skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Alternative scenario:
1) Build software, charge $1000+ for it, even though it cost you way less
2) Get insane margins.
3) Don't lower your prices ever to reinforce the assumption that it really is worth that much, meanwhile making competitors' products look cheap / worthless.
4) Profit.
Thanks.

Let the hot forking action commence.
Agreed, I only bought the $20 Amazon deal at Living Social since it's a guaranteed $10 savings at a company I frequent. Even then, I was hesitant to pull the trigger because I had to go through the registration process and opt-in to spam.

While it's not my concern, I don't see how some of these deals by large, nationally recognized companies (ex: Gap, Amazon, B&N) would be sustainable. I'm sure they can charge it to marketing, but they're increasing sales by offering a substantial discount that makes them lose money on short term, small transactions. I assume they hope 1.) new customers are attracted, 2.) customers spend much more than $20, or 3.) customers who don't normally visit are attracted.
Sweet. Now rip it out of Chrome and make it work on my phones and tablets!

This is probably best as a web app, not a browser plugin.
Ask HN: What tools do you use to test your website?
I'm just getting started with testing and I'd appreciate some help figuring out which tools are good. How would you test a subscribe via email form?
Who are the startups making physical things as part of their business? I've seen wakemate and square... and few others.

As a hardware hacker/builder, I'm very, very interested in startups that make physical things, or need people that make physical things. Right now I work in corporate R&D, and spend most of my day building/rapid prototyping things that will never see the light of day.

HN and the startup world feel overwhelmingly software-based... but surely there must be a need for people like me, who can hack hardware and iterate on atoms very quickly. Can anyone give me a feeling of who and where those places might be? I'd like to get a better sense of what's been done and how people are using hardware in this space.
Do Hackers Make a Difference in Middle East Uprisings?
http://browsershots.org

Shows you what your site looks like in different browsers. Extremely useful.
And Webkinz, but typed chat is unavailable to my kids. I have one around 12 years old now, and nearly all her friends have Facebook profiles (verified, usually wide open), so it's hard to explain why she can't have one yet. I don't really think there's anything terribly wrong with it; just another way to communicate, like cell phones and, much earlier, telephones. We let them use email, so I'm starting to question the barrier we put up ourselves to Facebook.
> to combat the startup world’s structural and cultural biases against women

You decide to create an incubator to descriminate against men. Try creating a nonprofit to descriminate against women and see how well that goes.

In the future, we should properly add xconomy dot com to the spam filter, if this is the drivel they produce.
Opps :) Whenever I see something neat that a friend is doing my first instinct is to spread it like wildfire.
It shifts the focus away from your argument. Think of the debate in the comments at YC as a debate at your University and of PG's thumb rule: Would you say this to the person on their face in that setting?
There's no such thing as a "cloud server" that sits atop a cluster of machines and pools resources together like RAM into a single instance. VPS and Cloud Servers are identical. It's just marketing. TO THE CLOUD!

Any virtualized Linux instance boils down to a VM running on a single host server. This is true at Linode, Amazon, Rackspace Cloud Servers, etc.

Xen and KVM instantiate a virtualized kernel per VM. Virtuozzo is a container/enhanced jail and runs under the host's kernel.
I keep a Roth at max contribution. It is my preferred retirement vehicle as you can withdrawal your contributions without penalty. I'm still young and naive enough to believe that I won't actually need to have a retirement plan because I'll get rich before then, so a Roth was a good compromise of maintaining control over my money versus not having a backup plan at all.

A significant portion of my personal wealth is tied up in my tech company's stock (>50%). Since this is a large position and completely unreasonable in any money management strategy, I attempt to balance it by being extremely conservative elsewhere (note: you can never truly manage such a high-risk exposure). This has led me to invest in gold, treasuries, and/or funds composed mostly of these components.

Having a major in economics and actively trading equities and options for some years, I personally believe it is foolish to try to trade these individually for all but the professionals. Actually, I believe even if you are a professional, you probably don't know how to trade these either, but that's another story. Bottom line: don't play a game when your the sucker.
Why does Siegler comment on technology he doesn't understand? The holy grail of mobile development would be a minimal runtime that would work on all the mobile platforms which developers could use to factor out the common base of their applications. Something like a native webkit with some kind of sandboxed privileges giving the illusion of a native OS. Currently the only thing that comes close is html/javascript and I know android has a way of bridging Java and Javascript code and wp7 also has the same capability except with C# and Javascript. WebOS is all basically javascript so there is nothing to worry about there and I can't comment on iOS but I'd be surprised if they didn't offer similar capabilities.
I think at this point it's a little too soon to make comments like Siegler. The space is still young and developers are still figuring out the proper way to do cross-platform mobile development.
Good start and on my CR-48 opens up some ways for me to develop on the road...
>In the current economic climate, it is pretty much a waste "investing" in anything until you have, say, an 8-figure sum in cash laying around doing nothing.

Why do you say that? It is clear that money can be made investing with less than an 8-figure sum. For instance, the Vanguard S&P500 index fund returned 22% last year and 10.66% since its introduction in 1976. The fund minimum is $3,000.
Your long rant basically says don't invest money at all, just keep cash in your mattress?

Who in their right mind would follow this advice? Let's say we don't worry at all about saving money, and just funnel our energy into "creative endeavors." If those creative endeavors are profitable, what are you going to do with the money?

It doesn't take a lot of energy to setup a 401k or Roth IRA. It doesn't take a lot of energy to pick an asset allocation that protects you from most risks. For example, a bond allocation will protect your money during a period of deflation, while a gold allocation will protect your money during periods of inflation. A stock allocation will grow your money during periods of prosperity. Just pick a good allocation and rebalance yearly. It should only take you a couple hours a year to worry about it, and you'll be exponentially better off at retirement than someone who stuck all their cash in a mattress.
How to: Find a Job Using Social Media
That seems like a fair assumption. Most important to me, as a web developer, is that soon most smartphone users will have modern WebKit browsers on their phones. Whether the OS is Android, iOS, Blackberry or WebOS doesn't really matter.
No that use is perfectly warranted. One shouldn't be civil with evil, nor be nice when pointing out wrongs.
You sold because you were afraid of another "double dip" that didn't happen, and now you think you had "pretty good forward-sight"?

"You should have held on to it" is not hindsight, that's typically stock market investment advice. Unless a company's stats have changed to the point where it's now a bad investment, you should hold it and ride out the storm.
Trajectory - I feel that's the only hope for what you desire for your kids -- that you put them on a trajectory to become the kinds of adults who will write essay quality posts on forums one day.

Try to visualize an online forum with fifteen year olds writing well thought out posts to each other. Try to visualize those kids. I can't. Not enough of them exist. It seems the closest you could get would be a Doogie-Howser-esque kid conversing with adults, or the opposite, one who's mastered short, slang, text-message type communications with his peers.
Many web frameworks support testing. Are you using a framework? Which one?
I want it for my ipad..
Which is limited to $5,000 per year at best (if not old enough for accelerated contributions), isn't it? Or am I missing something?
If I were to translate the grandparent post into advice for OP it would be "go with deposits".
Html5-based apps allow you to share (javascript) code between your web site and mobile applications.
"I'd prefer something owned and operated by the schools themselves."

I strongly disagree. Part of the point of these things would be to not be the school, to emphatically not be the school. My BBS days would have been much less interesting if everything had to be sanitized for school authority consumption.

At some point children are no longer in school. It would be nice if they have some miniscule amount of experience in being in a not-school environment, what with that making up the majority of their lives. If schools are anything they are already too large, in terms of the footprint they leave on our children's lives.
Will I need abs like yours to sign up for the site? Mine are bit more... spongy.
I'm also thinking about a advanced tuning class - hardware + core pg. Would love feedback from HN on the outline.
Weird, the Pre2 hasn't even hit a major carrier and they are going to Pre3. Also, awesome.
It is estimated that 1 in 50 people do not have prints or prints clear enough to be registered by the fingerprint readers currently in use.

Really!?
Privilege with your attorney/doctor isn't absolute. For example, if your doctor has reason to believe that you may harm yourself or another, they have a duty to report that to the authorities for the protection of you and others. I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt that your lawyer would be allowed to help you actively break the law.

In this case, these individuals were using their Swiss bankers to help them break US law. This is a very different thing than having confidence in the privacy of your transactions. I'd argue that his breach wasn't to his clients, but to his employer. His employer was asking him to help others break US law, so he turned them in. I see nothing wrong with that.
You are right, the web is diverging into pages and applications, unfortunately some are using applications technology to deliver pages. Yet others keep trying to force page development patterns and practices on applications. The progressive enhancements one is the worst of all the sins of page developers writing apps. It kills the model and spikes the complexity.

over ever-increasing complexity we call the web browser?

Much of the complexity at least from a development standpoint is when people try to sprinkle in Ajax. They are two very distinct development patterns and mixing them creates a maintenance monster. If one is providing pages they are better off, grabbing a CMS and delivering pages, if one is building an app then one is better off throwing away JSP, ASP or PHP and writing all of the UI logic in client side JS that communicates to the server via REST and gets data that the UI is then responsible for displaying. Anything in between those two becomes a maintenance monster.
The problem is that there is no alternative. If I told you that your congressman is taking oil money or gets payed by Blackwater/Xe, what would you do? It's not like the other guy you can elect is going to be any more honest.
Self storage is the epitome of American excess. We bought so much crap at the big box retailers that we ran out of space in our McMansions to keep it all. So, we put some of it in storage. This excess stuff that we obviously don't need, since we haven't used it in years, will stay there in storage, being air conditioned in the summer, heated in the winter, and having rent paid for it, until we eventually run out of space and need a bigger storage unit.

There should be an episode of Hoarders where they find crazy people that have been storing junk in self-storage facilities for decades and look at what exactly they have that is so important that they need to lock it up for years and never see it or touch it.
Actually, expected returns will be slightly lower but well worth it as the reduction in risk from the diversication away from 100% equities is huge. E.g. 20% in bonds will barely diminish expected returns whilst significantly reducing your overall risk.
Public library as a communication hub
In the context of something like Chrome OS, stuff like this is vital to being able to do meaningful development work. It's also pretty cool to have your personal development environment, settings, etc. immediately accessible from wherever you may be.
doesn't this mean though that you'd have to keep them off the internet in general? It's not like (no pun intended) Facebook is the only forum for expressing one's opinions.
If you're feeling brave, microwave your passport for good measure.
webOS is already very open. It's basically a linux kernel with a few binary drivers for the radios, and there really isn't a need to hack on those.
I've been using blender for models in the android game I'm making. Don't see a reason to spend $ 40 when there is a fantastic open source alternative. Kind of like buying windows server instead off just using linux.
You've touched on an important point, and it's related to a fund's investment profile. Every fund has one, and Astia's and YC's profiles are very different. It's not really fair to make apples-to-apples comparisons between two funds with different profiles.

YCombinator largely funds "toy apps". I mean that not in a bad way, but in a "the next big thing always starts out looking like a toy" kind of way.

Every successful fund is managed by partners who make very conscious decisions about the kind of companies they will fund and the kinds of returns they might expect to get - YC is no exception.
precentral is live blogging at: http://www.precentral.net/hp-palm-thinkbeyond-liveblog
The irony is, I think they are hurting women by arguing that just because YC requires moving to the valley, it is wrong for women. Obviously moving is a burden on anyone who has a family and I am one of those people. It is likely, given that women often take a more active role in families, that it is harder for women. Yet, by saying that it is "wrong for (all) women" you are only re-inforcing societal stereotypes. I see the marketing value it provides for Astia, and the P.R. value in comparing yourself to Y.C., but I fail to see how it helps women.
It seems to be focused on OS X/iOS. Which is annoying. When it works, it works well. But it only really works on Safari on my Windows machines.
I want this to interface to GitHub. That would be badass.
Inlu.st...

In Luv? Insult? Oh! In lust!
Engadget's also got a liveblog:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/live-from-hp-palms-think-...
We don't need regulations, we just need to make life sufficiently painful for them.

The best way is to find a way to waste as much of their time as possible, the next is to implement filters ala adblock, to block annoying people.
I noticed it does 64 bit only on Windows. Not a good sign for other platforms.
Duke Nukem Forever hands-on: an ambitious, audacious mess
Microsoft's Satya Nadella appointment email
Tricks for you
I dearly hope the offer a decent tablet that is inexpensive and not tied to a mobile carrier. I think one of the things that killed Palm/Pre was that they tried to play the 'mobile phone' game, when they could have gone 'retro' with the "pda without a mobile phone" and done much better.

Lots of geeks and non geeks would be willing to give a device a spot in their lives that doesn't displace their current mobile phone. Given the current state in the US, we're overwhelmingly tied to 'contracts' and steep monthly fees. The threshold any device needs to meet to displace our current devices at any given time is huge.

However... many people are willing to plunk down $150+ for an iPod Touch - which is for most purposes an iPhone with no phone, which also means no contracts, carriers, monthly fees, etc. If you like it, great! If not, it'll make a nice gift for some family member or friend. The barrier to trying one out is much lower.

Regardless of the initial price ("free phone!") most of us now understand that any "mobile phone device" we get is going to cost us $500-$1000/year for multiple years. Playing that game is way too costly - the stakes are too high - the carriers have no real incentive to push you 3 months from now when the next model of something else is 'new'. iPhones have been the exception to all this, and betting your company on being the next disruptive exception was/is foolhardy (Palm pre-HP).

Apple already proved there's a large market for wifi-only devices - let's hope HPalm's new webOS devices offer sanely priced wifi-only options.
Yes, the entire point of my original post is that I am a terrible stock market/retirement investor and a much better small business person.

You must have missed the part where I didn't sell at the bottom, started a profitable company, liquidated the equities to invest into myself at +60% off lows, and then came out ahead 2.5 years later.

'Oh you should have held' is hindsight advice, it's not real advice. It isn't even really saying anything at all. It's just something you say after you hear someone's story about how they lost money.
Speaking of DropBox integration: I have the DropBox App on my iPhone, and the 1Password App too, which has "DropBox integration", but it asks for my DropBox password. Is that the way it's supposed to work? Shouldn't 1Password be able to access DropBox files via the phone itself?
CDARS is a simplified way to do that with CDs, essentially distributing amounts past the FDIC limits into different banks behind the scenes, so that you only have to deal with one account, but get insurance on the entire amount.

http://www.cdars.com/
There is zero default risk in US Treasuries because the government has the capability of printing more money. Can you name any other type of bond or fixed income that has zero default risk?
I would really love to hear more about the kind of technology infrastructure they have that supports that kind of usage.
Asana's awesome new tool for businesses/groups/people/YOU
loving this collaboration/organization tool from Asana... Think I need it today!
after falling for this trick once with the palm pre I THINK I'LL PASS
Nokia May Announce Partnership with Microsoft or Google as Early as Friday
And Steve Ballmer's company wide email: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/238769.asp
the name is pretty bad...
It would indeed be awesome, except that dropbox still doesn't have a way to sync with true webapps last I checked.
The most valuable things in WebOS are the GUI and UX design, not the kernel or drivers.

I'm interested to see what they came up with in tablet form.
That sounds exactly the kind of crowd that doesn't need dating sites, especially in NY, the supposed best city for singles (http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/27/best-cities-singles-lifesty...). Any reason why you are going for that?
AT&T Announces Unlimited Dropped Calls
Excellent.

Now drop in some version control (mercurial for my own preference :)) and we are onto a winner.

Dropbox is great for syncing between your development machines, but version control is essential for deployment and team development. Combining the two is really powerful.
I feel like this is a little mis-titled. I expected a method to do something to a biometric scanner, or to temporarily alter your fingerprints, not to remove them entirely! Interesting read I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing.
Actually, privileges are exceptions to the rule, and they each have their own justifications. The rule as stated is fine, and any privilege must be specifically justified on its own.

Attorney-client privilege and psychiatric privilege exist for different reasons. Attorney privilege comes from the necessary functioning of the judicial system, as you pointed out. Psychiatric privilege, in the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, "serves the public interest, since the mental health of the Nation's citizenry, no less than its physical health, is a public good of transcendent importance"

What is the reason that a banking privilege should exist? What "public good" is being served by protecting private transactions that outweighs the harm done by evasion of tax laws or other regulations? That's a difficult question to answer, and simply saying "it's the same as other privileges" is not sufficient.
As a female CEO of a start-up I kind of resent the tone the founder of this org takes. Who is she to decide what is right for all women? That's like saying all Asians _______ because Asians ______. It's not appropriate and I found many of her generalizations about female founders/CEOS to be wrong. I also cannot believe they expect people to pay. If their main thing is that it's hard for us gals to get access to capital, why on earth would they charge A 5K Fee?

All that aside, the tone in this thread proves many of her statements right. The first three comments were all anti and were seemingly written by men. What you three commenters fail to realize is that in criticizing the org you've underscored the need for something similar to this to exist in the first place. The start-up community/entrepreneurs/VCs are still boys clubs that are very hard to enter. I have less of a problem because I am not afraid of situations where I'm different than the majority, but many women do. There needs to be either 1) a more welcoming atmosphere or 2) more women-focused incubators.
According to most official documents, any passport which has a faulty rfid will be assumed tampered with, and will become invalid. So unless you want to be refused entry and forced to replace your passport, this is unadvisable.
Your tone is making people misconstrue your point.
It's about time. Goodbye, Symbian.
"A Random Walk Down WallStreet" is still an excellent read.
Does anyone else think this is a terrible name? For me at least, this brings up an image of the trackpad on my laptop - which is... imperfect at best.

Aside from that, it just seems horribly generic. Touch? Pad? That's all you have to say about your product?
The Noob Guide to Online Marketing (With Giant INFOGRAPHIC)
I do something similar. I run screen within screen; my top level screens are all separate remote hosts I connect to, each themselves running screen locally. On one remote host I run irssi and use screen's 'M'onitor feature to alert me when people are talking. I also 'M'onitor the hosts screen for activity. This is somewhat convoluted but works for me.
Mental Focus Significantly Improved By Brief Diversions
Ask HN: Why no comments
I post questions and post on here and I never get comments or votes. What am I doing wrong?
Exactly. GEMA charges a minimum of €0.1916 ($0.2626) for each streaming of a song up to five minutes. Compare that to the £0.0022 ($0.0035) charged by PRS for Music, the equivalent performing rights collection society in the United Kingdom.
Phone Trips
I m waiting on jruby 1.6 to be released. That would make it ruby 1.9.2 compatible.