skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is not a particular problem at all in this case. The business in question is not a payment service provider at all, they only happen to process billings and disbursements on behalf of third parties as a part of the service they provide to the end user, and only in certain cases. They have also been doing so for some time. This is a b2b scenario with no current need for credit card payments at all; its all wire xfer, chq, eft etc.
I wonder how Miyamoto feels about that.
Have a startup? You're going to need some legal help
For founders, none. Early on, distros make sense.

For employees, lots. Employees want W2 wages. They don't want to pay quarterly estimated taxes and they want the company to pay its share of payroll taxes.

The sense I get is a lot of companies here don't foresee having "employees", at least until after their hoped-for A round closes. OK. Switching to a C corp from an LLC isn't that big a deal, as long as none of the founders have left by then.
Of course, that assumes you are actually permitted to change the process. The project I'm working on has the constraint that while we are allowed to write less-buggy software that catpures the existing process more effectively, we are not allowed to propose changes to the existing process (which evolved around the existing cruddy software-- 10 years of accumulated process and "feature" cruft, now cast in carbonite).

Corporations sometimes have a funny definition of "risk." Sometimes, Risk(changing to a sane process) < Risk(reproducing unnecessary complexity of existing process).
It's expensive to build the necessary infrastructure -- the conjunction junctions alone can cost millions.
An LLC can have regular employees. But you're right that it might pose problems if you wanted to give regular employees equity.
super cool tool, thanks for the tip andrew. This is a nice top level analysis and correlation, leave hardcore research to analysts. I'm all for "putting in keywords are looking at pretty graphs."

(edited)
I'm not saying that on-the-job experience is a bad thing-- clearly it isn't-- but as you say, it isn't always possible, and it's still a long way from creating software for you yourself to use.

Put another way: I'm not the target user of any of the most valuable (or most lucrative) software I've created-- and I don't think that's a rare condition.
New LG Decoy A Classic Phone
With handsfree calling facility having become the most common and widely accepted mobile communication features, Bluetooth headsets have become a must have accessory for users who want to continue their chatting process while they are on road.
Who Owns Blog Comments?
That had me going for a while.
Aren't you just conceeding the point? Patents are crafted like that precisely to prevent people from reproducing the work without violating them. Precise statements are easy to get around... fuzzy ideas and claims are much harder to circumnavigate.
Any opinions on expertrating.com certifications?
Question: I came across a site called expertrating.com, offering "certifications" in various topics, languages, etc. I wondered if these were recognized in the industry, since, as they cost money, I would want to make sure a particular cert was going to be an asset prior to spending time/money to aquire the certification. I already have the COMPTIA A+ and Network+ certifications. I googled for something related to a certification in c, and came across expertrating.com. Just wanted to see what merit there might be with that outfit. Thanks!
Most: ERP, accounting, banking, claims processing, ecommerce, order entry software sucks.

You're probably right about that.

But enough of it works to run the world. No small feat.
Is the name 'apostrophree' a typo itself? There are no hits on Google besides this article.

It seems way more efficient to have something like this running server side by whoever is hosting the content. This is something like charging for a spelling/grammar checker to read documents. As long as the publisher had a good editor I shouldn't have to pay for one.
As Steve Yegge wrote about earlier, determining the function of a conjunction junction can be difficult.
I'd like to point out that this article completely ignores most specialty or enterprise markets. As a maker of insurance software, we employ some people who were former insurance agents/adjusters, but none of our developers are, and our only real hope for understanding exactly what has to go into something like a policy administration system is to get out there and talk to customers and potential customers. Even within an insurance company, the developers still won't have a clue because it's not a product they themselves would ever use, and they'll have to rely on someone else communicating the requirements to them.

The same is probably true of just about any other business-focused software; most developers aren't hedge-fund traders, auto mechanics, laywers, hotel managers, etc. yet somehow people manage to build specialized software for those fields. You need people in the organization that understand those fields and what's involved, but the motto of "make something you yourself want" just doesn't apply when you're writing software to run an entirely different kind of business. Developers can be mountain bikers on the weekends, but they're generally not insurance agents or doctors in their spare time.
Bye bye Symfony.. Hello Zend
I've not used PHP for a while but was quite intrigued by this switch. What's the opinion of the PHP developers amongst you?
We have good reason to suspect that we can grow food and have access to all of the materials we need out there to build an industrial infrastructure.
I downloaded this, and went out and bought a Rubik's cube. I'll report back if Group Theory suddenly becomes clear to me...
Cool, you're welcome! Uncertain Principles is cool too; from all these, go through the links and you'll probably find a few more.
Yes, but if this cesspool were a real barrier, nothing would ever get done! Ignore at first. You'll be too small to sue. When you start to get somewhere, you can attract those with the resources to defend you.
It shouldn't be "business requirements gathering." It should be "business requirements refinement."
Because then PG wouldn't have built Viaweb. He certainly wasn't building it for himself.
Wow. I guess this is why Linux RAID sucked so badly for so long.
Build Your Own Quad-Core Machine With The Tempest Case
"Better that N guilty person go free than that one innocent suffer"

http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm
What I really like (honestly) is coders who talk to you and say, I have this great idea, wanna help me make it better? This is rare but really cool when it happens. It also makes me hope that more business people would bother to learn more about what they want to sell.
Twitter’s 2000-Follow Limit Raises A Ruckus
"In a typical company a small but significant number of employees read blogs and comment threads every day, sometimes several times in a work day. I say a significant number because the people who read comment threads and post comments of their own are very often among the most highly-paid people in the organization. The time apostrophree saves goes right to the bottom line.

Most people either don’t recognize or don’t care when they encounter a misspelled word or incorrectly-formed plural. But some people do notice, and there’s a personality type that will spend a lot of time demonstrating their superior English skills online."

---

So the target customer is someone who wants to not be so hung up about spelling mistakes and grammar, and wants to save time? This just seems a ridiculous answer to me.
I can see it being very useful, and a great feature in something else...
I think the post is a joke. That would explain a lot.
That is probably true, but a lot of it depends on the care you take while running.

Advice to anyone who runs on anything besides grass or rubberized tracks: buy expensive running shoes ($80+) fitted to you by a someone who knows what they are doing. A sales person at a specialty running store should be qualified.

Or go barefoot.
Don't build simple to succeed
I've had some dealings with the "sovereign citizen" nutcases before, but I hadn't heard that the concepts were being adopted in the "inner-city-drug-dealer" milieu. It's bizarre stuff-- almost like the Flat Earth Society, but these people actually believe the nonsense they are spouting. I had one guy try to argue, with a straight face, that the word "includes" is limiting, so that when the Tax Code says something like "For the purposes of this act, The United States includes the District of Columbia", it actually means that the United States is only the District of Columbia, and does not include the 50 States.
is there anyone that is not hacked when attending defcon? i mean, the wall of sheep alone would be enough to make me prep myself before attending.
To me, the article in reference is both unreadable and unscannable, making it basically unusable.

- Its default font size is much larger than what my browser is set to. This removes focus on the text's meaning and forces me to recalibrate my mind to its presentation and adjust to that, for better or worse (in this case worse.)

- The obsessively large headings make scanning 'stuttery.' (or is my own browser misrepresentative of the bulk of users?) These headings are scarily large when hitting them at reading speed.

- All the bold text is in such large quantities thus negating impact.

- There is no Table of Contents at top like a Wikipedia article with their jump-to links.

- I think one thing his site lacks is a decent menu and space between lines in bulleted lists.

He implements many of his own rules on his site and makes a caricature of them in the process. Sometimes you need to step back and say, "It might not be perfect from a rule-abiding sense, but does it work? If not, can we change things ever so slightly so as to create proportionally much larger improvements in usability?"
IPhone developers get first monthly sales reports
Linus wrote git for himself.
For those that have not got it. This is a Joke

apostrophree is not a YC startup. Presumably its completely made up (its or it's??).
This is my favorite of these ideas so far. It's one of those inevitabilities - eventually, someone will build a virtual currency exchange.
Felton, California Residents Pledge to Eschew Proprietary Software
This might qualify as hacking, for a very loose interpretation of the word: the defendants have stumbled across an input that the legal system is not prepared to handle. By neither cooperating with the system nor refusing representation, they maintained the case in an appealable state, which made the legal system move too slowly to make a judgment.

IANAL, but I'm surprised this worked. I assume a significant factor is the degree of rigor needed for death penalty cases.
> ... a Russian company that is working on what they call a "clue gate." The idea is to identify and filter out postings from newbies...

This has got to be an April fools joke that is just 231 days early.
i submitted this on his blog too, but i wanted to point out the fact that codeigniter has the same trend line as symfony/zend but is behind. its ahead of cake, though, which is stagnant.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=symfony%2C+zend+framework%2C+...
Me too. Well done, and not a bad idea. The spelling Nazi in me was already rejoicing.

Loved this line: "We observed that non-technical staff with Internet access are more likely to use their computers to view and collect pornography than to post spelling corrections."

The "clue gate" in the last paragraph is the final giveaway.
ok people I just corrected my estimate of the average intelligence of HN users...
RescueTime Gets a Shiny New Logo (Less red, still a plus)
I'd think that even taking into account the phenomenon described in the article, it would be quite difficult for a new startup coming that late into the game to build enough traction to be a threat, barring any new and significant ideas.
The Internet's protocols aren't suited to doing broadcast. Doing broadcast correctly requires new protocols, just like doing computer networks correctly required a departure from the physical connection-oriented view of networks that arose from telephony.

Van Jacobson's Google Tech Talk:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840
what a brave corporate logo!
"Well, as my grandpappy used to say: “When life gives you lemons, make a consolidated online virtual currency gateway and payment system”. I never quite understood what he was talking about. Until today."

-------

Amusing
Turning Clean-Tech Engineers Into Entrepreneurs
So, You've Sold Your First Startup
In other news, startup founder arrested for using his garage in an attempt to displace an entrenched competitor.
Disqus Launches New Version of Blog Comment Application
The buzzwords were a big warning, but it was the total lack of technology mention tacked with "Integrating different web applications" that makes the little bells in my head go off. (They're usually on, driving me crazy - times like this they shut off long enough to let me think clearly )
I was confused when I saw the title of the idea: "MyVC"

For some reason I think of MyVentureCapitalist rather than MyVirtualCurrency...
I would argue that the China example is somewhat invalid. Seems to me that China's economy has been expanding because they've begun to mimic "western" capitalistic principles more closely than in the past. That is, Chinese citizens are more able and willing to start up businesses for personal gain, something that wasn't really possible a couple decades ago.

Also, I picked the cow and the hay, even though I lean more towards individualism-- maybe not compared to the average American, though (I'm Chinese, born in the US).
Yes there is. His layout doesn't follow the grid at all, which creates additional cognitive load/eye strain when reading. Also aesthetics affects usability. In studies, it has been shown that people find things which are more aesthetically pleasing to them actually more _usable_ than equally structured but non-'beautiful' things.
No, style and aesthetics are intrinsically tied to usability and studies have shown this again and again. Check out Malcom Gladwell's Blink for a few colloquial examples. For more formal research studies, email me.
Correct grammar and punctuation please.
I applaud the transparency with numbers that some developers are exhibiting.
Interesting read anyway.
This is really clever. Even if you could get just two large virtual currencies (where points win prizes) and exchange those, it would be beneficial. Perhaps even from the same publisher.

You could encourage the companies by offering to take a rake on the transaction and sharing it with them. It'd probably be against their T&Cs if you didn't ask permission.

Other posts about loyalty are true. But if the points are transferrable, people will trade them. Far better the publishers get control over it - but you'd have to pursuade them.
Sometimes destroying the value of the company they acquire is the entire point of the exercise:

http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/adobe_translation
This joke should only be read through an edit-for-length proxy.
Introducing the New Disqus
I'm an apostrophree beta tester. When I read your comment I saw "The spelling Nazi in me was already rejoicing." It really works!
Because the legal system is as complex as any software or hardware specifications, and an attempt to break the system by using a bunch of valid but illogical statements, is very similar to actual hacking.

We don't want to learn about law, but we are just as interested in how people apply systems knowledge to bypass the security mechanisms of the system.

You dig, dawg?
The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government. ~ Tacitus, 117CE
Not to mention isn't a lot of the advantage of selling gift cards that they go unclaimed?

I'm not really sure what is the real advantage of a virtual currency system. I don't want to put any substantial amount of money in virtual currency. Also in order to buy something with a virtual currency there has to be a market for the currency, and the virtual currency is always going to be worth (substantially) less than regular cash. Maybe I'm missing something big here, but I don't see how this could ever be workable.
Absolutely true, but does it help the children now? It's a bit like antimalarial research, of course it will help millions of people when a vaccination is finally available. But it won't help those children who will be infected next week, free mosquito nets and free drugs might help.

Looking only at the longterm economic development perspective you are absolutely right, but if you want to help those suffering right now, you are wrong.

Your quote:
"And yet if you diff present conditions against conditions 100 or 500 years ago-- even in the poorest places--"

What would starving people think about us when we tell them that we are not giving them any food because it's not worth it in the long term?
interesting to watch ycombinator disqus battle techstars intensedebate.
I'm not sure what the problem is here. I worked as a salaried employee (in California) for an LLC from 1998 to 2001 (after which it incorporated). I got a ton of restricted stock options at a near-zero strike price, as was the custom at the time. Certainly an LLC can hire people and give them equity (options, in this case).

Either laws have changed, or maybe you've misinterpreted?
They were probably just trying to avoid the death sentence. And it worked.

In any case, I'm happy for them, because I'm very strongly against the death sentence in ALL cases.
> But that's not "usability", it's style.

I guess it depends on your definition of usability. Jakob Neilsen himself believes that user satisfaction is a part of usability:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

I agree that it's possible to have eminently usable software that is ugly to a bunch of people. But it entirely depends on how that software is being used.

In the case of a web site, Jakob says it well (from the same article I linked above):

On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for
survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave.
If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company
offers and what users can do on the site, people leave.
If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a
website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer
users' key questions, they leave.

I would add: if the site is ugly, people leave.

Your web site might be "eminently usable", but if people don't read it, it's a failure.
They've found higher correlation of intelligence with cardio vs. anaerobic. Although that just may be a function of what kind of person prefers running and swimming as opposed to throwing weights around.

I prefer the latter.
Total fat intake and calories have both increased steadily since at least 1849. Starches have jumped up as well starting in the 1970s.

http://www.chiroweb.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=38225
Disqus 2.0: New Plugin, New Interface, And Local Comment Backup
I'd expect this in a southern state perhaps, but.. Massachusetts? What the hell?
The battle is already over: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/disqus.com+intensedebate.co...
A very interesting look at the results of Google Insights. When I have a moment I'll see if I can find public sales/growth figures for a few companies and compare them to their Google Insight results to see whether there is any correlation.
I think the article was missing the '...And What To Do About It' part. Although, it may be a system that is perceived to be broken but in reality serves its masters well. The startup gets their payday and the acquiring entity may make some additional revenue and most likely get some sort of tax write-off.
I'd go ahead and keep the bed, since it is what you are accustomed to.

When I moved out to CA, I left half my stuff in KY. I'm about to downsize again to lower the bar of "ramen profitable", so some of my stuff has got to go.

I think our culture is way too obsessed with things. still, it's a capitalist society.

So, here is what I would do :

1) Set aside everything you really need : no more than 20 shirts, 10 pants, various accessories, the bed, whatever else you would be up shit creek without. Set all of that aside.

2) Look through what's left. Can you sell any of it? You wardrobes at least would certainly be sellable on craigslist. If so, do so. Get rid of the books you haven't read in 5 years, unless you really loved them. Libraries do a pretty good job of storing those things.

3) Throw out anything that you can't sell that isn't practically useful, if it's a hassle to move it.
Well, that's spam then bro :)
"This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation."

Right, because that's an entirely valid reason for a search and seizure. The guy should give the ACLU a call. This case is right up their alley.
The stifling collectivism and anti-creative properties you refer to are more akin to Feudalism, IMO.
Ask HN: How To Paint a MacBook Pro?
I've got a 15 inch MacBook Pro and i want to put the logo of one of my websites(ExplodingWumpus.com) on the back cover. I know that getting it laser engraved is the best option but i live in Calgary, AB Canada and everywhere i've talked to that has a laser engraver is either not interested or wants way too much money. So the next option i've looked at is painting it. I was just wondering how you guys would recommend doing it and with what? Making a stencil and then using aluminum spray paint?
Garb for trendy terrorists:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/store/imgs/stand_back_square_0.png
not an accurate comparison - since disqus launched they have been taking pageviews that should have went to the blogger/content creator and leveraged them on disqus - let's see what that chart looks like in 6 months from now.
Disqus Gives Users What They've Been Asking For
Steve has obviously never had to develop software for the life science industry. My response to any such post is simple. It depends. It depends on the kind of application, for what kind of market, etc.

I've seen more than my share of applications done in the "this is how I would use it" fashion and the results have been disastrous. I am sure there are examples, perhaps a first take or prototype that reflects what your ideal it and then you whet it with people out in the market, but you have to ask yourself "what problem am I trying to solve?". You have to ask yourself (cause if you don't someone else will) the "so what" question.

It's not about the process, which is where a lot of requirements gather bogs down (IMO, every time you talk with a current or potential user, or even a hater you are collecting requirements). It's about really caring about the problems you are trying to solve and why someone would care about the way you want to solve it.
It is an accurate comparison. Because Intensedebate does the same thing.
doesn't rendered useless imply a change of state?
Java.next #2: Java Interop
Using Your Network to Grow as an Entrepreneur
Wow, seriously, somebody asked me to do this too!

They also offered me 50% of the business in return for codeing it - I refused. (and no, it didn't turn out to be eBay itself :P)

All these wannabe entrepreneurs, I know I should applaud them at trying, but they are missing the main thing a entrepreneur should have - good unique ideas.
Swimming also puts you in better shape IMO. I used to run plenty, but my knees started hurting, so now I only run if I am actually playing a sport. I took up swimming for my exercise. I'd never taken a swimming lesson in my life, but I just went to the pool and started doing it. A few times I asked the life guards for some tips, and I also chatted up some of the good swimmers and got tips from them.

I went for a 2k run the other day just to see what it was like after swimming but not running for a couple months. It was about the same as when I ran everyday (maybe even a bit easier), and I have a slightly more toned upper body now.
i made comments using my email without registering and some months later when i created an account for that email address the comments where never claimed to me