skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wanted to like laptop. It's too slow and clunky for getting work done. Just surfing it's ok but I prefer a bigger screen.
Most of those examples are basically "company x tried to sell a Windows Mobile phone back when smart phones weren't anywhere near the market they are today, and when Windows mobile was very average and it didn't work out." Hardly seems like Microsoft was at fault for anything other than not making a better Windows Mobile. And most of the companies in that list were notorious for selling poor quality phones anyway, regardless of the software.

Partnerships don't work out, but there doesn't seem to be many examples in that list of Microsoft leaving those partners out to dry, it's just a case of the product wasn't good enough (from both Microsoft and the phone manufacturers).
10 Location Based Marketing Infographics
I used to be dead set against 80 character limits, and considered them a historical relic. But nowadays I'm actually in favour of them. On my 1440x900 screen, 80 characters allows me to have two files side by side in vim, or vim and a terminal side by side. Likewise, I'd imagine a programmer using an editor or IDE that's heavy on screen space would probably have about 80 characters of space for the file in a similar resolution.

Finally, in some cases, it's just more readable. Take the following code:

some_list = [a_long_variable, with_contrived_names, for_an_example, insert_your, own_parallel, if_it_bothers_you]

versus

some_list = [
a_long_variable,
with_contrived_names,
for_an_example,
insert_your,
own_parallel,
if_it_bothers_you
]
Can Google ever be a neutral news provider?
Maybe they should figure out a business model that is based less on controlling distribution archaically.
Stop trying to make maths "fun" - lessons also for coding?
Nice list. Shouldn't you be careful about shutting off the engine, though? Won't that lock the steering wheel?
In Java there are also static inner classes and static initializers (static code blocks that initialize static data)
I really don't see the resemblance.
QB is a telepresence robot, the goal is to transport your presence to somewhere else. The best way to do this is by creating an "avatar", which is a symbol for someone being remotely present. When you get closer to it, you can see exactly who is being represented by this avatar. If you think of it from the social robotics and symbolic interactionism (sociology) point of view, it is one of the most beautiful TPR solutions out there to date. Hope that helps illuminate your question! :)
They're probably trying a lot of things... that message there, blaming piracy, it's not meant for you.

It's also not meant for people who play console games but don't use the internet much and don't know how to use a torrent site.

It's meant for the marginal person who could go either way - who might grudgingly torrent a movie or music album that can't be bought in his home country, but feels guilty about it and wants to support content creators.

There's people who are going to buy, no matter what - this message doesn't affect them. There's people who aren't going to buy, no matter what - this message doesn't affect them. There's also a marginal group of people who might buy or might not - they're trying to appeal to them.

Or who knows, maybe they really are just blaming piracy while letting the ship sink. I'd buy that explanation too.
IPhone password compromised in under 6 minutes
Ask HN: Failed to Bootstrap, Now What?
HN, I've been trying to bootstrap my startup for the past 3 years, with little or no success, and I don't know what to do next.

I host a SaaS for churches that provides a walled online directory and social network for their members. The product is fairly mature, being in use at my own mid-sized church since 2006.

The problem is, my customer churn rate is horrendous, and growth is almost non-existent. Most churches cancel within a year of signing up.

It turns out that getting churches to initially part with their money isn't nearly as hard as convincing them that the investment of TIME is worth it for them and their members. Building an online community takes effort on the part of the church to promote it, and most give up within months. It's not unlike a forum or Facebook group; just sticking something out there doesn't draw in anyone.

So, the bad:

- Little or no significant growth.

- Product doesn't provide enough immediate value to customers.

- It's a time sink in support and I'm getting burned out, considering there isn't a viable business at the end of the tunnel.

Now, the good:

+ The business is in the black (barely), and it doesn't have any debt.

+ I still have my day job, which pays the bills.

+ The product does have a (tiny) bit of name recognition among church techies.

I see my options as:

* Pivot the product toward something less social that provides immediate value to church staff/leaders (rather than members), e.g. Church Management Solution (database).

* Provide some notice, and shut down the service. Keep my day job and find some other hobby.

...and maybe there's an option I'm overlooking...

HN, give me some advice. What would you do if you poured every spare hour into something for an Internet eon, and came to the realization that what you're doing isn't going to pay off?

[edit: formatting]
Free online business courses for entrepreneurs
I'm afraid you've been misled by an oversimplified definition. That is not fundamenatally what temperature is, though it works out that way for many common systems. Temperature is a way to measure which way energy will flow between two objects at equilibrium. Equilibrium in this case means a maximum entropy distribution. Which way will energy flow so as to maximize this. Well, we just take the derivative of entropy with respect to energy transfer, and we get the equilibrium condition. T is (partial S / partial E)^(-1)
"Great, another article pushing the viewpoint that hardware and software doesn't matter, that investment in technology is a waste of time, that what really matters is slick marketing and pretty packaging."

Bless your heart, my friend. You are dedicated to substance over appearance, and for that, I give you an upvote.

Sadly, most people are more complicated than that.

If engineering alone mattered, then the dominant desktop computer would be the Commodore Amiga. OS/2 Warp would be the standard business platform. TOPS-20 would be the server operating system of choice. They would all be written in concurrent versions of BLISS and run on multicore descendants of the DEC Alpha microprocessor. Microsoft would be a third-tier maker of programming languages. The Intel 8086 line would be long forgotten. Unix and C would be unknown outside of Bell Labs. Finally, academics and the cool open source hackers would be using different flavors of portable Lisp Machine.

"Man has as much of a sensible as of a rational nature."
- Alban Butler
Big Picture guy is now at Atlantic with InFocus - awesome photography blog
American Investors Forced Nokia To Hire Stephen Elop
On September 21, 2010, former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop became the first non-Finnish CEO of Nokia in the entire 145-year history of the company.
[...]
According to the newspaper report, the Nokia board’s first choice was Vanjoki, who had worked at Nokia for some 20 years. But, as mentioned, American investors (unnamed by the report) pressured the board into going with Elop.
When you accelerate through it, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect
ok.. i probably was thinking aloud, but it was HN inspired!
I really, really hate lines that stretch the entire width of a window - it makes it hard to find the right line on the fly-back. I've reached the end of the line, I'm looking for the start of the next line, my eyes flick back to the left side of the screen. Now, where was I?

When text stretches to take up the entire width I don't use full-screen windows. I adjust them to have about 10 words per line, and I can scan down really fast. Similarly for programming. Don't make me scroll through a 6000 line function, and don't make me read along a 6000 character line.

Yes, 6000 characters may be an exaggeration, but where is the limit? Where is the point where the line is simply "too long". Answer? It's where readability drops off, and for me, that's about 10 words, or about 60 characters.
Open-Source Network Data-Optimization Specialist
You could change it from: I built this 'almost' HN look-alike site. What do you think

To: I built this HN-inspired site. What do you think?

Maybe that would inspire a little more conversation.
The truth is that the military has very little power inside of a city. If you don't believe me, simply look at how effective the Finn's tactics were in the Winter War.

To put it simply everyone has access to liquor and fuel. From what I've read it still only seems to take 2-3 molotov cocktails to force the crew out of a tank (IIRC British crew were forced out of an APC from 3 hits that weren't visibly targeted), once the crew is out of the tank you either have a nice new tank, or access to munitions that can be used to your own advantage, or you simply killed 3 enemy combatants and a molotov inside the tank will ultimately render it useless or could potentially set off their ammunition and destroy the tank.

The military is armed to fight militaries. A tank, even a small unit of 20 men is no match for a guy on the 12th floor with a balcony lined with self-igniting molotovs. No weaponry on the tank can shoot him and a blanket bombing into the midst of the troops is going to kill most of them and the guy can be gone before any soldiers ever get to him (pulling the fire alarm disables elevators in most buildings, plus I doubt soldiers would ever trap themselves in an elevator when they've just been molotoved 5-seconds ago).

Over 80% of our populations live within urban areas, which in the US' case represents 2% of its land. Even given 1% of the population standing up to fight against their government would result in 2.4 million combatants in these urban areas, basically meaning insta-win for the guerillas as the US military only has 1.5 million active soldiers (I doubt you'd have 100% willing to fight against their own civilians, and I seriously doubt they'd manage to get 100% of the 1.4 million reservists to fight). Given the Finns lethality in the Winter War (6 soviet deaths/injuries to every 1 Finn; note this included the Soviets dropping cluster bombs). On the number of tanks the Finns destroyed ~100 tanks for every one they lost, so to put it simply the guerrillas likely destroyed near 3500 tanks with little formal hardware or weapons.

The thing that annoys me is that people think 'tank' and think its invincible from anything but a bigger badder weapon (IE a missile). Most tanks operate with their hatches open so they can see around themselves as they barely have any view from within the tank, which means a single hit with a molotov could potentially destroy the tank. A few of these attacks would mean all tanks would have their hatches closed, meaning operating blind when inside a city (they don't just have to see 360 degrees around themselves, but also 180 degrees above them).

Once the fighting starts, the civilians will have access to captured munitions. IE grenades, rifles and if they're lucky captured shells from a tank. Screw a molotov cocktail, a tank shell falling 10-stories would definitely be bye-bye to a tank.
That reminds me of a Microsoft situation.

This happened a year or so ago: Microsoft conducted a usability test where they put a different skin on Windows Vista service pack 2 and told the users that it wasn't Vista.

The users said that they preferred the Vista in sheep's clothing.

Anyone have a link?
If I was taught programming in high school the same way I was taught math, I would've hated it, deeply.

Most of math was about number crunching and the application of arbitrary formulas to arbitrary equations.

I can imagine, 20 years from now, a high school student will have to solve the following question:

"Write a recursive function in C that finds the minimum number in an array of integers".

Then imagine the teacher himself/herself has absolutely no interest in programming what so ever, and is only teaching it because the board of education decided that children must learn it.
Digg will cease to exist a year from now. Possibly six months.
Canadian Startups | Web Reach Transcript
Khach hang - nha dau tu so 1?
Việc đi xin đầu tư từ các quỹ đầu tư mạo hiểm chưa hẳn đã là khởi động đúng đắn cho mọi giai đoạn tài chính.
Twitter: show you still love developers and give us your private APIs.
I had this happen to me once. If you're on the highway, yeah, sure; you have nothing but time to react.

When it happened to me, I was in a parking lot. The pedal was accidentally pushed past a fold in the floor mat, which caught it and pushed it down. I was hurtling toward the curb in a small parking lot -- the car was a Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4. It was scary. Very scary. Even knowing it was a stick shift, and all I had to do was press the clutch and listen to my poor engine ping the rev limiter while I figured out what happened.

I can imagine a lot of circumstances where this would be worse. Imagine if it happened in a school zone, unexpectedly. Imagine if it happened while you were parking.

I think that's part of the reason that we haven't really heard as much about it -- we hear about the catastrophic ones, or the higher profile ones, but the majority of cases probably weren't dire.
That's a weirdly worded paragraph. The first three sentences are fine, then the fourth sentence is marketing copy awkwardly squeezed in ("Nanosuit lets you be the weapon as you defend NYC from an alien invasion"), then closes with a generic statement about piracy.

Will be interesting to see what effects this has, though. Apart from the simple fact of early availability to pirates, these kinds of leaks can change the early review climate, since now reviews can come from all sorts of sources, not just the journalists given preview copies. What effect that has might depend on how good the game is (and how close to done the leaked version is).

A worse outcome than just the leaked version being available would be if it led to a flurry of negative reviews of the pre-release version, the way leaks of bad films have a much more negative effect on opening-weekend sales than leaks of good films do--- the didn't-see-it-because-everyone-said-it-sucked effect can be larger than the didn't-see-it-because-I-already-pirated-it effect.

The best outcome for EA would probably be a flood of reviews of the form: "wow this is an amazing game but a few things are broken in the leaked version, which I assume will be fixed by release".
seems a bit garbled. also, the site renders awkwardly on an iPad. while I see the connection with HN - barely - you've got a ways to go. keep at it though!
Here's a rewrite that I think is much more pleasant, and would build good will, and probably increase sales:

Crytek has been alerted that an early incomplete, unfinished build of Crysis 2 has appeared on Torrent sites. Crytek and EA are a bit shocked, but surprisingly ok with the news. Saves us the trouble of writing a demo! So check out the pirated, unofficial demo, and be sure to buy the full game when it comes out on March 22nd.

And try not to spoil yourself too much on the leak, the full game is much better already!
Proposal: consider scientific research papers like open source software
A matrix would be much more usable indeed, but maybe the author thought colors should always be shown in 'color wheels'.
From "Nine ways to break your systems code using volatile" at http://blog.regehr.org/archives/28

"You can find various rants, screeds, and diatribes against volatile on Linux mailing lists and web pages. These are largely correct, but you have to keep in mind that:

Linux often runs on out-of-order multicores where volatile by itself is nearly useless.
The Linux kernel provides a rich collection of functions for synchronization and hardware access that, properly used, eliminate almost all need for volatile in regular kernel code.
If you are writing code for an in-order embedded processor and have little or no infrastructure besides the C compiler, you may need to lean more heavily on volatile."
According to Engadget, "[Nokia] has been given the liberty to play around inside WP7 to its heart's content".

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2206238
Well, you are competing with a behemoth with Zondervan publishing and The City (http://www.onthecity.org), and your pricing seems to be only marginally better (for hosting.. I just now noticed the part at the bottom about being able to host it yourself for free). Do you know how many people are using it for free vs. paying for it? You may want to re-think the open source model, though I can't imagine there are TOO many churches that would want to bother hosting it themselves.

You may be better served finding a smaller niche and doing it really well, rather than having such a huge feature set that may be overwhelming to people on their first visit. You don't necessarily have to pivot to something less social, but I'm sure you can do some research and find out something that you already provide that church staff think could be much easier, and make that an emphasis.
...and maybe there's an option I'm overlooking...

Since you know exactly what the issue is (assuming your analysis is correct), maybe you could work on resolving that and see if it takes off. Here is the issue you identified:

It turns out that getting churches to initially part with their money isn't nearly as hard as convincing them that the investment of TIME is worth it for them and their members. Building an online community takes effort on the part of the church to promote it, and most give up within months. It's not unlike a forum or Facebook group; just sticking something out there doesn't draw in anyone.

Every time I see something like this, I wish I could figure out how to capitalize on (ie monetize) my ability to get conversation going and keep conversation going in online forums. My ability to do that is ironic since I actually suck at starting conversations of my own (see my submissions on HN for an example of how lame I am at that). Yet, I know how to respond to other people and shape the forum culture to make it warm and welcoming and encourage people to open up. I have had repeated experiences where I joined some existing list or forum which had very little traffic in spite of significant membership and within a few months of joining traffic and membership increased significantly. Typically, the owner then says something along the lines of "I have no idea what happened but all of a sudden we are growing". I know exactly what happened and never get credit for it.

Anyway, my only point is that it is possible to intentionally make community happen and increase traffic, usefulness, etc. Teaching members how to do that would make this stickier. And probably would take less time and energy than the three years you have already sunk into this.

Peace and good luck.
Common Mistakes Made By New Bloggers
Here's something I don't understand: Why do they ban technologies on cost grounds? Why not just force the teams to sell one of their cars (chosen by random) in an auction at some minimum price at the end of the season? Banning technologies to control costs just results in more money being poured in to old technologies, when it should be poured into new technologies that could finally set us free from the tyranny of traditional IC engines.
That story, Joel's reaction to Gates, and the reaction of the other Microsofties has always disturbed me. Gates' behavior wasn't an example of competence; he was a bully on a power trip.

The cognitive load of asking a question or making an objection is generally lighter than giving an honest counter-argument. Especially if the question or objection is a profanity-smeared act of belligerence and the answers have to be polite or else you're fired.

"Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer."
- Charles Caleb Colton
How To Watch TV On Your Computer
It's mind boggling that the greatest threat to an individual's freedom in this country is in fact the federal government itself.
Have you heard of the massacre of Hama?

All that's required for militaries to be very effective in an urban area is sufficient disregard for human life.
DealNinja | San Diego Deals of the Day
Elop does not own any shares of Nokia stock
> I dislike the outright banning of certain technologies.[1]

So do I. Did you forget to include some link you intended to include?
The first thing I spotted was that full domains weren't showing next to the links, so for example, story 3 is currently:

Hosni Mubarak has resigned (co.uk)

Showing just the last two sections of the domain is clearly unexpected behaviour. :) The intention is clearly "TLD plus one more section", but not all TLDs are as short as ".com".

This reminds me of the difficulties with cookie domain validation - Mozilla actually contains a hardcoded list of top-level domains: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Public_Suffix_List

So you could either copy that, or just show the domain in full.
Ask HN: Validate our business hypothesis for a social approach to risk planning
RiskRef: A Collective Intelligence Approach to Planning and Preparedness

== Usage

Complete your profile and improve your Risk Score by finding risks, making a plan to solve them, and keeping track of your progress. Earn rare badges by helping others along the way.

== Abstract

RiskRef is a user-generated resource for risk management, planning, and preparedness. Utilizing collective intelligence, predictive algorithms, and game-design mechanics, RiskRef comprehensively identifies risks based on the user’s demographics, prioritizes them based on impact and likelihood, and holds the user accountable in an engaging way.

RiskRef allows users to create real-world value by proactively mitigating and planning for potential life-changing surprises. Immediate, actionable feedback and suggestions are the secret sauce.

== Wireframes

http://melaniewilke.com/clients/RiskRef/RiskRef_1_Homepage.png

http://melaniewilke.com/clients/RiskRef/RiskRef_2_CreateProfile.png

http://melaniewilke.com/clients/RiskRef/RiskRef_3_GetRecommendations.png

http://melaniewilke.com/clients/RiskRef/RiskRef_4_MakeAPlan.png

== Monetization

All the usual suspects for web apps. (Innovative suggestions welcome)

== Questions for HN

So we've got the concept above and development is under way. Best of all, we have a talented team that's passionate about the project

1) Can we get some feedback on the business idea, e.g., would users pay for it, could we get users to know about it, could we build it?

2) This current Ask HN is an attempt at an MVP-like business hypothesis validation. We plan to create a landing page/Wufoo form for signups and drive people there via Google/Facebook Ads; and use Amazon Mechanical Turk to pay users to do market research and answer survey questions about the service. Can anyone else suggest strategic next steps from here?

Let the validated learning begin! Thanks so much for the support.
It needs some polish: The tags should not be above the "tag" label. "Like" should be on the left of the article title (similar to upvote here). The line underneath the title should be vertically aligned with the title.

"Welcome" should not be there at all. To the left of "Join" might be a good idea. Your moto should be under your logo, at the very least in the same area (the header).

The drop-down of the search has a scrollbar even with no results.

Your overall color palette might need some tuning (too much darkness/contrast for my taste).

Unfortunately your site broke half-way through, more when it comes back online!

I hope you had fun building it, it's the most important part!
Pandora Used to Spend 119% Of Revenue on Royalties
i just tried google translate and the experience was dramatically less user-friendly than i recall