skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Another Group Photo Sharing Service? Yeah But ZangZing Actually Works
I guess it's good an iPhone app makes you want an iPhone :)
Jerry Lawson, creator of cartridge-based video game consoles, dies at 70
Unless you're also using one of those subscription-as-a-service startups to host the payment forms, no, PCI compliance is on you with CIM. The payment information passes through your server, so you're 100% required to meet all 200+ of the requirements of the standard, quarterly scans of your servers, etc. Secure storage is only one small subset of the requirements.
What makes you think that's a small subset? I'd guess most startups are evenly split.

I created a poll, so maybe we can get some data: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445715
Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?
I think it depends on the application. Though I asked the question below as ffumarola said it was 'bad practice'.

Why scraping is any worse than crawling is beyond me. But again, it depends on the application. I built a concert search engine which scraped data from multiple sites. It is my understanding that all the concert sites are getting a bunch of data from published apis and then topping up with scraped data.
Indonesia and monopolies: Last of the big-screen baddies
Right. So the IOUs need to be a form of investment as well.

re: star employee example--it's not how much you made the company, it's how much of the company is yours to begin with. Founders will be smart to reward performance, but to reward proportionally based on contribution wouldn't work. If the star is unhappy, he's welcome to quit, take the risk and start his own company.
If you're willing to talk about number of subscribers you're revealing the rough revenue. You might as well just talk about revenue directly. People love to hear about someone making money, so it's much better link bait.

"Hacker Monthly breaks $100k in revenue!"

The Balsamiq Effect.
That wouldn't be enough to eliminate the effects of ordering. Sure you'd get some judges that take breaks earlier or later than others, but they'll still have three sets of cases of about the same length at about the same time.
"This issue is the first time my teenager finally cared about what I do"
Just because the parameters may be diverse does not mean the rules need to be just as diverse. If I may use the biological analogy again, despite the myriad combinations of DNA base pairs, they are all still translated by a universal genetic code that's simple enough to describe in one table (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_codon_table ). I'm fully aware that a description of Universal Grammar would likely be more complex than this though.

The collection of language parameters in a person's head is not the language itself, just like the DNA of an individual is not the species itself. It's the translation of those parameters by a shared mechanism that gives rise to the spoken language. This is where I think your book analogy falls through.
The demo video is really well done. Does anyone knows who produced it?
مباراة الزمالك وحرس الحدود بث مباشر اون لاين الدوري المصري 14/4/2011
Mac + Nginx + Percona + PHP love them all!
It doesn't take much to improve the billing experience over sending someone to an external website, to pay with payment pages that are minimally customizable to match your site.

You lose the ability to tweak and test one of the most important parts of the customer acquisition experience. There's a >10% conversion rate gap between different checkout flows I've tested on one of my ecommerce sites.

I've written my own subscription code for Authorize.net; it's around 200 lines, pretty straightforward (take the form data, POST to authnet to create a customer profile, POST to authnet to create a payment profile to store the card, POST to authnet to authorize the first payment, display any errors, otherwise save the reference token to the database and display a thank-you). It'd be smaller if you used a library like ActiveMerchant. Rebilling is a 15 line script as a nightly cron job.

I've also done integrations with Spreedly and Recurly. I didn't find they saved me any time; I had to write lots of code to send them information about the customers and process all their postbacks that you simply don't have to write if you do the charges yourself. Recurly was also changing its pricing and publicly arguing with its customers at the time, which killed my trust in the company.

Outsourcing your subscriptions to one of these startups is a business risk. They will forever be able to hold your cash flow hostage if they want to. If, however unlikely, your account is suddenly closed or they raise prices beyond what you can afford, you not only have to rip out all the integration you did and find another way to bill customers, but you will lose some of your customers while you're explaining why they can't manage their subscriptions at whatever.com anymore and begging them to fill out another payment form so you can continue billing them through someone else.
Node v0.4.6 released
The designer half of Tapbots, the designer/developer duo, did: http://markjardine.com/
Poll HN: Is your startup equity split equally among founders?
Yes, evenly (50%/50%, 33%/33%/33%, etc)
No. One founder has more equity than other(s).
No. Two founders have more than other(s).
I've been noticing that the poll tilts in favor of the highest comment on the page. 'Without' used to be slightly ahead when edw519 (for example) was on top; now that a post more in favor of the points is on top 'with points' is nearly 100 points ahead.

I guess that in some ways it's hard to be completely unbiased.

As for my own opinion, I want to echo that no points are fine as long as we see some sort of gradation of quality. Maybe just >10, >50, >100 is necessary. It doesn't have to be too complicated.
Showyou launches video app for iPad
This is one of those instances where I wish everyone (specifically patio11) could see how much karma bryanh's comment has.
Wow databases have gotten a lot more complicated in the past few years.
I think this is more like a superset of features which describe many different types of nerd; some nerds implement all features, some only satisfy a subset of these interfaces. Each one is different depending on the level of nerd, and the activity the nerd centralizes their life on.

Definitely passing this along to my partner.
MAMP is from the past, agree. And nice site.
It took them more than a couple months to build this, and they've already made quite a bit of bank. Why wouldn't they release this?
W00ty Lab's Fbapp launched
Thanks! Bank loan is a good idea, also considering that we should really get one and have been procrastinating about actually do so.
That's a big overstatement.

Arts is very easy to get in to in Australia. Law is far harder. At most of Australia's top Universities you have to be in the top 0.5% of high school students.

Admittedly a large number of Law Grads use Law as an engineering decree for government and other administrative work, but still.
The fact that the judges can pick their breaks makes me suspicious that there might be a correlation/causation conflation going on here. A possible explanation could be that the workload is trimodal, and judges tend to take breaks after particularly depressing (parole denied) cases.
Bummer! I'm assuming you didn't set up any "one-click" option, and if that's the case they should go the Amazon route and only enable One-click if you say so first.
A bunch of floating point errors
In the global scheme, sure -- when you make a single purchase of 12 PB all at once, as apple did, that is quite a purchase.
12 petabytes makes Apple Isilon's largest customer: http://www.geekwire.com/2011/apple-plans-huge-digital-storag...
not really sure why this is hacker-relevant
I love the icon. It alone makes me feel compelled to buy it.
I think we're on a tangent here. My point is that law is at least as good as teaching "soft" analytic skills as english literature, with the happy side-effect that it comes with a career path built in if you want it.

As for getting into law, there are universities outside the Group of 8 who'll accept lower scores.
Anyone help please. Have I posted this on wrong page! Where do I need to post for "Ask HN"???
Probably because the parent was a detailed, well-researched answer, and your request for clarification didn't explain what sort of clarification you were looking for.

The second one, on the other hand, was downvoted for asking why you were downvoted. ;)
How Bloggers and Hollywood Fail to Take Sex Trafficking Seriously
Or just release it. If you're sure it's autoreleased then retain/release it. If you're not sure, just set it to autorelease before you retain/release it.
I may have misremembered the data. The closet I've been able to uncover is student usage in UVa from 1997 to 2009.

http://itc.virginia.edu/students/inventory/compare/

While laptop ownership is near universal; the OS distribution is trending strongly towards OSX but with only about 45% in 2009.
True but it goes to point out that user interface flaws/features that are not expected.
In the off-chance that you've not seen this talk by Tim Sweeney: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1277
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3po2gdQNgqk

I remember watching the episode of Top Gear where James May drives the new moon buggy, then sits down and talk about the old moon buggy.

[Kind of a spoiler] The old one, which served everyone so well, was left behind to collect dust on the surface of the moon for the rest of eternity. And then, he says, "But if you ask me, it's not half as sad a moon buggy that will never get up there at all." I tear up just thinking about it.
Re Leftist: Many subscribe to the democratic theory of truth, since if everyone thinks it, it's probably true. We are conforming creatures, the iconoclast is the exception, and it also explains why paradigms in science last so long.

I love Chomsky's work in computational grammars, it's a very elegant categorization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy

Re Universal Grammar: But I think parallel evolution is the rule, not the exception; when confronted by the same needs, with the same tools, similar solutions are often arrived at. In the case of human communication, the needs seem to be to describe things, changes and qualities. The tools are probably what amounts to the Universal Grammar: things like the sequence of things being noticeable; that you can flag one thing to relate to another (like cases, tenses, number). The specific rules then just fall out, depending on whatever gets a foothold in the community.

Oblig. spontaneous development of language in an isolated community (deaf children): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language

Going out on a limb here: I have doubts that recursion is really fundamental to human language: most people top out very quickly (e.g. 2-3 levels). especially if they actually want to think in terms of it. That is, it only has a (very) finite recursive structure, which you can simulate with a less powerful grammar (e.g. regular instead of CFG). What we do have is the ability to reference other things (which can be cyclic): "Like this sentence."
Offshore Software Development company,provides services for Australia
In that review I really have to wonder about using reddit.com (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4266/blackberry-playbook-revie...) as a site to test browser loading. Not saying anything about the results (PlayBook does about the same as the ipad2) just feels like reddit seems to have the flakiest site that I currently visit so hard to believe you could get consistent results.
Disclaimer: I work for rim on the webkit team.
Mathematics is notoriously famous for being dominated by the young. In more recent times, as more depth is required to break new ground, mathematicians have been making breakthroughs at slightly older ages... but they started just as young. In a sense, it's even more exclusive now. The current experts are still extremely bright people who developed exceptional abilities in their 20's, but then they had to keep on grinding further just to get caught up with the current state of their specialty.

In fact, the situation with chess is very similar. I'd say go with either nurse, or tax accountant since they are in demand and still pay well even if you don't have sufficient talent and/or early training to become the best.
Revealed : how to induce a vimeo takedown
further to yesterday's article about vimeo censoring user data,
today's article in crikey gives more detail on what threats you need to make for vimeo to unceremoniously delete user data you don't like.
Of course, no evidence or due process is required, just the legal letterhead. and perhaps it's worth speculating that it won't hurt your mission if you happen to be australia's richest man ...

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/04/14/twiggys-legal-team-native-title-video-incites-racial-hatred/
I would be very surprised if this sort of thing was not intentional.

Most of the sales I've seen coming through from Groupon and Livingsocial feel like they could be impulse purchase material. Eliminating the second thoughts of a "confirm your purchase" page probably adds a nice amount to their sales, even if it's hard to quantify how much from the outside.
Regarding the "Plugins howto tutorial" that was requested on the show, I'd like to ask you guys to check out the Plugins chapter of my book and let me know your feedback - http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Vim_en:Plugins
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This always happens to me, I thought the page was designed to make you always refresh or something lol.
Just off the top of my head?

Some goals: to deter others, to extra-legally punish me personally, to pressure me into taking some kind of action that is subject to punishment, to upset others into action that is also subject to punishment, to profile me under stress, to monitor my associates as I am harassed, to watch the tactics or long term strategy, to attempt to provide comfort for these stresses (that's a weird story), and so.

So yeah, they're trying to make an example of me but it's not limited to run ins with CBP. The ongoing legal issue with a specific microblog is another example. Visiting me when I give talks is another.

There are others but I'm not comfortable discussing them at this time.
Ask HN: What incentives do developers have to stay at myspace?
Other than the fact it's a paycheck can't see any other upside in staying. Especially after reading:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/bitterness-anger-and-betrayal-at-myspace/

and recently

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/exclusive-the-bleak-financial-numbers-from-the-myspace-sale-pitch-book/

If it was me I would find another job so I can leave asap.
Ok, but he takes more risk to never get his money then those who get paid. So it is a risky investment in the company and the interests or possible bonus should take this in account.
Next Mars Rover to Land on Planet Using Rocket Crane
TV9 TSR Film Awards 2011 Stills, Photos, Wallpapers & Pictures
It's SaaSy.com, as opposed to Saasly :)
Twitter / Sahil Lavingia: Instead of saying your ema...
Just launched this with a friend http://www.tradetools.me it's a simple little service to allow developers to share their computer setup and the tools they use on their machine.
We've migrated from authorize.net to stripe.com and we love it.
for completeness, the previous article was at
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/04/13/video-of-twiggys-superb-...
Exactly - the issue is that "walking away" has a very literal interpretation in the context of losing visa sponsorship. You'll be "walking away" to the airport, and leaving behind an established life, your friends, colleagues and potentially even family members.
Right - and by letting the star quit, the founders are ending up with less value, in this hypothetical. In other words, they are acting irrationally.
Not all of the founders do the same amount of work or contribute the same. One found is both working on the software and investing.
I think a poll isn't the best way to decide this issue. After all the problem you're trying to fix is the greater number of low-quality comment, i.e. those who provide low-quality comments outnumber those who provide high-quality comments. Thus, it is not unreasonable that the low-quality commenters would select the option that enables them the most.
This poll was created to gather feedback related to conversations on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445447
Perhaps point values should be shown for your post and all of your children, so you can see what people think of the responses to your post (and the submission author can see points for everything since he's the essentially the root node).

This may have been recommended in the other thread, but I don't recall it.
It has nothing to do with laziness. It allows you to override any part of the system without actually changing any of the core framework or module files.
Gerald A. Lawson, a Pioneer in Video Games, Dies at 70
I am one of those people who is hard to convince to watch something, so if there is anybody else out there reading this comment thread and wondering if you should watch that video - please do.

It is informative in parts, and his style is excellent, but watch if with an open mind and a pinch of skepticism
Jyr is definitly working hard on getting this project up and running, its looking better every day! Congratulations!
I didn't mean to upvote you, I misclicked.

I disagree with most of what patio11 said, and have found (like bryanh) that using ActiveMerchant with Auth.net was no harder than when I tried Spreedly.

As such, I'd pass on patio11's advice and instead just get an authorize.net account, integrate that, and forget about it for the next five years.
TabletPCs Guide
This website presents latest information about tabletpcs industry.
Something like that. The nice thing there is that the index creation is done in parallel, which is not split well with my method.

What I do is dump the schema, then split it between the table creation and the indexes. The first part gets loaded before the data, the second, after. Then all the tables and all the sequences are dumped, optionally teed to disk, and loaded in a psql process to the new location.

I've been doing this since the 7.x series, so it way predates 8.4. (It also predates the in place upgrades, which is a big thing that they've added since I was coming up to speed)
Ask HN: Should users be made to fill a form before downloading?
Hi,

I have a dilemma related to the free download version of the my startup's software (www.graphitecharts.com/download). We are a silverlight based charting library with an aim to support WPF and Windows Phone 7 in the near future. I know most people here hate plug-ins but our aim is to focus on intranet and extranet applications and sites, and eventually support sharepoint and possibly excel.

We launched on 22nd march 2011, that's the date I officially announced it on twitter and posted it to the visual studio gallery. We haven't had any sales yet, but we do get around 5-10 unique visitors a day from the visual studio gallery and google. 2 out of every 5 people who visit the site do download the free version. We have had around 50 downloads so far. The problem is I have no way to contact these people. I do not force them to fill any forms and but there is an optional comment form below. This setup stems from the fact that I personally get annoyed when I have to fill a form to try something out. I also hoped people who are genuinely interested will email us back on their own.

Problem is its not working. No one has filled the form and no has emailed us back. Its still early days but charting is hard (the first version has taken 1 year to build) and I would love feedback from users before I start working on the next version. So do you think I should force users to fill a form ? I will explicitly state there that we might contact you to ask for suggestions etc. in the future.

Any thoughts on this would be really helpful.

ps: I know the site needs a lot of work, so be gentle, but any feedback is welcome.

thanks,
Anuj.
But Balsamiq isn't asking people for free content ...
without comments? :)
I like to use slight gradients and/or antialiased text. Both use up palette entries like crazy.

Good point about SVG(.gz), I forgot about it. SVG it can do transparency as well, and is extremely compact, at least for diagrams. And even better, it allows to add interactivity to your diagrams.

WEBP would be as unsuited as JPEG for diagrams, as your high frequency drawing will be turned into a blurry mess. However, for things like layer effects and backgrounds, it'd still be nice to have a lossy raster format that supports partial transparency.
I think the biggest error is the insinuation that all nerds are computer nerds. While it fits me just fine, I know plenty of nerds of other varieties.

Regarding small talk, I don't think it's a lack of a system of understanding so much as a side effect of the relevancy filter. All that stuff people are saying to me? It frequently sounds like "Nice weather outside blah blah blah blah." Small talk about something I find interesting is another matter entirely.
I'm conflicted. As a (heavy) consumer of HN, not having the best comments called out to me has made it more difficult to parse, and not being able to sort searchyc results by points will eventually diminish its value as external memory for me.

As a producer on HN, I have noticed two things: one, the subjective self-assessed quality of the comments I have been writing since the change has been far higher than it was in the few months prior to the change. I've been quipping less and writing meatier, substantive, useful things (I hadn't stopped writing those, but there were periods of weeks where I had no comment longer than a paragraph and very few actionable bits in those comments). I do not know why this is -- it could be phases of the moon, totally unrelated to the interface change, for all I know.

I also note that my per-comment scores for meaty comments are higher than they've ever been, which may or may not be desirable. I don't care about karma, but to the extent anyone else cares about their karma relative to folks on the leaderboard, my anecdotal single-point observation is that winners seem to be winning at the moment.
The Netflix Effect: When Software Suggests Students' Courses
I'm trying to do something similar to copy databases around. Another problem with doing the parallelism manually is that you have to worry about all the annoying dependencies between tables, constraints, functions etc. Arggghhh.
There was an amazing discussion about this some time recently on Reddit, and there was a lot of input from someone who had read all the studies with well backed, researched info, fully cited.

The short answer was - Probably Yes.

At least there was enough information to cause one to second guess holding a cellular radio against ones head multiple hours per day.
Thanks, comming soon new features like create of vhost from the terminal
Great to see some strides being made in Node.js
Haml user here. I use haml because it allows me to see an entire page's code in a much cleaner format than erb with HTML. I can hammer out or rearrange chunks of HTML much faster in haml. To draw a comparison: haml is to HTML as yaml is to XML. Haml is denser and cleaner but it won't do everything. I still use erb and HTML for some templates because the haml just gets ugly.

Edit: a note, I am plenty comfortable writing vanilla HTML, I just prefer the speed and clarity of haml.
Thanks! I hadn't seen this "UberScript" before, though I was kinda hoping the Closure annotations could be inferred "for free" without changes to the CoffeeScript language. <:)