skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is Mozilla intentionally trying to create market confusion? It isn't obvious from the name, but this is built on XULRunner and has no relation to Google Chrome.
At one stage, when we were selling a very expensive version of our spreadsheet product, we'd offer a pre-sales service of going through some of a potential client's spreadsheets and converting them to our own system -- the aim, of course, being to show how much better our product was. In one case, a company was using a specific metric to drive their strategy; it was calculated as the difference between the sum of two columns. Kind of, "if the metric is positive, buy, if it's negative, sell". (I'm simplifying, of course.)

Each column was populated with a recurring formula, for example lets say that column A had something like "=D3+E3" in row 3 and column B had "=D3-F3" in the same row, filled down the whole sheet. We factored out the repeating patterns, put them into user-defined functions, and found that we got different results to the original sheet. After spending a while trying to work out what we'd got wrong, we double-checked the original. Halfway down column B it switched from using its own formula to using a mis-copied version of column A's. So half the numbers in column B were wrong. In effect, the metric that the business had been running on for several months had been meaningless.

The company never bought our software, but that may have been because they disappeared a month or so later.
DIY SEO: Building Your Own Scraper for Link Analysis
Data Analysis: Simulating the Monty Hall Problem in Python
I believe SO is designed so that new users ask questions. Then after getting a few rep points from questions they can contribute back with answers or comments (my preferred input).
Google Crisis Response for Egypt: Tools and Information
>Otherwise your adblock extension could be excluded via robots.txt

I think that's what most people though was wrong in your comment.

Care to elaborate on how an adblock extension could be excluded via robots.txt in that fictive scenario?
Thanks - I've cancelled that account. Some of these buggers are a pain to catch automatically
The Tiger Mother versus Cost-Benefit Analysis
You're 100% right from a technical standpoint, but I disagree with your opinion on the liability issues. I know it seems inconceivable when you start your business, but being sued is a possibility for just about anyone. It's entirely possible for your business to be sued because of the actions of an employee, for example. If that happens, and you're a sole proprietor, you are the one being sued.

This might sound like paranoia, but I'm living it, and you're right about another thing. It sucks. We have a corporation, one person in the organization did something none of the other members were aware of, and now we're being sued. The plaintiff even went so far as to try and sue all of the partners personally. Fortunately, the courts set the bar really high for breaching the corporate firewall. Being sued personally is no joke. If someone gets a judgement against you for some exorbitant sum of money, it's hard to resolve. It can follow you around for a long time.

Setting up a corporation is so simple, and so inexpensive that I don't understand why anyone wouldn't do it. I respect the fact that you've built a very successful business entirely on your own, and entirely organically, but operating without a corporation seems like flying trapeze without a net.
> Does anyone else wish that we could have the opposite? Web apps with desktop technology?

Yes. http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/apywt/qt_mixed_... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2116815

> Maybe it's time that we started looking for successors to HTTP and HTML designed with webapps/games in mind.

HTTP's by no means perfect, but it's roughly the right thing for most purposes and probably the part of the Web that needs revision least urgently. As to HTML, it's not so much that we need successors to it (though we do) as that we need markup-language browsers to be HTTP-loadable applications running inside a portable runtime instead of starting with hardcoded markup browsers and trying to bodge them up into a generic runtime plus GUI system. Your slogan for the day: "The Web Is Arse-Backwards".

By the way, notice that with (something on the lines of) NaCl + WebGL + appropriate cacheing we can could also get shot of the mobile-phone-native-app racket. No more Dalvik, no more iOS.
your unpaid time

Not deductible in the US. It isn't a close question, either.
PayPal security theatre threatens Scottish Ruby Conference
Tweaking my favorite programming font, Anonymous Pro
The really salient point here is that Google is providing users with results that it got from sites like Yelp through aggregation. Google asks for Yelp's data promising to link back to them, Yelp has no real choice because everyone else will be giving their data away so Yelp doesn't want to lose clickthroughs, Google uses the data to provide 90% of what users want to see on their pages, thus only generating 10% clickthroughs, and now they're getting more aggressive.

In summary, restaurant/bar review websites provided Google with data, Google will eventually eat their lunch.
I think it's scary when you first realize you have to charge users. (Or to raise your price on them). But, as long as you talk to them, sometimes it can surprise you how receptive they are.

When I was an SAT tutor I started charging $20/hour. I was inexperienced and a bit younger than most of my clients, so I figured I couldn't charge much. After awhile, I decided I wanted a higher wage if I got new clients. But, how much? I decided to ask for $30 from new clients. No one argued, or showed any displeasure. Wow! But, had I not gone high enough?

The next time I decided I wanted more, I made the decision to jump it to $60/hour just to see if anyone would take it. And... everyone did. Without question.

In order to get paid you have to ask. And, it's sometimes shocking how much people will pay you. Don't be afraid to ask for more.
I'm a software engineer... and being tired of being out of shape and gaining weight, I joined an extreme workout program/class a number of months back where we do kickboxing and resistance training alternating 6 days week.... and I absolutely love the results. I feel amazingly better, I sleep better, I lost my belly completely, and actually have abs! My heart rate went from the upper 60s to the upper 40s. (athlete range... and I code all day/night!)

But more interestingly I've found that I can focus a lot better... I feel way more productive.

I really recommend to all my fellow tech people to try some program like this! We spend a lot of time stationary in chairs...

We're all highly analytical, and like engineering whatever we're working on to best fit our goals. Think of exercise as some important performance module for the human framework? :)
Here's what I'm not clear on: why did we scrap the whole Ogg Theora thing in favor of WebM at all? Isn't Ogg actually unencumbered by lawsuit-fodder?
Yup. A comment on the original webpage reported that this value appears to hang/time-out Google Spreadsheet. I tested and it indeed was the case. So there are going to be lots of places one can fool around on the input side only to send the server thread into a loop. That's bad.
MacPascal here... weirdest code syntax highlighting ever.
less than 1
20-49
50-100
Entrepreneurs Don’t Fear Asking Stupid Questions
I'm talking about Google taking pictures of my house, snippets of books i've written or or other people's web pages with copies of articles i've written and displaying them without my permission. They seem to think that's ok because they "added value".

Well now people are adding value to Google's products and presenting them in a new way. This opens up a can of worms for Google.
Microsoft releases H.264 plug-in for Chrome on Win 7
Instagram Filters Through Suitors To Capture $7 Million
The Founder’s Choice: Paul Graham For President
End of an era? I met my girlfriend of 17 months there. Even though I haven't visited since, it's sad to see it go. They're definitely a company I'd invest in if I was in the position to.
Yes .. we experimented a bit with our pricing too. Raised it from USD 25.95 to USD 49.95 with virtually no impact on conversions. Thanks to Eric Ries for suggesting this on a call where we discussed Muziboo with him. He asked us if we had ever raised our prices and when we said no, he recommended that we double them and see the results :)
There's a somewhat frightening quote from Greg Blatt, CEO of IAC in the press release at http://iac.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1882

"We know that many people who start out on advertising-based sites ultimately develop an appetite for the broader feature set and more committed community, which subscription sites like Match.com and Chemistry.com offer, creating a true complimentary relationship between our various business models. 2010 saw record growth both for Match and OkCupid, and we believe coordinating the adjacent business models will help fuel continued growth for both. This acquisition therefore goes a long way toward our objectives of bringing new people into the online dating world, offering the ability to meet in whatever type of online setting, and at whatever commitment level, our members desire, and facilitating a seamless evolution of the online dating experience without ever having to leave our portfolio of sites."

Members of OkCupid, get ready to be upsold.
To repeat myself: Just because Crockford suggests it, doesn't make it a good idea.

Here's a set of benchmarks for creating a new instance, using the pattern you just linked to (called "Crockford Create" within):

http://jsperf.com/object-create-vs-crockford-vs-jorge-vs-con...

In Safari, it's about 5X slower than using a regular constructor function. In Chrome, it's about 20X slower.

In JS, just using prototypes as Eich intended is the way to go.
Bullshit.

http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/woome.png

Yeah, that's a "real" dater.
If extensions checked to see if they had permission to alter/interfere/access webpages by looking it up in robots.txt, which is what is being suggested by people who say "Bing toolbar violated robots.txt", then that same mechanism could be used to specify:

User-Agent:adblock
Disallow: /

Or even, if the "User-Agent: (star)" is supposed to tell Bing Toolbar not to play about with the page, then why doesn't that also apply to all your other extensions/addon/BHO's/plugins whatever you want to call them?
It would be great for a bunch of small companies and 501c3s who have been affected by this to file a complaint with the FTC and state Attorneys General. At the very least, it could get some higher-profile media attention to this long-standing pattern of abuse. And with luck, somebody will decide to investigate ...
PayPal and Google have an extra level of trust built in to them from a customer POV.
And they just released a Chrome plugin (like they recently did for firefox):

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2011/02/01/...
Where abouts in NC are you? I'm in Raleigh, and would be happy to meet up and show you some of how I'm setup. I charge yearly subscriptions for digital content, as well as one-off sales. I use both GC and PP for checking out - no sense in limiting yourself too much, imo. I have sales from around the world, and GC and PP have covered the overwhelming majority of those sales.

EDIT: Ahh... you're in Durham. I've got to be in Durham this afternoon. If you'd like to get together, ping mgkimsal@gmail.com. Also, I'll be at the tripug PHP meeting in Carrboro next Wed evening at 6:30 if you'd care to meet up and review stuff in more detail.

Good luck.
Crowdsourcing Law School Rankings
Ditch the App Store
Browser "Chrome" has been a term that's been around for ages. The confusion can be blamed on Google, actually.
Imagine a playground. Young, pre-alpha nerds writhing in chaos. Little arms flailing. Faces red. "Poopy face". "Your mommy smells".

Nerd fight.
that's not a message from a user.
In the UK setting up a limited company costs under £100, can be done online and takes a few hours.
Exactly. I used to have a flickr account but since dropbox/facebook came along if I want to share anything it goes in dropbox (public) or facebook (public, but it's easy for my family to see the pics).
"To repeat myself: Just because Crockford suggests it, doesn't make it a good idea."

I did not suggest anything like this. My point was that Crockford pretty much enumerates every sensible way to do inheritance in JS, with the conclusion quite similar to yours - Crockford suggests (in fact: describes) many things, so don't draw too much from this.

Btw, he suggests the regular constructor too: http://javascript.crockford.com/inheritance.html
Setting up an LLC in NC is $200 initially, then $200 every April. I didn't quite grok that at first, because I'd filed my LLC paperwork in March, then needed to pay the $200 again in April - should have just waited until May.

Getting an EIN from IRS is free and took about 10 minutes.

Not sure about any local paperwork you'd need to file in NC - I didn't have to file any in Franklin county.
What are the benefits of JSObjectSetPrivate? When is it useful?
Yes, because accidentally leaving a prototype at a bar is equivalent to deliberately breaking an NDA for the purposes of making a quick buck.
Software Developer Job Resource Kit - Now Free
The problem here is that the photographer lost data that he had no way of backing up. His photos are fine, his online collections, uris, and social networking are all gone and only existed on flickr's servers.
FWIW, you don't have to charge users. Ad supported/affiliate marketing is a pretty viable business model and will often fit better than trying to charge end users.
How to stop itunes automatically backing up your iPhone or iPad
Yes, but using "Chromeless" after the fact that Chrome is now considered as a browser name is asking for trouble.

It could have been a nice code name for the project, though :)
one day late to the party!
original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2167875
CSA: a Fantastic Website
I'm left thinking the only reason Paypal works is because the founders were too stupid to realize what they were getting into.

I'm not usually one for mantras, however "stay hungry, stay foolish" comes to mind.
MIT Media Lab Spin Out Affectiva Measures Emotional Responses to Video
I wonder why this doesn't ask for your HN account name. Nevertheless, filled this in. I'm available as ID/front-end dev on contract basis :)
This is one of those defining moments for a startup, where they turn the corner and come out on the other side stronger, or collapse based on a lack of user trust and system problems. Time will tell.
Eight Ways to Combine Typefaces
Don’t be afraid to try new things in your typography, but trust your eye and your instincts as a designer. Sometimes, even things that follow all the “rules” of typography can still look awful (and vice versa).
As I understand, Ogg Theora is an odd format (in a way that makes it exceptionally hard to implement in hardware, for instance) that doesn't perform very well.
2. & 3.) It's very, very late to come to these races with nothing truly compelling to show. I think they've already lost, but, nothing's sure...
The link to the actual post referenced in the techcrunch article but not linked to: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-...
Ogg (like mp4 or mov) is actually a container format that can have Theora or WebM compressed media inside.
I'm pretty sure they'll have disabled that functionality until this incident blows over.
HN is becoming a victim of its own success. It really needs to be taken to another level so its easier to use. Right now its alot of noise which is increasing on a daily basis because more people are using it and is making it more and more difficult to use. The voting system is just one problem.
This definitely won't happen. But hey, at least they don't sell your data, they just tell advertisers to come to them if they want to use it.
They might be paying commission to users that get other users to pay for membership. That would generate very bot-like behavior even if the users are "real".
I did contact WooMe. The accusations are not misleading, see also the update to my post.

Also, the user featured in the top picture personally contacted me, and while I never claimed her profile was fake (but mine obviously was), it turns out she's pretending to be someone else on there (confirmed).

It's easy to say I fabricated the story, much harder to prove, isn't it?

I wouldn't be calling you out if I didn't think you really need to take a good look of how what kind of shady business you're running.
Global Game Jam 2011
OKCupid seems to do a way, way better job at data analysis than the freakonomics guys, who sadly see no need to be correct in the analyses used in their popular books.

I don't think you intended this as a backhanded compliment, but it riles me up to see levitt mentioned as anything other than a pop Econ sellout. Reading anything by either Levitt or Krugman is guaranteed to enrage me. You know they can do better, but they traded rigor for money and fame.
Do you purposefully allow spammers (affiliates maybe?) to generate large numbers of fake messages that result in conversions from your fake free, to paid accounts?

Yes you do.

I have less than zero respect for you, and for everything you do.
Stop pretending I'm not engaging in a conversation.
Amazon Previews Rival Streaming Service to Netflix
Basically, no, haha. They should have a 'bubble' option, but then their advertising system wouldn't work. Wouldn't that be a shame?
I don't know. I actually think he has a pretty good point here. I'm generally positive on Google but I'm embarrassed by their public tantrum. If I was advising a startup with similar grievances against a competitor, I'd strongly encourage them to avoid this distraction. It just feels like bruised ego. And so far, I think Google's cause has been hurt more than helped.
I get really tired of people saying that the patents on H.264 are a "red herring." How is open source software like Firefox supposed to use H.264 if they have to pay massive licensing fees? That enforcement thus far has been weak to non-existent doesn't imply that it will continue to be so in the future.
Google already has terms of service. You agree to them by using Google. http://www.google.com/accounts/

5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.
complimentary / complementary confusion is unfortunate, too
For most ebooks (those from all of the big 5 publishers except Random House), agency pricing means only publishers -- not Amazon, Sony or Barnes & Noble, can change or set the prices. And, as already been noted, publishers also get 70% of the price they set. So 30% to Apple equals nothing for anyone else...
This is ver unfortunate, I'm happy for the founders, but OkCupid is a great service. I met my girlfriend of almost 2 years now there. I fear for what it will become. This is a very sad day on the Internet.
Theora is derived from VP3 which, as the name suggests, is a predecessor to VP8 which Google recently renamed to WebM. As such, VP3 is inferior to VP8 (WebM) and a huge step backwards from H.264.

One could also say that as long as software patents exist, no codec can ever be unencumbered by lawsuit-fodder.
> If you really WANT snake oil I guess I could find some and get it to you.

You certainly have enough of it in stock.

Let's get real: you're either generating, or allowing spams because they result in upsells. You have no financial incentive to stop the problem, and you lack the ethics to do it because it's right.

Not to mention that your investors would wonder why the cash spigot dried up, once you converted your site from an unethical cesspool of deception to a legitimate, value-adding business.

You're everything that's wrong with business in a neat little bun. Here's to hoping that someday you stop scamming people, and start creating value.
The only thing more frustrating than an ethically challenged business is the investment that came its way instead of going to legitimate start-ups that may die on the vine for lack of capital.
Is it one of those one-shall-stand, one-shall-fall simultaneous face punches like I saw on UFC?

Because that would be sweet...
We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we inserted

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-...
sounds like its time to open up a free site that doesn't store passwords in plaintext and doesn't get sold to the terrible dinosaurs. one can only hope it doesn't turn out badly. intuit hasn't yet ruined mint, so its theoretically possible.
Yes. YMMV as to which those are, though. Safety-wise, just do a little research before heading somewhere, especially at night (to get you started, in Brooklyn, don't go to East New York, Brownsville, and large parts of BedStuy).
For example, by trying to use the codec that is provided by the underlying operating system. The latest versions of both Windows and OS X ship with a H264 codec.
Like the workaround to this problem that someone suggested on twitter: As an alternative to PayPal can @scotrubyconf just sell t-shirts for $x00 on Amazon Z Shops? Then your t-shirt is your ticket.
From your comment: I suspect Bing is making use of data that is typed in the toolbar or browser's search box ... not data captured from text typed directly into Google's search page.

From the official Google blog:
We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we inserted.
And what of Linux, and its variants like Android or MeeGo?
Another step to the new Internet (what ever that is)
I got about 5 messages the first 2-3 minutes after signing up. A short while later, I had roughly 20 random women contacting me. Good thing I have screenshots, because they stopped coming as soon as WooMe noticed my post.

I can only see what these supposedly real women are trying to tell or ask me until I pay up. That's all fine and dandy, but there's no point in pretending that real users were just all jumping on the opportunity to meet a horse in such a short time period.
It's never too late, the game changes too much. Just 5 years ago Palm and Blackberry owned the entire smart phone market.

I wouldn't want to be in MS position, but with enough money, patience and perseverance you never know what they might do and what may be next
AI, ‘Jeopardy,’ IBM, and Wolfram Alpha
.NET Reflector is free no more: Red Gate gives up on the freemium model
I know one good example. Gurobi (http://www.gurobi.com/) sells a very advanced Linear Programming (LP) and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solver. The software is more than 10K+ for a license. They use paid AMI's that let you run their software for $4-8/hour, depending on the instance size (High Memory Extra Large to High Memory Quadruple Extra Large).

I imagine is it a good way for them to get over the chicken and egg problem. It is hard for developers to convince their managers that it will solve their problem without trying it, and they can't try it without the software. It also allows people like me to experiment with Gurobi without much up front cost.
WebM is a container format for VP8. Ogg can’t contain WebM but could contain VP8 as well.
Now, Microsoft Goes After Google--This Time Over Web Video Formats
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170185
Android supports H.264.