skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"If the movie industry went bankrupt, people would still create cultural artifacts"

But they won't have much "entertainment value" and therefore be disregarded as narcissistic ramblings or self-indulgent drivel. Or, just a hobby.

To have a "value" in a society or to have a cultural impact, one must create compelling works that appeal to a wide swath of the population to which the piece of creative expression is communicating. Perhaps that may take more than one person to accomplish. How do you get a group of people together to perform such a task without a motivational lubricant like money?

"I don't think any of our neolithic ancestors made any money on the paintings at Lasceaux."

There was no money in cave art because, well, there was no money at all. As soon as money was created, so was the minstrel, the portraitist, and the professional writer.
Internet Up For Nobel Peace Prize Again, Let's Hope It Wins This Time
whenever you leave, somewhere in the world a baby will cry hard in your name.

I recognise it's intended to be humorous, but that sounds creepy.

Edit: I don't know why you've been flagged.
Given the time period mentioned in the quora post, yes the Japanese (at least in Tokyo) had more advanced phones than we readily had access to here in the US until 2007. However, I was in Japan a little over a year ago, and I can tell you affirmatively that the common phones people were using were less-advanced than my iPhone 3G at the time.

The typical phone was a long skinny thing with a tiny elongated screen and dozens of impossibly tiny buttons crammed together to make something like a keyboard. They had cameras of inferior quality, inferior internet access, etc. I'll grant that some of their phones had things like NFC, but that's the exception that proves the rule. And my, was my little touchscreen phone popular with the ladies.

Its hard to disagree that Apple alone has completely shaped what it means to be a smartphone in the last 4 years. Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone 7 did not exist before iOS came out. Android has become the marginal market leader in the last 6 months or so in terms of overall phones sold, but that's a fragmented OS market now. The WebOS phones failed, and WP7(a pretty cool OS, imho) is having trouble getting traction. Right now, biggest and most unified smart phone market is simply iOS.

But to put everything into perspective, the model described by in the QP is remarkably similar to Apple's model in many ways. About 10 years ago, DoCoMo said "these are the specs that you will support on your phones", and because DoCoMo had the marketshare of customers, that's what happened. In the US, you don't see a red Verizon logo on the iPhone, right? Apple controls the software and hardware, aka "the specs" of their phones. They have dictated what the carriers will support for things like Visual Voicemail.

The sad part is that DoCoMo seems to have been innovating for a while, which helped give Japan (Tokyo?) the cache of having the best phones in the world. However, that hasn't been true for a long time and now the most popular phones in Japan are iPhones.
Best Web Design and Web Development Articles of February 2011
We are pretty flexible if the fit is good. I sent you an email to dig into it a little more.
UCLA grads on Top Prospect are more likely to be founders than Stanford grads, which may or may not be a representative sample of the population of founders.
Huddl.me seems to be very close to a clone.
Yeah, me too. Taxi Magic (iPhone app) seems to do half of it for Atlanta, but I'd seriously like the whole Uber if possible here.
For some reason, this is one of my favorite things about my phone! I had already moved to looking at wunderground.com instead of the thermometer on my back porch any time I wanted to know the temperature, and once I got a smartphone, it became the way I always check the weather.

I live somewhere that can be prone to extreme temperatures... looking outside doesn't tell me if it's wickedly cold, fairly cold, or surprisingly comfortable. If it's snowing, I want to know how much is expected and so on.
And the winner of StartupCraft II is...
Twitter, Digg investor Mike Maples: Yes, there is a tech bubble
"What if a talented programmer with a knack for marketing took a few years off to learn how to act, sing and dance (and to get few plastic surgeries ;)) and then promoted themselves on the internet?"

You mean Jonathan Coulton?
Why are there so many people discussing the way people comment? .. if anything this is what's killing hacker news.

There's only so much discussion, about discussion, a person can reasonably take :P
Clever, touching and funny ... but I'm not sure that "a jar of chlorauric acid, formed by dissolving the gold from two Nobels in aqua regia" quite counts as "Nobel prizes" any more, never mind "in plain sight".
Sure, a change does require education. Where we differ is that I do not agree that pure CSS layouts are always the "best" solution. The "best" solution takes programmer familiarity, style, languages, business case, time lines, budgets, etc., as inputs.

And I'm tired of people telling me how I ought to program. It's generally well intentioned folks who have an idealistic theory (it's easier to modify! scrapers can access it more easily! it allows disabled people easier access!) pushed into a half-ass solution. Yes, I find the CSS2 standard half-assed.

For me, it boils down to what I can produce. I have much more flexibility (I can only get CSS to work "right" with certain types of layouts; tables, I can do anything) and am more productive with table based layouts.

Perhaps I'll run into a situation where a light bulb clicks on, and I go "Ohhhh, it would've sure been nice if I'd used CSS for layouts here!" But, up until now, I have only ever had the experience of "Fuck, I sure wish I had put this into a table rather than a CSS layout."

I've read several of the highly recommended CSS type books (Meyer, a list apart, etc.) I've tried to apply the lessons. I've spent more effort trying to figure out CSS than any single other technology I use. Maybe going to a class would help, or having 1-1 tutoring / peer sessions, but that's not in the cards for the future.

So instead, I just pathetically create sites that I love (and are successful, for me) with less frustration, faster, using table layouts.

YMMV.
"Ask yourself what level of talent you would have right now if there was zero money in coding or designing software"

That's actually part of the reason why I find it so delicious that there are people outside of Computer Science that are hitting it big in Web and mobile apps; it's a validation that anyone can do the work of a CS grad just as anyone can write a novel or paint a picture; it just takes time and effort and acquiring skills.
My typical approach is to just go with the ORM approach while keeping an eye on various query metrics. If I begin to see signs of a slowdown related to a specific query being generated by the ORM, then I will replace it with hand tailored SQL.

I'm not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but it works well for me.
This sector is ripe for innovation.
Poetic license, ever hear of it?
I've come to believe that many people (like the article author) confuse talent with passion and persistence. If you naturally have a talent for something, you are more likely to pursue it and spark a passion for it.

It's much easier to get good at something you have a natural inclination towards. This does not mean that talent is a prerequisite for getting good at something.

And besides, having talent is like having a small head start in a marathon. You may start faster but that doesn't mean you'll finish faster.
That works perfectly. Thank you.

Sorry for the noise.
This is going to provoke massive eyerolling over at the Erlang industry.
Required viewing.
Sounds like an Onion article.
‘Rooftop painter’ creates murals for Google Earth
ActiveRecord (Rails) provides counter caches for this instance. There are also gems that will analyze the queries your ORM performs to tell you which ones you should optimize.

I tend to stick with "premature optimization is the root of all evil".
this is very true. while idle time is nearly erased with a smartphone, it's important to be cognizant to put down our device(s) when in certain situations, such as social outings, dates, etc. or it will begin to affect our perspective and paint a negative image.
I think it's worth differentiating between spam accounts, and new accounts. They are not the same thing.

I'm sure that a lot of the folks on HN are here because someone in a startup emailed the other folks they know in startups and said "check out my thread on HN and give me a vote". That's how I first found out about it and YC.

Spam might be distasteful, but I don't think there is anything distasteful about someone from a startup introducing other startup founders to the site and asking them to get involved. It might take new members of the community a while to learn the rules, but there is no innate correlation between being new and being a spammer. And HN isn't normally an elitist place where length of tenure implies respectability. I don't think anyone wants to see it turn into the tech community equivalent of a country club.
Hint: I never had any problems obtaining a scientific paper by directly contacting its author. Many of the papers are directly downloadable from author's pages.
Optical Microscope with 50-nanometre resolution demonstrated
All right - I'll get back to you this evening. Thanks for the heads up.
I suggest he run for office on a platform of changing the policy. I'm sure he'll win.
While I can see where you are coming from I don't think that our success boils down to "just getting listed on Mashable." We didn't just snap our fingers and one day get on Mashable. We had to come up with an idea, design it, execute it and promote it. All of those factors played into our being featured. Once featured we also had to make sure the servers stayed up, deal with users and try to help spread the app further. And all of those factors will be described in detail in forthcoming posts - I thought it would be relevant and interesting to give some of the back story first.
I agree that this coverage is only the beginning, but it seems that they're riding an extended wave of signups rather than just a quick burst. A week long stretch of 3k new users/day is an encouraging start. I truly hope that the virality they've built into the app will help sustain the growth a bit longer.

I don't think viral effects alone will be enough to turn the project into a sustainable startup however. The current value proposition of "see how worldly you are" doesn't have me reaching for my wallet anytime soon.
Republicans don't advocate a smaller, less intrusive government. They advocate spending cuts in things that help poor people and HUGE SPENDING INCREASES in the military, the war on drugs, and anything authoritarian or anything that puts money into a large corporation's pocket. The end result? Clinton balances budget. Bush blows it up. Repeat.

So, if you want to know why you should for 1 second consider voting for a democrat, I'd point to the results. Fast forward 6 years and we'll be able to point to a successful Obama presidency as well.
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:hustler so it's a good thing to be a hustler? Doesn't sound much fun.
It sounds useful, but I fear that new comments would be buried in the old comments, particularly if old comments retained their points in determining the ranking.
I actually emailed him for this about a year ago and he told me that he was an American citizen.
Show HN: Textmob - My simple Twilio + GroupMe app
It's also not easy for big companies to change course, add
features, iterate, or experiment. PayPal can't simply decide
to shift its focus toward consumers, nor would they want to.

This reminds me of an outstanding article I read some time ago which advised: "Attack your competitors' strengths, not their weaknesses." In other words, WePay might have failed if their goal was (for example) just to provide better customer service, PayPal's weakness. This is because PayPal could ostensibly improve their customer service without affecting their bottom line. Merchant-oriented services are PayPal's strength, and WePay "attacked" that strength by catering to non-merchants, which, as the article states, they could not do without a core shift in values and focus.
Oh! Look what I found: http://inumbr.com/features

$6.99/mo, 120 minutes, control outgoing caller id. Cool!
Hmm I used this page: http://www.treasury.gov/Pages/default.aspx and went to the 10yr note and looked at its return. So to be clear, I'm talking about US Treasury Bills and not Canadian Treasury Bills. If you have a relationship with a financial institution you can buy them 'directly' (which is to say you own t-bills as opposed to buy into a fund which invests in t-bills) at $10,000 each. (insert caveat about 'Goldman Sachs' which handles sales of t-bills to individual investors and takes a cut, grrrr)

I don't have a magic bullet for finding a good financial advisor, mine cold called me in 1988 when I was at Sun and convinced me to by some California Municipal bonds. Now going on 23 years later I still consult her for financial advice. I think its more of a style thing in terms of being able to talk with someone about what makes sense and what doesn't with investing.

To give you an example, I was waaaaaaaaaaay over invested in tech in the 90's. My advisor told me I was, but didn't push me to do something different. 2000 may not have had a y2k bug disaster but it was financially painful for me.

Some folks might blame their advisor for not being forceful enough and getting me out of tech, but I don't roll that way. I heard what she had to say, we talked about the pros and cons, and I went with 'let it ride for one more roll' (a reference to the game of craps).

I was less forgiving of a recommendation for a fund manager who turned out to be a total turd. But I'm a big believer in Iacocca's comment that if more than half your decisions are good then you are ahead of the game. So advice for looking for an advisor:

1) Interview them, ask them the 'hard' questions, like "did you suggest to anyone to invest in Madoff's schemes?" (note either 'no' or 'yes' has good follow up questions, "No? It was such a great return why not?", "Yes? Even when the returns were out of line with other investments?")

2) Know that the wider the diversification the closer to the mean you will get. If the S&P 500 has a return of X% and someone tells you they can guarantee you > 1.5X% return, then you know they are not being truthful :-) Doing about 50% better than the S&P 500 occasionally has sort of emerged for me as a good razor for becoming suspicious. (note that 'banks' make there boatloads of cash on volume, not because they beat the S&P by 50% but because they beat it by a small amount but on a lot of other peoples money, and FedRsrv money but that is a whole different rant)

3) Check for compatibility. Everyone is different in how they interact with each other, and money, like sex, is one of those things that often has some really strong notions that were burned into ones brain at an impressionable age which color the way you look at everything. Risk averse? Risk seeking? Money as a tool? Money as a game score? Do they define themselves by how much money they manage? Do you? Its perhaps the hardest thing to get right.
Who needs principles when reality is so convenient?
That's your objection to slavery?
That was pretty much my experience when I visited the place in the summer of 2005. I remember they were just introducing camera phones, and thinking to myself, hasn't the US had camera phones for like 3-4 years now?
Gianugo is a very bright, hard-working guy, with one successful company to his name as founder. I hope they make good use of his talents there, and listen to him.
Code Reuse and Technological Advancement
Don't downvote, it's a valid question that shoots at the heart of the entire philosophy.
Zynga Developer Spills the Beans on What Makes Social Games Great
Zip code deemed personally identifiable in California.
Unless one of his employees walks out with the source code and starts a rival firm.

Granted, it takes a lot more than that to be in business, but the IP laws give you some protection against things like that.
I'm sure it's easy to do some friend graph analysis to determine a ranking similar to pagerank for comments. The troll accounts would sink to the bottom like a rock.
Maybe there's no way to get around this, but a flight from DCA to LAS on Aug 3 is $227 with Hipmunk, whereas on Spiritair.com I get as low as $195. With a promotion coupon (which almost always pop up about a month in advance) I could get between $19 and $50 off that.

Is there some way Hipmunk can show reduced costs direct from airlines or incorporate promo coupons? I know some promos are "random" but Spirit has them every week for different destinations and dates.

(I also notice Tripadvisor shows me one for $189 if I leave from BWA... does Hipmunk have a 'nearby airports' search option?)
Show HN: scanii.com rest/json virus scanner service 
what I created: http://scanii.com/

This is not a marketing pitch; I'm looking for honest feedback on the business model and API, not the lack of gradients on the site.

What I'm looking for:
1. Is this something you could use today in your job/project?
2. Is the pricing scheme simple and fair?
3. Is the API simple enough?

I'll also monitor the thread and answer any questions you have.
You do not need to be signed up in the beta, you can use it today for free.
You succeed much faster with help.
Our ZFS I/O Throttle
Yes. But if you want help on Hakyll, there's #hakyll on freenode.
If you finish you're prompted to submit your code along with your resume for employment consideration. Keep that in mind as you move on to each next step. Had to piece together one of my solutions into a single solution.

https://www.greplin.com/jobs Here is the source of the challenge link which gives you a heads up it's for a job contest.
World Internet Usage Statistics (2 billion users now)
Could the massive quakes of 200 years ago happen again?
Glad they chose 'pipe' over 'hose'.
One page version: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/01/the_rise_and_rise_of...
Seems a bit unfair for Google- after all, most people there probably use Android, and Uber is iPhone only. Yes, there is a text messaging version- but the app is mostly what justifies the extra cost associated with using an ubercab.
cool story. maybe there'll be a movie about it someday.
It's a sitcom. That's what they do... don't take it so seriously.

My point was that people other than traditional 'geeks' find the show amusing. They get the humor. Geek-culture has gone mainstream.
I agree with you about their flight search issues See my previous comments - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2249984

But this hotel search upgrade really is an improvement on the usual booking systems. I can easily add filters for the basic things I need in a room and then visualize the results based on location. Traditional booking sites give you either no grouped map or a just a small indecipherable map.
Why anyone would buy travel insurance is a mystery to me

Medical expenses, repatriation, accommodation in case of particular delays, emergency cash in case of theft.. I can't see why you wouldn't have it for any trip overseas given how unpredictable medical costs can be (unless you have a great existing policy that would cover all of these).
Was the problem really that Python was slow, or did they not discover event-driven until finding Node?
Traditional media and established blogs have sympathy for small startups that take on giants like Google, etc. especially if they are founded by someone under 20.
btw, where is cuil now?
JavaScript and URLs
We are all simply products of intelligence + environment. I am however, more to the reverse of your experience. I used to believe that almost everyone could be amazing and brilliant if just given the opportunity and another set of circumstances. While I know that to be true in some cases, I also have learned over the years that many people just aren't bright enough to get advanced concepts and never will.
Congratulations, Beluga team! Please keep us posted on how things go with Facebook.
Great article. I couldn't help but think while reading it, "I see what you did there," being hn-famous & writing a great post on their site.
If you don't know what's in the POSIX spec, you should go and read it. If you do this, you will learn not only what the shell must do, but also that /usr/bin/env might not exist at all. The env utility is required, but it isn't always in /usr/bin.
Ask HN: Should I keep working on this project?
Hey guys, thanks for reading this. A brief history. My friends and myself wrote this app almost 3 years ago (in the middle of 2008) for Android developer challenge I....That was awesome experience and we've been featured on ReadWriteWeb.

But...then happened a sad story: my co-founders decided to get some day job in order to support themselves...I started another business (in construction industry)...and the Genome project was abandoned. But my heart is still in software, web and coding...So here is the question:

What do you think about the Genome project and should I keep working on it? Thanks in advance. Please send your opinions to bloodcarter@gmail.com.

The screencasts of the app and other stuff is here: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dch8qbs4_328fqk5dgtz

Thanks in advance!

P.S. This is follow up post from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271966. Previously I mistakenly posted it in the news section instead of ask section, sorry.
If you missed the first go: Jeff Hawkins's new cortex model
FWIW, I A/B tested a "long" sales letter with a cleaner, shorter and nicer looking one (imo) for my info product targeted at programmers.

Long: http://createyourproglang.com/index2.html
Short: http://createyourproglang.com/

I've let the experiment run for a few months and the results were never concluding, ~50% each the whole time.

My guess is that most of my buyers are pre-sold by affiliates, or via word of mouth, and don't read anything. Any other interpretation greatly appreciated.
Are there any successful business built by using a freelancer ? Or a devshop for that matter ?

Genuinely curious here. To narrow it down a bit, let's talk businesses who primarily operate on the web or through a mobile app.

It just seems that outsourcing the core of your business is a strategy that's destined to fail.

You need to be able to pivot, and fill in the blanks as you go along. Most freelancers and shops don't give you this option, or at least not at a reasonable cost. It feels like most businesses would be much better off hiring someone and giving that person a piece of the business as part of the deal.
Doing it in the comments with a bot.. yeah, I can see why that might've struck a nerve.

But it's the old usenet problem. FAQs I don't think would work here though.

I was thinking more as a collapsable "see also" section added only to duplicate articles.

Update Added reference to usenet.
Although the ideas and technology behind node.js aren't entirely new, the fusion of a well known client side language like Javascript and a robust server-side event based architecture really makes node.js great.

I really enjoyed the article because it approached node.js as it should have, as the new way of doing things on the server. I see node.js becoming as ubiquitous as ruby/python/perl are on the server (maybe even for desktop applications).

Even if node.js doesn't become as big as I think it will, I feel that the shift is has helped cause is a positive one for the server space and we will all benefit from it.