skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's see

1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company

2. He says "our platform is burning, we have to do something drastic" which most people interpret as "prepare to come up with a strategy and fight like hell to win".

3. Guess what, he already had something in mind! It was "throw out our current reasonably successful development efforts and become a licensee of Microsoft's failed platform instead". And piss off all our QT-based app developers at the same time.

What could possibly go wrong?

I seriously wonder if this guy might not end up having to leave and not set foot in Finland (or the EU) again for fear of arrest. I have a feeling some Finland business regulators will be going through his emails with a fine-toothed comb.
> PHP is on its way out

Think it's funny that a lot of people make these bold statements. I'm not a big fan of PHP either but the job market in my country Java, .NET and PHP are the most asked for languages.
Maybe "rockstar" is the new codeword for "confident junior".
cost of living in some parts of US is already lower than somewhere in Europe.

Europe isn't really comparable to India when it comes offshoring.

And Europe has large differences, from the UK (expensive) to Romania (cheap).
MeeGo, Qt and Nokia – Feb 11th 2011
That's what this post is: someone refusing to face the changing landscape of tech.

You clearly don't know http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jacquesm very well. He is not at all resistant to change. To the contrary he understands tech better that most of us can ever dream of.

Microsoft has been trying to figure out how to create a decent phone, and has been failing. There is no reason to believe that Microsoft's team has addressed the causes of their past failures, and therefore there is no reason to believe that they will suddenly, miraculously, start succeeding now. Theoretically Nokia can tell Microsoft how to do things better, there is a lot of expertise there. But there is every reason to believe that a lot of that institutional knowledge is about to be laid off. For better or worse, Nokia is now dependent upon a team with a history of failure.

I know you believe differently. You expect Android to take the role of feature-phones now, while MS and Apple control and split the high-end market. So I'll offer you a bet. In 2010 Nokia is estimated to have held 33.1% of the phone market. I'll bet you $100 that by 2015 either Nokia and Microsoft have parted ways, or else Nokia will hold under 15% of the phone market.

Care to take that bet?
Democracy is a social agreement in which all remains well as long as fairness more or less prevails.

"Democracy" doesn't have a darned thing to do with "fairness". Democracy means exactly one thing: the strength of the majority to force their will upon the minority. There's no reason to believe that the result will be fair in any known moral system, and plenty of historical examples where it hasn't been fair.
I've always wondered why they asked you for this information. Best Buy has been doing this for years. The article points out that online retailers have access to this a lot of info, but when you shop online you expect it. I actually hate purchasing for William Sonoma online because after I bought a wedding gift they spammed me from here in to 2027.

It's amazing to me how merchants feel entitled to your information and will be so aggressive in their procurement of it.
With Nokia Dating Microsoft, Intel Was Just Stood Up
it haven't picked-up one bit, now down -13%.
Optimize your social media budget
Also - there's a SIGNUP UP NOW, below that there is an Enter, and below that is another Enter. Over on the bottom left is another Enter with a smiley face. Not sure what to do first.

This front page is using the same framework behind the rest of the app. I figured I'd do that to keep everything consistent. The free text field that says "Enter" is the name of that particular layout (it matches the smiley face icon)... I figured I'd leave all layouts editable on the front page just for people to tinker with if they wanted.

Video tutorial goes by pretty fast. How do I stop this video?

It's actually all javascript. :| I've considered adding pause/stop/forward/back buttons.
IIRC, The not so Short Introduction to LaTeX is good: http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort
One thing that I think hasn't been recognized by popular engineering culture is that the guys who started programming in the 1970s had a lot less to work with, and had a harder time. They often worked in assembly, and a soldering iron was a legitimate debugging tool.

Those who started programming in the 1980s had compilers but languages were something you went out and bought, and they were sold like enterprise software, expensive, slow to be updated and not sophisticated.

Those who started programming in the 1990s came of age when a major revolution was being effected by Java. But you still had to build a lot of infrastructure, and engineering involved a large amount of tedium.

The last decade has seen a huge advancement in the quality of the tools, and thus the barrier for entry for programmers is a lot lower.

I even remember meeting one young gun who was proud of the fact that he didn't have a computer at home because this was a job, why would he do it at home?

this is the opposite of the hacker mentality. In the 1970s you had to be a rare breed of hacker, and by the 1990s mainstream hackers could get into the business.

Now people who never wrote a program before entering college are graduating with CS degrees. So it is not only that they don't have a lot of real world work experience, they often haven't been programming at all for more than 4 years.

This is a huge shift in demographics and attitudes. I'm sure many of them are very intelligent and genuine hackers... but they are a very different culture.
The deal would seem to work both ways.

Microsoft aims to leverage the huge market share of Nokia, while Nokia on the other hand wants to focus more on development of the product, while using the technologies being driven by Microsoft for phone and touch devices.

Adding the fact that they only have each other to go to as all the others (Android, Apple, etc.) have been starting to establish their niche in the market.

I expect the deal to go through, although it should take something revolutionary in their merger to even make a niche in the smart phones and tablet market.
My favorite parts of python are the parts more oriented to functional programming (ie. list comprehensions). As I got more of an appetite for functional programming, I have drifted, because it seems at odds with the direction python is headed (ie. Guido wanting to remove map/reduce).

There have been a few libraries posted here on HN recently about adding functional elements to python, so apparently it's not just me. Maybe it's time for a "functional fork" of python?
but the meta-programming aspects you're mentioning here are either highly exaggerated, or significantly less impressive than you make them sound.

I don't think that I have exaggerated, the fact that currently AI systems are built by developers with a predetermined set of rules in not in dispute, those rules constrain what an AI system will generate this is analogies to the function of serotonin in the brain, it's level directly affects a factor of our state (happiness, empathy). Machine learning employs the same factor, basic here is serotonin (data) and here is the serotonin regulation mechanism (algorithm) but the machine learns (abuse drugs) to defeat the regulation mechanism, none the less it has to work within the constraints of the system, just as our minds have to work with the constrains of their biological functions. It works with in the constraints of the system to find ways to adapt the system. Whether this is impressive or not is subjective to the observer (I personally think it is). When contrasted to a biological level, it is pretty primitive reward logic is pretty low level when it comes to biology. None the less I think it is impressive.

I think when talking about AI a lot of people confuse consciousness with intelligence. While evidence suggest that intelligence is a prerequisite of consciousness the converse cannot be said. I think we have made great strides simulating the constructs of intelligence on a mechanical level. As for consciousness, we have to master the former before we will know how to tackle the latter. And when most people think about AI they think about the latter which sets a pretty high bar when measuring the state of the art.
"Don't live your life according to quotes." -- Keith Malley
I'd put a way to ask a question right on the front page. People want to be able to test the merits of your service quickly (at least I did). I wanted to quickly type "Good wings in Toronto?" but couldn't find a place to do so, unless I signed up (I think?)

Optimizely (I'm not affiliated with them) gets this part down pat. You can start using their service right away without any signup.

http://www.optimizely.com
This is great. It will limit FUD. MPEGLA have called, and people need to show their cards. If we hear nothing, then that shows that the MPEGLA doesn't know of any patents that affect WebM/VP8, and they can stop all this "don't use VP8 cause of patents!" FUD.

If however there are patents on WebM/VP8, we can get them out in the open and look at them and then see.
The bingo card generator is, in a sense, "hello world" hooked up to a random number generator. The mechanisms built around that small piece of software to demonstrate and provide value are what's sophisticated about BCC.
This post has what could possibly be my favorite TLDR.

"TLDR: Yes, it's a long post, but if you'd like to apply for a job at reddit, you'll just have to read it."
This adequately describes a sentiment that I hadn't previously figured out how to put to words!
Apparently, the point needs to be made:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2204545
It's interesting that, with 43 days to go, they've already raised over $8,000 dollars. This suggests to me that RoboCop galvanizes altruistic giving. I suggest we add RoboCop to more funding appeals to give them some extra oomph:

- Medical equipment for crisis-ravaged third world nations, SHAPED LIKE ROBOCOP!

- Library resources - FILED BY ROBOCOP!

- Worldwide AIDS education, ADMINISTERED BY ROBOCOP!

- Soup kitchen meals COOKED LOVINGLY BY ROBOCOP!

Of course, some A/B testing would be required. For example, does Batman trump RoboCop? Where does General Zod fit into the charitable giving landscape? So many variables to test!
Health Term Papers about Dengue Fever
The dengue fever is a disease that is spread through the dengue mosquito. Writing a health term paper about dengue fever is an excellent choice for students as it is spreading quickly. Knowing how to write this type of term paper will enable students to present information well.
Thanks!

The landing page uses the same framework as the actual app... I wanted to do that to keep things consistent and emphasize its flexibility.

I've also been trying to do something different/new but as everyone seems to be saying... maybe I should conform to a typical startup landing page. I just get tired of seeing such similar layouts all over the place. I'm sure it's for good reason though... so I'll probably end up conforming. I can actually do it myself and in a fraction of the time it took me to do all of this... but oh well. Just trying to break the mold! Maybe some other time haha...
"I think the main thing people have an issue with is partnering with MS and using their platform rather than buddying up with Android or persevering with their own stuff."

No, I think it's stupid because A: Microsoft has shown little to no sign of "getting" the smart phone market B: Nokia has shown little to no sign of "getting" the smart phone market and inevitably C: Two companies who don't get it will probably not magically get it by joining forces. This is coming from my looking at their business and success up to this point, not a fanboy reaction. (I don't even have a smartphone. I have a Nokia 6205 in my pocket but not for any particular reason. It was cheap and I don't hate it but it's not generating brand loyalty for me either.)

Sure, the new partnership might get it and pull it together and make it work, but if that was going to happen it seems if anything more likely to happen without the inevitable chaos of a culture collision induced by this sort of deal. I'm not saying this is a 100%-chance of failure, it just doesn't strike me as a move that really increases it for anyone.
Are you going to release tgrep after the contest is over?
That'd be a very useful tool for lots of jumbo-logs, assuming the timestamp handling is anywhere near generic or customizable.

If not.. Hell, it'd still be useful for Apache logs. Please put it on Github? ;)
1. You need a designer. While a poor design was acceptable 10 years ago since web design was a relatively new concept, it's no longer acceptable by the consumer.

2. You name seems like a bit of a stretch

3. This is an extremely crowded market.

4. This is exactly how I started. 10 years ago I wanted to help bands connect with their fans and so I built a site for them to sell their music online (CD Baby at the time was delivering CDs). Unfortunately iTunes launched and killed my idea so I created a social network that included music. Myspace then launched music and killed that idea as well and Facebook came along and all the girls at my school were using it so I knew I was going to fail. The result was that I eventually gave up but not on entrepreneurship. I also now had learned how to program and was getting paid $30+ an hour which was a serious upgrade for me from Baskin Robbins or Home Depot.

The reason I say this is not to discourage you but simply that I think you have a long way to go. I was approximately 21/22 at the time so it sounds like we're in a similar position. Keep focused and keep trying to make something work. If an idea doesn't stick, try another (I tried importing liquor ... it failed, online bookstore ... it failed, about 6 other things ... they all failed). I eventually got really good at programming over the past 10 years and 8 years after starting my crappy looking (it really looked like crap when it started) music website, I sold my first company.

I'm going to be brutally honest about your website: it's not presentable and the name is horrible. That's not a bad thing though ... you're just getting started on the path of entrepreneurship! Keep doing the side jobs (as they'll pay the bills) and keep studying how to program and maybe look into learning some design. If you want to be a successful internet entrepreneur you'll make it happen.

I know that didn't answer your question the way you wanted but as soon as I saw this site, I knew we had a lot in common. I'd also suggest taking some business courses or read business books ... you are entering an extremely saturated market and performing market research will often help you improve your idea and find the proper niche. Also try working at some local internet startups. I worked at a bunch that failed but I learned a hell of a lot. It's a much cheaper way to fail :) Best of luck!

5. Just thought of one other thing: I'm not sure if you're a musician but create a product that solves YOUR problems. It's much easier to be passionate about a problem when it's fixing your life. If you're a musician, congrats!
Do you mean "is planning to double"? They haven't doubled anything yet.
Thank you for sharing this. As I was reading this post last night and the comments here this morning, I had some ideas about how to potentially solve the problems. Some of the ideas I had you've outlined and tried. Glad to see I'm not alone in these thoughts.
Great post, David. In my relatively brief experience as an entrepreneur and from talking to other entrepreneurs, I and many others have encountered a lot of the pitfalls you talk about. You may have learned these from your experiences, but it is most certainly a shared experience. This should be required reading for any first-time entrepreneur. That is to say, I wish I could have read this post a few years ago.

To reiterate your first item, a DO I would suggest is DO pick a partner that can make sales and close deals. The purpose of any business is to drive revenue, so how come so few new tech entrepreneurs focus on this from the very beginning? Why do sales people get such a bad rap? They are the only people in your organization who (if done right) don't cost you money. Dev, product, marketing... they are all cost centers. Sure, product design and development is important, so is marketing and related activities, but if no one is dedicated to actively selling and crucially, closing deals, nothing else really matters (because you're out of business, literally). Moreover, an experienced and dedicated sales-focused co-founder will provide you with more actionable and relevant product feedback (i.e. direct from potential customers) than anyone else.

The old saying, mo' money mo' problems, doesn't exist in business.
"for fear of arrest"

Whether you agree with the decision or not, nothing about it sounds in the least bit criminal.
The Bright (Near) Future of CSS
We've graduated from the grammatically-incorrect singular they to s/he? Really?
"Malicious" would have sufficed. ;)
The Elopocalypse: Nokia chooses Microsoft
I think people find a language they like- maybe their first language, or one of the first couple- and then it is really hard to be interested in everything else. If you can't read it right off the bat, it "sucks".

This is how I felt about erlang. But the importance of concurrency was so high to me that I forced myself to learn the language, and now I love it.

A couple times learning a new language after being annoyed that it isn't like the language you already know, and I think people might recognize that every language has a reason for being....
I've seen offshored projects be highly successful, and I've seen them fail terribly. Sorta like other software projects. ;-)

One time I spoke with the owner of a failing software company who was hoping he could make his company more competitive by hiring offshore labor. The trouble was that he was unable to effectively manage his team in the U.S. -- if couldn't manage those people, there's no way he could manage a relationship with a development shop overseas.

Offshoring requires impeccable project management to succeed, on both sides of the relationship. You can hire management people affordably in India and other places places, but many of the businesses drawn to outsourcing pinch pennies excessively and fail to make this important investment.
Anyone that sells software is printing money. You build one copy and then sell it over and over.
Does torrent freak publish anything that isn't link bait anymore? Look, we found an example of a generic demand letter crafted for an individual sent to a large company? LOLOMGLOL?
I've noticed there are a lot of ports from C/C++ to Java of late. Are there some sophisticated tools floating out there for syntactic transformations from C/C++ -> Java? Or is this all due to the gravitational pull of the JVM/Android?
It's not about consumer satisfaction but about business models. They want the high margin Apple model (into which HP also wants so they bought Palm and in which RIM is).

Then they need their own OS. That their OS setup is behind the market hurts their sales, but is irrelevant to the Apple vs. Dell business model discussion (full stack high cost high margin vs. commodity hardware low cost low margin)
and apparently known to refer to himself in the third person.
The stock market appears to predict otherwise, believing that this move lowers the net present value of the company. Of course, stock markets aren't necessarily accurate prediction markets, but given suitable efficient-market hypotheses they're an approximation of such a thing.
I had no idea.. thanks!
The MPEG LA will most likely look at a ton of patent claims on WebM in the next 5 weeks, accept any with even a tenuous grasp on reality as legitimate, count how many they have, and announce a number of infringements essential to WebM. They will then file a number of lawsuits in a shotgun fashion, perhaps a few hundred, half of which will be against Google, and the other half against various companies using WebM; these will serve to gain royalties in settlements (minor gain) and discourage adoption of WebM (major gain). The suits against Google and whichever minor players don't settle will be appealed by the losing party and drag on for years.

This isn't the end of the FUD, or even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
Obligatory 'An Englishman thinks 100 miles is a long way, an American thinks 100 years is a long time'.
Speaking of software errors, that link redirects me to the mobile site home (not the article page), so I guess I won't read this story.
If you know what you want and can explain it simply, odds are it's not your core business and you should just buy something off-the-shelf even cheaper.

edit: grammar
That link is an unofficial blog. Either way, the point stands though, they're still just arbitrary numbers. Back in the day when software was paid for by version number, an increase of 1.0 was a marketing tool that usually meant a significant update. Browsers are free and are beginning to implement auto-update which makes the version number of a browser even more insignificant.
How Becoming a Dad Helped My Startup
Ppersistent data structures
Each applicant owns their code and will be free to post it. We've only asked that they keep it secret until March.

We will probably release our version as well at that time.
It's a nice looking site.

On http://www.crowdbeacon.com/how-works.aspx the video was a little slow to load so for a while it looked like a blank page above the fold.

Some of your FAQs don't sit well with me:

Why did you start Crowdbeacon?
Consider ditching, "Also, because the future of life as we know it is rapidly becoming mobile and we wanted to make our mark early in the game." It comes across as a long-winded way of saying "this is a me too startup" rather than focusing on your USP.

How do you make money?
Comes across very much as a non-answer. I suggest you remove this one entirely.
Review my Facebook app
I appreciate the kind words. But believe it or not my design sense isn't lacking as much as it would appear haha... it's just that I was trying to do something different with this particular app. The landing page uses the same framework as the actual app but it looks like that wasn't the way to go. I'll probably end up conforming to typical landing pages and repost within a few days. Please keep an eye out as proof that my design sense isn't as terrible as you think haha!

I should also mention that my app does something completely new for that market but it's my fault that you didn't know what it does.

Lastly, I actually don't plan on becoming a huge internet entrepreneur... just using this to have some kind of self-sustaining income so I can work on what I'm really good at: robotics.
GNOME's C++ APIs are absolutely delicious for C++ developers who like modern, grown up C++.
Massive Layoffs Expected at Nokia
Facebook Changes News Feed Settings
Hmmm... and RIM is up. I'd be betting on them to be the big losers if Nokia/Microsoft's partnership actually works.
Since google's adoption relies heavily on their claim that WebM isn't patent encumbered, it's a pretty safe bet that this is being done by the h.264 patent holders for competitive reasons.
Ask HN: resources for practicing searching/sorting/big O
I've been interviewing and recently got my ass kicked by an interview due to my lack of knowledge regarding searching and sorting algorithms and not being able to calculate runtime performance of said algorithms (ala Big O notation).

So I want to take this opportunity to learn more about these topics. I'll continue to read Wikipedia articles and some books but I'm more interested to know of good resources for practice problems related to searching/sorting/big O.