skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ha! The only reason I clicked on Comments here was to say, "I feel the same way about Reddit that this guy does about Twitter." Paid for Reddit gold, got the same lousy site availability.

I used to be in Web publishing. I understand how difficult it is to make money off of smart people on the Web. They know how to block your ads, and even if they refuse to block them, they ignore them. The real money is in stupid people who use IE6 and click on everything that blinks.

If it were easy to figure this shit out, there would be a lot more valid competition.
How Dabble.in created their interactive pixels
Note that that browser apparently uses Safari/Webkit objects to display content and interpret javascript. So you're still effectively using the iOS safari browser, albeit framed and with a different UI and some management features.

http://www.icab-mobile.de/faq.html

Each Tab is creating a WebKit object, which eats up additional memory.

Here is what someone from Mozilla said rather recently:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/firefox-iphone-2/

First, he gave the obvious and fairly well-known official answer, “We have no plans to release the full Firefox browser for Apple iOS devices,” Brubeck wrote. Why? Because the current iOS SDK agreement forbids apps like Firefox from including their own compilers and interpreters, Brubeck explains.

But he continues on to note that there are a couple of ways to work within Apple’s system, notably what Skyfire is doing (using Apple’s own build-in WebKit libraries) or what Opera Mini is doing (using a proxy server to execute their JavaScript). “Mozilla could create a browser that did one of those things, but it wouldn’t be related to Firefox in any way,” Brubeck explains.
> On one hand, 'imperative' means 'a list of operations
> that produce a sequence of results'. We contrast that
> with 'declarative programming', which means 'a list of
> results which are calculated (somehow) each step of the
> way'. Mathematical proofs and SQL queries are
> declarative. Most of the things we think of as
> programming languages are 'imperative' by this meaning,
> though, including most functional languages. No matter
> how you slice it, Haskell is not declarative.

Either I'm confused or the author is.

SQL is declarative, sure, but I don't think mathematical proofs are. Sometimes you do declarativeish things like, "Let x be the solution, known to exist, to this unsolvable problem." But I think the structure is fundamentally very imperative; ignoring the syntactic sugar, formal mathematical logic is a sequence of logical transformations that leads from hypothesis to conclusion.

I can chalk that up to confusion or inexperience on the author's part, but the bit about Haskell really confuses me.

I'm still quite new to functional programming -- just emerging from the "how the heck do I do that without for loops?" phase -- and the experience really has been one of learning to program all over again. As in the CS 101 days of yore, I have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to accomplish simple things, dealing with alien logical consequences and constructs.

Now, Scala lets me do things either way, and I like to think I'm getting to the point where that's an advantage rather than a crutch. But looking back over the last little while, I can't imagine how you could possibly slice Haskell in such a way that it's declarative at all. I mean, I've been banging my head against the relentless declarativity of it for a while. I'd like to think if there were crutches, I'd have found them.

Unless the author is talking about something silly, like the fact that it's ultimately compiled down to an imperative language to run on a real processor . . . I can't figure out what he's talking about. And I don't know whether to chalk that one up to confusion on his part or inexperience on mine.
(Edit: Disregard this comment. Copyto has a fine business plan, a flat $1.99/month fee.)

I have a policy of only investing my time in a service if I know their monetization plan, to avoid getting burned by shutdowns or features moved to premium account plans. Does Copyto have one yet? I see no ads, the privacy policy is strict enough to make data-mining impossible, and there doesn't seem to be a way to pay.

Other than that, this looks great. It has all the features I use on Pinboard, and the thumbnail view could be handy.
I agree with this. The fact that you can cycle through both applications and a specific applications' individual windows (in a consistent way) is definitely a perk of the way that OS X handles windows.
Sorry, there were some shorthands in my post. Let me expand.

If someone cracks your developer's development workstation, they can piggyback on that developer's access in order to insert malicious code into a commit, or in order to ssh into a production server and run a canned exploit of a local-root vulnerability. The first of the two leaves a strong audit trail, and may require a third party to sign off on it before going to production. The second probably doesn't, and won't.

If you can run strace on a process, you can inject malicious code into it.

While this is a theoretical consideration, I don't know of any security breaches due to this policy at the companies you list. On the other hand, there were security breaches at MySpace due to gross incompetence on the part of the developers — most of all, Samy is my hero!

I wasn't suggesting that developers themselves would be putting malicious code into production.
> It is extremely annoying that this starry eyed experimentation is going on in the most popular Linux distro. They are basically risking the one foothold Linux has been able to make in the desktop world. If you want to experiment, you should start an experimental distro and not risk your's and Linux's one single solid success.

That is an excellent point, and one that worries me, too.

On the other hand, I'm glad that some major player in the Linux world has an interest in UI experimentation.

How to reconcile these two thoughts? Maybe what we need is another Ubuntu variant (like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.) that is stuffed full of experimental ideas. And then the best ones get into the more mainline releases.
That's based on the assumption that Twitter's market value should be equal to the amount of revenue that they pull in on a yearly basis. Somehow that doesn't seem right to me.
I must agree with your comment, but what other revenue options would someone like Twitter have other than advertising?
What Programmers Can Learn From Bodybuilders
I would be very interested to see a similar survey done of Asian tech execs. Is anyone aware of such a study? The hypothesis would be the proportion that's technically educated is greater but I could be wrong.
are you kidding me? gcc?
bbatsell hit this correctly. I saw two replies appear and immediately killed one. It surprises me to see replies on the dead one, there were no replies when I did the kill.
"He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting!"

Very well said!
> Fedora is not there to "get on top."

What's the goal of Fedora? To satisfy intellectual purity or to make sure software runs for it's end users?
Looking at some of those valuations, all I can say is that it doesn't take a Warren Buffet to realize that they are overpriced.
Kendal. There's tech here, but it's laying low between the sheep.
Yea. That was my impression too. Pinboard has a monetization model that looks to be pretty stable. This doesn't look like it necessarily has a business plan other than 'social.'
When you author a journal paper, not only do you not earn any money, but you pay the publisher several thousands USD in fees.

This is not always the case. In Applied Maths and in many fields of Engineering, there are no publishing fees.
No, please read my comment again (I apologize if I were being unclear). I calculated how much free cash flow (a flow, which means it's not a stock) must be generated from each paying member (I assumed 50% paid) in order to justify its most recent valuation.

It certainly is not revenue ("i.e. after costs"), and is on a flow.

Believing that I said Rev(t) = Market Cap(t) is very wrong because I said Market Cap(t) * 0.15 = FCF.
Firefox is a browser; how do you delete spam from a browser?
The thing is, you tend to hit save every other second, while you probably only need to revert/lock like once or twice a day.

Think of lock just like commiting to your personal source control. Revert than maps perfectly to SVN revert. You work just like you always do. You commit whenever you finished some task and want to start a new one. You revert whenever you found out that you did some wrong stuff since your last commit. I do these actions every day today.

But I almost never discard all changes since the last save. Hence, I'd be glad to have the OS save my work implicitly for me and take care of my personal source control system. The proposed system would actually save me a lot of work!
Do you think the clever stuff he did 20-30 years ago should still be the subject of patents and causing a huge drag on innovation now?
That launch games for a console are pretty mediocre isn't really news. It's always like that.

Also, I see Professor Layton didn't make the English launch. I was surprised to see it as a 3D game at all (since all the art was previously 2D) but the game plays nice enough... They throw in a puzzle that has 3D (but doesn't -really- use it) once in a while, too. And all the conversations use 3D characters. It's actually pretty what you'd expect from a word-puzzle game being made 3D. lol
Show HN: Breed Breakdown: Find Your New Furry Friend
> I'd really like to see, as a principle of law, the axiom that corporations do not have a personal reputation that can be impugned-- that reputation only applies to living human beings.

So when someone goes to forums and posts outright lies about a company (e.g., claiming that the company's software surreptitiously loads child pornography on to your computer so they can blackmail you), what recourse (if any) do you think the company should have?
Anyone else thinking that this is pretty much imitating the way OSX works? Not that this is necessarily a bad thing...
They catch comment spammers, too. It's kind of buried in the FAQ, though: http://www.projecthoneypot.org/faq.php

"How does a honey pot catch comment spammers?

In addition to including specially tagged spam trap addresses, some honey pots also include special HTML forms. Comment spammers are identified by watching what information is posted to these forms."

Here's a list of comment spammers they've caught:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/list_of_ips.php?t=p

You're absolutely right that fake fields like that are a good way to catch bots, though, and that making your site unique is a great way to avoid being targeted by mass attacks that go after, say, all MediaWiki sites. Of course that doesn't help when you're big enough to be worth attacking specifically, but it makes things a little harder for the spammers.
Yes, I did. But I didn't notice my error before the 'edit' option expired. ;-)
That's not chrome, it's the source of the page:

<A HREF="https://github.com/MacRuby/MacRuby.>https://github.com/M...;
From a business standpoint, I've got to agree that AOL is making a lot of bold moves, and is trying to reform.

But from a humanist standpoint, reading an article about AOL's massive amount of open office space, reminds me that they just laid off (or are in the process of laying off) 25% of their workforce.

Not saying that this Palo Alto space is now free after former employees vacated, for all I know they worked in other offices, but still - my first gut reaction to this article was "yuck" - like "hey startups! We just laid off a huge chunk of our staff - more room for you!"
Well, they have to do something with those $41MM, right?
I noticed that after you signup there is a Paypal subscription fee of 1.99 per month
Nice work! I found it earlier this week from https://twitter.com/metafizzyco

Awesome use of jQuery Isotope.
I did not mean to generalize. I'm sure you're correct, particularly in other disciplines that are not as financially endowed. Economics 101, I guess.
Photos Inside Fukushima Reactor 3 After the Catastrophe
Myths and Realities of Being an Entrepreneur in India
I'm confused by your comment and the replies to it. Maybe the page changed since you posted it, but if you visit the sign up page[1] now, it says (in big letters, right up at the top left):

just for $1.99/month
no limit, no fancy premium upgrades.
no contract needed, cancel anytime.

[1] http://copyto.co/signup.php
Why Color will fail (and how your social startup can succeed)
> Swoopo’s run out of gas — not at all surprising since its business model is built on the willingness of bidders to lose money on lost auctions. If you don’t win, you still paid for every bid you made.

How does this make sense? The business model is to make money hand over fist on "stupid" consumers who are willing to pay for nothing the hope of winning something for below retail value.

HOW on earth did they lose money and how on earth is it unsurprising? My mind is blown that they're filing for bankruptcy.

Anecdotally I know 2 people who signed up to Swoopo, paid £10 for bids but then won nothing. That's £20 they made at £0 cost to themselves.
Ever learned a musical piece that's more than just a few chords? The process, at least for me, is similar. You practice practice practice until you've got it perfectly memorized.

I couldn't give you a specific number, but whenever I've given a ~5 minute talk, I'm sure I ran through it at least a couple dozen times. Even if you have every single word written down and perfect, there are all kinds of details (timing, tone, etc) to be worked out -- and in reality, I do a lot of minor editing as I practice. That effort is the difference between a dull talk with a lot of um-ing and uh-ing, and an engaging one that the audience might remember.
The author is very confused.

"Declarative" and "imperative" are just syntactic styles. Haskell supports both For example, the following Haskell expressions are equivalent:

dec :: [Integer]
dec = map (* 2) [1..10]

imp :: [Integer]
imp = do
x <- [1..10]
return (x * 2)

Due to their origins, stateful languages are traditionally imperative, and functional languages are traditionally declarative. But please don't confuse the two sets of terms.

Stateful
|
|
|
|
Imperative | Declarative
-----------------+------------------
|
|
|
|
|
Functional
Tsunami in Japan [HD] 3.11 first person raw footage
Your documents can carry in them hidden past versions without you being aware of it.

That's not how the feature is implemented. Versions are maintained in the filesystem, not within the file.
I appreciate the sentiment that underlies your post, but in practice, I think piracy would be much easier.
Yes. The first time I saw swoopo I couldn't figure out how it wasn't illegal.
I'm a case of this. I met these motherfuckers from Turkey and Bahrain through the community surrounding that little flash game "n". Also several (?) people from Finland, a guy from Bulgaria, and another from Singapore.
Dancing Links is definitely a fun algorithm to implement. I wrote one in Python a while back and included an option to generate graphs as it went through the recursion tree. I put up a quick page at http://cavernum.net/dlsudoku/ demonstrating them.
What does any of this have to do with the software business?
There're similarities, but also quite a few differences as well. Airlines are a commodity business: the service Southwest sells is essentially the service United sells. Tech at the micro scale is very much differentiated: the service DropBox sells is very different from the service that AirBnB sells, which is very different from the service Google sells.

Tech is also weird in that software development has significant diseconomies of scale, while software operations has significant economies of scale. Small teams can develop a product faster, but once the product exists and has been proven in the marketplace, it's cheaper to scale from 100 servers to 100,000 servers than it was to go from 1 server to 100 servers. This has historically fueled the cycle of small tech startups being founded, gaining traction, getting bought, and then the founders quitting to found other small startups. It's economically rational for them to do so, because they can develop a product faster with a small team than inside a big organization.

I'm curious how the existence of cloud-hosting like Amazon EC2 will change this market. That's had the effect of splitting software development and software operations into separate markets: before, it used to be cheaper to integrate them into one firm, but now a commodity product exists that makes it feasible for the development firm to remain independent and simply pay a fee for all the operations support.

I suspect it's actually bad for startups in the long run, much like the power loom was bad for textile manufacturers. Since there're economies of scale to operations, that side of the market will tend to a few big players (right now Amazon has a virtually monopoly, and only a couple others even have the capability to offer something like that), while the startup side will tend towards many small firms. In a situation like that, the big firms have all the bargaining power, and so most of the profits will accrue to them.
ha ha ha... maybe I will return later with a better comment, but have been overcome by a fit of the giggles...
Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering
Competition in a free market is not a pretty sight. That's why gaming commissions never stepped in -- they knew what Casinos have long known; without state protection of gambling, the number of venues would quickly proliferate into the thousands and push profits to zero.

I'm also pretty sure that there is still a lot of legal liability in the air. August Capital will most certainly face some exposure; on my female facebook test account I've seen advertisements of Swoopo class action.
If you go with the touch screen on the table, it would be really neat if users could place orders from their table using the device, and see the progress of their order going through the kitchen.

Good online ordering and options for pickup would be really cool for the website. Also, put your hours and an HTML menu on the front page, right up at the top. 99% of the time, if I'm going to a restaurants page, I want the hours or the menu. Most eateries seem to miss that.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see that. Disregard my comment.
It's basically gambling carefully dressed up to look like ebay bidding. You gamble your money on a chance to get a fancy thing for 10 dollars, knowing that if you loose you loose your 10 dollars.

Actually last I heard those sites were very profitable but, you never know with gambling sites. They tend to misstate, hide profits.
Is Sharing More Valuable for Publishers on Facebook or Twitter?
This would be great for the music business and music start-ups. Im thinking music start-ups would be given better terms and or breathing room to create innovative services that in turn strengthens the music industries's bottom line.
I applied to college without a high school degree and got rejected everywhere
Sulia Joins Forces with Twitter to Give Publishers More Relevant Twitter Streams
> Well the fundamental idea behind iPhoto is: why would you care where it put your files at all?

As you say, it's not just iPhoto - it's a big part of the iVillage. Certainly some people - not just geeks - like this approach, but I find it patronizing ("Don't worry your pretty little head about where we store the files.") and authoritarian ("You may not delete the Pictures folder from your home folder or give it an alternative name.") all at the same time.

Long story short, I shouldn't have to open an application to grab one file. I should be able to use the file explorer. Apple seems to go out of its way to make that harder for me.
much to my surprise it worked, I mean, after we finished the first maze (it was short just a proof of concept), he wanted to do another one and he really got into trying to save the schoolbus, funny thing was that he rolled the dice over the monsters and then hit them with the dice during the battle, epic!
This is an additional spec used by statusnet called webfinger. we're working with the OStatus folks and should have support soon.
Wow....I don't know why, but I always thought Jason was much older. Like 45 - 55.

But he looks/sounds much younger in this talk.

Btw, interesting presentation!
How is getting onto a developer's workstation more difficult than on an operation engineer's workstation? If you don't allow developers to do some operational duties, this also means having to have more operations staff (which typically will have higher privileges than developers, anyway).

You are also forgetting that there is usually a step between a developer workstation and production, and at that gateway you'll typically have additional security measures (so that simply getting to the gateway doesn't get you to production).

I don't, however, disagree with your overall idea: yes, technically, developers having ssh access to production might (to a very small degree) reduce security, all else being equal. However, there countless benefits to giving developers ssh access that result in greater security.

Nor do you have to use the same policy for all machines: SOX, for example, mandates that developers that write the code that handles financial transactions shouldn't have access to machines that run this code (to prevent fraud). There are other types of machines I'd include in this case (databases holding sensitive user data, machines holding sensitive configuration, etc...). However, for a vanilla machine running an application server, or a database server holding strictly non-sensitive/non-revenue data, that's not the case.

There are also far worse mistakes one can make (e.g., don't use version control, don't put proper review procedures in place, hire/don't fire incompetent developers) which will impact security.
Hopefully you can go broke underestimating the stupidity of the public.
How many times did they do that? Everybody who "loses" at Swoopo gets a crash course in the scam, and never falls for it again.
Got to love that orange shirt.
I didn't know Yahoo charged for this. Any reason you went down this path rather than Gmail, which offers POP3 and IMAP both for free?
Which is why for some reason's it's good to be an entrepreneur outside of California. Recently traveling to the US this was quite a revelation: being in Europe (Amsterdam) can also be a competitive advantage.
The Answering Bot
It seems pretty cool, but one pretty major thing: What is the selection to the right of "Protection"? My primary browsing computer is an EeePC right now, with a resolution of 1024x600. Your site clearly expects a wider resolution than this, but does not provide a horizontal scrollbar for me. Don't forget us netbooks!
The business model depends on a certain level of involvement. Below that level of involvement, the "bidders" (or gamblers if you like) can actually "win" auctions at ridiculously low prices. If their user base savvied up and realized they were just throwing money away, like the people you knew, and not enough new suckers were coming in to replace them, they could eventually drop below that critical mass.
Sean Parker seems to have a huge problem with grudges. He should let it go, grudges and desire for revenge make for bad business decisions.
Having a link to wikipedia for each dog listed would a couple of clicks. The UI was really intuitive, great job on that and the design/JS.
I was sure that things like 'let' in ML are not assignments - but I looked it up in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_(computer_science)#S... Apparently it is assignment - but a special case of it.
If investment banking is so needless, why did the economy falter when lehmen brothers went bankrupt?

If high frequency trading is so needless, why does the entire market go into shock when the traders panicked and left on may 6th 2010?

Most importantly- if these products are useless and harmful, why do people keep buying them?