skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's not really a requirement, any more than "Add a user interface" would be a requirement. It describes a perceived need (which could be real or marketing created) that ought to be broken down into specific requirements.

Most people/companies don't have any idea what can be done with their data or how it would help their business, and as such, aren't in the position to formulate clear requirements. Saying "I want to add analytics" is just shorthand for "I've got a lot of data, some of which I suspect could be valuable and want to start doing something with it."
They could just extend the MacBook Air line up to 15" and leave the MacBook Pro line in the same form factor, "pro" ports and all (please god no more variants of video out).

I wouldn't mind being given a choice between an optical drive and an extra battery or hard drive in that space.
What's to Love & Hate About Internet TV (software vs. hardware)
I'm curious as to how helpful these threads have been to both seekers and employers. Has anyone found a job through one of these threads? Do employers get meaningful applications?
We have been using jQuery-TMPL and it is very cool.
Researchers enable mesh WiFi networking for Android smartphones
Why doesn't Apple own an Iron ore mine and run an Iron smelting operation? Why don't they produce their own LCD panels in-house? Who don't they have a Lithium mine and produce their own Li-Ion batteries?

For Apple's needs they are perfectly capable of relying on the market to provide most of their components. Apple has no expertise outside of hardware design, system integration, and software, they are best left to concentrate on where their expertise lies rather than trying to cannibalize the entire supply chain.
I'd like to hear your take on an idea I read about: burn boron. It only burns in pure oxygen which means (1) you need an oxygen purifies on board, so it'll take some engineering to make smaller ones than we have now, but (2) the static problem you mention for powders isn't such a problem.

Energy density is higher than gasoline, but you have to carry around the oxidized boron. Then you turn it in for recharging and get a new batch. If there's only one boron car and one recharging plant, on opposite sides of the country, it's still only 50 cents per gallon equivalent even including the shipping costs. And you can store as much in your back yard as you want, pile extra in the back seat, whatever. Chicken-egg problem solved.

Source: Prescription for the Planet by Tom Blees. (He also advocates advanced nuclear reactors to supply the energy for all this.)
PULSE - Downtown Palo Alto, CA (across the street from Caltrain) - We build Pulse News an awesome newsreader for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Website: http://www.alphonsolabs.com/jobs

We're hiring iOS engineers. We would love for you to come by and get to know our 7 person team. You will have a large amount of control and impact and have an extremely engaged user base to answer to! Shoot us an email at jobs@alphonsolabs.com

iOS - Ideally, you have already developed and launched an app in the store. You prototype features rapidly and iterate on design even more rapidly – while writing clean code.
Ask HN: Networking for DoD Information Assurance Contracting Position
I know HN is mostly entrepreneurial, but does anyone have contacts within the DoD contracting world? My current contract is going to be ending shortly so I am looking for new opportunities.
Great article, dodgy headline. Altogether though, some solid advice. My project(s) meet a number of those criteria, but fall short on a couple of them. So you've given me some food for thought, regarding things I can do to better market my own stuff.
Tinychat - New York City.

Looking for website lead engineer: nginx,apache,php,mysql,perl,memcache.

jobs@tinychat.com
There is something wrong with him. Slight case of narcissistic personality disorder?
Link to the project: http://www.servalproject.org/
How Robert Scoble Influences The Market
Intel Discovers Flaw In Latest P67 Chipset, Halts Production
Interesting problem: for what base (if any) is this actually true. Now there's an actual interview question!
Is Berkeley DB a NoSQL solution?
If you want to do that, I recommend starting by watching Paul Irish's "10 Things I Learned from the jQuery Source" [0] and "11 More Things I Learned from the jQuery Source" [1] as he does exactly that.

There's also jQuery Deconstructed [2] to navigate the jQuery source in... an interesting manner.

[0] http://paulirish.com/2010/10-things-i-learned-from-the-jquer...

[1] http://paulirish.com/2011/11-more-things-i-learned-from-the-...

[2] http://www.keyframesandcode.com/resources/javascript/deconst...
At Facebook, defense is offense
Yeah my point here wasn't that I don't understand how Dropbox is useful in general, it's just that this article is by a hacker and he says Dropbox is the "best piece of software written in the last 5 years" and I seem to survive without using it whatsoever.

Being able to send files to people makes sense, but 9 times out of 10 e-mail does the job there just fine. I'm still not getting it, I guess :) Maybe my life is just too boring.
His firm already went out of business. He states that he will write a post-mortem at some point in the future.

I like the post-mortem meme sweeping startup world; I find them very enlightening.
Ask HN: Pre-revenue, approached by angel...what to do?
Been working on an app for a year or so (off and on, as best as possible while balancing day job). It's gotten some press here and there and traction (mostly still in the customer development phase--our app is one in which significant bugs would be a problem). Recently, we were approached by an angel investor. We're pre-revenue, however. How does that work with angels? Is that a bad thing? I predict by the summer (June or July) we'll be ramen profitable, but for now that's not the case. We weren't thinking of taking any investment either, but if that would enable my partner and myself to work on this full-time, I'd be all for it. What to do?
I'm not so sure this is true. For any startup founders here, some questions:

1. How much time did you spend incorporating your business?

2. How much time do you spend per year filing your income taxes, or do you hire an accountant?

3. If the latter, how many billable hours do they put into it? Was this a major expense for your business?

There may be a huge step function if they somehow simplify the tax code such that small and medium business owners can do it themselves in a day rather than having to hire an accountant, but anything short of a major overhaul will leave people in roughly the same position I think.
Show HN: Your Location Sharing made Simple and Easy
I use Terminal.app + Visor, but I'll give iTerm2 a try after reading this.
Congrats Simon! Site already looked awesome--funding and YC backing are both amazing news.
Because I didn't know about it =) I've found a few more active mesh networks from around the world, so I'm doing a follow-up story. Thanks for leading me to Freifunk.
The tech industry isn't high school, companies that get into emotional huffs based on this sort of BS don't survive long. I'm sure Intel and Apple are on perfectly fine terms with each other. Intel is not dumb enough to ignore the importance of selling tens of millions of CPUs a year (as Mac components).
This is great info. I was pretty ignorant about this facet. Thanks for the response. Thanks to the other people responding to the OP's comment, too. This is what I love about HN.
Wow thanks, I'll read through those first.
What would Neptune look like if it orbited Earth?
I was also a big fan of remapping capslock to control. Fortunately, in OSX 10.5+, it became a configurable option in the keyboard prefpane. Thanks for posting your list! I'm looking forward to giving Lyx a try.
I suspect that the amounts they are quoting are extraordinary bargains for Google and Mozilla, given how many highly skilled person hours went into discovering and fixing those bugs.

I fear that if they increase the amounts, it will damage the free software ethic a bit -- people will _expect_ to be paid for work they were doing before!
Trulia (Downtown San Francisco)

Fastest growing real estate search site.

Looking for multiple solid back-end developers, a data scientist or two, an engineer with email systems experience, front end php/javascript types if experienced, and at least one data warehouse engineer and one sysadmin.

Ongoing and upcoming work:

Efficient scaling of multiple systems

Creating new products out of all the real estate data we have access to.

Integrating new sources of interesting data many of which are geospatial in part.

Excellent opportunity to work with cutting edge tech (we save the bleeding edge stuff for prototyping) and work in an environment where your work can have an immediate impact on the business.

The back end is mostly java with bits of python, the front end is lamp based. We make heavy use of open source where we can.

Not all the positions are posted all the time so if you don't see one of the ones mentioned, just apply for one of the other engineering positions and put in the cover letter part what you are actually interested in.
http://www.trulia.com/jobs
This is a great idea, and I'm surprised no one thought of it sooner. Now, if only someone would create a "social layer for Facebook" my online life would be complete. Maybe there could be some way to recommend Facebook friends, get access to some kind of news feed of things my friends are doing... you know, stuff that would really make Facebook useful in a social environment rather than just a place to host my photos.
Mark Zuckerberg on SNL
I updated the post with the benchmark source.
Full Color Sticker Printing 2011
Full color stickers have become the most sparkling symbols for the contemporary businesses in 2011. That is why company offers you full color stickers printing.
> where 3G is everywhere and wifi is a hastle.

I'm an American, and don't understand this statement. Why is WiFi a hassle? And how does the 3g work? Do you just get it through your normal mobile phone provider?
Excellent news. My kudos to the jQuery team. Great work.
Carbon Ads - Remote - Front End Web Developer
http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/7990
The jQuery 1.5b1 announcement is probably a good start, it lists a lot of stuff (though not all new features, in fact most of it is bugfixes from 1.4): http://blog.jquery.com/2011/01/14/jquery-1-5-beta-1-released...

The most important new features are probably: the rewritten $.ajax [0] which returns a promise [1] in the manner of e.g. Mochikit and the subclassable jQuery object [2]

[0] http://blog.jquery.com/2010/12/28/jquery-community-updates-f...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise_(programming)

[2] https://github.com/deadlyicon/jquery/commit/4024e67d0f352e4a...
Google’s Snazzy New London Offices
If you want to get a sense of how bad thing at Skype have gotten, check out this thread on their site.

http://blogs.skype.com/en/2011/01/mac.html

It's their "big announcement", and it's followed by the longest, and most vitriolic stream of comments from people who are appalled by the terrible design. It's the only thing 9/10 comments even mention.

The amazing thing is that near the bottom, their "Blogger in Chief" Peter Parks provides a point-by-point reply to each of the comments that didn't mention the UI (there are a handful), while completely ignoring the issue receiving all the attention. He actually gets called out on this, only to come back with half-baked line about "your thoughts about the new UI are very valuable to the Mac team here."

Which, of course, is total bullshit. They're the exact same comments the Mac team received by the boatload and promptly ignored during the beta.
Unfortunately Incognito mode on the browser gets me right back in.
This discussion reminded me that I really should get a US ham license. (I have a Swedish one but the reciprocity is only one year at a time which makes it a pita.) I can probably pass the technician exam just on common sense (judging from the online test exams) so it wouldn't hurt.
Unfortunately, the range of a single computer is very limited, and an ad-hoc wifi network requires that all computers be in range of one another. What you would really need to do is create a mesh network, where each host relays messages to other hosts within range. This way, you can communicate with hosts that aren't within direct range of your wireless radio.
http://www.economist.com/node/6919139?story_id=6919139
I guess a launch had to happen soon. What with photos of them (& others) at the YC Yuri event popping up on the web :-)
Well, we didn't hope hard enough. Dag nabbit. Is it me, or has the quality gone way down hill w/ new cast? I mean they are all funny, but are they funny enough for SNL. Where are the Adam Sandler's, Chris Rock's / Farley's & Chevy Chase's?
The current dictionary syntax is actually typical for lisps, particularly this is exactly what Clojure does. It's just a series of elements except in this case it's designed to look at every two elements as a pair.

What do you mean by it's inconsistent? Commas are the same both in dictionaries and anywhere else, they're completely optional.
Started on a honeymoon. Great story. They say a co-founder is like a spouse and a startup is like a marriage, but you two are bringing it to a whole new level.
Yes, if anyone understands the role of government as the insurer of last resort, it would be entrepreneurs. The single-payer option is exactly the kind of thing the government should do to cut health coasts costs and encourage economic growth. Private insurance companies can provide additional insurance. But the present system is designed to impose a huge negative externality on would-be entrepreneurs and others who might have left their jobs to pursue other opportunities. And you are subsidizing the profits of the industries that benefit from the relative immobility of labor. That negative externality you pay is someone else's subsidy. If it were up to me, I'd rather pay into a universal health care system than pay the negative externality to stay tied to an employer on account of health care coverage.

Another negative externality is the administrative burden imposed on companies to handle employee health care.
Some usecases mentioned in this article:

* MemcacheDB is a server that implements the Memcache network protocol but uses Berkeley DB for storage and HA to replicate the cache state across all the nodes in the cache group.

* Google Accounts, the user authentication layer for all Google properties, was until recently running Berkeley DB HA.

* Voldemort, choose Berkeley DB Java Edition for it's node-local storage

I know that openLDAP and Apache httpd server also makes use of Berkeley DB. What are the other big use cases?
Less simple than Shift-Command-3/4?
Satellite hacking's been a big thing in Brazil for a while now: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom...

(It's probably not a good long-term Internet access solution though)
The problem I have with government using tax incentives as a way to spur entrepreneurial growth is that by their nature these incentives reward current activity with future benefits. But the payoff horizon — next year's tax filing – isn't actually useful for a new company. That's why I'm so bullish on using simplified health insurance as an incentive for new business. It provides value and reduces friction on day 1 and continues to do so through the earliest, highest risk phases of a company's lifecycle. Tax incentives reward success but don't help business attain that success.
Uber (San Francisco, CA)

We're hiring engineers for all kinds of roles, including mobile development (iOS, Android), infrastructure (node.js and Python), as well as engineering-oriented data analysts (we've got LOTS of data to mine). Extra points if you can do all of the above.

More info here: http://www.uber.com/jobs
Where can I line up to collect the cash :) seriously the proposals from fairtax.org will go a long way towards encouraging entrepreneurship along with single payer health care but both are politically too risky for any govt.
I do that too. Double clicking on web page text is sort of a nervous tick for me. On sites like the New York Times (and now TechStars, apparently) odd things happen when you highlight.
Jacques, thank you for all the wonderful posts. Really enjoy your insights and the sharing of your life stories. I'm impressed with your desire to continue to learn new stuff and asked questions.

I completely understand your motivation to quit HN. It takes a lot of time and effort to write well thought out posts. Taking a break is good. I hope you do come back for reading. HN is a nice source for news. I found that not logging in helps to stop the urge to post. May be, just may be, after a while we'll see your posts, however sparsely.

Good luck and wish you success on all your endeavors.
If you are thinking about this before you come into wealth then it sounds like you are the type of person to manage money well and use that wealth to create systems which not only edify your own life, but the lives of hundreds/thousands of others.

If only all lottery winners would ask these introspective questions before they won the lottery, they wouldn't all go broke and be miserable after 5 years.
Intel Says Design Error Will Reduce Sales, Margins
from a 1019 day old account, too
We're hiring for both our Jacksonville Beach (Florida) and Chicago offices. I work and speak more for the Jax office though.
Huh. I'm thinking I might very well not want to be hired by someone who doesn't know the difference between a digit and a number. What an odd thing...
Perhaps they could offer a small separate sort of "Flash Guard" utility for the blocking function. We consider the possibility of rogue Flash code opening the camera and/or microphone to be a security vulnerability.
Being able to block those globally is a "feature" some need.

Of control of hardware access should be by user choice only, not a side effect of an app. Counting on stored Flash settings isn't an option since many use Better Privacy (Firefox extension) or other utilities to delete Flash storage, including the settings, due to the stalking features.
Team-based task management tool
Yes, he said that in the post. I was wondering if he solved the problems before going out of business, or if it contributed to going out of business.
Yes. Wifi is hastle because you have to search for open hotspots, ask at the counter what the password is etc etc. And lots of times they don't provide instant connectivity, but redirect you to and force you to go trough some sort of user-agreement where you have to click "I agree" and maybe even pass out your email before you can actually start using their network.

This is annoying.

3G is basically what your phone has with theoretical speedlimits up to 3-4mbps. Get a laptop with a built in 3G-adapter, insert the SIM card. You're done. You now always have internet. Always. Anywhere.

No asking anyone for anything. No confirming silly agreements. No need to stay in one specific place to stay connected. Heck, you can use it in the back of a car while getting driven off somewhere. Why would I want place-restricted wifi over this?

Yes, it's probably slower than Wifi, but watch me care: It just works(tm).
Julia Map
yeah I was so sure that someone would recognise me! I am the only girl in the front row in that photo, Simon is on my right
You can be curious about something without expecting a specific outcome.
Thanks! The Balls in Space game scored several sponsorships that have collectively gotten it into the 4 figures range, which is pretty good by Flash standards.
"Julia sets are fractals that were studied by the French mathematician Gaston Julia in the early 1920s. Fifty years later, Benoît Mandelbrot studied the set z2 − c and popularized it by generating the first computer visualisation. Generating these images requires heavy computation resources. Modern browsers have optimized JavaScript execution up to the point where it is now possible to render in a browser fractals like Julia sets almost instantly.

Julia Map uses Google Maps API, and HTML 5 Canvas to render the images. It will let you browse these fractals in an interactive manner. We hope you will enjoy exploring the different Julia sets, and share the URLs of the most artistic images you discovered."

http://www.googlelabs.com/show_details?app_key=agtnbGFiczIwL...
Fantastic. I'd love to see Canada do something like this.

Is anyone aware of municipalities that already do this sort of thing at a city-wide level? Any that come to mind as doing it particularly well? I live in a city that is desperately trying to reinvent itself (Hamilton, Ontario) and I'm curious about these sorts of programs and their successes (and failures).
let me know when you find out thanks
e-Dreams?
World Income Inequality in one chart
Since you asked... check it out! http://www.deliriumapps.com

(Shameless plug) We're looking for beta testers soon - ideally, you have an iPhone and use Highrise and/or LinkedIn a lot
Congrats on the site, didn't realise until now it was yc.

Out of curiosity (I was considering the same) where else did you travel to?. Being that my principle goals are to do a round the world trip and finish my startup, I figured the best way would be for me to do them both at the same time.
This seems like a fine line. You can talk to an Egyptian ham about what's going on and then decide yourself to pass on the information.

Also, how does the prohibition on passing third-party messages mesh with packet radio equipment? Am I not allowed to send email over packet? I thought that was one of the main uses back in the 90s.
This is more Growl than Android.
Its too bad the matching funds aren't available to the companies themselves and not just the investors. It would be great to be able to double your investment round with a government matching grant.
Your problem is either ill-specified or trivial. The trivial answer is any base greater than 144, allowing all numbers up to that point to be one-digit each. Since to have a 144 "digit" we must already be in base > 144, as chosen by what appears to be your problem, there's no other possible solution. (I'm assuming integral bases to keep things well-enough contained for a simple HN post here.)

"Ill-specified" is if you're still playing fast-and-loose with the meaning of "digit"; I've tried to adopt the closest meaning I can come up with where 144 can be a "digit" but in conventional terms the "digit" refers not to the number, but the encoding, in which case 144 can't be a "digit". It may be the ordinal identifier of some digit, but it is not itself a digit, which by definition is a single atomic unit in your number digitization scheme. (That is, your atomic glyph may itself be encoded by multiple glyphs in another scheme, I could imagine representing base 1296 numbers (36 times 36) by definition as two base36 numbers with the obvious English encoding, but in the base1296 encoding a "digit" would be two alphanums in the English encoding. Gotta make sure to keep all the layers straight; there's the abstract number, there's the digit breakdown in a given base, and there's the serialization of those digits in some concrete format.)
He did mention simplifying the tax code in the state of the union address.
I am just telling you what the numbers are.
Do you want to influence the future of your favorite software? Speak up
This is a super awesome project. Basically running a mesh network, asterisk, asterisk special sauce, and a sip client/controller, all on an android.

They can even route calls through the mesh & out via phones with working connections. (Though not clear myself if that is outbound VoIP or using the android phone).

Plays nicely with Village Telco too. (http://www.villagetelco.org/).

Sadly only works right now if the phone is rooted as Google don't provide an IBSS API (which they believe they need).
Use invite code "hackernews" to get early access to download iPhone app. - @krisrak