skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bullshit. When I came to SF to be an intern, I purchased my own tickets (my parents helped) and I found a room on Craigslist for three months. (Again, my parents helped with the rent.) I wish I had known about AirBnB.

My point is, if your intern can figure out web programming, the difference between Ruby procs and lambdas, or what fine whiskey tastes like, they can book a flight.
This is one of the most important things that those "if you're so sure Apple/Gold/etc is overvalued why don't you short it?" people ignore.

Maintaining a short position is expensive. And even if you can afford it, holding it for too long can kill any upside you get when it finally does collapse. I can say that Gold is overvalued but I won't short it, and be perfectly consistent in saying that, because I admit that I have no idea how long it'll take for the bubble to pop.
Domain Create Date:30-Oct-2008 20:35:59 UTC
WP7 is consumer-orientated.

RIM / Blackberry have most of the business market at the moment.
I'm trying to read the source to this on it's codeplex page, but don't seem to be able to scroll down... http://fuv.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/9e0aaba... I had no idea people even used codeplex, and seeing this, I have to wonder why anyone would.

(using firefox 3.6.13)
New LuaJit Release brings PPC support and ARM promise for Q1/Q2
Yeah, I understand. You would think that employers would prize the kind of employee who wants to do the same thing in their spare time as they do at the office, wouldn't you?

And yet everywhere they are treated with suspicion.
Why did you have to move to San Francisco? I understand the benefits, but I thought YC funds companies based outside CA, so was that a condition of the funding that they made?
On the other hand, it's good to set goals, and for kids especially it's good to have a concrete way to visualize those goals. It's hard for a preschooler (who can't easily count past 10) to understand what it means to do something "every day for 2 weeks." (What the heck is a week?)

Heck, it's useful for adults too - lots of popular productivity techniques are basically grown-up star charts, for example: http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...

I agree that tying it to an external reward can be risky. It might be better to do the chart without any reward. Or make sure the kid chooses an activity as the reward, so it's more like "rewarding myself" instead of "earning goodies".
I think Ayn Rand had integrity as a person

This is totally off-topic, but... really? What are your thoughts on her refusing to pay people back including her family, taking large amounts of government assistance, and idolizing a serial killer?

It was nice, watching the trailer, and being a cinephile, being able to recognize all the C-list character actors. The pawn shop owner from The Crow was an especially good find.

Who knows, it might be better than the trailer lets on, but it doesn't do a good job of selling it.
anyone notice the example song?
http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/pages/example-tra...

you just got rolled, a million times
Important note: The London School of Business and Finance [1] is not accredited and not affiliated with the #1 ranked [2] London Business School [3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_School_of_Business_and_F...
[2] http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ran...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Business_School
Also available on Infochimps =)

http://infochimps.com/collections/million-songs
...yeah, not so much. It's GroupOn's responsibility to make sure that the deals they come up with aren't being totally negated by this kind of merchant shenanigans. If they knew or if they didn't, they still screwed up here.
Sounds like a use case for a TrueCrypt hidden volume.
Thymus+Valentine's
Are you sure Toyota didn't do that gratuitously as a PR exercise? Because I'm not.
Netscape absolutely deserved to go public based on any metric. The future could not be predicted based on their inaction and Microsoft's dominance.
Apple to Launch Low-Cost universal-band iPhone mini
All the Digital Data In the World Is Equivalent to One Human Brain
I saw speculation about Nokia switching to WP7 about as soon as Elop went to Nokia. It's hardly a surprise that they've been working on this stuff for a while.

Or it's some Photoshop renders. Either way.
This company is almost entirely investor owned. Geez.

It's been saved from the brink of death so many times, the actual employees and founders really aren't going to get a tremendous windfall for their efforts.
Read this again, maybe twice.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab...

Then read your employment contract that you may have signed. It often contains legal terms like "work for hire", etc. that have explicit definitions. Make sure you read your contract after understanding these definitions.

The portions that are not easily enforceable include the following:

You contract may state that the agreement will continue to apply up to six months or one year after you terminate your employment. This provision is generally included by employers so as to prevent employees from coming up with patentable ideas or creating copyrightable works (like software) and "then" terminating their employment pretending none of that happened. Under that scenario, the IP you generate does indeed belong to the company.

On the other hand, if you start your work and develop IP strictly after terminating your employment, court will not honor "non-compete" clauses. This are designed to protect employees who are most likely to continue working in areas of their expertise, which is likely the same as what they were working on while they were employed.

Reason for edit: Fixed some typos.
ARM promise comes from this tweet: https://twitter.com/luajit/status/36094933609746432

Also, first release with FFI support.
that was one of my first thoughts too. Self-righteousness is a bit hard to stomach when it's coming from PHP dev.

The world is a lot bigger than that - in and outside of programming.
Why not just use Crucible if you are running a small startup? There license cost is $10 right now, and it has a lot of niceties.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible/
While that's generally true for basic CDN backed services like image fills from akamai, DNS geolocation isn't the norm for more complex applications. Netflix specifically doesn't use dns to push you to a specific pop, you first talk to a set of central authentication/drm servers who in addition to giving you your ticket/key also direct you to the video CDN POP they choose for you. The fact that Apple TV made the news because their service was/is broken by anycast DNS servers is just a case of bad engineering and not the industry norm.
I did it on the spot within a matter of three weeks. I had already saved up enough to support my lifestyle at the time for three months plus I have a consistent source of passive income.

My lifestyle was extremely frugal. I never ate out, only bought the food that I needed, no TV, layered up instead of turning on the heat, didn't buy anything I didn't need, etc...

At the time, I was living in Las Vegas - cost of living wasn't too bad. For a time I considered living out of a tent (urban camping) but decided that my budget was capable of supporting me without resorting to that. (it is much easier to maintain a structured self-education and side-project routine when you live in an apartment vs. a tent!)

In nine months I completed a book on college level rhetoric, a college level course on philosophy and reasoning, re-taught myself how to perform arithmetic on fractions (my weakest point in math), algebra 1, geometry, and half way into algebra 2; I studied a few classics too: Aristotle, Ovid, and Emerson. I was a core committer for a popular open-source project, put a lot of time into that; I also finished two of my personal projects/ideas. The projects were academic interests and at the time I didn't really have the knowledge nor network to monetize them, so they've just gone into the personal history book as "experience".

Once I was done with my nine month stint, I moved to San Diego (from Las Vegas) and began doing contract work under my own sole-proprietorship for about six months. After that I co-founded a startup (8 months ago) which is now paying my salary entirely and very close to profitability.

I like this new job much better :) I got the idea to pursue nine-months of structured personal focus from the dissatisfaction I was experiencing with the "work for someone else" thang.
سقوط حسني مبارك
emilhajric.com
The positions are not fundamentally opposed. You can believe that people have the right to choose their own leaders while also believing both that they should be accountable for that choice and that those leaders can be ignored or shunned if they do not follow the rules of the international community.

In other words, the only legitimacy that being elected democratically confers on leaders is that of being the authentic representatives of their people. The greater legitimacy of a government as a member of the international community of states might be influenced by whether it's democratic or not but is determined mostly by that governments actions and stated intentions. Hamas has refused to agree to steps, such as renouncing terrorism, that the US, EU and Israel believe are fundamental to a government being a member of the international community.

So they have accepted the results of the election, but they're under no obligation to be friendly with the result.

With that said, like all great powers the US's foreign policy is at times hypocritical to some extent. It will extol the virtues of rapid democratic change in some countries while discouraging it in others. This seeming mismatch in standards is the problem with a foreign policy with an idealistic rhetoric but a realpolitik reality. The truth is that encouraging rapid democratic change in all cases would be foolish and irresponsible, because it could lead to far worse outcomes than the status quo. Some countries can handle that kind of explosive change, others can't and need to be shepherded towards it at a slower rate. I think Egypt falls into the latter category.
I can't get Pandora in Canada (unless I use a proxy), so I don't really know how it works. I was struck when I read:

"About 86 percent of Pandora’s revenues ($78 million) comes from advertising, the rest ($12 million) comes from subscriptions."

which made me think, wow, Pandora is kind of like a newspaper, magazine, or cable TV network!
The article states they lost $328k on revenues of $90M for the first 9 months of the year. The $328k loss is not really material (either as a proportion of revenue, or absolutely versus the size of the business) they are essentially breaking even. If you look at the numbers (image in the article) The $328k loss also includes some exceptional charges, they made an operating profit of $1.15M in the period.

Their revenues in the same 9 months of last year were $31m, so they have tripled their revenues year on year. Over the same period their costs less than doubled.

If one were to extrapolate this growth rate forward by just one year (a bit crude, but makes a point), they'd end up with $270m revenue, on $170m costs so $100m profit.

They are now breaking even - which is a simple metric of a sane business/proven model, doing significant revenue and growing very quickly. So now they are in an attractive state for the markets.

In terms of strategy, Techcrunch shows their first VC round was back in 2000, with significant further rounds in 2004 and 2005. One could safely assuming the overriding factor is that VCs will be looking for an exit.

An IPO will also provide the company with significant injection of operating cash, along with liquid paper (stock) with which they can use in further acquisitions
Why is that clear?

Just because the lowest level of computation occurs in a 'mix of hardware and software' does not mean that all the important abstractions don't run at a higher level.

And indeed, some evolutionary arguments about complex systems suppose that higher level structure is likely: its easier, evolutionarily, to build systems from many levels of subcomponent, rather than from the lowest level component.

Maybe with memristors we'll be able to simulate the particular high level process that occurs in the human brain faster. But unless we know what to simulate, that doesn't solve the hard problem. The game changer will be when we know what to simulate/run; after that we can work on finding a computational substrate (which may be memristors) that is optimised for it.
Minority leaders protest hiring practices at tech companies
...Objectivist opponents and proponents agreeing on something? I take it the apocalypse is about a year early?
retail management. more specifically, grocery stores. Ive managed several. this is number one on my list. maybe more of a pet peeve. working in an aisle, stocking, tagging, reset, talking with a customer, any boring daily chore. dressed in the standard boring company garb, shirt that states the company name, name badge clearly stating name, with company logo on it.

customer: "do you work here?"

really?

no, I dont work here. I just enjoy standing around impersonating a supermarket manager all day just to answer these types of questions.
This is some highlight from the book "The Secret Life of the Grown Up Brain" by Barbara Strauch

Neuroscientists found that:

* Longitudinal studies shows cognitive skills peak at middle age.

* Older people are happier. As one ages, they become calmer, more positive, and being able to regular them emotion better.

* The amount of white matter in the brain, myelin, continue to increase well into middle age. (i.e. better brain function)

* Older people are using both hemispheres of the brain to handle complex task, a phenomenon known as bilateralization. This is linked to higher cognitive ability.

http://tungwaiyip.info/blog/2010/10/29/secret_life_of_the_gr...
Excellent response.

The the historic state of Linux at the time makes all the difference. I should have been more general and said "Open Platform." Because at the time BSD was a much less risky choice -- it was more mature & didn't have the GPL license stigma being pushed so hard.

The outcome of the SGI WinNT decision is even more interesting when juxtaposed with Apple's decisions during the same time period.

The adoption & use of FreeBSD as the base of OS X's Posix layer shows how SGI could have gained all the benefit of a set of core tools that they needed to stop spending money on maintaining while still retaining control of the best parts of IRIX.

In 1998 both Apple and SGI were on the ropes. Apple embraced and integrated open source, SGI turned to a closed platform. Apple immediately got geeks like me on-board (still have my OS X 10.0.x disk around here somewhere). The difference between the two companies & where they stand now is the ultimate example of how open source can help a corporation succeed.

Apple was pushing very hard at the time to get geeks on. They actually flew their evangelist and lead dev for OS 7 out to my undergrad CompSci program in '99. They really wanted to get a foothold with a dev community & integrating FreeBSD not only allowed them to save on the cost of developing a whole new posix layer, but also was a great way to get a new community of developers interested in the platform.
Makes sense now that you've clarified. I've done the "pick up and move" myself in the past, but I suppose they way I read it I assumed more time.

Once again good luck to you!
Mysterious Manuscript's Age Determined
This was featured three days ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2192664

As I commented then, the fact that this is a Windows-only program hosted at Microsoft's open source outreach site only makes this funnier.
Analysis: Nokia-Microsoft alliance is a win for Apple
I had not heard about "about.me"; checking it out, thanks.

I actually haven't received a business card with any social network on it, so it's good to hear that some people do promote their linked in profile on their card.

Would you be more compelled to have this.vc/ljf on your card if it aggregated all your social network data into one cohesive, easy to use interface?

What do you think about QRcodes; would you, for example, use that to post on a bulletin board at a convention?
>Have you looked at how we write code? It is directly related to the hardware architecture. Operators over here, memory over here.

This argument really doesn't make sense.

My desktop PC has a haskell interpreter, a prolog environment, and neural network code that I program on it.

I can write using functional programming, do maths operations, do connectionist computing.

Once the underlying computer is turing complete, all these things are possible.

Maybe having the better hardware will run the appropriate programs faster, but how we write code is not directly related to the hardware architecture.

The hard part will be figuring out what to tell the memristors to do.
How to introduce to startup accelerator program referrals?
Hi. I want to introduce my product and my startup to some mentors of an accellerator program like 500Startups, to have some chances to get introduced and to enter the program. I live in Italy, so I can't be there and meet that mentors at some networking event. Every mail, tweet or contact on LinkedIn is ignored, even if I try to be personal, funny and to show my passion. How can I can introduce myself in an effective way?
Thank
Is there a way that I can apply to be kicked out of Y Combinator without being in Y Combinator?
I think Pandora is a good company to buy because they have superior technology. I pay the $30 or so for the annual subscription to get unlimited listening and no ads. I have tried other services like this but I always come back to Pandora. I have read several articles that talk about the techniques they use to define a "station" and I think it is pretty solid.

It is my understanding that they have hired musicians to listen to each of the songs they stream then rate each one according to dozens of factors. The factors include things like "acoustic guitar", "strong melody", "high studio production values", "gritty vocals", etc etc. Then they are able to do some kind of cluster analysis on that dataset. So that if you put in "Stone Roses" you hear music from that band but then others that have a similar sound.

I find about 2 or 3 new bands that I really like every week. I have actually started buying CDs again.
PS: I am not a lawyer, although have done extensive online research on these issues.

1. "Not work related" gives you an incomplete picture (not related to who's work?). That it is not related to your work is not enough. It must not be related to the employer's line of work, or anticipated line of work. Even if one person in the company is working on a related item, the your work may belong to the company. Even if one person in the company is anticipating the same, you have a potential issue. (See item 3 below for a related issue.)

2. The normal meaning of "related" also should not be taken at face value. If you are making burgers for MacDonald's while making a software side project, you are likely to be OK (and I am guessing that McDonald's would make you sign an employment agreement for these issues also). If you are in sales for a technical company and are making a software, they can easily be considered to be "related" by your company or the court.

3. Keep in mind that in any case the onus of proving is on you, so you the legal costs of proving you are clean would fall on you. That also means that in case of trouble, the court may initially side the employer and wait for you to prove you are clean to turn to your side.
Wikipedia says that the projects on that site focus on ASP and other Microsoft-centered products. That may be why you've never heard of it.
Kill Mommy
That's the kind of info I was looking for. Thanks!
Very sad. I loved the borders in San Francisco on 3rd and Townsend. It closed last year, now it is just a big, ugly, empty space.
That would be the smartest thing that they could possibly do, especially if they take the opportunity to define a constitution with strong protections for negative rights. With enough care they'll constrain any future government, protect fundamental freedoms and kill two birds with one stone by easing Western fears about the Muslim Brotherhood assuming power.

They would do well to learn from South Africa's example in this. I honestly believe that if it was not for the phased departure of apartheid from 1990 to 1994, combined with the constitutional convention and the preservation of the national police and the military, South Africa's transition would have ended in disaster. In the end the security forces played a massive role in creating a stable enough environment for the vital negotiations to take place and without the work of the military behind the scenes it's doubtful that the 1994 election would have happened at all.

So the biggest mistake now would be to rush this. Egyptians need to understand that the steps they take next are going to set the stage for the next 30 years and determine whether Mubarak will be followed by a true multi-party democracy or by yet another group of thuggish oppressors. They had better make it count.
Or, as Jamie Zawinski put it in Coders at Work, shipping is a feature.
I found this to be an excellent resource for this topic.

http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Open-Source-Prot...

While this has "open source" in the title, it's still an excellent book related to this topic.

Another good thing about this book is that it draws analogies between software source code and law statutes, making it very easy for software folks to understand these legal issues.
There is a sample, the svgdemo file is clearly sending javascript every 100ms, but yea, there no link to a running server.
Ask HN: Re: $150K conv. debt for YC - what if company raises no more money?
Just curious regarding the terms of the $150K debt from Yuri and RC: what happens if the company never raises a follow-on round, and a) there is plenty of cash flow to pay back the debt, or b) there is insufficient cash flow to pay back the debt.

Anyone know when the debt comes due, what the interest rate is, and if payback terms are pegged to cashflow somehow?
A real programmer uses whatever editor he damn well pleases.
Considering that couples pay up to 5 figures for private adoptions in Canada, the question may be less silly than one would expect. :)
Great post -- kudos to Nick for him coming forward on this.

With the PATRIOT Act up for renewal, now's a good time to do something about it. A few links:

http://bit.ly/demandjustice

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/patriotact

https://eff.org/r.x8P

http://bit.ly/oppose514
Do you have any links, references on this??

Specific to Canada - and Alberta - would be nice. :)

I'm trying to find more info on this, and can't find any relevant info on Google...
Potty Racers 2
That's good advice. I wish it came to me earlier!!
No, that is absolutely not what the law says. http://www.cardreport.com/laws/california/1747-1748-7.html

The law prohibits recording personally identifiable information, unless it's absolutely required for the transaction (for instance if your CC contract requires it, another law requires it, you're delivering something, etc).

In particular, it explicitly allows checking ID:

(d) This section does not prohibit any [retailer] from requiring the cardholder, as a
condition [blahblah], to provide reasonable forms of positive
identification, which may include a driver's license [...], or [...],
another form of photo identification, provided that none of the
information contained thereon is [...] recorded [...].
Doesn't match my experience when I worked there. We had a pretty typical setup: a few phone screens + one in-person all day interview round. I have to imagine he was interviewing around a bunch of different widely-spaced groups or something?
Your customers react to colors based on their culture
Bubble Tanks 3