skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
15 min on the website, I am out of space on my phone.. Time to get 2.2
The problem here is not related to the "death-grip." The problems with AT&T's network affect all versions of the iPhone, not just the iPhone 4.

As a Canadian, I never get to see how well the AT&T data speeds are on an iPhone (the prices are insane for roaming), but on the times where I've needed to do voice calls, the AT&T experience is—at best—not great. I don't have that problem here in Canada.
Good question, most of the expats insurances I've seen exclude both Canada and US except if you pay the higher version... I've never been to Canada so I don't know how the healthcare situation and cost is there.
I think the standard thing to do would be to get a dotcom, even if you have to be creative with the name. But there have been successes with non-dotcoms:

Drop.io was acquired (http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/29/facebook-acquires-drop-io-n...), and bit.ly seems to be doing well.
I'm still wondering how all the internet-based businesses in Egypt fared after losing 5 days of business. That's a pretty hefty hit.

And if any of them had SLAs that didn't include 'the government cuts off the internet' as an exception, ouch!
Twitter Support gets about 100-200 tickets per hour
It's actually pretty analogous to actual scratch cards, as mwg66 pointed out here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2174506
Ten Things You Need To Know This Morning
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I'm always surprised people put up with the lottery given how it's easy to verify who is buying tickets. If you care about the poor why give them such an easy outlet for spending their money? If you care about morals why let people gamble so easily?

I routinely see people in my neighborhood spend more than I could imagine spending on any one food item in a month on lottery tickets. It's never the upper middle class people around here that do it but rather it's always the poor. The government even sells $20 cards just to let them part with their money faster and more efficiently.

I don't really have a problem with gambling but given how what I'm describing isn't really new analysis I wonder how those who claim to want to use government to help the poor allow this. It just seems like a naked grab for tax money on the part of the politicians.
Why is RDF so old, complicated, unpopular and still not discarded?
Yes. In any case, it's not a big deal. If it was any other way, we all would have hacked it by now.
Ok, then I actually have something similar... I can get the insurance 1100$ cheaper if I agree to a 1250$ yearly deductible..

And actually your insurance is then about the same price as it would cost me to have worldwide coverage including US and Canada as someone who is under 30 years old. Except that I can't have a deductible this high...
I think some people (read: "old people") probably don't even know that non-.com tlds exist. If you want to create a memorable domain, you are seriously handicapping yourself by not going .com.

If your success and customer aquisition is going to be more viral in nature, spreading through invitations/Facebook, or if it is dependant on SEO for traffic, then I don't think it matters as much.

I'm (someday) going to launch my "November" Startup sprint project and went with a non-.com url (http://www.rankoro.us/) but, just to be safe, I reserved http://www.rankorous.com as well.
Very interesting, thanks!

Especially the Android-app has huge potential, when people actually use it. Using the situation in Egypt as a case-study, loads of people there could've had an app which inter-connects them and supplies them with a messaging-system, and when the network could handle it, voice-contact.
I discovered this myself a year or so back when I had some money left in my lottery account from a small win. It soon became clear that 'wherever' you scratched would cause the same result and to test my theory, I scratched the 4 of the 5 panels off - then refreshed the game (which reset the grid, but loaded against the same unique game ID) and I scratched off a completely different set of 4 panels to reveal the same 4 numbers in the same order.

The laughable thing with this is that they have a whole array of games, which each require the user to do different meaningless activities, which serve no purpose other than waste time.

I guess the 'average Joe' may feel cheated, if they paid £1 and instantly got a message saying 'You lose' - with no form of 'entertainment' or interaction.

Either way, it appeared to me as quite a horrendous scam and scandalous for such a reputable company as Camelot. What would be interesting, is to know how many times it pays out the jackpot amount of that card (if ever).
Social Music Startup Rdio Raises $17.5 Million, Adds Rob Cavallo To Board
That is exactly what's being claimed. The queries were not made on bing.com, they were made on google.com. The only way Bing can become aware of the results of these google.com queries is if they're "spying" on the user's activity via the Bing Toolbar and IE8 suggested search features.

From http://goo.gl/Bi0JH (Google blog):

"We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed. As part of the install process, we opted in to the “Suggested Sites” feature of IE8, and we accepted the default options for the Bing Toolbar.

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. We were surprised that within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing. Below is an example: a search for [hiybbprqag] on Bing returned a page about seating at a theater in Los Angeles. As far as we know, the only connection between the query and result is Google’s result page (shown above)."
Shell offshores 8,000 IT and finance roles in five years
Pretty much the case in any online gambling game, as soon as you part with your money the server decides whether you've won, and then the game interface can decide how you find out.

For example, Roulette on paddypower.com:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE GameResponse SYSTEM "http://www.orbisuk.com/igf/dtd/GameResponse.dtd">
<GameResponse>
<Header>
<GameId id="1155" ver="1" channel="I" />
<Customer>
<Account balance="1525.00" held_funds="0.00" ccy_code="GBP" adjusted_free_balance="No" ccy_decimal_separator="." ccy_thousand_separator="," />
</Customer>
</Header>
<Close />
<Play stake="600.00" win="1200.00" id="0" >
<BetState drawn="15" total_bets="1">
<Bet name="Outside_Black" stake="600.00" winnings="1200.00" seln=""/>
</BetState>
</Play>
</GameResponse>

As others have pointed out, it doesn't make it any less fair. It does mean you're wasting some time scratching to see numbers, or waiting for a roulette ball to land, or waiting for cards to be dealt... but that's a choice the user makes to make it more entertaining.

Personally, I love playing roulette/blackjack in a real (offline) casino - if i just walked to the front desk, handed over the amount of money I was willing to part with and asked them to randomly generate my winnings/losses, I wouldn't ever bother.

And the same applies for online - I'd be far more likely to play an online casino game as time-killing entertainment than as a way to make money.
"since no one is typing a url by hand" - that's a pretty big assumption, and if you proceed under that assumption you better nail the SEO for your company name. Google gives better rankings for .com names so at least make sure there is not another active company using the .com. It definitely depends what type of audience you are targeting as to whether they will be savvy with not owning the .com or not.

I know a couple startups that assumed they didn't need the .com that ended up paying a fortune later to get it because their brand was established and it was too late to change. roollr.com actually seems like a decent domain, just be prepared for the misspellings and make sure there is not porn at rollr.com, rooller.com etc...
PC building race creates new record
Show HN: from software to "hardware" project
If an efficient approach to convert hydrocarbons into electricity had been invented, we all would be driving electric cars today.
If you have a non .com name then you are forcing users to remember two things. Will someone exposed to the domain be able to remember 24 hours later whether it was "roller.it", "roller.to", "roller.us" or "roller.at"?
If you have patience, you will probably find like I did that anything computers can be understood without resorting to analogies, and that understanding is deeper without them. Stephenson's nonfiction about computers is all analogies and hyperbole. It might be fun to read, but it will not tend to increase your understanding.
> require the user to do different meaningless activities, which serve no purpose other than waste time.

Isn't that the real purpose of gambling (besides dreaming about what to do with the money if you win)?

The same could be said about watching TV series or any other form of entertainment.
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File sharing on the Freeway
I had a discussion with a colleague of mine recently regarding this exact point. It all comes down to hope and the chance to change things.

If for example, you have a steady job and you earn enough money to pay all your bills and save / spend an amount of money per month, then you will be content to the fact if you save for a few months you can afford that 'thing' you desire.

If however, you are technically poor or your job barely covers the cost of living, then you know that things will not change as they currently are and you will not be able to afford that 'thing' you desire however long you work.

In the second situation, the opportunity or hope that comes from gambling seems an adequate risk to achieve the money they want to buy the 'thing'. After all, occasionally their gamble will actually pay off and solve their problem temporarily.

Unfortunately, the downside / reality is that often is the case, the poor get poorer by wasting money on things like scratch cards.
Now I will look for other posts from you about this. BTW, was there any good discussion of the recent partition number proof by Ken Ono et al?
> If you care about the poor why give them such an easy outlet for spending their money? If you care about morals why let people gamble so easily?

If you care why do you let people drink, smoke and eat fatty foods so easily? Many people don't want nor need a nursing state because the government has a habit of getting it wrong. I live in a country where online gambling is illegal and I'm not even allowed to play a friendly game of poker online.
From the National Lottery site:

There is a 1 in 4.49 overall chance of winning a Prize on each Play of the Game. The Expected Prize Payout Percentage for this game is 64.08%.

They are required to publish the odds and they are correct. There is no scam.
Just want to share my experience doing an online business (iPad cases). It's not a typical HN project. Somehow, I got distracted from doing software development and I started doing this iPad case project. Let me know if you have questions and I'll try to answer them. Clickable link:
http://www.millswyn.com/
Presumably these scratch-offs are a pseudo form of entertainment, otherwise people would just buy a ticket with one giant scratch off that tells how much money they either won or didn't.
Why? What is your reasoning?
"Google gives better rankings for .com names"

Is this true?
There'll be enough problems to deal with. Please don't add another unnecessary complication by debating over this.

Just go with dotcom. Don't waste another minute.
Indeed, I often enjoy the 'fun' of playing online poker, betting on sports events, even putting money into 'fruit machines' in a pub.

However, the sole entertainment value that comes from these on line scratch games is so limited, that you would have to have a seriously dull life to find them enjoyable.

At least in most forms of gambling you feel you have an element of control (despite the odds). Whether it's choosing to bluff in poker, choose a team in sports or 'collect' early on a fruit machine.

The difference with the online scratch card is that it shows a fake level of interaction to the user, which makes them believe they could have effected the result by scratching a different panel.

Combining this with the 'near miss' psychological effect, it will probably leave the typical demographic playing it coming back for more.
Is this the end of regional intellectual property rights in Europe?
If you care about morals why let people gamble so easily?

Because gambling isn't immoral? Some people may think it is, but... some people think drinking is immoral, some think eating pork is immoral, some think being gay is immoral.

I have no issue with any of the above, and wouldn't want to live in a country where any of them are illegal.
I think one thing that should be considered, is whether or not people can easily remember and spell the domain correctly after hearing it. A lot of referrals are still by word-of-mouth. There's a big difference between: "Hey check out Facebook" and "Hey check out Orkut". Even when meaningless; Spoondog is more easily retained than Fleaty.

Having a .com similarly makes word-of-mouth referrals easier.

BTW, I found an available .com that might be up your alley. Email me if you like.
Is this different from actual physical scratchcards? Are they even allowed to be games of skill? I thought the scratching was just a distraction to allow you to reveal whether you had a "lucky" ticket or not?
I prefer Camera+, even though it isn't free.

I tried to get into instagram, but I felt that without a web interface, the app is useless to me.
Why wouldn't you? As I understand it, Redis is a superset of memcached (since you can turn disk writes off) and comparable in speed. I, at least, use it as a memcached replacement for storing sessions with the added benefit of not having them all expire if I need to restart the server at some point.

Basically, I exactly agree with the GP's use cases. ACID for things I want to keep, redis for small things that need to be fast (sessions, stats counters, etc).
It appears not. I don't remember seeing any.
The .com is a must, the average user will just type your startup name and then .com
What you should do is buy doma.in and domain.com and redirect the latter to the former.
It seems weird there's nothing for Firefox out there. Even Googling doesn't really show up anything.
I was under the impression that this is actually a legal requirement. That's why roulette fixed-odds betting terminals in bookies spin before you gamble.
Based on my own experience, I would state 2 things:

1. Time will heal, there's no magic switch to make this undone. It's natural that your startup will suffer with you for a while. Just like raising money will occupy your mind, it's inevitable (I'm not suggesting this is the same quality of pain). But it will pass. In the meantime, don't let it be the reason to kill your startup.

2. Having your face rubbed in your imperfection hurts, but not every flaw is unacceptable for every person. If the flaw makes you imcompatible with the whole world, that could be a problem. But I'm quite sure that this flaw is only an issue for a certain type of person, or even only for that particular woman. It could be her problem, not even yours!
And there is the other type, who appreciates your strengths and can live with your weaknesses (or doesn't even see it as a weakness).
8) Expansion (possibly covered by 5)
9) to preserve the Earth: if we can move the bulk of the human population off planet before we totaly destroy it, we could turn the Earth into a planet-sized nature reserve.
The question of 'a scam' wasn't relevant to the chance of a win.

It was questioning how often it would pay out the jackpot of the challenge.

A pub fruit machine for instance has stamped on it, 'this machine will pay out 78% of all money taken' - that is the reality, it will return a proportion back in winnings and take 22% as profit. However, it does not disclose how this will be returned to the user or over what time frame.

In the scenario with these online scratch cards, if you play them for a while you will end up down on your money (as you would expect for a 1 in 4.49 chance) - but occasionally get a small win which regains a proportion of the money you have spent.

- The question is, how often and what are the chances that if I play the game long enough I will win that advertised £100,000 prize? - That information afaik is not disclosed.
If it were me, I'd purchase both the vanity tld of your choice along with .com/.net and use .htaccess rules to redirect content to one or the other.

I'd be wary of .ly domains though.. http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-b...
Very interesting. I wonder if the same punishment would apply had he not sold the virtual chips?
An 800m iron asteroid would make a rather nasty weapon.... (about 75000Mt, probably considerably more than all of the nuclear weapons that have ever existed).
As someone running a non-dot-com service (http://historio.us), get a .com name. If you can't find your name in .com, change your name. Nobody can type anything other than .com. Seriously.
Indeed. Corporations only saving grace in this regard is that they can fail before they get too bad.

(In the old days, they also had to worry about Gordon Gekko style takeovers/restructuring. Not so much these days.)
Thanks for inspiring me to put money into a "pot" for small, act-fast business ideas like this.

Could I ask some details:

* Where did you get the T-Shirt made?
* How exactly did you go from nobody knowing about it to 1000s of hits?
This is the same as any online gaming site.

I used to work for Victor Chandler [1] and there's basically a small number of companies who supply the games to all the different gaming sites. NetEnt [2] and Playtech [3] are the two which I can remember.

There are hundreds of games available, but they are all basically the same with different skins. The spike in traffic when a new game comes out always surprised me, people wanted to play the new SpiderMan game (or whatever) even though it's exactly the same as all the others, just with a different colour-scheme!

At the point where you start the game, the outcome is already determined, it's just a case of going through the motions until it informs the player. Whether that's scratching numbers off, watching a virtual horse-race etc...

It's heavily regulated though, much like fruit-machines/one-arm-bandits there is a percentage payout which needs to be satisfied, so it's no more a scam in that sense than buying physical scratch cards which they have to ensure a certain percent win each of the prize levels.

[1] - http://www.victorchandler.com/

[2] - http://www.netent.com/

[3] - http://playtech.com/
There's not a single piece of fact in this piece, other than the opening statement.

Considering many apps upsell to premium apps, I have a hard time believing that this would ever happen.
> But data is never really unrecoverable.

I agree with your comment, but this one sentence is sadly not true. Until last summer, Seagate Recovery Services (formerly ActionFront) was a division of the company I work at. Their Canadian lab is still collocated with us. A disk drive I took to them was completely unrecoverable (the head was scraping the platters). Now, partially because I work in the dats protection industry, I had another copy of the data. The point remains that the drive in question is unrecoverable.

I'm also aware of, but have no details on, a customer lawsuit that relates to the customers' missing data where the customer misconfigured their backup. Significant chunks of that data are apparently gone forever, too.
The bad news is when you lose or break your computer. You can't re-download or transfer the app files from one iTunes repository to the other.

Or, at least, I couldn't find a way.
They don't do cross-user deduplication, yes. They only deduplicate data that belongs to you.
Currently you have to click over to the chrome store to read more about the apps. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to put some descriptions here too.
1 in 2,880,000 for the top prize of £77,777, this is again clearly printed on the site. I still don't see how you can regard this as a scam, unless you want to classify all gambling as such.
Why the focus on short? Is there any study into whether it actually helps? 2-3 words works just as well, in my opinion.

Sure, an extra 4-5 letters to type in the domain name, but at least it's more memorable than the awful and impossible-to-spell-other-than-letter-by-letter 4-5 letter animal noises. (i.e. How many times do you want to say "No, you leave out the 'e'")
Both the video and slideshow can be found on the original source, which is http://keynotekungfu.com
"As everyone knows, it is incredibly difficult to get a good .com name."

I actually wrote a tool to solve this problem (it finds short, available .coms using real words):

http://impossibility.org/

Ironically, it's a .org :)

Basically, the reason you want a .com is so people will know you're a website. It's instantly parsable. "I work for Shoes.com" vs "I work for Shoe.ly... it's a website that sells shoes". It greatly simplifies advertising, press coverage, word of mouth, etc.
I get horrible CPU usage as well. It's to be expected, I guess, since they have to encrypt data, but what is the encryption code written in, Python?

Also, it's slow to update things. You wouldn't expect this, given that Linux has inotify, but it is.

Their support is rather bad, I've emailed them about legitimate bugs and high CPU usage and SpiderOak not syncing and a whole lot of things, but they never credited me anything. I decided to buy it for a year to back my photos up because my disk is making weird noises and it took them three days to reply to my "PayPal won't let me pay from my balance and I don't want to add a credit card" email, to tell me to add a credit card.

I replied "yes, I don't want to add a credit card", and they haven't replied since I sent it three days ago. With that sales support, I wonder how they sell any copies.
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I think that non .com names are pretty easy to remember when they form meaningful phrases like "take.it" or when they reflect the name of the company (e. g. yolk - "yo.lk"). And it signals that you are different.
Using this tool, how would a developer properly support localization?

if (english)
{
// 100 LOC
}
else if (german )
{
// 100 LOC
}
else if (french)
{
// 100 LOC
}

seriously? Might as well use the tools that Apple supports/uses instead of spending time and energy reinventing the wheel
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Why a technology leader should code
My problem with your domain is that I continuously typed it as histori.us from memory, whereas with a .com I would have defaulted to a more standard spelling of 'rious'.

(Having typed it enough times now, I do remember - but still every time the way I remember is by thinking of how I got it wrong in the past).

That said, I don't see any difference, personally, between .com/.org/.net - remembering the extension is no problem, it's only when the extension becomes a part of the site name that sometimes confuses my memory.
British Airways 'value calculator' challenges RyanAir / EasyJet (2009)
It's called refusing to do business with people who are ethically challenged.
Jersey shore season 3 episode 6
jersey shore season 3 episode 6 Also coming up on Thursday's new episode of Jersey Shore titled "Should We Just Break Up" Snooki meets a guy, but it's unclear if he's engaged or not and Pauly makes peace with an old enemy. Plus, despite
jersey shore season 3,episode 6
Actually it signals that you are the same as the many, many other people who are trying to be 'different'.

It's no longer a novelty factor.