skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Pretty interesting. I would definitely use this if it was in my market. I don't bother using circulars given the hassle of searching, comparing, and clipping. I'm also not a fan of how much they contribute to the junk mail epidemic we have.

There's a lot of interesting data to be consumed here if you can collect it from the various chains and regions. Good luck!
Norwegian Flyby
Cool, congratulations!!

1) For existing software a total rewrite is extremely risky and will most likely fail or cost significantly more than you are prepared to spend. Rewrite portions of it instead and modularize it.

2) The biggest problem you have is that large companies have very different needs than small companies. As a small company you simply cant have both. Enterprise clients need things done exactly how they need them done. Small clients dont want to pay for features they dont need.

3) marketing generates leads - you may not have a sales problem it may be a marketing problem. Do you go to shows? Mailing list? advertising? etc You have a sales problem if you are not able to convert leads to sales.

4) I sell exclusively to fortune 1000 clients and I can tell you they are a pain in the ass and will suck your morale dry. We recently have gotten two mid market companies (500M revenue) and they are simply a pleasure to work with. The elephants are great because they can dependably generate > 2M in business for us each year, but they will steal your soul.

5) 80% of your revenue in a single client is probably the single biggest risk you have. You need to get under 25%.

---------
We do strategic planning each year and we decide on the major initiatives based on that.

It goes something like this ---> What are the biggest business objectives for the company -->what are the problems keeping us from achieving those -->what are the specific changes we need to implement --> how do we tell if we were successful?

In your case it might look something like
80% of or revenue comes from a single client (huge red flag)-> what is preventing us from increasing our revenue?

Above you had said a few different things as being possible problems. You may want it to be that the code is bad, but if that really isnt the issue, then fixing the code wont get you more revenue. I think it is probably a lack of understanding of who your customer really is and what they need. Once you decide, then you can implement specific changes to make it happen. Those changes most likely will include determining how to reach those people then running campaigns to reach them. Once you reach them you can find out why they arent buying, then you can begin making changes to the code.
Actually, that is sort of a myth. AWS was built independently of the core Amazon.com platform and specifically for the cloud marketplace.
How are those contradictory?

There's a huge financial incentive for discovering the next big thing precisely because carbon based fuels will not always be cheapest - One leads into to the other.

Also - if you surround text with asterisks you'll get italics.
The main hardware that others have used are Arduino, Netduino, and ioBridge. But, you can do more abstract things, like use CURL to send server uptime or embed a web page counter on your website that sends a Growl update or flicker an LED.

Here are some tutorials - http://community.thingspeak.com/tutorials/

Here is a project from me using netduino and jQuery to build a front-end showing updates from my house.

http://iamshadowlord.com/2011/02/thingspeak-building-my-own-...
What area? Web Dev?
But Amazon can, and still will put multiple (of your) instances onto the same box. So performance is still not as predictable as a dedicated machine.
It also supports using the accelerometer in javascript!
http://karlwestin.posterous.com/javascript-accelerometer-on-...
I can't believe people still think his name is Christopher Poole. This has got to be the longest-running joke turned gospel on the Internet. Either that, or that thing about Glen Beck killing and raping a young girl in 1990, except people actually _know_/tounge-in-cheek that one.
Depends what you use to access it. I'm using Google Docs with SMEStorage and they enable me to upload / download files to Google Docs using FTP - makes it easy....
Turn Your Computer Into a Cloud With Tonido (perfect companion for cr48)
Many people are considerably less well off, and have more time than money.
Why Modal Windows Have Replaced Popup Windows
Yes it is. Amazon beta tested it for years in the enterprise and is now releasing it as a consumer service.
Sadly this poll does not say much... what the heck is an 'average' freelance job? How complex is it (can anyone do it)? How much time or how many people does it take to complete? How harsh are the deadlines? ....

Daily rates used in estimations may be more relevant in this case...
Google's recipe for recipes
JQuery: The Write Less Do More Javascript Library
Assuming I had money to hire employees:

No, not having a CS degree would not be a significant disadvantage in general. And a candidate with some proven track record, a portfolio and/or demonstrable skill would not be at any disadvantage at all with me - simply by not having a CS degree.
So basically users are happily swimming in the sea of advertisements with content they don't own or create.themselves. Nice business!
Why? I really liked (and still like) the one they used up until now [1]. It looked fancy, it was _really_ distinctive, and it had a great readable font for devices (e.g. screenshot [2]). What more do you need from a typeface?

P.S. Doesn't this new typeface somehow remind you of Windows Phone 7's one?

[1] http://spiekermann.com/en/nokia-sans-character/
[2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/21709201@N00/4263893860/
Thanks for the input.

I think the most significant problem with the example books is not their position on the page but the couple of second delay before they appear. I'll definitely fix this in the next few days.

As for caching the example books in the background. It would be nice to do and I'll think about the problem for the next few days but I think it may be be extremely difficult based on the current design.

Edit: Thought on it a bit more. It may be possible to cache the contents of the example book but not the processing of the book. I suspect that the major part of the load delay comes from processing rather than downloading but it'll probably be worth it anyway.
Respool.js
Just looking for some feedback on this really...
The time value of money is also a statement of our exponential decrease in our knowledge of the future. If you knew the future precisely, the time value of money wouldn't decrease into the future.

This statement is worthless. The politicians who would be responsible for actually telling people that yes, its actually time to get these things off the road are teenagers now, and those making this pronouncement today are going to be dead.

Anything past about 2030 is worthless, and any statements about where a government will be ten years from now is very, very suspect. Especially a (putative) democracy, since it's a claim about what the populace of forty years from now will be willing to do. Please. If you could plan that well and accurately we would live in a very, very different world.
For something like this, why wouldn't you copy the user experience of Google Maps rather than make people learn a new pan and zoom behavior?
I want to learn the arts of warm fuzzy feeling. Please elaborate :)
I'm the author of this article which was about the technology we use. Your comment doesn't seem to be about tech at all.
Maybe I will write a separate post on this in the future?
Yay HN circa 2011!
Only when executed/attempted.
I wish someone would revive the cyberpunk-prophesied revolution from the '80s: Virtual Reality.
The problem with the [non-lisp language] community is that they don't have a sense of humor.
I thought he just said 'independent test' and not that MS was an independent source?
I think the best predictor of being a good hacker is products you have built. I was a Electrical Engineer in undergrad, but then went to go for a PhD in microbiology. When the .com boom hit I wanted to get back to technology, but had been out of it for 5 years. I built up a portfolio of projects and used those as my in to my first job. I was able to submit code samples as well as running applications. The bar at google is high, but I would expect that this tactic would work for them as well (but dont know for sure), but it would have to be something very cool. The company I went to work for only hired people with a graduate degree in engineering (which I didnt have) but they made an exception for me based on the portfolio (and also probably because they were desperate).
The Ultimate Designer Toolkit over 60,000 Designer Items
This deal was immensely popular in the past and we were inundated with requests to bring it back, so here it is one more time for everyone to get a chance to get it. This bundle is even bigger and better than before, while still being at the same low price. For the past 2,000 years, a group of talented designers have been creating the ultimate toolkit for designers. Well, it was more like 11 months, but hey even then, the results are super impressive. How about over 60,000 designer items in one single bundle!
Ancient Mysteries and the Unexplained
Thanks for sharing michaelochurch. Yeah, I don't know what panic attacks are like, but they sound pretty crappy. I've found that if people are able to survive trying experiences like that, they can come out stronger on the other side. A good thing to look into might be how we can expose ourselves to tough things without breaking ourselves.
this guy gets it.
Is this typical of cloud storage? I read through their ToS and found that they retain the right to access your files.

5.2.Our Right to Access Your Files. You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law.
If you are competent and willing to work for equity rather than a large salary, a startup will hire you. Unless they have "Color level funding", a startup does not have the ability to be too demanding on the formal qualifications. Take advantage.
Heh, I've also got problems with estimating the end price. Mostly I think: WTF?! I can't charge that much for this simple work. I always forget that the "simple work" is black magic to most of my clients.
> I do not know about this project, and have no real expertise as a maintainer

In my example case, it certainly is. There certainly aren't zillions of patches. The maintainers are just not "maintaining". Plain and simple.
Complete business diligence before you sign a term sheet
Easy Client Side Repeater with jTemplates
Post shows how easy you can implement client side repeater. There are a few jQuery plugins which you can use for it. However I recommend to use jTemplates. With jTemplates you can easily define a client side template.
I love this! CouponMom is a nightmare (especially on mobile) but has great data so I slog through it. Anything would be better, but this looks excellent.

I always wonder where to go for my next fix of Diet Coke 12-packs, so I can't wait for AnyLeaf to come to LA.
Radio Fonic Oddity - Expirmental / Electronica Music
good call on your part. Im annoyed I didnt figure it out before I read your post. You should have posted SPOILER :)

I thought it was extremely clever (possibly too clever) but good nonetheless.
That is because you are looking at Arial or sans-serif, not at "Nokia Pure Text"... assuming you did not download and install the font on your computer. Check the .css:

font-family: 'Nokia Pure Text', Arial, sans-serif;

The only thing that is "Nokia Pure" on the web page is the .gif images of the sample text.

This is an insurmountable problem with branded fonts; they only work if you load the branded font on every computer that will ever brush up against it. This means your Word documents will look like crap when you send them to an outside company. This means your web site that proudly uses the font will look like... umm... some generic sans-serif font when you use it on your web page.

The problem is insurmountable because, to fix the problem, you will have to convince everybody in the world to install it on their machine, which will require you to release the font for unrestricted use. A custom company-branded font with unrestricted use is an oxymoron.
These articles about "tuning" Apache are a pretty decent source of amusement, though.
I find that there are far more people who worry that things might offend others than there are people who are actually offended by things.

Stop being offended on the behave of others, and call out others for it when you see it. It'll make the world just that much bearable.
You can have multiple sitemaps. You can ping just 1 sitemap containing only the links that you want to notify. You can use the optional <lastmod> tag to indicate a URL's last change date.
Show HN: location-based messaging
Hey HN - this is something our team (a bootstrapped startup based out of Berkeley and SF) has been working on for the past couple months. Basically, Crumbs is a mobile app that lets you leave notes for friends in at a location, which they pick up later. Its useful for reminders, discovery, and can be all around fun.

We'd love to get some feedback from the HN crowd. We seem to have trouble getting trouble getting traction, but so far feedback from users and testers has been very positive.

find us at: crumbsapp.com Thanks!
Hi,

Oops! We forgot to limit the maximum FOV. you are referring to a field of view of 140º which is, yes, crazy! we'll switch it so that its' limited to 110º when you zoom out.

Incidentally, photos can be shown in many different projections. Rectilinear is the "normal" kind. For more fun, you can right-click on the panorama, and select other projections, including stereographic and little planet. these can show a much larger FOV and still look ok, because they curve some of the lines which makes the edges look not quite so "stretched".

There is also something called the "vedutismo" or "panini" projection, which was used a lot by renaissance painters. this can show a very large FOV but it keeps lines straight if they go to a vanishing point. you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlK075yE6g4 or on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/vedutismo/
"I'm talking about more intangible assets like skills, reputation, relationships, attention & fame."

When you separate reputation from attention & fame is there any real value there, at least in the context of startups? I get reputation as it relates to something like stackoverflow, but the attention & fame may not be as great an asset as the author seems to think. When I think of fame & attention without reputation I think of Lindsay Lohan and the cast of Jersey Shore. He could be talking about attention & fame like that that color.com received with their $41 million in funding but that is an extreme outlier and a lot of the community views it more as infamy.
> Uh, you understand that Shivers was joking, no?

by gjm11, in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2383021
-2 for what? :D
LYAH is fun and accessible. A great introduction to the advanced concepts in Haskell and the power of functional programming.

It made me better at javascript and python. It rekindled my interest in math and algebras. It makes me want to do battle with complexity in nuanced, clever ways.

Thanks Miran!
The same book is available for $25.56 on Amazon (vs $44.95 on No Starch and O'Reilly). How can Amazon afford such a huge discount on a new book? And how does O'Reilly survive with such competition?
for now!! but in the future who knows. people might want chapters that focus around making real useful stuff with the knowledge, so that's a possibility
Web Analytics Tools Used By Boston Media Sites
I would love to hear how you guys got your gigs? I'm looking to do something on the side but haven't been able to find anything concrete.
Would you buy Nokia shares now and hold them for five years?
I did not say that I would be offended, just that officials tend to be very nervous about such threads. I know several stories about pupils who got in trouble with their school for less.
I would agree and disagree with that. The Tories DID bugger up the rail system and Labour partly put it right by bringing the infrastructure back into public ownership but they should've finished the job. I would argue though that Labour were far to pro-airline and the Tories did at least can the 3rd runway at Heathrow.

Lets face it like a lot of things Britain sits half-way between the US and Europe. We want European rail travel but we aren't prepared to pay the taxes to support it.
Amazon's Password Policy Sucks
it's a mystery! but i'd recommend buying it directly from No Starch because you get the free ebook and swag, plus more money goes directly into my mouth this way
Just goes to show how dead a language Lisp really is when even the FBI can't find someone that understands the code.
EPA Seeks to Raise Safe Levels of Radiation
Hi drm237,

:-) Actually, we are using the "original" behavior used by QTVR which was the first implementation of interactive panoramic images on computers back in the 1990's. It is the paradigm that you are the camera, and you are moving your eyes.

The click/drag paradigm is good for maps, because it uses the analogy that you are grabbing and moving a map.

Anyway, this is a huge debate these days in the pano photography community. It seems that google streetview / google earth are somewhat winning at this point in terms of this type of navigation....
This kind of gouging soon won't be a problem anymore. I'm in the process of creating an online service (launch date sometime this summer) that will provide completely free full-text access to all academic journals in one fell swoop. Think Napster for academic research.

I won't give implementation details for now, and I'm still evaluating different domain names, but it will be called Acropolis.

Yes, I know it will create a legal shitstorm, but I feel it's a small price to pay for what is at stake. To hell with it. Academic research is supposed to be free.
Yeah, I definitely learned way more about Ruby when I used it to automate a set of tasks (like my build/push process) and writing something minor like a twitter bot or a text parser.

Using Rails on a larger project is good as far as learning a framework, but to get into the language and get into the cool/weirder stuff I've found small projects do the trick.
This appears to share the same ciphertext characteristics as traditional prison kites.
Ah thanks. I guess what I mean is that most truly world-shattering discoveries are driven by heavy amounts of funding from national governments. Private industry might build an electric car that is affordable for the masses, but it isn't going to discover something as long-term or pie in the sky as nuclear fusion. I just don't see them spending the time, effort, and money on that sort of research.
Bootstrapped, Profitable & Proud: Coudal
IDC fails to learn from previous mistakes, issues 2015 smartphone predictions
It is a nice idea with a large potential. A challenge that comes to mind is that right now the older folks cut coupons etc. And the younger ones surf for deals on the internet. There is an overlap in the two sets but it is small.

One suggestion would be to pick a city/area where more people are into coupons and circulars and start from there. I feel that places where old peeps hang out (Florida) as opposed to Sunnyvale? might be better hunting grounds.

Sounds promising though!
Yup- I took compilers with him in 2005 and while it was one of the hardest courses I took, it definitely set the tone for what I wanted to work on. I was really sad when he left Georgia Tech- he was definitely one of the best professors I had there.
The one thing that I give credit for [regarding a CS degree] is discipline. Discipline means actually going through whatever hoops the schools make you go through. Discipline means actually having the patience to take the requisite classes and doing the projects, even if it isnt glamorous.

lets be honest, about 10% of the work of the startup is exciting. the other 90% is pure drudgery, and that's part of the reason why some people opt to work for a large corporation.

I restrict myself to hiring kids with a solid CS degree from a good university, not because I think other people are incompetent or because those people are competent. I think, at the end of the day, especially for a startup, I want to be sure that I dont end up with a fly-by-nighter or with a person unable to keep focused on the task at hand for months at a time.
Common Lisp - Arduino cross compiler
The 4 Boxee Box Issues That Must Be Addressed ASAP
This isn't my project - I just found the site.
Even though these images aren't meant for live sites, it's good to see that the images have proper attribution.
Why Vevo Acquiring MySpace Could Be a Very Good Move
I would love a chapter on Monan Transformers. Its one concept I can't seem to wrap my brain around and a LYAH style chapter seems like the perfect thing to help me understand it.
>As soon as they aren't cheaper - the market will shift.

or there wouldn't be any market anymore. It is also possible that they will be cheaper for centuries to come - the amount of coal and oil reachable in the next 50-100 years just isn't known. And the higher the price, the less demand, thus the less the price - the free-market behavior which has kept the price of oil pretty stable since WWII. Instead of flying cars [more fuel consumption] people of San Francisco are biking. As a result we have civilization developed into Facebook instead of homes on Mars [the last statement is (C) of another HN commenter]

It is plain stupid for the human race to sit and wait until the price of oil will go up instead of stimulating development of new technologies [some of which can carry us at least to closest planets].
Well, there are private torrent sites with most journals already. Or so I've heard ;)
Why not put the cached content in the page by default, then do an update via AJAX only in the case where the cached version is old? That way it's not triggered for crawlers. It's probably secondary content anyway.
How Amazon could loosen Google's iron grip on Android
How to build Glass Buttons in iPhone programmatically (source code)
It does depend what you do, and how you do it, but the results suggest that your scale needs to go a lot higher; typical London contract rates for say Java development are about $700 a day, tend to last 3 / 6 months, e.g. $42-84k. Probably 2/3rds of that if you are a js dev, or 2x that if you know your investment banking and grid computing.
Just wondering, why didn't you choose to self-publish the book through Amazon or Lulu?
It's perfectly healthy. as a sidenote: you can mimic those effects through exercise (and a smaller window of caloric restriction). I've had some great mid-distance runs on no calories for the prior 6-8 hours (they felt great.. but I couldn't have gone much further given the low glycogen).

The people who've posted here might also be interested in checking out PaleoHacks, they've had some interesting threads on IF: http://paleohacks.com/search?q=intermittent+fasting#axzz1I0z...
Looks like Mobile Dev, if this is him:

http://twitter.com/eekfuh

http://www.deliciousmorsel.com/