skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Resist the urge to become a professional philanthropist. Have the gumption to dream even bigger than before and risk utter failure. It's only money.

I would rewrite this comment to replace "philanthropist" with "check-writer." There are two kinds of philanthropists just as there are two kinds of investors. There are check writers who donate their money, take as much credit as they can and don't do anything else. In contrast, there are truly great philanthropists who get involved in the causes they give to, leverage their connections, and contribute time and expertise. To a nonprofit, the first type is merely another thing to be managed (make sure they get enough credit to stay happy but don't soak up too much time and energy) while the second type is invaluable.
Ask HN: What are the pros/cons of joint-venture vs. other arrangements?
Hi HNers,

I'm seeking advice with the following situation: I'm a software developer with a B2B sales-process app in a niche market. The app is at the prototype stage, well past just an idea. I've been in discussions with someone who intends to bring industry knowledge, contacts, and finding/closing initial sales using the app.

He's proposing a joint venture arrangement for collaborating, and I'd like to know what the pros and cons of such are? By contrast, most of what I've seen/heard for software startups involve equity as an employee/founder vested over time. This JV proposal still has equity involved, as well as possible salary/commissions. Terms are still under discussion, things are fluid. Any advice, stories, etc. appreciated. Thanks HN!
Yes, but you compared google adding a new link to their search results to Microsoft releasing new versions of windows. That comparison doesnt make sense; however, the small updates Microsoft makes daily is a valid comparison. You're off on a different argument now, regardless.
I think their reasoning is that if you really want to delete something from the results, it has to be really bad. Hence, you'll likely not want to receive search results from that same site.

But I'm no Matt Cutts.

Btw, is the link showing up for everybody? It is not for me.
I guess you're joking, but a European person-year is definitely smaller than an American person-year (or PY as we call them at the office).
Thanks for posting that. Here's a great overview of negotiations and the "anchoring" strategy you describe: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2008/03/16/bargaining-with-your-ri...
Do you know whether the new one month gap between YC acceptance and techstars acceptance will be a problem? E.G. Will the offers explode in a month? In not, when typically?
I was going to apply and found out that a YC W'11 startup was working on something extremely similar.
Do you consider applications on products that are similar to those of another YC company ? If yes, is there any history of YC doing this ?
Thanks for trying out the plugin!

If you are open to sharing, it would be great to see the keywords/phrases you are tracking and quality settings you are using. You can email me at joe@inboxq.com if you like and I can do my best to help you find the right mix that will improve the output for you.

There are about 1.5m Tweets with a question mark each day. We start with that pool and then use a bunch of filters to get down to about 30-60k actual questions. Our models aren't perfect, so you will likely see some tweets that may be in the form of a question but not have an information need. But that number shouldn't be 99%.

We've also seen that there are big swings in question quality based off of the topics related to the keywords you are tracking.

At any rate, happy to help figure it out so please email if you are so inclined.
Warn Congress: South Korean Free Trade Agreement Is A Huge Mistake
I signed up for OKC, lurked for a while, and then sent a message to the person at the top of my match list.

We're still together, five years later.

I'm probably an outlier, but hey--match percentage works some of the time!
If you’re looking to grow in popularity as quickly as possible and the cash you could get from ads doesn’t matter, then yes, go without ads.

It's not one way or the other. You can fall in the middle. You can run ads on a site to only non logged in users or only on posts over a certain age. For a long established blog, just running ads on posts over a month old could still cover 50%+ of the pageviews. I use this "trick" myself and the CTRs are great because it's mostly people coming in from search engines who hit those ads rather than my "regulars" :-)
Just remember that correlation is not causation!
I just lost a little of respect from you guys with this comment.
You could log out..
It's 40 hours * 52 weeks, according to http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/manyear.asp

Although, I think that number is closer to 40 hours * 50 weeks (vacation included)
"C++ is a powerful language with flexible solutions to problems that other languages don't have."
Windows Phone 7 is product of the same organization, staffed by mostly the same people, with only certain degree of improvement to development process since the CE 6. What makes you hope 7 will have better quality?
awesome. shared!
A Note on Distributed Computing [pdf]
It says, "All six YC partners read applications. We each do it separately, to avoid groupthink."

This makes me curious about the process.

I assume this means that an application is at least initially seen by only one partner. I see the advantage in parallel processing, but what if one person rejects something the other five would have gone for?

What puts founders on the "let's interview" pile? Is it the choice of one reviewer, or are promising applications then reviewed by the remaining five (or maybe just pg) to see if there's an agreement?
This is me nagging.
The Haskell Platform 2011.2 is out: GHC 7 for all
Selling heroin to people who aren't even adults is immoral. It's not a trade to sell death to someone that can't possibly be aware of what they're "buying".

Earning is inherently a profoundly moral action, because values are things that advance human interests (not to be confused with desires) long-term. People don't generally pursue lower values over higher ones (unless they are mistaken about what is actually valuable to them).

Values (such as food, clothing, or abstract ideas) are earned, honestly by free minds through great conscious effort. There is no other way.
Firefox dev team does an IAmA on reddit
Real hackers burn everything in EEPROM. Before testing.
Recursion is not fundamentally sequential. It depends on your data structures:

Structural recursion on sequential data structures is sequential. Structural recursion on somewhat-balanced tree-like data structures is more amenable to parallelism.

(And non-structural recursion is too general to talk here.)

Though I agree that using recursion does not scale very well in terms of program complexity. Hide your data flow behind combinators, if you don't want to get a headache.

I highly recommend Guy Steele's talk that's linked in a sibling comment. I am glad I attended ICFP that year.
"Out of professional courtesy, I do not answer competitively sensitive questions about my employer's policies. Which is a good thing, because some day, someone is going to ask me about your's."
Show HN: Readability-like API Using Machine Learning
I was trying to generalize a bit with their strategies rather than make specific one-to-one comparisons. When Google rolls out a search results page change, potentially hundreds of millions of people see the effect immediately. When Microsoft pushes updates to Windows, there is rarely new functionality added and few people actually notice day to day. Most definitely not all Windows installations get the updates daily (whatever happened to Patch Tuesday? Does MS actually push out daily updates to their customers? I'd be very impressed if this is true).

Anyway, all I was really trying to say is that Google is, in general, faster to react to market changes, faster to push updates, and faster in developing new features when compared to Microsoft. And that's one of their advantages. Sorry if my specific examples became the primary discussion here, I really only meant the Windows comparison to be an example showing a larger strategy.
The tutorial contains a nice overview of the language:
https://github.com/pika/LinearML/wiki/Tutorial

The most interesting feature is the use of linear types to statically ensure sound usage of resources, including memory, in other words, no garbage collector.
Are there any YC companies that aren't based on the West Coast?
More Redis internals: Tracing a GET & SET
I wonder how many man-years Microsoft has spent on failed UIs? (and, yes, they've had successful ones too).

Nokia had a broken development process. The answer clearly was to surrender and turn the company over to ... another company with a long history of broken processes.

NOTE: I'm not saying everything in Microsoft is broken by any means. Microsoft has had processes which produced Windows ME and Windows Vista ... and they fixed their process and produced some better things. That might be evidence Nokia might have been able to do something similar.
This was making the rounds a few days ago: http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/08/passport-ownership-p.ht... (Passport ownership prevents diabetes)
Because there are a raft of bad actors out there with junk sites. Removing them utterly from your personal existence can help make search much more useful. Examples:

- Yahoo! Answers

- Ezine Articles

- Those Efreedom assholes

- Experts Exchange (your experience aside, this place is crap for most everyone else)

- All the junk sites around appliance manuals

- All the other content farms
Sounds a bit like Clean.
Employment Insurance Law in Canada
Must read book on this topic: "House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time"

http://www.amazon.com/House-Lies-Management-Consultants-Stea...
Developer Preview of Couchbase Mobile - Apache CouchDB for iOS devices
I don't know why you'd say that Nintendo is afraid of iOS. Or rather, the reasons for them being afraid of mobile platforms is a little different than you are implying. During Iwata's keynote at GDC, he spent a while talking about these platforms and how they are saturating the market with low-quality games that are bogging down the industry as a whole and lessening the value of big budget, well-produced games made by your more traditional gaming companies. He's afraid that the value of content will decrease as the amount of content available increases, which is certainly a valid concern.

If you meant that Nintendo should be afraid of the massive success of iOS, then yeah, I kind of agree. Still, making a sequel to a monumentally successful mobile game on the most successful gaming console at the moment (or its 3D successor, due to launch soon) would hardly be a bad idea. Yeah, lots of "non-gamers" love Angry Birds, but that's the same market that Nintendo had been going after with the DS in the first place (remember Brain Training?).
I think after "Vision Studios", it was pretty clear what is there and the Jaimy's Visual studio 2000 had to be a rhetorical bitter joke ...that was then completed with "better" one like putting the cherry on the top of cake.
"Quickly"?? People have been asking for this for years.
GitHub on LinkedIn
Google insights node.js chart
It's not just misleading. It's wrong.
Owning 15 things: 7 months in
I agree. This guy Mike seems so smart
Businesses pay for value, not for work successfully completed as requested. Want to hack something? Either hack the org chart and get assigned to where you provably make money, or hack your job duties such that you can measure how much money each project translates into.

The first thing I do for new clients is get metrics (or set up systems to do so), because you can best believe that when they move in the right direction I'm charging more next time.
I'm not interested in debating such a thing.

That's because you have no leg to stand on here.

Let's just say (agree?) the labor/services Madoff performed were not the labor/services his investors had hoped for

I don't agree. Madoff knew he was defrauding his victims. It's not simply a matter of breach of contract because that is something that civil courts handle. How many people do you know that are in jail because they breached a private contract?

I have already provided at least 2 other examples of people immorally earning (per your new definition) money, you have ignored both to focus on semantics involving Madoff.

I've dispatched with your context-dropping heroin example. You think that this is all a semantic issue, but I don't agree. You can't use the same language to describe heroes and villians without committing a profound injustice against the virtuous (or focusing on nonessential attributes that any two people might share regardless of moral status, which is an epistemological error).
Measuring Long-Term User Engagement
I'm not the only one who noticed that?

Seems odd.
Spread.ly: A New Social Sharing Button That Rewards You With Deals
Awesome...any idea how much a video like this costs?
I was actually referring to the qubits of quantum computers, which can be zero, one, or in a superposition of both zero and one. Or something.
I did an IAP on LinkedData at MIT and one of the session's was given by Sir Tim Berners Lee, creator of Internet and now creator of Semantic Web.

LinkedData has amazing power and capability,the only challenge is adopting it. NYTIMES has all its articles on Linkeddata, DBPedia is an RDF version of Wikipedia.

On the other side all the companies are opening their API's, linked data has a similar vision of data mashups. These two overlaps in few aspects.

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.htm...
It's very, very nice to see this article vs. the salary negotiations one [1].

Over there, Jaques mentions that a lot of people suck asking for more money because they just love their job the way it is. Which is kind of a failure if you're on the low end of the pay scale, but this particular thread here shows that it actually ends up being a good thing in the end.

IF (big..) you end up in a job that you love and that compensates you enough (not talking about endless greed here..), you're probably among the happiest people out there. Hats off to you guys and I love the "stick to things I love instead of selling myself" attitude.

1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2309317
We've actually had this conversation before. It sounds ridiculous, but the story is actually a little different: OKWS was built prior to OKCupid, and they inherited it. See http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~max/docs/okws.pdf.
I'm not even sure what NoVA is
Most Android devices are locked down so that users cannot install apps outside the Android Market (aka "sideloading").

Of course those of us who know about xda-developers.com and are handy with adb can easily bypass this in most cases. But we're in the minority. The average joe, the vast majority of the user base is either incapable or unwilling to do these things.

Unless you've got a rooted & bootloader-unlocked device running an AOSP-derived ROM, Google's dream of an open mobile device OS only applies to the carriers.
>I honestly believe that a rational geek has to give up some rationality in order to become a boss.

Uh, that doesn't make sense. Becoming a boss might cause your incentives and perspective to change, but if "rationality" makes you worse at your job then whatever you're calling "rationality" isn't.
Safer than what?
I was unclear above. My experiences getting git wedged came well before I ever taught git. I'm much handier with it now, and haven't wedged it in literally years. That said, I've found it easier to teach hg and svn since shooting one's foot off is much harder.
I have been waiting for this so I can hide Experts Exchange.
Why would those things be discouraged (by people giving good negotiation advice) if they work well?
I didn't, I think its true. I'm shocked google actually did this, it will cost them money in advertising dollars, and I honestly thought some of their technical decisions were being driven by maximizing revenue at almost any cost, so this move seems to invalidate that theory. Kudos to google I say.
I think most programmers only work for money. Now if there's a combination of equity, and some pay, that's something that warrants discussion.

You might consider trying to get one of your friends to help out for equity. I'm working on a project (unpaid, but ownership of part of it) with some friends at the moment. But we are all ok if it doesn't end up making money.
Is The Customer Always Right? 5 Times When The Answer Is “Yes”
Out of curiosity, what were last round's stats like? Number of applications, number of interviews and number of funded groups.
SwfStore 1.2 released (JS library for cross-domain flashcookies)
“Section 11.8” or “How we got rejected by Apple”
"If you <3 CouchApps, you can deploy them as iOS apps." - Love this one!
منتدى رعد
منتدى رعد ثقافي اجتماعي افلام صور برامج حصريه العاب الكترونيه اهل حائل ويضم بنات السعوديه خاصه وفيس بوك وتويتر وسيريل نمبر للبرامج ومقاطع بلوتوث وافلام نادره
You can rent friends?

Oh wait, I suppose you can... for some value of friends...
gotta crank those page views, my man.
Grrr IE....

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3; MS-RTC LM 8)
Timestamp: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:39:09 UTC

Message: 'beats' is null or not an object
Line: 303
Char: 9
Code: 0
URI: http://wistia.com/about/team
"If you're thinking "do I really want whoever is hiring me to have to pay a recruiter?" the answer should actually be yes. Why? People who pay recruiters 1-want someone badly enough to pay extra for them..."

This is a point against applying for jobs through recruiters.

The use of a recruiter does indicate a desperation on the part of the employer, and an inability to fill the job through more informal means.

To me that usually indicates that the company and/or job just isn't very good. Or otherwise they'd have no problem filling the position some other way.

Help wanted ads basically indicate the same thing, except that some companies are required to post such ads by law (even when they've already decided to hire someone else). But if they are seriously considering you based on your response to a job ad, then it's another indicator that the job/company is just not good enough to find applicants through more informal channels.

So in both cases, I'd really much rather look somewhere else.

Of course, there are some exceptions, for really huge and famous companies like Google or Microsoft, which would really have no problem getting plenty of candidates through informal means, but might still advertise or use recruiters for other reasons.

So I wouldn't avoid job ads and recruiters in every single case. But I think it's a good rule of thumb, all other things being equal.

Of course if I was so desperate that I couldn't find a job through more informal channels, then it might be worth considering job ads and recruiters. But then I'd probably have to reconcile myself to being employed at screwed up company or job.
"This is just one of those cheap, direction-less advice blogs that hopes to get a book deal"

That is a stab at the content, not the author.
One suggestion, I find it very difficult to follow when other people are zooming the notes in and out; maybe the note zoom level should be client specific, not shared.
Git hits for github: are you awesome enough to be in the top 10 in your city?
If the cofounders have only known each other for about 1 month, what can we do to reassure YC we'll work well together?

Would evidence of some random (yet to be done) side project help? Good chemistry in the video? Anecdotal evidence that we've built up trust and a good relationship? Good legal framework?

We are still actively building a larger team of course but these things take time. This is the only part of the application that worries me. =)
Don't forget to come to the meetup tonight if you are in SF (see the bottom of the article for details).
Some of my words ("poisonous") strengthen my statements. Others ("demonstrably better") restrict them. I'm aware that the relative power of tools isn't a total order. For instance, I disagree with "git > svn". For now. Therefore, bashing svn and praising git specifically isn't a good idea. But distribution may well dominate centralization for version control in general. I think the article has a point there.
Enhancing Client-Side Storage with HTML5
BackType — Software Developer (Intern)
If you think that the US is a single culture, you need to get out more.

Yes, the coastal cities appear to have the same culture, but there's a lot more to the US.

And, even in the coastal cities, there are multiple cultures.
How come there's a fixed list of cities? Why not let users search for a city?
Ask HN: Who Is Hiring (For Freelance/Part Time Remote Work) March 2011.
As with the last one I made, I figure this would be useful for those of us who work 9-5s for BigCo, Incs, but would like to be involved with startups/other more interesting work in our off-hours.
BackType — Data Mining Engineer
> Git definitely isn't better than SVN in "every way for every foreseeable usage."

I didn't say that. I actually agree with that.

My other point was more general.
BackType — Software Engineer
What happens if I delete my Facebook account?
Has anybody deleted their Facebook user account via https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account ?

I wonder if ALL data ever added via the signed in account will be deleted.
This includes status comments on friends walls, likes, events, my created groups etc. If not all things are deleted I'd rather keep my account to keep the control of my data.

Experiences of leaving Facebook are welcome.
BackType — Product Designer
Thanks for the details. I didn't test dance mode in IE. I thought I'd cut myself some slack since it's just an easter egg. I'll see what I can do though!
Great article, thank you very much.

Btw it is possible to use:

make noopt

To compile Redis without compiler optimization.
Rewarding companies that behave or provide a valuable service is "voting with your wallet", which is the backbone of capitalism.

By using an ad-blocker, offensive websites become less annoying.

Let me put it into context: for every website featuring offensive ads you can find well-behaved websites with similarly or even better content (expertsexchange versus stackoverflow). By using an ad-blocker, you're rewarding the websites with offensive ads or business models - your traffic is still valuable as (for example) you may pass links around, or they may just serve you with commercials hidden in the actual content.

Personally, if a website bothers me that much with ads, then I stop using/reading it. Made me find better content too. That's why I won't be using an ad-blocker any time soon.
there is an enormous difference between the knowledge about structural advantages and disadvantages of steel T-beam in the suspension bridge and the knowledge that Company A is planning to bid a 100M on the contract for the bridge across that river in that town.
Great! Does this also have a fix for the incoming call digit bug? (I notified you guys here http://www.phono.com/forums/1/topics/111 )
Looks like a recruiter's dashboard. :/
Question?

I'm an ubuntu/xmonad user. I also do some occasional haskell coding. I've been using the packaged versions of xmonad and the haskell platform thus far.

Are people building from source? Waiting for Natty? Using a ppa?
Why SXSW Matters
CNN's take on why SXSW matters.
Did the FDA lie to congress to shut down biotech startups?
Would be nice for the Haskell Platform to adopt a de facto IDE (e.g., Leksah) that was compatible across the major OS platforms and distribute it along with the other developer tools.