skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Am I the only one who doesn't believe the $25 drop is worth it? If it was something like, $50 or $75 then yes it would totally be worth it.
3D on a screen is always an illusion of some sort. The 3DS is just a different illusion (albeit a more technically involved one, for sure). It's not any more "3D" than this. Perspective not changing when your head moves is one of the things that breaks a 3D illusion; with this, you don't have that problem.
Android Tablet Store
Yep. The way the 3D effect works, there are essentially physical barriers inside the screen separating the different views being rendered for each eye. Move your head so that you're not viewing the screen straight-on and the barriers don't work properly, ruining the effect.
Then what do you see the use case is in the future? I'm not sure I can envision what function this would actually fill.
hmm.. decisions , decisions now I really cannot decide who to go with for Node hosting, I'm crossed between Nodester,Dotcloud,akshell and now Duostack, guess the auto horizontal scaling is a huge plus.
I like your outside the box thinking on this instead of sticking with the typical email/phone call.
I don't mean to say that it's a rational objection! Apart from a couple of annoying customs charges (because the sender didn't fill out a form correctly, forcing me to pay import duties on already-taxed goods bought from Canada), I have never had any actual problems purchasing from Canada rather than within the US. And for that matter, I'm not even American myself, so it's not based on some unfounded fear about the outside world. I've just gotten lazy and begun to assume that there will be some sort of unforeseen additional cost later, or that relative currency values will have drifted since the last time I looked and I will wind up paying more than I anticipated, or...something. If I'm hesitating over it, I'm guessing a good many more are.
Few tips:

This is based on experience working with large tech companies - not sure how similar this will be for your targets

- Be ready not to hear back (looks like you already are)

- Use linkedin. It will help you understand the org structure and who is between the people on the management page (CEO, etc) and who picks up the phone when you call their 1-800 number. The people you want to be talking to at first are probably somewhere in the middle. With a lot of companies you can start to guess what their pattern for email addresses is. If not InMail works occasionally

- If you are reaching out to someone cold or semi-cold, try to connect what your company is doing with some hot button issue or topic in the industry (as they are likely already thinking of ways to work on this). Offer up something that would be interesting to them (e.g. info on how companies similar to them are approaching the problem - ideally something that they couldn't find out by surfing the web). This is often a way to start up a conversation and understand if there really are opportunities to work with the company

- If you are working with their customers, partners, competitors (even peripherally) - leverage that. In the end you are going to have to show them how your product is going to drive more revenue, gain more market share, cut costs for them (or whatever your value prop is)

- Make it easy for them to say yes i.e. be flexible. don't ask for them to drive 2 hrs to see you. offer up some some possible times for a call, etc

- Sometimes it helps to start lower down on the chain. It will give you a lay of the land and maybe some introductions to the right people. Leverage your connections (friends, investors, etc) - its worth talking to anyone in the company rather than not talking to anyone.

- Conferences can be a good place to try and corner people :)

- If you really have no way of getting to someone in the company - customer service reps will likely be a dead end. Sales people will be slightly more help, but mileage will vary. If the company has some sort of partner program try and join it. At the least it will get you connected to someone in the company

- Its a process. You will likely talk to 10 people before you get to the right one

- Timelines are always longer than you expect. Nothing is done until its done.

Good luck!
I feel naked, but I have been voting on more comments and responding much more.

It is weird. I guess I like it?
Ask HN: Hacker Artists?
I know there are a lot of people on here who aren't strictly computer programmers; I think in one post someone described the "hackers" of "hacker news" as "creative, curious, practical, and hardworking people who struggle with the confines of bureaucracy and traditional corporate jobs" (ie people best suited for start-ups). By that definition I am by all means a hacker.

But the thing I'm most passionate about is making images and visuals, ie art (not graphic design or web design). From what I've seen of the "art world" and "fine art," its not the place for me. I feel like I have zero in common with most artists I meet; I like working hard, making things, and learning skills more than sitting around talking about concepts. My friends have almost always been programmers and "techie" types, not other artists or "fuzzy" types.

So I was wondering if anyone else here is an artist or creator or whatever you wanna call it. I'd be interested in hearing how you balance your expressive side with your rational, non-BS hacker side, and in what kind of career you're pursuing.

The only solution I've been able to come up with is starting my own company where I'm in charge of the art side of things (ie a video game company that requires graphics and what not).

If any of this rang a bell for you, feel free to send me a message. Thanks.
How about for companies that just sell products (Walmart, Bestbuy, Newegg, etc) who would you contact in a situation like that? The marketing team?
Ask HN: Defer College?
Hello Hacker News,

I'm here to ask for advice. I've gotten into college, but I would like to defer and work at a start-up in the bay area for a year. I've done a little bit of c++, java, javascript + html + css, and a lot of lsl (from the virtual world Second Life). I don't know if I would be very useful as a coder (right now), but I learn very fast, and I will learn if given the opportunity. Because I go to a boarding school on the east coast, I haven't had a lot of time (they don't give us any free time here) to code and search for jobs, but I want to know if you all think I should start contacting start-ups in the bay area for a job. I know it's a little late in the game for job hunting, but do you all think it's worth it? Or should I go to college? In case it's relevant, I would double major in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in college. Please ask me questions if you have any!
I, for one, probably wouldn't try to take on Facebook. They're pretty big and scary - especially that big Zuckerburg meanie :(
How iPhone and Android Are Changing the Network
Thx, yeah I knew the ipad screen was a standard display, but having only seen ads for the new nintendo I wasn't sure what their tech was.
I don't think that MySpace user count is 63 million. I would assume it to be way more than that.
Weird that you find them comparable. I've compared the two and Bing's results are just kind of weird (old results and non-related results come up). It's worth 50 cents a day for me to have decent results.
It's a tool, it largely depends on how it's used. It's more of a personal question than one that is best answered by statistics. What you should worry about is whether it increases / decreases your social interactions and how social you want to be. Perhaps you want to be less social and Facebook enables that, perhaps you want to be more social and Facebook also enables that. It really comes down to how you use it. I don't think I've ever thought 'I'd really rather not go out tonight, I'll just find out what happened on Facebook tomorrow.'

For myself I find out about events that I may not have heard of because I didn't speak to that friend that week. I think Facebook is neutral for good friends and increases interaction with friends at the edge of your social circle. It's also a great place to keep in touch with people that you only see at certain conferences, events, etc. It's essential for me for keeping in touch with campmates from Burning Man.
dont be fooled, this is not 3D as in "stereoscopic" 3D like avatar. You will not get the feeling of depth because for that you need a different image for each eye (only achieved with glasses or a special screen (like 3DS or at the movies). This is just a 3D geometry trick...
Removing the karma overall is a good thing, I think. However, it doesn't allow us to see how much the community supports (or doesn't) a comment. Maybe a system showing the percentage of karma per thread would be better.
Actually, it's a bit more than 43.

I think alumni will always think the subsequent batches are too many.
منتدي التعارف والترحيب
If it's not displayed, how can I tell where the 'activity' is happening, so to speak?

Does this mean I have to read each comment carefully(!), and ponder the comment in a large psychological way(?!) ;-)
Knowing nothing more than what I've read in articles elsewhere, to someone who's not going to have a child immediately, these kits provide information that is of limited use. For example, they might tell you that you have a 10% higher chance of developing a type of cancer which has an incidence of 1 in 10 (10%). Implying you're now told that you have an 11% chance of getting the cancer than the general population. Mostly, this is just going to get you stressed and not "prepare" you to face the slightly-more-likely cancer.

I suppose this might be useful to figure out potential genetic defects, but as adults, wouldn't most defects have manifested already (I'm speculating here, correct me if I'm wrong).
OK, that's even more nakedly partisan. Still an overreaction from the Republicans, but less of one.
This is true for replies directly to the article, but replies to the comments turn everything into a huge mess. I liked being able to see at a glance whether the thread below a comment was worth reading as compared to the next comment.
maybe you could argue a different point of view instead of downvoting my idea? or is that the recommended way of doing things?
Wow, anyone care to reply rather than just downvoting?
It's more than just about queries. Ruby on Rails is an absolute pig in terms of memory used. That's something you find out pretty quickly if you build your own VPS setup.
Mold Removal
I have no insight into Twitter's decision making, but the reason I recommend Java over the other popular languages comes down to readability and maintainability. In my experience the dynamic-ness of the language begins to work against maintainability and readability after a while, especially after the original designers hand off the project to other programmers. Most language communities have built over time best-practice guidelines for readability and avoiding common bugs. But I think Java's age and enterprisy culture have allowed it to evolve stronger guidelines (see Joshua Bloch's Effective Java), and it's limited flexibility make it easier to maintain.

If you are in a highly competitive startup environment where break-neck execution for the next 6 months to a year is a matter of survival then Java might not make sense, but that doesn't describe most projects.
Same here. I had switched much earlier. The rewards just make the deal a bit sweeter
It's an intriguing idea, but it's hard to see HTML as a real competitor to C++ anytime soon.

I'm not a programmer, I'm a UX guy, so please tell me if I'm missing something here.
The typical initial deal price for licensing deals by my startup (x264 LLC) is around $5000-$10000. Per-unit royalties are extra (though the initial price includes a bunch of free units).

The vast majority of our deals fall smack in the "$1000-$75000" range.
Oh god, that is the worst. I have seen this plenty of times. Boss won't give direction because either he is intimidated or, he is the "idea man" who shouldn't have to be bothered by implementation. It's fine if you want the dev to just wing it, but you have to align expectations constantly. I ping senior management at least every couple days with screen shots or questions asking for input, even if they never read my emails, I want to be able to say that I informed them of exactly what direction we were taking and that they had input.I keep my PM looped in on almost every email I send just incase someone pops into his office he won't have to say "I don't know" if someone asks him where the project is.

Even then, we still run into "misfeatures". I have no idea how you could tell a dev to wing it, let him work for months with no oversight and then be shocked when he came back with something unexpected.
Good business would be to build something people would actively seek out, in my mind. Anything else seems to diminish the brand -- or maybe the point is to diminish the value of search and the competitor's brand?
What the heck is my brain doing in my free time?!

If you're bored... people ask for a touch sensitive rear surface - how about using the rear camera for gesture control?

Wave your finger in front of it to scroll, that kind of thing.

Also, some acoustic gesture recognition would be good to pick up one/two/three fingernail taps on the back.
There is a big difference between old style 3D (that games have had for dozen years) and stereoscopic 3D where your brain captures the depth because each eye sees a _different_ image. Seeing depth makes it a much more involving experience.
They leveraged one monopoly to create another instead of trying to promote IE on its merits, and implemented IE with insider knowledge of how Windows works, and did various other things like coercing OEMs. Those are the things that got them in trouble, not simply having the OS monopoly.
The most important number is search advertising revenue. The entire online services division (which includes Bing) has revenues of around $2 billion per year. Google's AdWords brings in about $15 billion per year. Microsoft is nowhere close to 30% of the search market, revenue wise. For individual ad clicks Microsoft gets about as much as Google, so clearly Microsoft is not doing 30% of "real" searches (actual people looking for actual things and occasionally clicking on an ad.)
>The company worked with advertisers to ensure the ads don’t get in the way of reading, he said. Ads will appear as a screen saver when the Kindle is idle. They will also be seen as a banner on the bottom of the screen on a user’s home page, Marine said.

That's not too bad, I'll admit. Though I do find the idea of pulling out my Kindle and seeing an ad on the screen somewhat distasteful.

Certainly $25-distasteful. I'm with others here, if it were dramatically lower, I'd probably run out and buy one. Especially if there were an upgrade path (pay difference, lose ads). For $25 off a >$100 item though, no way.
Without seeing comment scores, it's hard to find the ones worth reading - or are they ranked by score now (instead of by hotness)?
Math As Art
Three of the arguments are the same (Apple, Google and Microsoft have lots of cash, they should spend it on something!) and for Yahoo the argument is that misery deserves company.

I'm not really convinced.
Exactly, I know a guy, Dr. Mark Sheppard, who has been working his whole life to be an astronaut. He has (5) degrees so far is a trauma surgeon (or something) and is in the airforce.

It is REALLY hard to become an astronaut -- so I sent this to him as it might be a great alternative.
Do be fooled. What do you gain by refusing to be fooled?
I'm not sure I care to spend half an hour writing out a new and interesting opinion if no one ends up reading it. With no points visible, obvious feedback of people actually reading it is limited to reply comments.
Are Fractal Tree's better than B-Trees? Apparently so, as used by a database addon to MySQL: http://tokutek.com/2010/11/avoiding-fragmentation-with-fract...
You haven't described the service you're offering, so it's difficult to know for sure where to send you. If your service obviates the need for a marketing team I wouldn't recommend it (even if it's marketing based).

For a walmart/bestbuy I'd try to win a single store first if that's possible. Or target a smaller competitor and use that as leverage. If you're trying to sell to an entire F500 at once, I'd probably say you need to change scope. Perhaps there is some way to piggyback without their permission? Making it so they can't ignore you.
Last month I have is February unfortunately, but showing just under 400k search engine referrals with about 66% from Google and 16% Bing for a video-centric site.
Hitwise is a reputed source of data. Their whole business depends on the accuracy and reliability of the numbers they report. Questioning their numbers based on your personal experience when your domain is not representative of the general internet traffic is too amateurish.

The trend of bing making slow and steady gains is confirmed by a bunch of other such sites as well.

Bing is far from being a credible competitor but lets give them credit for what they have achieved.
"The problem is they're directly copying open data communities"

Could you clarify that a bit for me please? It was unclear to me in the original as well. Is Google copying the data generated by open communities, then closing it with a restrictive license? Or is it copying the idea of community-generated maps?

One's an interesting story worth discussing. The other is silly; community-sourced maps is a fairly obvious idea.
I own a kindle, and I buy a lot of technical ebooks, but I don't tend to read them on the kindle device itself. The screen is too small for code or fixed width tables to display well.

So I read the tech stuff on my iPad and use the kindle for long sessions reading fiction, where the content is much more reflow-friendly.
Name sounds familiar. Have there been other Sheppard astronauts?
The Wall Street Leviathan
Groupon may rule them all in New Zealand
They are only copying the idea of a crowdsourced map.
I disagree. It is BECAUSE of the HR, finance, and warehouse staff that the products that are being sold have that value proposition.

If you're 37 Signals you're providing a SaaS product, which means that people are paying exactly because you have a level of support that goes beyond mere development. Also, there is a certain "economies of scale" going on where by adding less and less people you can make a product more useful to a larger segment of the market (because you can include many of the little featurettes that are deal-breakers for many businesses).
I agree, there is. Stereoscopic 3D isn't an end-all solution, however, and this isn't just ordinary "old style 3D", either. Head-tracking 3D is still a pretty novel technique, adding the illusion that you can look around an environment just by moving. I imagine that combining the two you could create a pretty immersive experience, although I can also admit there might be some difficulties doing so.
Healthcare is broken, here is my attempt to fix it
I am currently working on an application based on a good amount of interviews with doctors and personal experience with healthcare problems as a consumer. I wanted to get your feedback on what do you think is broken in the consumer healthcare space and which suggestions you have for me. Thank you :)
Johnny Lee demonstrating Wii-based head tracking using the same plates-on-sticks imagery in 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

Guy mounts two large framed LCDs in a wall and uses this effect to create a very effective virtual window which adjusts the view depending on viewer's position: http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/15/winscape-virtual-window-f... ("Winscape") in April 2010.
If you really were getting 2 points per search I'd do it, but I just tried it out and it doesn't work that way, you only get points by taking advantage of their offers which are similar to Dropbox's free storage promos and WoW quests:
How do I earn credits?
You earn credits by taking advantage of offers that may include searching or exploring features of Bing. Offers are found in the Rewards credit counter located in the top right of the header on Bing.

And this buried a bit deeper: Search and earn. Earn 1 credit per 5 Bing searches up to 8 a day until Apr 30.
Inside Ten of the World’s Largest Data Centers
Sounds kind of pointless... the kind of people who can spent at least $120 on an e-reader (and by extension the $8-$15 it costs per book that isn't even a touchable/sharable thing) are probably the kinds of people who can afford another $25 to get the full version. Now if this was being sold for free, or for $50, that would be a different story.
For anyone that can't tell what the site is about at first glance: it's a collection of word-based games (think text twist) and every time you guess/figure out some word correctly, a search to Bing is fired off in a separate frame.

The reasoning behind this Bing-fueled gaming experience is so that you can "research" words as you play...or something.

It's all very shady/hilarious.
Hats off to Virgin Galactic just for using the phrase "sub-orbital commercial space tourism." It reads like science fiction.
no. you don't exist. Can't you see that? :-)

now tell me your birthday so I can explain to you that its another day entirely.
Not showing scores is curious.
For one — and this isn’t a criticism — it makes voting feel slightly idempotent.
For another, given the way both arrows always disappear after a vote, it makes it tougher to see if you clicked the “correct” arrow (always been an issue given their size and proximity).
I used to make pretty pictures. The work from years ago:

http://detrus.nivr.net/
http://detrus.nivr.net/space/thumbfolio/AS2.html

Back in 2003 I was inspired by the likes of http://www.flight404.com and gmunk (who recently worked on the tron2 movie http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178). I became a regular designer/production monkey for a while, before getting serious about programming, trying a UX A/B template startup.

There's a lot of programmer artists in the http://processing.org/ and open frameworks world. Probably a bigger movement there than the no-code digital art movement of the early 00's, which flight404 was also part of.

I heard one guy talk about a studio job doing processing style exhibitions, mentioned it doesn't pay a lot. Flight404 popularized the trend and had/has a hard time making money from it.
This matches my own experience as well. There are creeping-horror Java codebases, but I find it easier for me and the people I work with to effectively build long-term, maintainable, sustainable code in C# or Java. (My day job involves Java, my play-around startup concept is based on .NET.)

I suppose that if you're building a crash-or-sell "startup," this might not be a huge priority for you, but as guelo noted, most projects don't fit in this mold.