skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the universal appeal of comic book/superhero/fantasy mythologies.

Major studio economics have changed in recent years and it is now critical that movies have a global, universal appeal.

Their major profit centres are evaporating before their eyes (back catalog tv licencing and dvd sales), along with declining domestic audiences.

In order to turn a profit the movies must be as generic and acceptable as possible: lots of children, the hero's journey and other myths, no sex or swearing, "fake" comic book violence or none at all.

Any kind of NC-17/Restricted rating is the kiss of death. Anything controversial will be a flop.

The problem is the death spiral of risk-aversion, unoriginality, and plot refinement to the point where the "movie" will be perfected and there will be nothing left to film.

Lord or the Rings is the new mythology.. the archetype of the Hero's Journey. Once you print it to film.. what's the point of retelling the story?
In London, and just about any page loads much slower than I'd want/expect. Not like there's a better alternative out there, but 2-4 second page loads can be a bit frustrating at times.
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The founders get to cash out is what I'm seeing. That's pretty nice, and may allow some of them to go on to better things.

For instance, I think YC is far cooler than Viaweb.
> declaring bankruptcy in the event of a cataclysm

Some procedures are not covered in your scenario depending on your state. Organ Transplants in Arizona etc.
Am I the only one on HN that's about sick to death of the "PHP developers are children/idiots/bad programmers" meme? I can (and have) been paid to code in all of the following languages:

C
Perl
JavaScript
PHP

I also occasionally code in Python and assembly for fun.

When it comes to web projects PHP is my goto language because it works in all web environments without a bunch of bullshit surrounding installation, versioning or deployment. It's 2011 people, are you telling me developers are still trying to establish some sense of shiny self importance based on language choice? Sad.
That's what Google did with YouTube, right?
> There's nothing confusing or deceptive about this practice.

This is a matter of opinion, of course, but in my opinion, it is deceptive.

The only reason _anyone_ is doing it is that it has been shown time and again that mentally $4.99 registers closer to $4 than to $5 (and $199.99 registers closer to $150 than to $200).

It doesn't register that way with me, because I trained myself to ignore it - I grew up in another country, where this practice was not widespread while I was growing up. When it started appearing, most people trained themselves to ignore it, but the younger generations are vulnerable to it.

Now that I am living in the US, I see that most people my age are also vulnerable to it.

Furthermore, in that country I grew up in, the law says that any advertised price must be: (a) inclusive of all taxes, charges etc. (that is, in a cash or credit transaction for the item advertised, the charge must never be more than the advertised price under any circumstance), and (b) in the same font/style/weight and at least 20% larger than any other descriptive price of the item (before tax, finance charges, etc).

Do you consider advertising a $1 27" television with a super small fine print saying "+$900 shipping, handling, state tax; included even if you pick up in store" false? I do, and I think it's in the same class.

All the info is there in both cases, and both cases are designed to leave the impression of a lower price than the item really costs.
It's more than just date movies. High school kids have lots of disposable income, few bills, plenty of time to kill, can't get into bars, and don't need get hire a babysitter.

College kids have lots of other things to spend their money on, like booze and, uh, booze. Once you're past that age, the odds of having kids goes up and then going to a movie becomes a major outing. For my wife and I to see a movie in the theatre now, we'll have to shell out close to $80. It's just not worth it, especially as home theatres keep getting better and better.
Did they check swear words in other languages? ;-)
By some criteria, I'm sure. But if you like Broadway shows, it's not the best choice. And while there's a river or two, the surfing's not all that good. I suspect there are better places weather-wise, too.

And I might be interested in some of those criteria at some point, but it's like some article that said it was great to retire in Fayetteville, Ark...
Ask HN: Should we apply to YC if they backed a competitor?
Hi guys,

We are wondering if we should apply to the next funding cycle because YC backed a competitor.

We have a different approach, go-to-market strategy and technology. So, if you look at the projects, we are really different while solving the same pain.

Just wondering/asking to not build up our hopes while waiting for an answer... we will apply anyway :)
Full Android 3.0 SDK Available Now
The article ignores the stories that turn out differently. For example, I noticed whereonearth in the list of acquisitions. I happen to know that their technology was nearly immediately used to start making money for Yahoo (because I integrated it into parts of the ad serving systems). It also was probably behind the "platform technology that enabled things like geolocation open API" that Upcoming enjoyed.

The time cutoff also leaves out the Overture, Inktomi, Altavista trio which made a ton of money for Yahoo, let them build a search engine on par with Google, and fueled significant growth of the company.

Finally, the article also ignores the fact than many, many internally developed products (of any internet company) have a lifespan of under 5 years.
For PHP, you'd have to search for "ass_hole", "fuckmother", "cock_sucker", and so on to be fair.
As a bit of a tangent, I'd like to mention a movie ranking site I think is pretty underrated http://www.phi-phenomenon.org/ which uses some interesting statistical methods to aggregate "best of" lists
I only see him "lumping R in with Python" in that they're both full-blown programming languages and TFAA apparently hates them both because they're programming languages.

_delirium is merely pointing out that there are push-button packages for statistics, and that statisticians using programming languages (be they statistics-oriented or not) usually do so because they want to or because they need to (as the push-button stuff is not sufficient for their needs, for instance)
http://www.freshbooks.com/careers/sys-admin.php

http://www.freshbooks.com/careers/database-developer.php
I've witnessed numerous efforts to "measure" "morale". Couched in positive language, they inevitably ended up being increasingly bad efforts to paper over failure to address underlying (or over-arching) issues.

Here's a question: Why do you need timesheets? You didn't before. What's changed? If you can't -- legally -- avoid them, at least be honest about it. And don't let them become a tool for petty tyrants. (Oh, and, good luck with that last part.)
I never found Apollo 13 to be a compelling movie. It's so true to life that you could just watch the documentaries and get the exact same experience.
Continuations-Based Web Apps in Common Lisp
Good points...there's so much that goes into making the decision to go forward on any project. Competitors are just one thing to consider. There are maybe other more important things like does this solve a pain point? For example, do people really feel the pain of trying to hold direct conversations on Twitter? Would they prefer to have a real time discussion? If so, how many people would potentially use this type of app? How big is the market? Etc.

p.s. second mouse gets the cheese...hilarious
PG states that they will fund multiple startups in the same market. I believe it may be on the FAQ, or How to apply successfully.

If I were you, I'd definitely apply. If you don't, then you've guaranteed yourself no funding or YC experience.
This looks great. The "recap" email after SXSW with videos, photos, etc from the sessions sounds interesting...how often does Lanyrd send these types of emails?
Or... Hard to stay interested when [my company] uses XP.
Building a business isn't about 'a punch'. It's about hard work, day after day for a long time.

Convore has got a nice UI, they haven't really got traction yet, and there's space for tons of chat like services. They're nothing new, they've been about for decades and they'll be around for decades yet.

Right now Convore have something like 200 users online. That's not unachievable by any means...

Keep going and listen to your users.
Since they invest mostly in people, and then their projects, you should apply.
They don't say if the emulator is still slow like in RC/beta.
I have found Windows 7 to be a pretty good OS, I am happy to say. I just wish Microsoft would make the intergrated Windows 7 Install DVD ISOs available for download, like the do for MSDN and Technet, even if they charged a small fee for it.
No, no, you've got it all wrong. If the startup just takes advantage of all of the institutional process and knowledge that the acquirer has to offer, they'll do _even better_ than before they were acquired!

(This post is a good example of Poe's law...)
Just installed SP1 on 64bit professional. Went smoothly in 20 mins. Freed up 7GB of diskspace on my SSD. Nice!
I remember messing around with a (much simpler) 3D engine on my old TI-89.

I'm honestly not surprised that high-end calculators have got the grunt to do this - it's not exactly HD video they need to render.
No, shut up. Python isn't a statistical programming language.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajbrustein/5222637962/

It's a shame about the grey, overcast winters and the muggy summers though. I went to college there for four years, and it's a great city, I just couldn't stand the weather.
I'm less interested in the sessions (I can read a conference guide!) and more interested in the parties, networking events, flashmobs, etc. Where to be and who to meet. Have you guys thought about this angle?
The DIY Mass Protest
Apparently the very creative people at Goldman Sachs have some ideas.
Thanks guys for those comments, quite helpful.
This is very stupid.
Drunkenness is not the same as alcohol consumption. Someone tell this drunk idiot that:

1) Spirits have way more alcohol content than wine or beer.

2) Binge drinking is very different from regular drinking. A Russian walloping 1 liter of vodka at once will get far more drunk than a Portuguese or Argentinian drinking 1 liter of wine in small doses through the whole day.
I'd rather not give away any clues about my identity since most of my co-workers read Hacker News. I'm just trying to get gauge how others have handled this.
D.C. is third and Detroit is 7. This might just be a trick to see if they can get anyone to buy their $500 report to see WTF they are talking about.
A display of that resolution is infeasible with current GPUs, though. The device would be a combination of too large, too heavy, and/or have too short battery life. I don't even think it will be feasible in the next iteration; perhaps the one after.

I honestly think they made the resolution only 1024x768 on purpose to reduce the amount of time it will take to be able to cost-effectively double it. If they had shipped with a 1280x800 screen (like the Xoom's) off the bat, it would probably tack on an extra iteration before they could double it.
Very true :-)
Uh? If "the infrastructure for things such as internet and communications can easily be compromised" why would you be able to access this particular website more than Gmail or Facebook?
> So why does Yahoo buy these properties?

Why does Yahoo do anything? It's clearly a company without a vision or purpose that is simply shuffling money and paper around in the hopes that onlookers mistake activity for achievement as the executives hope the kick the can down the street just past the next executive pay review and/or contract extension.
Glad you realised it's not the end of the world. Just remember there are 6 billion people in this world. Probably 1 billion have internet access. The likely hood someone else has the same idea as you is very high. You discovered half a dozen people with the same idea. But if half a dozen people have a product to show there where probably hundreds who initially thought that such a service would be a good idea. The only thing separating those hundreds with the half a dozen is action.

So instead of competing with hundreds on the idea alone you are competing with half a dozen on implementation. I'm not sure about you but I like those odds.
hm, his email isn't on his site. do you know where I can find it to ping him?
So what? You can't access your mail client / favorite social network but you can access this website?
There are 2 companies which Yahoo! acquired:

1) Overture. If you look at the financial reports, nearly 50% of Yahoo's revenue is from search. They acquired Overture for ~1B

2) They acquired RocketMail (essentially Yahoo! mail). Most people I know, when they think of Yahoo, they think of Yahoo! mail.

So, while its easy to say they messed up many acquisitions (esp the infamous 3B offer for Broadcast.com), the 2 acquisitions they made is what keeps them "in the game" today. You win some acquisitions, you lose some. Just like investing, if you make few smart ones, it can easily pay off and create more value than the money spent on many failed ones. Same with Google - Youtube was handled very well, but many acquisitions are essentially just shut down or never integrated into other products(Dodgeball,Jaiku etc)
When were those movie rated? Now or at the time of the release?

If they were rated recently then there is obvious bias there. Yes/no?
Without "growth" the stock tanks.
yawn

Speaking of frame of reference, people belittling PHP devs are mostly showing their own ignorance.
You know, at first blush I would want to throw in the towel as well, but on second thought you really might consider making a proper go of it. The idea has now been validated by a lot of smart people, and frankly you've got a solid MVP going. I'm leaning toward the general sentiment of comments on here. :)
Dealing with amorphously defined tasks. I run into planning issues, time management issues, etc.

I find that defining what needs to be done as concretely and minutely as possible (within reason), does absolute wonders for my ability to manage tasks. It sometimes results in me needing to go over things many times (and risk looking the fool to someone who is not familiar with how I work) in order to clarify precisely what the expected outcome is but that is a small price to pay for super powered productivity.
We just moved from NYC and bought a house out here... it's not NYC, but it's a pretty nice place to live :)
Main Page - OpenResearch.org
I think he's asking for a direct link that doesn't require you to go through the Windows validation requested in the link. That validation requires you download via a Windows PC.
I love Dell's site too.
I didn't say it had anything to do with technology exclusively. But there's a relatively new medium in which people experience narrative and action scenes. It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to believe that current or new moviemakers will be influenced by the action in, say, Modern Warfare 2, and make scenes that take from it rather than reality.

I don't disagree with you in other respects at all.
Then I'm not understanding the definition of "polarizing". By my thinking, a polarizing movie would have distinctly good ratings to go alongside distinctly bad ratings, i.e. Twilight is not polarizing if everybody agrees it is bad.
Carbonmade is an anomaly.

We're three designers, one project manager, one CEO, one customer service guy and only two developers.

That's only two developers out of eight people.
Code Complete Essentials taught by McConnell
Adobe founders were in their early 40's. (born 1939 and 1940, founded 1982.)

Also, I really do think that people are aging more slowly, 40 is the new 30 etc. Adolescence is extended; old-age is longer and healthier.

But, whether you have an advantage by being older is a question of the value of experience... although each new generation of tech seems to reinvent all the old stuff (so experience helps there), mastery of detailed workarounds is lost. Experience seems to have most enduring value in people and business-related skills, more than in programming. Other things that don't change much are laws and mathematics. Although this doesn't help mathematicians, who need to be creating new mathematics, my guess is that applied mathematicians would get better over time.
You don't have to buy the $60 popcorn.
...and so how are they going to buy the next version of the operation system in a years time?

I had this with Win XP - I prob used it for 8 years+. Vista was no reason to upgrade. Then I discovered OSX and made the switch over to Mac.
Add "wtf" to this list and you match more than 50% of all commit messages ;-)
Screw Screen Readers
When you are being acquired, you could say: "We're worried about loosing our culture, which has brought us the success we've seen so far. I want to agree that our group will be allowed to set its own rules to some degree in terms of working environment." And give a few examples. No need to push it or make this legally binding, or even put it in writing.

Then, when the timesheet dude shows up (which they will), just say no. When the meetings are being called, say no. It'll be a shitstorm, and lots of people will dislike you for getting away with it, but you should get your way if this happens soon after the acquisition (when someone way up stands behind the acquisition and can't have it go bad this early.) Let the shitstorm happen, and stand tall. I don't think any company would fire founders of a company they acquired a month or two ago.

I don't know, anyone know of cases where it happened this way? Or is being a wholly owned sub really the only way to have a culture that's separate from the parent company?
Given that Nathan Fillion doesn't even know the site exists and the actual people behind it refuse to reveal their identities, I wouldn't trust this site as far as I could throw it.

The simple fact of the matter: If Joss wanted to do this, he would do it, and have a much easier time promoting it than these people will (did anybody see the profits from "Dr. Horrible"?). And Firefly with Nathan Fillion the only returning cast or crew member isn't what the fans want. But right now, Nathan is doing other things and Joss is doing other things, and that's their choice. If this isn't a scam, it's a poorly thought-out plan.
They could do something that my Windows folder doesn't eat up 30GB of my SSD disk. Or do something like an app store where all applications get updated in a uniform manner. They could make the backup program usable.
There is so much that could be done.
Sometimes I wonder what the 50000 (just a guess) or so people in Redmond do.
Medicine through the Years
Surely timesheets are never a legal requirement?
The Declaration of Independence says it, so it must be true? The DoI is, among other things, a social contract that most Americans have agreed to, which is exactly what ThomPete said.
Sample size is too fucking small. Also, as others have pointed out, you've allowed far too few swearwords.

Good job though :-)
As a person who has twice tried to hire remote/foreign workers, it boils down to this (for me): when I'm looking at markets, how do I differentiate you from the rest?

I've had 2 mediocre/bad experiences, trying to piece out some component work for my startup. Both didn't go well. I thought I had picked the best of the available applications, but in the end, I was unable to distinguish them from each other, so I semi-randomly selected.

If you can figure out how to differentiate (both yourself, as well as a more general solution), I believe you will have solved a major problem in the industry.
how about 'chainsaw'?
But you can visit some of Apple's former buildings for free. Look on folklore.org for addresses. There's at least one 70s-tastic office park at 20863 Stevens Creek.
Whither Twitter as a Platform?
Thanks for keeping us operations folk in mind. I would love to see more Ops-focused hiring threads, posts, articles, commentary, etc. around HN.
Where you at Jack? Shaloc, Simple Location Sharing
$45M in VC funding later, Goodmail Systems shuts down
The Launch Pad: Robot Race is On
As a side note, your blog is beautiful. Did you design it yourself?
This is a breathtakingly inane argument. Yes, if an evil spirit took away Apple's profits they would not have profits anymore. In other news, if my grandmother had balls she'd be my grandfather.

However, the evil spirits do not exist: There is no entity that can upset Apple's entire business model by blocking their retail channel. This is not a coincidence, and it is not because Best Buy and Wal-Mart and the cellular carriers are run by angels and saints. It is because Apple recognized the importance of consumer sales ten years ago and deliberately built a retail channel of their own, with patience and focus and at great expense. The result is so valuable that companies will apparently pay 30% of gross revenue to access it.

If you hate Apple's deal, find an alternative. If the alternative does not exist, build it. Surely Apple is not the only company on earth that can possibly make a decent product. And if they are, they should charge accordingly.
Pittsburgh is the 29th most liveable city in the World.
Upgrades continue to this day! As an example, I updated my last household PC to Windows 7 Ultimate (up from Windows MCE 2004 from HP: a frankenstein OS).

It runs better than ever (2.4Ghz, 2GB memory). Media Center works great (looks like MCE 2005). For a 7 year old PC with AGP graphics (7600 GT) it's surprising how well Windows 7 performs. Assuming nothing breaks, it's still a good 'dev test server' for .NET and LAMP work.
Microsoft's main customer (as they perceive it, rightly or wrongly) is the enterprise.

Enterprises are not equipped to cope withe Steve Jobs style new OS every year - they want standardization and stability, and often be able to deploy their own build which they don't have to change for years.

Every time a new significant OS or SP comes out, many enterprises feel the need to do security audits, complete compatibility checks, acceptance testing while running their enterprise apps, rounds of 'training' for the people who can't work out how to do stuff on their own, etc.

Lots of reasons behind that, many will end over time. But for now that is why you don't see a lot of new feature orientated updates from Microsoft.
Video Tutorial: Android Application Development - Android Services Example
Ask HN: Questions lie and mislead. Data does not.
My founders and I conducted customer research to suss out what feature ideas customers really wanted from our web application. Digging deeper into data, our demographics suggests our prospective customer will be female 3 out of 4 times. As a prudent, behind-the-numbers and first-time founder, I need to make this information actionable.

To these ends, would the front-end engineer, graphic design or UI professionals on HN, particularly the female members, be willing to share their insights offline or post links to model web applications with a sentance describing why they think its a good model?

Grateful,

Rhodee
Looking at the worldwide list it seems like access to healthcare plays a really strong part... which I guess makes sense if you're calling your metric "Livability"
They do say "One more note: Candidates must be eligible to work in the US (citizenship, green card, visa, etc)"

"visa" does seem to suggest some possibility.
I think his point is that bollywood (for example) is bigger than hollywood by most measures (budget, gross etc.)