skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Is there any precedent at all for an enforceable regulation banning a particular form of speech by declaring it "wasteful"?

It isn't banning a form of speech, but a form of distribution.

Consider this: If I wrote "Obama sucks" on a note and posted it on my own bulletin board, it would be perfectly legal. If I got a can of spray-paint and sprayed it on your house without your consent, that's illegal. The content of my message has no bearing on whether my distribution method is legal.
If the argument is "they are obsolete because they don't do native mobile", that is a poor argument to make. Where is the data to support it? It's simply a theory wrapped up as a conclusion.

The more important question is, "are they positioned well for the future?" That is really what matters. Don't focus on a particular type of technology as the end-all-be-all of development.
I'm not sure that's right. Even if Kindle App has no purchasing option but accesses content bought on Amazon.com, it should still allow Apple's in-app purchase. Which essentially means, Kindle app is useless. See the excerpt below.

>> If an app lets users access content that they purchased via Amazon's website, for example, then that same app must also let users buy the same book via Apple's own in-app purchase system. If the app developer doesn't want to use Apple's in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can't access content purchased elsewhere either.
All of their products are web apps. Those round-trips are getting made regardless.
Heaps of useful info:
http://www.nationmaster.com
This is starting to feel like Y2K.
Which would mean that spam would be sent first class. It would reduce the amount, but it certainly wouldn't stop it.
A/B test the menu/pricing.
(hint: you're supposed to expense it through your employer)
The demo is "semantic video", not "semantic HTML".

The video tag references a "data-timeline-sources" document at http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/semanticremix/data.xml with all the footnotes.
Oh I definitely did read it in its entirety and understood it perfectly. What you're failing to do is see the whole picture.

Let's put it this way... if Google hadn't bought the PageRank algorithm from Stanford and put years of work into perfecting their search results, Microsoft wouldn't have any way to track which Google search results users click. It's an unfair tactic that clearly demonstrates Microsoft's sketchiness and desire to monopolize themselves (by any means necessary, "evil" or not) wherever there's a computer.

As for the fanboy comment... I'm certainly not a fanboy but I'll let the following speak for itself: Microsoft Internet Explorer vs Google Chrome
Guys, come on. The bit about being a replacement for the iPhone was a joke. It's a toy. It's meant for nerding around with. It's not a production device. You probably shouldn't be depending on it to actually work more than 10% of the time.

It's a model airplane. It flies, it's kindof neat, but it's pretty much totally pointless beyond being tons of fun.
(The concept the crowd sourced effort is cool, but the idea of wanting to remove all the ads from times square and make it a reality isn't)
Nope, maybe the domain name "socialcam" triggered it
Google MENA Marketing Head Apprehended in Egypt, Please Help Locate Him
Would someone really trust Yahoo/Flickr to all their images and not have backups? Hopefully they didn't really care much about the images, else they should have copies elsewhere.
But if you extrapolate:

1) All possible electronic commerce is likely to utilise web-based technologies.

2) In Amazon's case, they used a mobile website to allow sale of their e-books.

3) If Apple is going to state that directing the user to a mobile website to purchase a book, constitutes an 'in-app purchase' - where is the line drawn?

4) Will app developers be able to advertise any alternative methods of purchase, within their apps, without also allowing purchase via the Appstore?

My guess is, no; they'll simply deny the app in question access to the marketplace - which will prevent users from viewing any externally bought content, that can't also be bought via the Appstore.

In-effect Apple are holding these developers over a barrel.
screenshot of current design: http://i.imgur.com/uhNCCl.jpg

what am i missing here? i disabled adblock and flashblock. ff4 beta mac.
The yellowpages papers seem to crumble so easily and the ink can get into things. Why use it with food?
Someone submitted it to HN too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2167727
It would be an amusing denial of service for the referenced article's author to change the text after the questions have been generated.
Small world!
How about the tool used to weld a metal link around a prisoner or slave's ankle?

I can't imagine anyone still knows how to do that. (But I'm semi expecting to be proved wrong.)
Ask HN: How do you overcome the chicken and egg problem?
You're building a community driven site that relies on member generated content. Potential users don't want to participate unless there's content. What do you do?
bla bla bla I will write my code how I like, thank you very much ...
Mailchimp doubles their freemium plan
Chrome takes 10% usage share, IE continues to hemorrhage
Correlated genotypes in friendship networks
What on earth were you eating? This is the oddest thing I have seen on the internet today.
He must be self employed.
Sounds really awesome, wish I didn't live so far away from SF or had a bit more notice :)

Hopefully they stream or have videos up, I really want to see the talks from @ryah, @jashkenas, and @jacobian
From http://ycombinator.com/faq.html:

Will you fund multiple startups working on the same idea?

Yes. If you fund as many companies as we do it's unavoidable you'll end up with some overlap. Even if you tried not to accept competing companies, you'd still get overlap because startups' ideas morph so much. The way we deal with it is that when two startups are working on related stuff, we don't talk to one about what the other's doing.

In practice it has not turned out to be a problem, because most big markets have room for several slightly different solutions, and it's unlikely that two startups would do precisely the same thing.
"Someone" would, yes - we're not all as smart and paranoid as you.

Anyway, the artist has originals backed up, but the article points out that all of the links to those images, and embeds, are now broken.
I believe if you write "Obama will die" on a note and post it. The SS will visit you. If you live in another country, and send just a simple angry email to White House, they'll ban you from USA[0].

[0] http://mashable.com/2010/09/14/luke-angel-barack-obama-e-mai...
i still don't get why people allow legal system where producer of the hammer you bought has legal power to limit your applications of the hammer only to a approved set of nails
I would imagine it's not so much about the loss of the photos as much as the loss of the social aspects of those 5 years, the comments made, the photos favorited, collections followed. Moreover, there's the uploading which would be a monumental effort to redo, including titles and captions.
> This is why photos of sunsets -- digital or film -- never look right

The main reason sunsets don’t look right is that sunsets have a huge dynamic range, beyond the ability of our printed photographs or computer displays to reproduce (no one has the sun in their living room).
You have to factor in other costs on top of the employee wage:Taxes, Insurance (liability/health,etc), Retirement/401k, Office Space (Rent & Utilities optional if running virtual)

I'm sure there are other costs some optional, some not. Depending on how lean you want to run you can have a very low overhead.

It also depends on what level of developer you are hiring.
In general, you to have seed one side.

Would also recommend checking out this HBR paper - Strategies for Two-Sided Markets. It's talk of the "money side" and "subsidy side" is quite good.
I like the idea of this - work hard / you'll be rewarded, even if the current payment is meagre - BUT, I don't think that this is necessarily the case for the majority.

This guy struck it lucky. I'm not sure an exception makes the rule.
@sorted = map { $_->[0] }
sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }
map { [$_, foo($_)] }
@unsorted;

Sometimes boring isn't as good as awesome. My first reaction to the Schwartzian Transform was, "Computers can do that!?" Figuring out what this thing did, and how it did it, made me a better programmer.
The customers for yellowpages are advertisers.

The people getting yellowpages are the product.
Maybe the tools Egyptians used to remove internal organs before embalming?
Internet runs out of addresses as devices grow
I like it...great concept if you can pull it off.

I came up with a similar/not-so-similar concept that I'm still working on (http://www.xuland.com) only I'm not leveraging Foursquare, Facebook or other location-based apps. I'm depending on folks actually logging into the application and posting/replying.

Of course, my app is also done in Flash (jury is still out on whether that proves to be a good idea or not) but I discovered well over a year ago that it would be great if I could find out what was happening at this very moment in a given location so kudos to you and your team for recognizing a need. Good luck!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk
Here is a link to it: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-aol-way#-1
> Would someone really trust Yahoo/Flickr to all their images

It's a paid service[1]. So yes.

[1] he had a pro account.
Seth Godin's Domino Project Launches First Book
No, it drives home the point of selection bias. Someone who got noticed tells us he worked hard, we don't hear from the rest of the people.

It says nothing about whether people who work hard get noticed, or about whether if you work hard you will get noticed.

(Actually, not even that, he tells us he went to a conference and was hired by someone he schmoozed with!)
Your site doesn't work with javascript disabled.
They don't intrinsically cause more dilution in later rounds. The buyer has to pay whatever the price is in the later round. So they'd only cause more dilution if the lead in the later round insisted on getting a specific percent of the company. VCs often insist on that sort of thing in A rounds, but less often in later rounds.
"Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest."

-- pg
Just want to note that while I'm a big fan of Seth, I'm somewhat disappointed by the way he's launching this book.

1. It's hardly revolutionary
2. The title is ambiguous and seems repetitive of earlier titles
3. Pre-ordering a book on Kindle seems a bit lame.
I can't dump my garbage on your lawn and defend my actions by saying that I'm expressing myself.
Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it
Someone suggested in another thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2166935) to try BackBlaze (http://www.backblaze.com/) - unlimited for $5 per computer -- the old Mozy model. Anyone have any experience?
According to the article, the average YC company raises $700k in seed funding. Assuming your $3M pre is correct, that would be about 18% total and 4% for the $150k investor.

The question is, does a quick and easy $150k delay fundraising until a company is looking at a $6M pre? For the super hot ones I bet it does. For those startups that are more worried about not getting early traction they probably won't delay fundraising.

So if we are going to throw a number around... my fuzzy math says 2% of the hottest companies and 4% of the others.
Time for backupify.com?
It's not exactly neighborhoods, but the US Census TIGER database has block and blockgroup boundaries with associated demographic data. You could probably synthesize that into "neighborhood" definitions. http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.ht...
The Post Office makes the bulk of its income from bulk-rate spam.
In Israel some Jews use gas lamps for lighting on the Sabbath because the electric grid is run by non-religious Jews in violation of the Sabbath, and they don't want to benefit from that. (Before you ask: There is no central gas distribution network in Israel because of the risk of war, so all houses have individual tanks.)

The requirement to avoid the electric grid is disputed, and most religious Jews don't, but some do.
Mozy Drops Unlimited Storage, Destroys Cloud Dream
tl;dr: "whoops actually this headline is totally inaccurate. please ignore."
Not to rationalize away the similarity between nonsense words and search results, but there are legitimate reasons why gross misspellings might yield similar results. Among them are that similar algorithms may have been derived from similar libraries and academic literature.

With 25+ years in the word processor business Microsoft certainly has significant experience with spell check and algorithmically deciphering bungled words - The claim that Google has better code for deciphering jumbled spelling is not self-evident.
Make 20 different user accounts. Create 20 different pieces of content, from 20 different people. Rinse and repeat.

To a new user, it'll look like there's some serious activity, and they'll join in.

I believe this is what Quora did.
Process Systems Services
First, for a foreigner, there is obviously the language factor, but that's a given wherever you go in a country where you don't master the language.

Whenever I went to a doctor for relatively minor things, they wanted to give me some pills. Generally, I got the impression that they just want to treat the symptoms rather than fixing the actual cause of the issue. Dental is so scary that I have never been there: people I know who went for minor things had to battle not to get their tooth removed for the most benin infection. Treatment of orthopedia also "looks" scary, although I don't have first hand experience with it: you see quite a lot of people, young people, with significant issues. I don't know the explanation for that (lifestyle being a huge factor obviously, it would need a real statistical study to actually know something there).

The only times where I was under the impression I had someone who knew what he was doing was when I went to a university hospital, but I don't have easy access to that anymore.

It is also extremely unpersonal, but I am willing to concede that's mostly cultural.
http://www.zillow.com/howto/api/neighborhood-boundaries.htm
Lawyers can't handle opposition, give up on P2P porn lawsuit
I think this is a huge problem with all cloud services.

As we start to rely on cloud providers to look after our data, we need to either become more educated (and proficient) by creating regular backups ourselves (which kind of makes the idea of managed cloud services defunct imo), or be in a position where we can individually sue for damages incurred by negligence on the part of the service company in question.

So many of these companies have liability clauses which negate all responsibility in situations where negligence leads to loss.

I think the current situation is crazy, considering the amount of responsibility and trust that's involved in using web-services which store and manage irreplaceable data.
It's not really a new thing. Rudolf Arnheim's Art and Visual Perception (published in 1974, widely read in art school from what I understand) had a whole chapter about exactly the same material as in that blog post. But before that it had a chapter on the psychology of color, and why the color wheel is in fact useful.
First thoughts:

Delightful site. Scrolling is the new black. Strange they aren't using IDs in elements so you could link to sections though (e.g. http://codeconf.com/#location).

GitHub will clear between $100k and $125k after expenses.

The personal notes about favorite sights and attractions are a nice touch.
But 2.35$/GB for overages.
Yeah ... I just enjoyed spending my afternoon clearing 2 inches of sleet off my lane and driveway. Stay tuned for a sore back tomorrow (oh ... and up to 0.6in of freezing rain/ice).
Some perceive Google's stand with hypocrisy e.g. http://twitter.com/#!/counternotions/status/3256864602692403...
Show me one place in your code right now where you have done something innovative with peer discovery, that no network engineer, or researcher has tried before, doesn't use a central meeting point, and is successful at discovering peers in a reasonable amount of time. I'll start work immediately. I'm pretty sure more people will join in on it too if this is the case.
uh, wouldn't that be "hiring engineers"?

Or do you want the designers to build the blackberry app?

I think spending it on swag would be a horrible idea. I can't think of any company that succeeded because they had really great swag in the early months.
I'm not siding with or against you or Flickr or anyone else here, just pointing this out: I see nothing in the FAQ or Upgrade page that indicates a Pro account ensures your files will be backed up.

(Point being, nothing site-wide in my quick glance seems to indicate a promise of the integrity and forever-ness of your data.)
Another thing I've noticed is that if I see a support forum where most of the answers are given by customers rather than employees, it gives me the feeling the company is not listening or keeping in touch. I get the feeling of laziness, which paints a poor image in my mind.
Mozy discontinues unlimited backup plan - big price increases for some users
I've been a MozyHome subscriber since May 2007. I use Mozy to store all of my home photos and videos - a total of 409 GB.

Today I received the following e-mail from Mozy, announcing that they have discontinued the "unlimited" plan ($4.95 for unlimited storage) that I am on and that I need to choose a new plan.

"Thanks for being a valued Mozy subscriber. For the first time since 2006, we’re adjusting the price of our MozyHome service and wanted to give you a heads up. As part of this change, we’re replacing our MozyHome Unlimited backup plan and introducing the following tiered storage plans:

50 GB for $5.99 per month (includes backup for 1 computer)
125 GB for $9.99 per month (includes backup for up to 3 computers)

You may add additional computers (up to 5 in total) or 20 GB increments of storage to either of the plans, each for a monthly cost of $2.00.

While this policy takes effect for new MozyHome customers starting today, your MozyHome Unlimited subscription is still valid for the duration of your current monthly term. In order to ensure uninterrupted service, you'll need to select a new renewal plan.

As the leader in online backup, we’re committed to continually providing the highest levels of service and protection that you’ve come to expect from us as well as delivering those innovations you’ve been asking for. For more information on the factors that led to this change, please read my note or visit our FAQ.

Be safe,
Harel Kodesh
President"

It looks like I would have to pay $9.99 (gets me 125GB) plus $30 (gets me 300GB) for a total of $39.99 per month. Is this a good deal? Should I switch to another "cloud" backup solution? Thoughts?
I use compile/eval in an IRC bot I wrote (http://github.com/rmmh/skybot) for plugins.

It lets me do hot-reloading of updated files, easily examine the namespace to find functions marked with various decorators, and not litter the plugin directory with unnecessary .pyc files.

The builtin imp module has problems with reloading already-loaded modules, and I might have been able to do some weird hacks with __import__ to make it work like I wanted, but when the core functionality boils down to 3 lines of code, why bother?
That procedure is vulnerable to the same issues mentioned in the article.

Let's say you design a game that has outcomes Lose, Near-Miss, Win, and Invalid (tickets that must be suppressed, e.g. multiple wins). Then, imagine a rare, salient pattern, like 3 singletons in a baited-hook row. That might be an extremely rare occurrence in the overall lot of random boards, but it might still occur disproportionately in, or in the vast majority of, Win boards and Invalid boards.

If you then choose the Lose, Near-Miss, and Win cards randomly, in the desired proportion, from your truly randomly generated set, then the pattern will be statistically correlated -- potentially strongly -- with the Win cards. That's what the article describes.

A single confusing sentence in the article seems to have gotten a lot of people (including me, at first) thinking this had something to do with PRNG; rather, apalmblad's claim that this is a game design issue seems right.
App might last for few days in the App Store before it gets pulled out. Either way, it will be cool to create one.
I.e. taking some of the "feed the family" money off the table.

This could open YC to entrepreneurs who can't live on ramen because they have families.
Quora vs. Yahoo Answers
The cloud just went 'poof'.
It's not a wrapper. Bing isn't passing requests to the Google API and then returning the results on the Bing page. Keep in mind that 93/100 of the seeds Google injected into Bing's database were filtered out.
Crashplan (http://www.crashplan.com) also looks interesting and uses an annual payment model - $49.95 / yr for unlimited storage (less than $5 / mo).
Thanks, I can't believe I read over that.
It means that you're making enough to cover living expenses, provided that you are living extremely cheap -- so the different food gradings still apply. The article's description is correct but ambiguous.

http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html
I'm very surprised that he wasn't arrested, prosecuted, served with an injunction not to talk about this and have all his computers confiscated.

The lottery commission in BC is on it's Nth major criminal investigation - but the trick here seems to be the simpler method of the shop stealing winning tickets from customers.
We fixed that mistake:

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/02/01/y-combinators...

Scott Austin wrote:
@Andy - I think we mean the same thing. But we actually changed “pizza” to “ramen,” since “ramen profitable” is the correct term that Paul Graham uses. It was actually the founder of Y Combinator alum Airbnb that used “pizza profitable”! http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/06/10/from-crash-pa...
thanks - don't see your email tho? mine is dgurevich5@gmail.com
YC will probably increase its intake proportionally, or close to it. They've been begging for more applications lately, even extending the application deadline for the last round. It's sounds like they've got capacity for more.
"Things I've Learned about Silicon Valley"
I meant not hire full time engineers, $150 can only get u 2 engineers, get a app done on contract basis.
"This wasn't much compensation considering Flickr Pro costs $24.95 per year, and Mr. Wilhelm has already received a year's worth of Pro through his participation in some events and competitions.*"

what else could flickr have offered to compensate?
The End of Blogging
The Best Motivation
"When I read really great code, I often think "This is all there is?". It seems like there is too little code to do all the things that it does. Or what is there seems trivial, so simple that it couldn't have required any thought or effort to produce."

That's exactly what I think when I see Peter Norvig's spellchecker: http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html
The suspicious part is that the "corrected" version only appeared in one link, the first. So it doesn't seem to have actually recognized the misspelling as such, but associated it with the Wikipedia page through some other mechanism. There's definitely a circumstantial case that it's through the Google clickstream, though I don't think that's the only plausible explanation (especially given that it's a Wikipedia page).