skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sorry for the mix up vis a vis the OP.

It is a fabulous skill to be able to put together a fairly complete prototype in a month, it does let you start the process of analyzing an opportunity. My rule is that a working prototype is worth a thousand power point slides :-). Use what ever tools you are comfortable with.

That being said, I understand that you were not thinking of this as a 'career' so much as a cool project. In your write up you got to the first stage which was you had pinned down some of the technical unknowns (complexity mostly) and had some market feedback (moderate response). The next chapter would have been should be phase 2 which is "How can I make it simpler?" and "Given the limited appeal, what size market would I need to make it worth my time?" The alternative for a lot of folks is the Harmony One [1] which is $250 list / $150 street so that sets some boundaries around price and acceptance.

The first part of the question is an engineering exercise, brainstorming ways to simplify the who pipeline. The second part is a finance exercise, you have a 'day job' you make a salary and have benefits, vacation, etc etc. Take the total of what you'd "earn" (both tangible and intangible) as the 'don't do it' value of your time, vs your market research in terms of units sold vs price per unit as your 'return on investment' for doing it. Then factor in the uncertainty of your data with your 'future' return and you no longer have to ask whether or not your baby is ugly, you can ask "Is it worth my time to bring this one to term?"

Ideas that are well executed have a way of paying for themselves. You are about half way to something I could use as an operations guy, an iPad app which provides a framework for showing 'dashboards.' Web pages sort of do this but something designed to be a control console using the iPad's gesture capability would be much more powerful.

[1] http://www.logitech.com/en-us/remotes/universal-remotes/devi...
I have a family member working directly in the manufacture/production of DVD/Blueray media (movies and games).

The company is actively telling employees the facility will shutdown at some point in the future. While the timeline is not specified, the parent corporation is not replacing low level production staffers now, hours for all workers have been curtailed, and generally the production projects are falling off.

Compared to even just a few years ago it is a pretty shocking change - this place used to run full out 24/7/365 and employees were typically scheduled for 20+hours of overtime in a two week rolling schedule. These days, they run two shifts, often close up early and I can't remember the last time they offered any overtime.

It's too bad, this was a pretty solid employer in a rather remote region that doesn't have many other options available for the class of workers facing layoffs.
With advice like that, I hope this isn't your last post here too. Welcome to HN! :-)
I'm debating whether it would be a good idea to have the dropbox client be aware of planned downtime and inform the user accordingly.
I'm not sure about their support for really large file sizes, but lately I've been really digging Receivd for file sharing.
What's strange about it ? Any unusual behavior can be suspect. Also "suspected" implies possibility, pretty much the opposite of "clearly".
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If the dirty hippies had read the paper, they'd see that machinery depreciation is a huge part of that difference between the effective and statutory rates.

The really clever hippies would notice that different industries have different machinery needs.

The especially brilliant ones would understand that the value of an oil lease goes down as the amount of extractable oil goes down, such as happens when said oil is extracted. They'd see that said decrease is just like the expenses of other industries.
Do you feel you're being unethical by downloading pirated copies of tv shows that are not available in your country?
Komodo Island is The New 7 Wonders of The World
Interns: A Startup's New Best Friend
Often (age)
*Evernote - specifically the Clip to Evernote chrome extension which allows you to save links, specific text/pictures, and/or whole webpages while browsing the web. God knows a good idea can be as transient as the time it takes to open up a word document or email yourself a note. Plus, having a single place where all your notes go, whether you're on your iphone (evernote iphone app) or laptop makes it much easier later to find that idea, article, etc.
There's the Hg-Git plugin: http://hg-git.github.com/ I have no idea how well it works, but I know we have customers using it now.
Sometimes (age)
Rarely (age)
Never (age)
Other (please explain if you're willing to)
Honestly? Facebook.

I would be embarrassed to tell you how often I open it up each day but I've found it the best way to stay in touch with my friends back home and schedule/rsvp to events.
I saw that sometime ago but it looked like

a) A crutch

b) Abandonware

But if you're saying that people are using it then maybe I ought to give it a shot.
> I really wish GitHub would add support for Mercurial.

Hrm...ah here we go.

http://hg-git.github.com/

> but it's clear that GitHub is the innovator and market leader in the field of online source repos.

You were saying?
DRM isn't black and white though. Blu-Ray DRM is (last I checked) pretty good; thus I don't buy Blu-Ray. DVD-CSS is such a joke that it might as well not exist, so I buy DVDs without any problem, and I keep my DVD collection on my file server for easy access through Boxee. Kindle's DRM is in the joke category of DRM. It supposedly exists, but I have a tiny python program that strips the DRM off my kindle purchases, so I can keep backups on my file server in case Amazon decides to pull a PlaysForSure. DRM is definitely evil, but when it's trivially circumvented it doesn't bother me so much.
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Note that Google doesn't pay US taxes on profits that it makes overseas and doesn't bring into the US.

Me - I'd like Google to bring that money into the US but can understand why it isn't willing to pay taxes to do so. Many other countries tax repatriated profits differently, so their companies are more willing to bring said profits back to the mothership.
What I find objectionable about the video is not his identification of team quality being the problem. It's his total abandonment of responsibility for it as a founder. That he'd say he just woke up one day surrounded by B and C players he hadn't interviewed makes it seem like everyone else was running amok and he is not to blame. Trashing the reputations of his ex-employees in order to save face on a tech show is irresponsible at best, and at worst a demonstration that he is unfit to lead a team of any size.
You missed the point of his argument.

Consider the Crash Bandicoot folks. Sure after Naughty Dog got bought, Sony couldn't figure out how to deal with the Lisp codebase and future projects were in C++. But Lisp let them build the first major platform game on the PSX, beating Sony itself to the market, and none of the stuff afterwards would've happened without that.
Yep, caching is great.

But I think caching is something best done in system/platform code, not in your application.

Like you say, there are plenty of examples where sharing state makes sense. But I still believe that state in application code is something that be avoided, and that most of the time it's best to rely on platforms that do state management for you.

For example, session support in web platforms is a great example of something that supplies (simulated) state, and is supplied by the platform.
Why is your logo so similar to the world wildlife fund? http://www.worldwildlife.org/resources/media/images/global/p...
Incidentally, I think it's ironic that I'm "defending" a imperative language by using lack-of-state as a feature when it is being compared to a functional language.

But I think it's an illuminating discussion anyway.
I hear it constantly.
Big problem with IPad games is that most of them are junk :o there is really no comparison to good DS stuff, xbox or PS3. There was a good keynote from the Nintendo at the GDC, situation with junk games now is getting dangerously close to the Great Video Game crash of 1983
gmail, hands down. Not only do I use it for communication, but I also store a lot of notes and cross-computer bookmarks in the form of e-mails to myself.
I was an unfashionable geek for quite some time - I picked up salsa dancing it changed my entire perspective on outward appearance. I really grew to appreciate it, to appreciate the time people (and obviously women) put into grooming and dressing themselves in a manner that was unique to their own style but also attractive; an extension to that is enjoying the time it takes to find, select, and try on clothing for that purpose.

It's like going to Fry's and shopping for components to build a new computer - why do you think most contemporary non-geeks say, often, that they "hate shopping for computer parts"?

I would like all people in the latter category to stop caring about choices of clothing as a factor

I'm surprised you would say that - you may begin to notice that humans aren't computers with predictable API's to interact with. Inter-human communication and interactions are largely driven by sexual (perceivable or not) and biological queues. Smart and attractive (if you can dress well and take care of your body, you will be attractive) is an extremely powerful combination because the ultimate fate of humanity rests in the hands of our intelligence and a lot of the world will acknowledge you for your intelligence but if you want to make a serious difference - putting yourself together in a way that many non-geeks can relate with is crucially important.

Oh and clothing was never actually made to fit your particular body style - it's meant to be generic, you gotta get that stuff tailored! It's like custom fitting a computer for your needs, you have to do the same thing with your clothes, your body.

I once had the outlook you do, why do people like "clean" and attractive people so much? Why don't they see my intelligence more? On and on and on...
That doesn't seem like a legit assumption though. Combine the sensationalization of tech media with ever-lower barriers to entry for web and mobile development, and it seems almost impossible that there wouldn't be significantly more terrible developers than ever before.
Well, maybe it's me, but I can talk shit to my friends and vis versa without touching each others ego. Frankly it only hurts if it is true.
I had that same though pop into my head. Right after claiming that Digg hired a lot of "B" and "C" coders, he says that he's handpicking everyone who is working on his new project. I don't see how that will prevent the same issue from occurring.
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Amen. Note that the reason Kevin was too busy to interview everyone is that he was busy doing side projects. In my opinion if you want to know what was wrong with digg, I'd start with

Revision3

Pownce

Wefollow
Indeed - it's pretty silly that in the US apps cost anywhere from 99¢ to $1.10 depending on where your credit card's billing zip code points to. But I can hardly hold Apple responsible for the US's lame sales tax system, and at least Apple doesn't add a $1-$2 "wetlands recovery fee" to my monthly bill.

That's not a joke. AT&T does.
Kaku is a computer scientist? Wow I didn't know that(snark). Maybe he should stop trying to be an expert on everything. Maybe he should stop being a media whore.
Not just any website! A website of a YCombinator funded startup. A website for a service with which most of us have accounts. A service that wasn't working because it was down, thus affecting our DATA!!

I doubt we'd post a CNN 404, but a CNN 5xx might be HNewsworthy. Especially if 4chan was to blame.

Maybe we can discuss how to startups can handle planned downtime situations?
It doesn't work that way. You go buy clothes that are as close as possible to your fit, then you take it to a tailor and have that last inch brought in/up etc...

Believe this: tailors aren't just for fancy clothes and they aren't expensive. I take all of my jeans to my tailor and have them hemmed to the exact length of my legs because not a single clothing manufacturer makes clothing that fits my length!
Firefox 4 Final Available One Day Ahead of Official Release
Show HN: aLikePlaces.com, the Pandora of Restaurants
We're a small, scrappy startup based in Miami and we launched aLike Places (www.alikeplaces.com) in January of this year to help people discover new restaurants as easily as possible. We've already iterated several times based on user feedback we've received locally. Now we'd love to hear some thoughts from the HN community.

Curious to hear any pros/cons, loves/hates, tips, or anything we haven't encountered from local feedback.

Based on many talks we've had with local sites we're currently building a prototype to allow sites to have a hosted solution of aLike Places to power restaurant searches/discovery on their own sites. If you're interested in this please contact me via my HN profile email.
There are a number of companies trying to solve this problem:

Chomp
Appsfire
Appolicious
AppAware
Appboy
Frenzapp
AppESP (AppStoreHQ)
Chorus
StumbleUpon
GameFinder (Slide to Play)
AppShopper
Smokin Apps
Apptizr
Appsaurus
Heyzap - (just launched their new android check-in based app)

In my personal opinion, none of them have truly solved the problem of app discovery but I would be curious to get your perspective on any of them.
Oops, I was mistaken—it was the ATI Radeon X1600 that had problems in early MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo machines.
The most telling part is he doesn't even have enough sense to recognize that blaming "them" only makes him look bad. I'll bet though there are plenty of "Bubble Boys" who just can't wait to lose money on his next venture.
"I'm somewhat disappointed when charts like this use pre-release browser versions like Firefox 4 beta."

Well, at least browsers release. Unlike HTML only-sorta-5-for-legacy-reasons [1], which gets to just float along making changes whenever. Using pre-release browsers to test a pre-release specification is basically how the system is designed, now.

[1]: http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-Dec...
One doesn't need to know how to code to know if a programmer delivers or is always making excuses.
Ask HN: Does your organization have a Product Management Department/Function?
Unfortunately, nothing can match the quality of Blu-ray, and as other commenters have noticed, on really big/high-resolution televisions - the kind that movie buffs tend to have, personally I have a projector - it really makes a difference. Netflix is pretty compressed both in the audio and video departments.

The only thing that comes close is the HDX catalog on the Vudu box. I have my eye on this as a potential replacement but for now I use a PS3 to play Blu-rays because the audio and video quality is just superb.
Homeland Security arrests site owner for LINKING to copyrighted material...
Agree. That's why GOOG and MSFT both sued GeoTag earlier this month. http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/03/03/google.and.mic...
Affirmative action is enforced by bureaucratic procedures in the private and -- mostly -- the public sector. Such procedures can be notoriously difficult to undo, especially if someone benefits from them disproportionately. The purpose of these procedures is to "level the playing field" for different demographic groups. Once this happens (and how would we know if it does?) then we would face a serious problem.

Since bureaucratic procedures are difficult to undo even in the best of circumstances, then inertia will cause affirmative action to remain in effect for some time after it has served its ostensible purpose. Again, inertia alone will bring about this outcome. The lobbying of those who directly benefit will add to that inertia.

Outcome: The former in group becomes the out group.
You should probably google "Technical Debt."
I'm married for 20 years. And yes, I haven't changed. She somehow saw past all that, in fact was a bit thrilled to be dating a real nerd. Funny how things can work out.
Japan earthquake has implications for Moore's Law, too
I think it would be good to fire an event for planned downtime, without incurring too much of an overhead.
Projector here too. I can definitely see the difference between blu-ray and DVD. It doesn't bother me much (DVD being lower quality) but when I have the option to watch in high definition I choose to, even if it's slightly more expensive. I don't like how I can't stream in high definition, even though my bandwidth is enough that it's technically feasible for me.
I'm basically in favor of it, and think it's well worth it for entrepreneurs to participate in the official requests for comment and suchlike. The recent FTC assessment of the IP market and the ongoing expansion of things like data.gov suggest the administration is trying to lower barriers to entry.

I'd like to see more support for things like the startup visa and DREAM act too, which would enhance opportunities, but for legal reasons those changes have to come from Congress and can't be implemented by the executive.
Breakthrough in delivering drugs to the brain
You may laugh, but I still use Delicious religiously and will until I export it to something equally as effective, simple, and useful. Close 2nd and 3rd are Dropbox (I could use a shared FTP server and mount it as a drive, but why?) and Gmail (I guess I could use any other email if I had to).

EDIT: forgot to add beanstalk for git hosting.
I got mine here: http://www.clker.com/clipart-14542.html. The website claims that my logo is in the public domain, so I used it accordingly.

Edit: Theirs is much more cutesy. Mine is all business -- you can tell just from looking at him that he has an impeccable memory.
One does need to be a programmer to know if they're delivering at the expense of absurd amounts of technical debt.
Works now. That was quick.
I think this is related to this article in The Economist re: a method to treat "mad cow" disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease): http://www.economist.com/node/18276254
Didn't know about BitTorrent DNA. Thanks for the link!

One difference I'd note is that DNA seems much better suited for mass distribution while Sendoid is much better suited for sending individual files (especially if you're on the same network, since you'd need to upload to a server and re-download to get p2p going).
Well, it has been done: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2056629
Is there an HN for the non-entrepreneurial?
I came upon HN a short while ago, and I've come to rely on it as my source for daily technical articles. As a developer, I find this community's input to be both insightful and relevant.

With that said, I have not yet been bitten by the startup bug. I am now and will be for the foreseeable future an employee of a "safe," sizable company. As such, I tend to draw much more value from posts about things like language design and scaling than I do from those regarding angel investors and venture capitalists.

I still enjoy reading the business-side articles because hey, it's a learning experience! But I also wonder if anyone might have any sites they could recommend with more of a worker-bee angle. Part of me suspects that such sites would be less compelling because life is less dynamic and challenging if you're below deck instead of at the helm of the ship. Still -- with so many people not running their own company, surely there would be willing readership?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Even worse is when you try to _buy_ something but can't because it's not available for your country or because they only take domestic (US) credit cards. No, it doesn't seem unethical to me, not one bit.
It's that way for chick-geeks too. I get hit on a lot by women in the tech scene and they can never figure out why I ignore their sexual and IOI signals in favor of women that are a bit boppier, wear heels and g-strings most of the time, and are on the extreme side of femininity.

Do I like intelligence? Greatly so, I get along really well with many women who are lawyers, doctors, &c... because those professions seem to attract really smart people that also like to be attractive when they go out casually. This is not typically the case for women and men in technology - it's actually refreshing to meet someone that is both a brilliant programmer/mathematician/engineer and cares about their outward presentation.
Ha! I haven't heard that one come up in a while. Computer Shopper used to be my regular Saturdays (and yes I mean the whole day).

When I was a kid I used to flip through the Sears catalog to the toy section.

I actually really like the catalog that ThinkGeek sends out. It reminds me of all the good parts of the SkyMall magazines, but with funner toys.
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The post is obviously meant to be funny even if it's true. There is really no reason to overanalyze it...
How is this "throwing under the bus?" He's absolutely right. They probably made some hiring mistakes, and those are can be tough to identify and undo.

I suspect the one making the analogy is such a developer. Related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
Thanks for mentioning Receivd - we've been in early-access for a month now and are growing pretty quickly. We do support large files, our last test with a 5GB+ dataset went swimmingly, and folks use it to share large photos and videos everyday. You can take a look here at http://receivd.com

If you signup with +hn in your email, we'll make sure you get access right away.

Sendoid - congrats on the launch!
The coding, compsci, and reverse engineering reddits have a fairly high signal ratio for computer science (higher than the programming reddit). All of the language-specific reddits are also fairly focused.
This reminds me of another article posted on HN about how design of satellites revolved around these having to fit on ICBMs.
'App' is short for application I guess that's the problem so Amazon should come up with their own shortened version I suggest 'appl'
I submitted the article because it reminded me of a pattern of good-spirited customer service I've had from Apple.

It's a lesson in how to treat customers in a way that rewards their humanity. The end result is that this guy and his wife will likely be Apple customers for life. That's likely upwards of 30 years of loyalty for the cost of a single iPad.

I'm sorry I didn't add this comment the moment I submitted the story, but I figured most people would take away what they came with. Good question! And feel free to stay skeptical and have high standards. Let your snob flag fly!
please. have you read the comments on slashdot anytime in the last... o at least 10 years? the median level of discussion is vastly below what you get on HN for just about any topic.
Isn't this a parry to Amazon's One Click patent?

Certainly an interesting way to negate the fees...
Git as source control. I am absolutely in love with Git and wouldn't want to go back to anything else. I've used CVS, Subversion, Perforce, Mercurial and now Git and I never knew what I was missing until I got to git!
I am not familiar with leiningen or clojure, but it looks like you are just adding a list of requirements + version, which is exactly what you get with pip + requirements.txt file ?
If it means he just doesn't enjoy working in it, and thus might never get the business off the ground, then it's a good business decision.
For once the word 'breakthrough' seems entirely appropriate - both for context and for significance.