skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's silly to us hackers that the paywall can be defeated with Firebug/CSS/JS, etc...

But does that mean that the NYT has failed in their mission to monetize their content?

I'm not sure it does. I still have conversations with lots of folks people where I have to explain the difference between a browser, the internet, and that blue "e" on their desktop.

The NYT probably has solid demographics on their target market, and I'm betting that folks like us that know enough to laugh at their paywall implementation are in the very low single digits percentage-wise.

I'm just spitballing here, but I could see someone standing in front of the client saying, "Look, your demos say that 1.1% of your target market is going to be able to circumverent the paywall. The oooold reach around. That represents X dollars in lost revenue. The other 98.9% of your target demo is going to use the system as designed because they're not even going to understand what the nerds are talking about. However, our content is still going to get indexed by Google, which as we know drives X percent of our traffic. We're still going to serve ad impressions and content to that 98.1% of users, resulting in the X% conversion rate bizanalytics is projecting."

My point is that the solution might be technically laughable but still meet the business objective.
Do We Really Want Judges Determining What Art 'Says'?
Many 'designers' have a collection of 30 'logos' that are basically clip art that they use for every project

But how is this different from me having a custom framework I use for most projects? Or a library of code that I can reuse whenever I see the need for it?

Honestly, if I were looking for a cheap logo, "non-automated clip art" from a barely competent designer is better than anything I could put together myself anyway, so I wouldn't be too concerned that it was somewhat derivative of work the designer had done before.
Well, it looks like I'm applying for a position at DeviantArt, then.
Why respond to the troll? There's certainly no point to that!

"Preposterous" sums it up nicely. If you don't think it's preposterous, then you would not be in agreement.

What else needs to be said? You either believe the hogwash or you don't. No need to get into facts, those are obvious.
Ironically, WikiLeaks got its start spying on a Tor exit node.
are they mean to primadonnas at Google?
If it did become the norm, imagine how much less downtown office space we would need.
I highly recommend you read Jeff LaMarche's WWDC survival guide. http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2011/03/wwdc-first-tim...
Elon Musk was supposedly almost bankrupt a year or so ago: http://smallbusiness.aol.com/2010/06/22/on-the-eve-of-an-ipo...
I love it how the photo on that page is that of David Rockefeller - someone who inherited the money and yet did a lot of charity.

Reminds me of the story behind my favorite Rockefeller quote. "Everything that is watched - improves." - John D. Rockefeller.

John D. Rockefeller had a rule that he passed down to his kids: donate exactly 10% of all your income to charitable causes. Not 9%. Or 11%. But exactly 10%.

What this did is made sure that the Rockefellers kept "track" of each and every penny that came in. Because they watched over their money, it grew.
http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/how-to-succeed-like-apple...

I have few suggestion to make but, I think Jason has explained it more clearly in his above blogpost.

--Hope this helps!
I'm about two months into my first remote gig and I have to agree with you that communication is the worse. Sometimes I feel like I'm pulling teeth to get an answer out of anyone.
yeah, let's meet. this will be my 3rd time.
As a layman, I've grown to associate "new phase of matter" with concepts that I'll never hear about again. It sounds like "there's a hole here, but we made a cork for it, and guess what, it fits!", aka too much model rearranging.

Said that, I hope they are right this time.
I wouldn't categorize whitespace-as-syntax to be merely "frustrating". I'd categorize it to be "wrong".
Depending on your disposition, I would actually recommend learning with Processing. Java based, and you get visual results.
Artificial Leaf Splits H20 for Use in Fuel Cells
If you're relying on weird specificity chains, then your CSS is likely an unmaintainable mess.

Leave IDs for uniquely identifying an element on a page because you need to access it from a script.

Treating them like "Extra Strong" class names is a maintenance nightmare.
I don't think most business owners or bosses are mature enough for this yet... they just assume the remote worker is sloughing off.

No use trying to convince them otherwise... they think their staff is slackers. Period. (Not all business owners or bosses, just those that lack the maturity to direct a remote workforce.)

But for the seasoned manager, it's no problem at all.
Introducing Appirater for Android
Point well made.

I do agree with you, especially when considering the life cycle of the user. Maybe NK never looked or calculated the average member value of his users. Some of these users might have reached the peak of their member cycle and decided to unsubscribe. It could have also been (as you mentioned) that the long text had "turned them off".

Nevertheless, the important factors in which he should focus on are the following:
- CRM - keeping a good relationship with his user base
- Sales - number of joins/sales made by the campaign --> which would transfer towards average revenue per email
- Maintaining a good quality list of users who are truly interested in his product --> it's all about quality over quantity, and not the other way around.

Lastly, the most important factor which NK did pick up, was that there was a surge in unsubscribes. Why was there a higher than average number of unsubscribes? He looked into it, and attempted to "win back" some of those users by sending them a personal email.
--> I personally would have added a question asking them as to why they had unsubscribed (to find out the truth behind the sudden spike in unsubscribes).
On Skype: I've found that running our own IRC server and setting up ZNC* with accounts for all employees/developers has made a huge difference. The bonus for us is that since we do alot of open source work, it encourages developers to connect with other open source developers over IRC which is a great way to grow knowledge or get quick feedback for whatever framework/language/library we're working with at the time.

* http://en.znc.in/wiki/ZNC is a IRC bouncer that allows each user to keep their choice of clients, but still have catchup if they're offline.
I love Factor, but this paper was frustrating to read. They use variables in their rewrite rules even though the whole point of the paper was that you don't need variables. So we never get to see a quotation function written in point-free style. The definitions are never used to actually prove or conjecture anything. Definition 3.4 is particularly content-free. Section 4 contained a 'cool' analogy with nothing to do with this programming style (4.1), 'research in progress' with no prototype (4.2), 'belief' (4.3), reference to 'an as yet unpublished paper' (4.3), and related work that should have been given its own section (4.4).

Perhaps it's not satisfied to be a position paper and the authors find themselves trying to show off novel research. I wish they'd resisted the temptation.
Amazon Web Services Adds an Un-Cloudy Options to Its IaaS
Accelsor Takes Web Sites From Prototype to Publish in Zero Steps
99Designs is like a game for the people, if you really don't care much about the design of the project or logo or whatever it maybe, its great and can do the job.

If your looking for something exact I wouldn't recommend, hire one good designer. Its a great startup idea and works well.
EBay to Buy GSI Commerce for $2.4 Billion
Worldpress generates 12% of the web
I think this depends on your requirements... if you are a liaison between departments, or the specs of what you are trying to do aren't well defined, there's too much to communicate.

Some remote jobs are great: they lay out what you need and you provide it without having to pester people for information.
>> left to argue about is how many spaces per indent ...

Zed has recommendations for setting up an editor (gedit) and configuring tabs and other settings for Python:
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index
Most of Canada lives in a few large metro areas, so density is not a factor (unless those metro areas are getting fantastic Internet service, which other posts in this thread suggest isn't the case).
Leaked plutonium at Fukushima
Agreed. I learned Java first, and it's a hugely non-optimal choice... but I was playing the hell out of Steve Yegge's game, Wyvern (http://www.cabochon.com), and it was 100% Java/Jython. As such, I had competent developers to talk to.

I work 0% in Java now, of course.
NY Times Paywall: Ignoring the Micropayments Lesson from Outer Space
I wonder when I see this type of question, if the person is really going to learn the language or just do a survey to get a feel for programming.

If your trying to get a feel, then maybe something simple with good tutorials like Small Basic http://smallbasic.com/ wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Weirdly, I would say Postscript and work your way through Adobe's cookbook ( http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/ps/sdk/sample/ind... ).
I'll second this. Owen's code was bad, because it was a large hack. It was a hack that worked. It was a hack because he had limited resources. He was ONE GUY coding, administering, doing everything up until something like 8 million users. That's not easy. The code was bad. So fucking what. It worked.

So with that, I say Owen is a good coder.

Kevin never understood tech. As Owen says, he's just a guy who looks good on TV. Now he's throwing all his good coders under the bus because he fucked Digg up with his grand V4 vision, and he's trying to point the blame at others besides himself.

"It's a low move, Kevin. Low move. We supported you. We took the blame when we fucked up. We never pointed the finger at you. So take the blame when you fuck up. Asshole."

Sincerely,
The guy who kept DBs running for Digg for 4 years.
Time spent playing Angry Birds equals 12 Wikipedias worth of person-hours
No way $300 is nothing and you always get what you pay for, I dont know any good designer that would do a good job for a low price.
You're looking for a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) with a Gmail extention (or a mailing list tool that's almost a CRM)

Something like https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pr...

or
https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pr...

or
https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pr...
>Bjarne would have discarded his own trash properly.

if he able to remember what pockets he has them in and keep correct counts of his hotdogs and their wrappers, large hotdogs, baby hotdogs in large wrappers, eaten, half-eaten, saved for later ...
Indeed, and how much fuel and pollution it would save from people not having to commute every day.
The Founders are awesome and it's quite an intriguing idea, whether it can stack up is yet to be decided I suppose.
Hi Vladik - I'm working on a product that is somewhat related to this. Could I email you about it? Or shoot me an email: justin.burdett AT gmail.com

Not sure if we're going to directly solve your problem at the start, but I'd love your input.
AngelList: Faster Startup Processing with HTML Emails
Thanks for the clarification :-)
People like to point to population density but I find the answer a little too easy - about 80% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the US boarder and a similar proportion live in one of 3 dense urban areas (Quebec City - Windsor corridor, Calgary - Edmonton corridor or BC's Lower Mainland.) Moreover, network infrastructure was heavily subsidized by the government and service to rural areas remains heavily subsidized to this day.

All that to say, there really is no excuse for how badly we lag behind except for the de facto duopoly.
I've certainly decided that remote-working is worth a reasonable chunk of money in my salary when negotiating. It's not quite a must-have, but it's close.
There are probably five or six companies in the world that can actually hire "the best", the household names of the field. For everyone else, such hyperbole is not particularly helpful advice.

Also, rock stars rarely produce anything interesting after their brief peak. And you'd want to avoid hiring Ringo.
I found this interesting timing, as I just unsubscribed from AppSumo today. Today's email was a huge dive into web-copywriting-drive-conversions-awfulness with all the stuff I really loathe about that corner of the Internet. Even when the product in question is 'free'...

I understand the value in trying new stuff, but it's the old early-adopter problem: if you have a certain loyal userbase, do you risk doing stuff that they are too savvy to pick up on (and might backlash over), or do you pander to the huge new userbase you got from a recent promotion? Eventually you have to leave the fluffy world of appealing to HN readers, but there are ways and ways.
Great stuff! Perfect timing for me too, as I had decided to spend this week brushing up on Mongo. Thanks!
From a designer's point of view yes; just because it doesn't really matter to Bob's Plumbing whether they get the logo done cheaply by their local print shop or get 30 designs by Filipino teenagers doesn't mean their local print shop is going to be delighted at the loss of £200 revenue and a chance to upsell some business cards. Especially not when the site purports to be encouraging an "enterprise-led recovery" for the economy

They also might take exception to the notion that race-to-the-bottom logo work fits under the site's "creating a brand" heading; 99designs is exactly the resource for businesses where visual branding doesn't matter much (which in fairness is a lot of them).
Become Efficient or Die: The Story of BackType (YC S08)
I've had this problem on interviews before, you get scheduled to talk to a bunch of people, serially, and end up saying/asking the same things over and over. An entire day of that is grueling and can wear down virtually anyone.

For this reason, I actually prefer panel interviews where 2 or more people interview a candidate at the same time. This way less time is wasted and the interaction between interviewers can be useful for the interviewee as well.
Things Groupon Won't Tell You
Best practices these days tend to involve putting things in CAPITAL LETTERS, and occasionally bold or italic, and BEING A COOL DUDE, and getting real, and adding ten foot high 'Click Here To Purchase' links.

I'll check those books out to see what advice they give, though; personally, I learnt copywriting by.. well, writing copy.
What about Logo?!?
Well I hate to say this, but you get what you pay for, those cheap designs look cheap. I like 99Designs, but if your really after something exact I wouldn't go that route, not to say you cant get something good from it.

From a designers stand point, I notice your startups aren't that great about design and not to say it doesn't work out. Some are really great at design, but I guess the main focus would be function over design, but if both are in play, its great.
Whether or not you consider the source credible, there's wisdom in the saying, "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." (Matthew 6:24a)
What does the declaration of "unawareness" that Hotz filed mean (near the end)?

Is that some sort of narrow legal definition, or is he actually declaring that he's really never heard of SCEA and didn't know they were located in California?

That seems highly unbelievable and a bit ridiculous.
I think he just loves the product. Based on some of his recent interviews, Twitter is something he's been thinking about a long time and is based on things he's worked on his whole life (dispatch, maps, cities, networks etc.)
Wix, Flash website creator, raises $40 Million
12-Year-Old Genius Expands Einstein's Theory of Relativity
You forgot to include information so the OP could pay you for your research time.
The first part of any security is to figure out what truly need to be protected and focus your efforts on securing those points. That being said the vast majority of web apps have a very small surface of information that someone would look to exploit mainly being credit cards and to a lesser extent personal information. But session is not the solution to fixing that problem, it is merely, again curing the symptom; the cure is to build your web application so that it solicits, transmits uses and disposes of credit card information in a single state transfer.

Further if you have a sign up where credit info will be stored you should be using a solution that provides you with a proxy of the numbers collected and not the actual number itself. None of this is fixed by session rather session just allows you to design patterns that take jirations to bolt onto HTTP.

As for the transaction data being modified by the client, whether you transmit entire state or snippet of state you have the same issue, at some point if the client is comprised they are comprised you can't secure the client you can only assume that all clients are hostile, session does not fix that fact. In the end, with session based auth, web developers post a form over an SSL connection and receive a proxy ID for that session. If someone hijacks that proxy they become that user, in statless auth you POST some auth info over SSL, if someone hijacks the token they become that user. Session does not make a web application more secure. It just helps developers not think through the ramifications of their design choices. Worse yet it gives developers a false sense of security in which they feel that the information is protected by being in session on the server side, when in fact session hijacking is trivial.
I see some serious potential. This could allow people to make their ideas come to life or at least increase the amount of nicer designed sites and personal websites.
Another happy remote worker!

Microsoft Office Communicator is great in that sense - it nicely integrates with Outlook(Calendar/Free-busy/OOO etc.), chats are searchable from within the OS and within Outlook just like emails. Best part is if I am outside with my phone (haven't found a nice OCS client for Android yet) and I miss a conversation it emails me with the conversation which I can continue over email.
Also think how much person-to-person social interaction would be wiped out. Not very pleasant from my point of view
Seems like a deliberate scam or an unintentional case of an overly kid-promoting parent & a gullible reporter. Check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mathboysmom#p/a/u/2/lNypTxvOxxQ

The kid doesn't actually prove or say anything significant beyond what's stated in basic physics books or in various resources on the web (e.g. wikipedia). Kudos to the kid for being interested in these topics at such an early age but the "genius" label should come with some results.

Also notice how the Princeton professor gently sidesteps the question of kid's genius: "I'm impressed by his interest in physics and the amount that he has learned so far," Institute for Advanced Study Professor Scott Tremaine wrote in an email to the family. "The theory that he's working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics."
Rockstar Digital: our newest partner | ShoutEm
It's so easy to spell that they had to buy the variant spelling of the domain as well.
Can you explain what is lacking with the built-in contact group functionality? Why doesn't that work for you?
Argh, If only I could afford it. All of my money is tied up by sending it home to support my parents. :(
"If I am correct, the use of a product based on modelessness and monotony would soon become so habitual as to be nearly addictive, leading to a user population devoted to and loyal to the product."

- Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface
This drives me nuts; either I'm checking (timestamped no less!) code into the repo, and delivering what I say I'll deliver by the appointed deadlines, or I'm not.

It's not like you can fake productivity as a coder.
Airbnb - Analytics Specialist
Does anybody have a good way of converting this to .mobi for Kindle?
Ev is involved less and less (from the TechCrunch article). Maybe he is preparing for his next venture.
Regarding group chat, I strongly recommend HipChat - (http://www.hipchat.com). We're in there all day at Mixpanel.

It's like IRC but easier, with persistent chat storage, file sharing, etc.
It seems like a nice enough idea, but uh, "App Pirater"? I think a rename might be required.
Has C++ jumped the shark?
Phases or states of matter at the higher end of physics do not necessarily entirely correspond to the ones you learned in school. For instance, look at this state chart of water, and note how many entries there are: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html

It seems likely to me that this new state would be a subset of what you'd call a "solid", just as you'd call both water II and water III "ice" without worrying about it. You can say the same thing about plasma and how it is a subset of what you would call a gas, if you don't care about the electrical differences.
PageKite looks like it might work, thanks.
Fake Facebook Girlfriends From "Cloud Girlfriend" Will Be Run By Real People
I'd suggest PHP. It gives you the ability to create something for the web and you're able to share it with your friends by simply sending them a link. plus there's a lot you can do with it (eg. start facebook) and the documentation (esp. for beginners) is abundant.
www.fiesta.cc , my buddy's startup. It's not quite the solution you describe, but it mostly solves the problem.
Startup Stories Lesson 1 – How We Got VC
I think most of you who answered this reply missed the point where CSS is not HTML… ID's should be used when they suit better. The same with classes. You end up constructing semantical html which a) easier to maintain and b) won't mix the design with the content on code-time.
‘Know Your Meme’ Acquired By Cheezburger in Seven-Figure Deal
I'm learning the iOS SDK and I think I'd truly benefit from attending, but the $1600 price is WAY out of what I can reasonably afford. So does Apple ever offer reduced rates for people just starting out? Seems to me that'd be a wise investment on their part. After all, if they offer seats for 75% off, and just one person makes a blockbuster app, they'll more than make the difference up in app store and or iAds fees.
Financial firms do. Or defense contractors or others who require a 10 year background check.
Cleantech Investment Rose Considerably in 2010 & Since 2000
Are web startups' valuation fueled by Wall Street?
It seems the biggest problem is that the boilerplate seems to act more like a framework instead of just a library. If that's the case, then using this with other frameworks like Sproutcore and Cappuccino can prove quite daunting...
"Non tech cofounders that have 10 people committed to paying up to 1000/mo and signed letters of intent from the 5 of them (120k/year, 60k guaranteed) before building a product are few and far between."

What? I would suggest that the abovereferenced set of cofounders is equal to the null set.

I can't imagine anyone dumb enough to commit to a $12k annual contract for vaporware from a company whose very existence is contingent on finding 9 other suckers just as dumb as you are. The closest model I can think of is games software publishing, but that exists in an area with a known customer base. Nobody in the real world, running a real enterprise, with real money on the line, would gamble like that - at least none of the people I work with.