skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Somewhat OT, but perhaps related: I've watched SpoutCore and Rails 3 from a distance. My impression is that Rails 3 is still heavily dependent on Prototype.js (for scaffolding, etc.) though the majority of rails developers switch to jQuery for new projects.

Does the community believe that SproutCore is Rail's future javascript library? I realize that SproutCore is independent of any server infrastructure, but, given Yehuda's involvement in both, it seems fair to ask. Or is it the case that, since SproutCore is all about moving logic to the client, Rails would be a poor match -- too heavyweight to pair nicely with SproutCore?
Azure hits 31,000 customers on 1 year anniversary
Dropping my Microsoft MVP
Are you taking care of the shipping (after printing the T-shirts locally) or is the wholesaler taking care of everything? Congrats!
path-o-logic?
baller move guys. love the audacity. go mixpanel.
Walt Mossberg: Verizon Beats AT&T on iPhone Calls
I loved mine so much I took money from them again.
I prefer expectation (over typical queries) of weighted variance of the feature, divided by the total weighted variance of all features. (most likely sqrt(variance) instead, but whatever power you prefer).
Fortunately there is a map editor.
To be honest, a lot of the front-end issues are going to be tough to fix for a number of reasons. There are 50+ instances of inline CSS styling on just the home page, and the CSS is minified so it's hard to pass on changes that can be made in Firebug.

As well, much of the copy on the page is using line breaks rather than new paragraphs, which is why you see funny spacing like in these examples.

While I do think the bulk of the design is quite nice, the HTML/CSS end of it could use some refactoring.
"all they have to do is show up for three more years"

That's a lot harder than you're making it sound. (Or maybe my sample is skewed.) I personally know one person who has walked away from millions and know of another half-dozen. "Phoning it in" for three years at a company you don't care about just to collect a big paycheck can be absolutely soul-crushing.
I think the MPEG-LA's terms are pretty good for the next Youtube. First free web video is free. If you charge your customers, for the first 100K subscribers, it's free.

100,001 - 250,000 subscribers/year = $25,000; 250,001 - 500,000 subscribers/year = $50,000; 500,001 - 1,000,000 subscribers/year = $75,000; and more than 1,000,000 subscribers/year = $100,000.

That's about 10 to 25 cents per paying customer PER YEAR with first 100K subscribers free. And there are limits and caps on the increases.
Well, FWIW, I disagree with Firefox not using it if its free to use.

However, I still totally object to H.264 being a requirement in the spec.
Counterfeit Game Sold on Apple's App Store
Noticed on 101 last night. Presuming the idea is to give the folks on the GoogleBus something to see?
The Daily News is not the future of journalism
Value is the difference between cost and gain. If your users are getting a gain, and their cost is 0, then there's value being created.

The trick is to determine what gain is, and how close you can raise cost before value becomes too low.
Are you looking to use a "badge" system to reward those who answer like SO?

Quora works now because they don't have to deal with idiots posting crappy answers...will they be successful after a real launch? Isn't that their main concern...becoming Yahoo Answers?

Do you have a workaround? Just curious...I'm sure you have something...
Actually it would be trivial to shut down such an attack, using the existing tools and policies already in place.
Humans are going to space. Those that do are going to be awash in riches far more vast than the Europeans found in the New World.
America today is a great place for innovation, startups, and living comfortably. We got here by risk-taking, fighting, exploring (geographically and other ways). The people who continue to do that will be the new America. I'd like the old America to be the new America.
Paul Buchheit: The two paths to success
Tell HN:My app 'bubblegum' just hit TechCrunch
dont know or care who this person is
Good point, sounds like our auto-fill solution was too clever by half in your case. Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.
Download link for WP7 (you need the Zune client) -> http://bit.ly/bubblegumwp7

My wife and I worked on this together - it's been a fun day dealing with launch and getting on TC. Still fighting launch fires :)
The light-gas gun launch + rocket hybrid is a very interesting concept. It consists of a large, but conventional light-gas gun propelling a g-hardened payload 2/3 of the way to orbital velocity, then the payload uses its own engines to accelerate the rest of the way. The scheme is advertised to cost around $400M, but we should consider that within an order of magnitude. Even at that, the opportinity to significantly lower launch costs should be embraced.
Yup, (nearly) all of those points are valid.

He could have gotten comparable performance by simply turning of safe writes, but the commenters point out a lot of other problems with his original assertions.
Al Jazeera English, Live Now: Gunfire in Tahrir Square
AJE (http://english.aljazeera.net/) and Reuters have APCs moving on the bridges nearby. A lot of gunfire in the background of their correspondents' phones during interviews. Very confusing due to sound reverberating off of the high-rises that ring the square.
"Same with Facebook, it’s ajax heavy, what people are liking, commenting, etc is more valuable to facebook than someone just viewing the site."

how does facebook compensate here? i believe engagement is more important, but are the lost pageviews really of no matter? how does it play into alexa etc?
UFO Spotted Hanging over Jerusalem
Watch this video for a synchronized view of all the footage: http://youtube.com/watch?v=IyCPzXICRc4.
Entrepreneurial Training from Goldman Sachs
One person may have been killed (Reuters / Al-Arabeyya reporting) ... gunfire may be coming from several directions.
It came from the Bing toolbar tracking the user browsing. Yes, obviously "hiybbprqag" came from Google. But that's because they only tested it on Google.

They never tested the fact that it could have come from any other website as well. Thus, they can't conclude that Bing is copying Google or whether its copying the user's browsing behavior.
CS grad students: their talk will drift to automatic weapons
What if your orders go viral. How can you possibly fulfill them?
The number is not big, less than 10 million dollars. You have no idea many employees they have or what kind of talent they have. This number is well in line with Google's talent acquisitions in prior years.

Also the space they're in is very very relevant.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

- Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau#Walden_.281...
This is incorrect lol. Hipster has launched in some locales, just not everywhere.
think of it as the ultimate link bait
Murfie Jewel Case Time Lapse
Having raised cap and interacted with a bunch of YC alums (hired 2 and friends with others), I can strongly second Elad's points. Just because they're in YC and exposed to some very accomplished people doesn't imply that they already know these things. They have a lot to think about when they're starting up their companies, so it's hard for them to absorb everything at once, despite being super smart.
>Success comes to those who force reality to bend to their will.

Words of wisdom in any age. Utterly fantastic.
FBJS Animation: CSS based open source animation library from Facebook
wingo's contribution here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962959, reminded me of this old favourite:

Shivers, Acknowledgements to Scsh Reference Manual, http://www.scsh.net/docu/html/man.html
A non-relevant question, which one? St. Louis, Tulsa, Chicago, New York, etc... Since the shirt doesn't say, it won't make a difference from the sales point of view, just wondering which one was your inspiration?
Armor moving away from positions near the square and toward the Nile bridges according to reporters and activists on the phone (AJE).
Flickr restores lost pictures
Yes, I was once again annoyed by a market partially displayed in German even while I was logged in, and other Google properties were just in English. The semi-random locale switching makes for a lousy user experience especially for expats.

Adding ?hl=en to the URL fixed it for me (just having it here once was enough).
Great landing page. I instantly get what's being sold and for how much, and the sale is a click away.
Thank you. This is so true: "It takes time to find your internal voice, learn when to trust it, and stop fearing outside opinion."

When I was young I did as I was told. It was easiest way for people to leave me alone so I would have time to do the things I wanted.

Later I always wondered why I was never competing for prizes or honed a specific skill; I was having too much fun doing things that others could care less about. It was a great way of learning about being comfortable with myself.

What great blog post. So well written, I am envious.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it.

Whoever wrote this must not be very good at what they do (assuming they agree with the opinion). Programming was an enormous amount of fun for me, I would have never gotten good at it if it weren't. In fact, everything I ever got good at was tremendous fun. Sometimes it was work and pure misery, but for the most part it was fun. Perhaps others tick differently from me, but based on conversations I had with people that are very good at what they do, I doubt it.
Are you sure it's not Hipster buying Groupon?
>But we are not making any serious effort as a society to cross those valleys. It is not clear why.

Because what we have works well enough for the task at hand. The problem, which Stephenson alludes do earlier in the article, is space just isn't proving to be as useful as we had anticipated. We're already doing pretty much everything that you can justify from an economic perspective. Activities like asteroid mining and space solar power aren't going to make sense for centuries even if we dramatically cut the cost of $/kg to orbit.

So sure, we could do the same things more cheaply after a huge investment in, say, tethers. But so what? How does it make sense to spend trillions on a new launch technology when you could use that money to buy all the conventional rockets you'll need for the next 50 years.
There are not enough upvotes in the world for the knowledge you are dropping in this thread.
Their assertion is that they're imitating Google.

"Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation"

Which they have NOT demonstrated. Their results can easily be interpreted that they imitate user clicks.
I don't think it's ambiguous. They are contending that bing is intentionally using this to recreate results similar to google's. I'm guessing you feel this is ambiguous because you don't think it is supported by the data, not because they are saying anything unclear.
Funny, I don't think I have a lot of noise in my life, even though I would like to leave my job and am generally feeling frustrated here lately with not having moved on already. But I know why I haven't moved on: I had to get well. Perhaps my increased sense of frustration is a good sign -- an indication of rising energy and awareness that my burden, in terms of health and the time and work needed to resolve it, is substantially less. If so, then the odds are good I will move on in the near future.
My favorite story from the Quora discussion on Chua's article (http://www.quora.com/Parenting/Is-Amy-Chua-right-when-she-ex...) was this one: "At one point, I attended a "piano camp" with other equally talented white students, and what struck me is that those students actually practiced for hours because they loved music, and genuinely practiced for hour after exhausting hour because they couldn't get enough of the emotional expression that piano afforded them. Piano held none of that for me."

I think it's obvious when someone is truly passionate about something versus just doing it because they think it will get them another carrot.

Is it possible, though, to have a functional society where everyone follows his or her passion? I believe it is, but would be curious to hear thoughts.
Why would anyone upvote a completely ambiguous comment (what is "this response")? You thought the ambiguity was intentional?
Watch The Mechanic Free Online Movie 
Looking for The Mechanic streaming movie online? You've come at the right place and at the right time. Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is a well-paid assassin who executes people at the request of the American government.
Ironically my mostly intrinsically motivated life was extrinsically validated while reading this piece.
Actually we do have a code-mirror app that edits Pageforest applications: http://editor.pageforest.com.

I'd love to make things as simple as possible too. Here's a video walkthrough where I try to show how simple it is to get started (including the CodeMirror use).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5pfopKTnD8
All the examples of things Google Analytics can't do are incorrect. Google Analytics Custom Events are fairly robust, providing a 4 level data hierarchy. 'Pageviews' are a concept that can be applied in non-pageview scenarios, and they regularly are in apps. And being able to flag people as logged in vs. not logged in is a classic example of what you can use Custom Variables for. Mixpanel has some interesting offerings, particularly in the real-time space, but Google Analytics offers 99% of what most sites need, and without a price tag.

There are things Google Analytics does poorly, though, like Goals (which don't work for Events, aren't retroactive, and are limited to 20 per profile) and Funnels (which are even more rigid than Goals).

I wish MixPanel well, since a competitive analytics space is good for us all, but the developer they quoted could use some advice on how to maximize his/her Google Analytics experience. Can't beat the price tag!
hah. awesome. thx.
At first I was skeptical of the bubble, but this is outrageous.
Please fix this, PG.
The weight on keywords that exist nowhere else on the internet other than the fake searches Google injected?

Well, if there's one source of data, that data is weighted at 100%.

The whole experiment is meaningless.
Great post. The reference to Alfie Kohn is worth following up on. His book "Punished by Rewards" changed my world view about what motivates people.
This is pretty good: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deepapraveen/5340132714/ (from the comment thread)
And I'm "the wife" ;-)
Follow the app on twitter @bubblegumapp
I would love a blog post describing the steps you used to get to a MVP; how you got the shirts en masse to be printed and shipped, platforms you used to quickly iterate, etc. Really inspiring.
I'm with uvdiv here: the idea that the modern oil industry exists due to path dependence ignores the massive fact that petroleum was by far the most concentrated, easily transported exploitable form of energy on the planet in the 19th century.
Tell HN: Side project, MacGist 0.3beta
Here's a side-project I've been working off and on during evenings/weekends.

It's called MacGist and allows users to copy selected text in any MacOS application to a (public, for now) Github gist.

Future releases will allow pasting to private gists and filtering of the gist listing so the menu doesn't get too long.

http://luckycatlabs.com/macgist.html

Feedback is appreciated.
In my opinion, rails is much to heavy to be the first choice for SproutCore. SC works with data at a JSON/CRUD+search level, which makes for some pretty degenerate rails code. You only need a thin layer to surface data, which is more elegantly provided by PHP or sinatra.
How to find a hacker roommate in SF?
I'm a startup founder with an office in SoMa, but I live in the east bay. I'd like to get rid of that commute, but I've found it's really difficult to find a place to live in SF, especially when you have no proof of income. Whats the best way to find a good hacker roommate and/or a decent super-cheap place to live (I'm always at the office anyways)?
Hulu's Thoughts About the Future of TV
Part 1:
I'm a financial model builder since Excel came out on the MAC in 1987 (I’m now however a PC and 63 years old www.fser.net). Some of the inaccuracies are caught using accounting articulation points: Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders' Equity... if out of balance, something is wrong... What is wrong is a bit tricky and takes thorough understanding of how Income Statements, Balance Sheets and Cash Flow Statements interact.
Unfortunately, articulation points don't catch algorithmic mistakes. My models have some very complex algorithms built over the years and the best thing to do is graph each line “quickly”, looking for breaks or unusual patterns in each line item. My models are regularly 3,000 to 5,000 lines long - not because I like complexity, but because I have lots of ways of expressing revenues and expenses. I can model most business in a few hours.
Recently, I built a steady state feasibility model for growing, harvesting and extracting lipids from algae using heterotrophic and autotrophic systems. I did make a graphing tool that would allow me to capture the relationship between any input and output as I incremented an input 10 times. In most cases the output was basically linear as the model was basically a linear calculator… I would suggest any builder of engineering models to implement an incrimination graphical recording system as an error checker.
Part 2
To underscore the other knowledgeable experts on this bog, finding the error before you replicate is very tough, indeed. It takes time, several sets of devoted eyes to methodically question each algorithm, which unfortunately are written in cells, which are hard to edit. One thing I learned was to use spaces in a cells code… Spaces inside a huge concatenated IF Statement (the type I love to make), have no effect on calculation, but a huge effect on legibility and understanding… Remember, Excel 2007 allows something like 7,000 characters in a cell, so spaces can work… Use Alt Tab to move code to the next line… give yourself a clear line and line up the code so that similar code components are in columns… this really helps when you come back a year later and have no comments to remind you what you wrote… also if you use VBA – to calculate and fill in a cell, be sure you clean that code and leave some narratives as to what you are doing…
While HN's reaction to DDG's 'war on Google' has been mixed, their search traffic doubled in January (according to Gabriel's newsletter, not sure if there's a linkable source on this), so I'm not prepared to consider the strategy a failure.
Part 3
A few weeks ago I wrote a simple fuel saving device feasibility calculator. I whipped off the Excel version in a couple of hours…. Then, I tried to do all the calculations inside controls using VBA code, placing output in text boxes… OMG … this “simple” experiment turned into a long nightmare… What we take for granted with Excel – i.e. dependent relationships being automatically programmed is NOT done in VBA… I had to place code in every dependent control (SpinButtons) to calculate several text boxes and to carefully format them both numerically and graphically … like Green Boxes for Positive Numbers and Pink for Negative Numbers… Now I should have call up a module and avoided duplication, bu nonetheless, this was a tough edit… Spinning numbers in and seeing if every text box that should have registered movement actually did…
Part 4
Why did I do this excruciating experiment? Well, I wanted to show clients how I can make Excel look like a bullet proof application with output on top of sculptured, raised backgrounds… i.e. the look and feel of make-your-own Dashboards… Bottom line – I don’t think clients will pay for this expertise… You can make you own Excel Dash Boards 9 as I have done many times) without resorting to the extremes I recently undertook…
…So having confessed my inexperience about the difficulty in making non- Excel calculators, I thank my luck stars that we have Excel… without out a doubt the most flexible and beautiful numerical authoring tool on the planet offset by the extreme difficulty in detecting algorithmic mistakes. Isn’t life a trade off, anyway? Thanks for reading this … Bruce Badeau bruce@fser.net
Wow, there, Allan Bloom.

As if a thread on Hacker News (and, specifically, single comment on that thread) is representative of all dialog.

And it might not add "information or opinion", but it's not "just noise", it's what we hip people call A JOKE. And that it's valuable on it's own merits.
The title on the post is "Counterfeit Lugaru on Apple's App Store", which is slightly less inflammatory, and much more correct.
> No, fans of Fight Club on Facebook are much less conformist than other people on Facebook.

Which is not saying much.

> If you actually read the article and came to this conclusion then either I'm a bad writer or you're a bad reader.

I'd bet on the former.
I'll give another vote for Alfie Kohn.

Also, if you're interested in this stuff, check out John Holt. He explored the ideas Paul talks about and advocated a type of homeschooling called unschooling, which is student-led and based largely on intrinsic motivation.
That sounds like a great problem to have.
One huge caveat: Google Analytics is completely FREE.
One thing to consider about unpaid internships is that they can limit the potential candidate pool. Not everyone can afford to work without being paid.
Oh, I never took part in these practices, sorry if I lead you to believe this. I did work as an affiliate for these type of sites, however it was via a blog that would review the sites. I will admit, I was deceptive in the fact that I never really used the sites - I was working an angle to make money, but I never tricked users in to thinking I was someone else, or lured them in to a situation where they were forced to register. My reviews simply talked about the features of the site, then provided a link with my affiliate code.

The actual luring tactics do seem predatory and that's why I worded it like that - simply because I have witnessed how others were going about things.
Instagram raises $7M, led by Benchmark
I don't mean in terms of usability. Clearly a small screen and touch input changes things. By flexible, I meant that you can install what you want and from whatever source you want. You can modify the system files (with a little bit of work) and replace core components easily.

In this sense, it is every bit as open as desktop operating systems traditionally are.
Well, DDG's argument was essentially that they offer the same service as Google, but without certain risks. Both services give you the same thing--search results.

Mixpanel's argument is that you don't need the service Google and others offer (page view stats)--you need a different service, and Mixpanel offers that.
And I just want to say - huge thanks to the HN community and to folks like patio11. I got to use a lot of things which I learnt here when it came to launching the app. Need to do a post about it when things settle down.
WHAAAAT? Unlimited storage for $4.99 a month not a viable business model?
wrote something on the history of linear algebra I liked

Do you mean "The Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra"? Can you say something more about it?
>4.Any suggestions on how to market this.

The page at that link is not specific enough. Tell a _story_ about how to app makes a purchaser's life better.
No, I have the same problem. I tried typing "crtcrazy.com" into the address bar and I couldn't access the site. When I added "www.," it let me access it.