically been to go to school for a comp sci degree and then get a job as a developer, as that's what I really enjoy doing. However, I've recently been having second thoughts on school in general and whether or not I even want to pursue a degree. This, coupled with the fact that I've recently received two separate offers for full time work (one with the firm I'm currently working for, one with a new startup that shows a lot of potential) as a developer straight out of high school, is making it very difficult for me to make a decision.

I've been discussing it with my parents, and they've been being very diplomatic about it by saying that I should do whatever will give me the most options in the long run. My friends that I've asked think that I should take one of the jobs that've been presented to me, as this sort of thing doesn't happen to most people in their lifetime, let alone before their high school graduation.

I don't really have a specific question, just a call for advice: what would you do in this situation? If you need anymore information, just ask. I'll give what I feel comfortable telling.

Thanks for reading.

TL;DR: I'm about to graduate from high school and I have two job offers for full time work as a developer. I don't know whether I want to take one of those or go to college. Advice?
CBS sued for 63-year-old song used on Family Ties DVD
I think it can be argued that Apple never created as much of a cultural sensation as Microsoft did with its use of "Start Me Up".

On the other hand I've heard people refer to Yael Naim's "New Soul" as 'the Macbook Air song' on a few occasions.
Although one can't blame Google for it, what's really sad is the loss taken by people who had booked flights and hotels in anticipation. Google definitely needs to come up with a better system to address all the nuances. A tech conference need not be like a rock concert.
I'm hoping they make one that eats humans. That would be a fine piece of furniture to put on my mantle. I wonder if you were to breed organisms, would they be able to produce a plentiful amount of energy for our electrical grids. I'm not necessarily talking about humans. It may make sense to breed dogs or rats, whatever gives the best bang for the buck.
While I don't disagree, please tell me you've expressed that to Gawker, in a polite fashion?

Bitching here won't do anything, and it also not really a learning experience for us:P Giving constructive criticism is good practice for not hiring people, also:P
Seems like kind of an overwhelming amount of attention.
I think it would be even better if the protocols were stored in some sort of machine parse-able format rather than just human readable text.

This solves two problems a) the big problem of reproducibility in fields like biology, and b) if it's machine-readable, you can just toss the file onto a robot and have the whole procedure done for you.

Check out Biocoder for an example of a language for describing protocols: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/india/projects/biocod...

Format conversion and outputting versions for publication also follow quite easily once a strict protocol language is defined.
for some reason this feels a bit skimpy on the details compared to the "first month at facebook" (or may be 6 weeks) item that came about a few weeks ago...
You might consider multiple backup strategies, different types of backups done in completely different ways, none with any level of dependence on each other. Test them to see if you are able to restore from them.
Master Facebook Marketing for Business free email course.
If you are looking to get more fans to your Facebook page or are just looking for a more engaged Facebook audience, then you will definitely want to register for this free online course.
The problem isn't that the code is insecure it's that the network overlay structure is fundamentally flawed.

Edit: Well, I guess their code is also insecure, but fixing that will not fix the second problem.
How can over 100 people be needed for basically a scaled blog system that consists only of 140 character titles (not even any article content) and RSS feeds? It doesn't even have a search feature (past the previous week) or html, or tags, etc.

Doesn't WordPress.com do it with like a dozen people and their system is way, way, way more complex?

update: no, wait, in December 2010 they announced it's over 350 people now

http://blog.twitter.com/2010/12/stocking-stuffer.html

What on earth are they all doing?
Interesting - I had the same thought not too long ago.
I talked with a friend, and it turned out that a lot of the same friends that show up on my profile when I am looking at it show up for him when he views my profile.

As to (a) and (b), the friends that showed up seemed pretty random - I interact regularly with less than half of them. It's definitely not random, but I'm not sure how it's determined. It would be interesting to track it over time (as friendships are added, removed, and changed).
Thanks, this is all great stuff. I've been meaning to read some of Smale's papers on learning theory. It might be over a lot of people's heads though, since we advertised this is an introduction to basic concepts that one might encounter in a first course in Machine Learning. We are doing two groups of 10. The topics will have to depend on the kinds of people that applied and their interests, but I like the idea of having a beginner group and an advanced group (possibly based on mathematical level).
Self-sustaining pest control robots. No need to bother about their maintenance. Just let it loose and have a lot less pests.
If not for a software career making it necessary to be "online", I would readily bet that I could go an entire year without the internet, and I wouldn't be any less happy for it. If I could ensure my livelihood in some extremely non-technical yet stable job (e.g. as a HIGHLY overpaid landscaper), it might even be a fun experiment.

This isn't any different from any other exercise of willpower. You don't really need to make it the entire month at once, you just need to be strong enough to handle each moment of weakness OR you need to be smart enough to prevent them so temptation is removed from your life.
I liked this line:

The Romans used to use continuous tickling of the feet as a form of torture.

I'm pretty sure I saw that in a Looney Tunes cartoon.