skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think they'd pretty quickly find out that Arthur Andersen is effectively a defunct entity. I suppose it is an "in joke" like the "thousands of case studies" part of his question.

You are correct that some time, though probably not too much, would be wasted in discovering the above. I do see your point.

I felt that was part of the author's point too; "lying is so often a bad strategy". Perhaps the common ground between our approaches to the article is that he should not be surprised that his bullshit question elicited a bullshit response.
$22.2 million
DevCentral Daily - August 7th, 2008
I think SEO is one of the best options for product builders to market their products, but it's really only a HUGE win if you have a huge body of content (and a means for that to keep growing). User-generated content + SEO really a viral loop: 100 pages get indexed, which generates X views per day. Eventually, a user creates some new content. Now 101 pages get indexed, increasing the views per day. Rinse repeat, wait for glory. :-)

Of course, for a lot of startups (like RescueTime unfortunately) SEO isn't a huge/viral win (though we still give it a lot of love).
Maybe I'm just charitably interpreting things, but #1 actually seemed OK to me. I think his point was that you want to separate the code that interprets your data from the code that builds your data so that they can be tested in isolation. That makes a lot of sense to me. The "bad code" end of this spectrum would be an algorithm in the application logic that can only run when connected to a fully-stocked external data store. That's not very testable; ideally you want to suck in a "test set" from a file or whatever and hand it to the algorithm instead.

But yeah, it's not as simple as removing "new" calls from application logic; it depends entirely on what you're trying to construct.
Mushrooms are fungi, you know.
If Apple can disable third party apps remotely, who’s iPhone is it, anyway?
I wonder what Bram's plan is.

It ought to be obvious that none of this is about piracy. It's about new sources of revenue. It's divix again, but this time mandated by law, because people refused to buy it. It is about charging extra for extra functionality like pause and fast forward. That's what DRM is about, not piracy.
I didn't vote it down, but I imagine it was voted down for laughable incorrectness. GNUStep, while a noble effort, is largely a copy of the pre-OSX-era NeXTSTEP API (although I guess technically it's trying to rebuild Openstep, but it seems the history of these projects is so confusing that NeXTSTEP is used interchangeably because it's so iconic), which is literally a decade behind.

GNUStep is not seem to be, nor does it seem to want to be, an effort like Mono to create an open Mac OS X platform (at least last time I looked at it, which was late. It also can't use some of the finest decisions that Apple and NeXT made (e.g., ".bundle", ".app" and ".framework" paradigms) because the underlying linux platform is hostile to them.

Comparing modern OS X to gnustep as anything more than a historical curiosity shows a degree of ignorance and dismissiveness that borders on flagrant. Even assuming the best in people, most mac developers I know would have a frown forced out of them at such a comparison.
There's a more insidious meaning in that article: Men are reasonable and don't want more than they need but have no balls to stand up to a wife that keeps wanting her husband to get MORE MORE MORE. The SEO stuff could be abstracted over and it would just be a folk story.
We have used PHP extensively, and have been bitten by the confusing semantics of "==" more than once. By now, we have diffused these problems, but they did trump us quite a bit.
Agreed, static functions are (in my experience) much easier to test precisely because they generally have very explicit inputs and outputs, whereas instance methods are more likely to have "implicit" inputs in the form of object state and to have side effects, often in the form of modifying object state, rather than explicit outputs. My experience is that basically the closer you get to pure functional programming, with no global state and no side effects, the easier testing is.

The item about polymorphism strikes me as bogus too. But then again, I absolutely abhor mocks, because my experience has been that the mocks end up diverging from the real production code and you end up with either tests that don't break when the app is broken or tests that break when the app isn't broken, so optimizing for mocking is a horrible idea in my book.

Composition over inheritance is generally a good idea, but it is actually useful for testability, though not for the reasons the author mentions. Deep inheritance hierarchies make things hard to test because testing a leaf class in the hierarchy naturally means you're testing every other class up the chain, making it very hard to test just the code on that leaf class. Deep hierarchies like that also usually involve some contract between the different levels that's inherently hard to test for.
I feel super iffy about completing the form.
Maybe I've just seen one too many factory factories.
I love boolean constants for assignments, but I think you've got a good point with regards to comparisons. Rarely, in real PHP code, do you see comparisons involving boolean constants. Most of the time, you just do this:

if ($var) { dothis(); }
if (!$var) { dothis(); }

The constants are definitely adding to the confusion. However, only in these contrived examples does one compare numbers and strings with boolean constants. The type conversion is logical, it just looks funny.
>But rather, will this make kids the kind of people who want to check out non-fiction books from the library on their own ten years from now.

That's a really tall order.
Poll: More Secure? Hosted Vs. Self-Hosting Web Applications
A recent thread proposed that a company should host any web application that they are going to put private data on so that the data will be secure from the owners of the web application.

If it came down to it, the poster said they would not use the application at all, if it didn't have a self-hosted version.

The options are:

Yes, we would self-host even if that means maintaining application code, severs, and physical security.

No, We would not self-host the application. The chances our data being stolen is slight because we are paying these guys to secure our data as well as provide the web application...

For the sake of the poll, lets assume any cost benefit for self-hosting would be wiped out by the costs of internal staff to maintain the web application and other costs.
Yes, we would self-host
No, we wouldn't self host
Upvote for using hundreds of student hours. Free labor is good for startups!

I also resent the fact that your time is viewed as worthless if you don't have a college degree.
So, this version doesn't work for the 3g iphone. What's the point?
The point is..there are many consumers out there that own 1st and 2nd gen iPhone that are on T Mobile like myself.
What if they fire you for some shitty pretext?
Right, his take away needs to be that he should create a style of conversation where entrepreneurs feel safe saying "I don't know" or questioning him. He hasn't discovered a flaw in entrepreneurs, just a flaw in his own style at the meetings.
People buy the $999 iPhone app
If this were called "female lying syndrome" it would be a Thing You Could Not Say.

I'm a beer-swilling steak-eating iron-pumping male and I say "I don't know anything about that" all the time. What compelled you to post that glib answer?
I wanted to do something like this after reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I still plan on doing it one day.

If I do, I'm not going to plan anything, just randomly go for a month only with a destination in mind. I would be camping a lot more and try to stay away from hotels and the usual boring highways.
morons...they get what they deserve.
Code Readability: Documentation vs. Refactoring
"...I... clicked 'buy'...and it really bought this app...the App Store...It's not being run well...beware!!!" Does this make sense to anyone? Don't click buy!
While we don't know much about building intrinsic motivation, we do know a lot about the factors that undermine intrinsic motivation. So in practice if you can avoid all these, and you make the process both enjoyable and useful, then at least you're on the right path.
Does Andersen have any profitable divisions? Heck, does it have any divisions?
The myth of the creative class
Call up credit card company.

Say that you didn't make the order.

They fix it.
Thirteen words that lose their meaning when the denominator approaches infinity
Sounds like a good plan :) Should also be a lot of tie ins/plugins/extras you can sell related to mockups I'd expect.

Good luck
My startup will apparently be worth $36 million in August 2011... total BS.

The entire YouNoodle process feels like a phishing scam.
Interview: Second Life founder Philip Rosedale
Where does this say that BitTorrent is working closer with the MPAA? It mentions that in 2005 they were working together to remove pirated content.

It does mention that in 2008 a deal between BitTorrent and Best Buy fell apart due to external situations (the comcast thing).

Also, it might be noted that Akamai bought out Red Swoosh ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Swoosh ) last year to compete with BitTorrent.
This looks fake. Notice the AT&T logo in the top left. There IS no AT&T logo on the iPhone. It just says AT&T in caps on the phone, not lower case.
Well, I grew up on a horse ranch, and I mucked out stalls and was a groom for multiple stables and a training assistant (read: that guy who always got kicked at first shoeing). I'm well acquainted with the notion of physical labor and that oft-mentioned endorphin rush.

I get the same satisfation from a good day's work from either, and I think this notion of a "hard day's work" s exactly that: a romantic notion with no real basis in reality. If anything, it's just another example of how modern american society is anti-intellectual.

And I find it tiresome and hackneyed and often part of a post-hoc rationalization for people who couldn't hack it in a job with more responsibility. Which is not to say that's exactly what this author experienced, but it's certainly an archetype I've run into in the valley more than once.

Ultimately, people should do what makes them happy without any delusions about what is "real", what is "meaningful", and what is "productive".
Agreed. But all the people who said "Yeah, my CTO was telling me about that" are also lying, and trying to trick the investor. It goes both ways.
"What compelled you to post that glib answer?"

It might be glib, it might be stereotypical, but I run into BS answers a lot. The article struck a chord with me because I've witnessed this quite often over the years, and its mostly the guys (rather than the gals) who to HAVE to have an answer.

I'm sure google and forums has made this "syndrome" worse.

to your question: I got this from a recent email discussion of a group of former co-workers from a now defunct software company, where someone started complaining about this issue and we had a big long discussion on it.
> Andrew Yeager, a professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, has been judging the ISEF for nine years and the Intel Science Talent Search for more than 20. "The level of sophistication in these projects is in many cases beyond the level of graduate school and doctoral research," Yeager says.

So why not award them graduate school degrees?
Seriously people, with Apple having the history it has, is anyone surprised by this? Honestly, anyone? This is like someone writing a blog post complaining that there are no clones for Apple hardware, or getting a cease and desist after posting a picture of some theoretical apple hardware product...
A warning sign on the way to digital utopia
What is OCTANe and how can it help you
Wow. How is this number 2? Bad HN!
I assume it's based on "The Fisherman and His Wife", a Russian fairy tale with virtually an identical plot.
While you should definitely report transactions you actually didn't make, I don't recommend lying about transactions you actually made. You have to swear in writing you didn't make the purchase. And the merchant has the opportunity to prove you did actually do this.
> "..I... clicked 'buy'...and it really bought this app"

Gee really? What else is clicking "Buy" supposed to do?
It's not even about free labor. The students in the classes will get free access to my learning system, which has all their class materials built-in, and so no matter what the result of the experiment, the people who use the system will at least reap the same level of benefit that they would with traditional flashcards, and with far less work.

So, I'm doing something to help them, and in return, getting some data to improve the system. Truly the epitome of a win-win scenario.

And, actually, I do have a college degree. Two of them, to be precise, and I rather wish they had been printed on toilet paper, so they'd be worth something.

I've met many college-educated idiots, and many self-educated geniuses. I've also met a similar number of fantastically intelligent college graduates, and self-educated morons. The true test of intelligence, in my experience, is action. Those with intelligence act, create, build, and contribute to making humanity better, whether they want to or not.

So, you've been upvoted for being agreeable. :)
By Mr. Pushkin no less :) Here's a translated version for everyone else's reference - http://home.freeuk.com/russica4/books/goldfish/gfish.html
Another +1 — the article link isn't great at all — those new to SEO should definitely check out the SEOmoz one you provided instead.
While I was not 100% enthused about the idea of having every application go through Apple's gatekeepers, I did think the concept had merit. Enforcing a little quality control could be a good thing; especially with the large number of users who've never owned a smartphone before.

But the quality of approved applications isn't any better than what's available on the average Pocket PC software site. They're just rubber-stamping applications. Some applications have horrible engrish descriptions. Approved applications disappear and reappear depending on the whim this week. Updates to applications take forever.

Apple has dropped the ball on almost everything related to iPhone apps, from the app store to the fking NDA.
It could be a jailbroken phone.
This Week in HTML 5: Mark Pilgrim’s new blog series
Very interesting visualization, but you can also see the politics of today. Certain countries are selectively emphasized even though their relative size does not deserve it. In particular, Iran is a labeled circle in 2000 and 2004 when they won maybe 6 medals total.
Or an ayePhone, which is quite popular among the Scottish demographic.
AIRing out your Lingerie; Running applications for the articles
Yep, mine too.
Is Google's Knol already becoming a den of spam?
For all the coverage this gets on HN, I tried to use the demo and nothing loads.
It's your iPhone, but until you disconnect it from AT&T's network and stop running Apple's software, Apple owns the runtime.
One major example that has stuck with me in the case of Nicaraguan Sign Language, which was spontaneously developed by a group of deaf schoolchildren. Wikipedia has an article on it, and Stephen Pinker discusses the phenomenon at length in his book The Language Instinct.
Is anyone here using New Relic RPM? The demo looks slick. We're currently doing things a little more adhoc for Kongregate. Just using pl_analyze - http://rails-analyzer.rubyforge.org/pl_analyze/
Where are the barriers to entry? I could build the same thing in 24 hours.
Yes and no. You will see the boolean keywords (they aren't actually constants) is the case making sure actually is a boolean, not a string/int.

$x = "";
if ( $x == false ) {} #yes
if ( $x === false ) {} #no

Edit: this is very useful for allowing a string search/manipulation function to return an error condition.

$str = string_function(...)
if ( $str === false ) {
#error
} else {
#continue processing $str
}
The human brain is pretty good at filling in details and justifying or explaining inconsistent things. The person who mentioned a Slashdot thread might not even have been lying. There might have been a thread which said "OS2 is old and dead" and another thread, the following day, which said "DB2 is the future of databases," and, in the heat of the moment, talking to someone you're trying to impress, the brain put the two together and delivered up an attempt to cope with a strange question.
> The argument is really easy when you just look at shops today. Even without a rich population, the denser downtown areas are full of small businesses. In the suburbs, where people are more spread out, chains rule.

Part of that is zoning.

But, how many of those stores are bookstores? How many of them would have sold food if Webvan hadn't screwed the pooch?

Frankly, I don't see the appeal of small stores, especially for things like drugs and food. The prices are higher, the selection is smaller, and they tend to have lousy hours (unless they're liquor stores). If they employ anyone outside the owner's family, they don't pay much and they don't pay benefits.
People try to use this excuse on eBay a lot too.
doctype: Documenting the open web
Doctype is a Google-sponsored open encyclopedia and reference library for developers of web applications. By web developers, for web developers.
Normally: prompt the user for a password, then purchase.
It has been quite a long time since I last looked into Franz' licensing terms, but I believe the royalty applies only if you distribute a product which contains the Allegro CL runtime. In other words, if you write a Lisp application, using Allegro CL, and you deliver it to a customer, then the customer effectively has a copy of Allegro CL. Franz wants to be compensated for this. If you wrote a server-side product, then Allegro CL is expensive, yes, but you just pay for the number of licenses you need. No royalties, as far as I know.
You're probably Scottish, would you pay $999 for a delicious 'Buttery' app, which would display a picture of a fabulous Aberdeen rowie?
Learn Another Language
While I haven't used the AppStore myself, I'd expect the Buy process to take at least two user steps -- a good rule of thumb for an interface action with permanent effects, to guard against accidental clicks.

Maybe the user was expecting one more level of confirmation than the AppStore actually had?
The Incomplete Web
unless you've purchased something else recently
They would also have to admit that they're not the Grand Poobas of security. They confused security with brand management.
I'm definitely looking forward to your launch. Sounds great!
Doesn't Amazon hold a patent for "one-click shopping"?

Or is this "one-touch" shopping?

;)
Creative business cards designs
Given a tiny piece of paper, some designer can be truly creative.
Unless you had to type your password right before ordering (which I'm assuming wasn't the case in this instance) I think making an argument that it was you that pressed the button is pretty hard for the merchant.
Thanks for the correction, I've updated the post accordingly.

The idea behind the 10 minute sessions was to address issues with short attention spans. Maybe that could be another dynamic variable - the lessons change in duration once they reach a point of diminishing returns.
Incidentally, this says more about the low quality of grad school research than the high quality of these kids' research.
They might catch on since he said he's already called them and told him he made a mistake
Is this some kind of advertising campaign?

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=OlgaRitchie
NewsCred was nominated for a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer Award
mmm, candy
define private data
People is plural. This is one dumb guy. Small difference, but with big implications.
Rate my startup: iphone+web app helps managing passowrds
Yes, and Apple licensed Amazon's patent.
This is the standard concern with any SaaS solution, from Salesforce.com to hosted Gmail to Mint.com to QuickBooks' online offering. We get the objection at RescueTime less often than you might think. When it comes down to it, data about what you did as an individual (whether it's Twitter-like or a passive recording of window/tab titles) isn't THAT valuable/scary.

It's probably likelier that you'd have a disgruntled tech/admin do something untoward with the data on a local version of the app.
Yes, point taken.

However, I can imagine people seeing "$999" and some pattern recognition firing in their brain interpreting it as "$9.99" because that would be a more reasonable price for an iPhone app, and clicking "Buy" before the rational part of the brain realized the error.

So I imagine that the whole point of setting an iPhone app price at $999 was to scam people in exactly this way.

Maybe a modification to one-click would be a "are you really, really sure" dialog for suspiciously high prices.

This person, of course, does not have this excuse, because they did correctly interpret "$999", and clicked anyway.
All you need is an idea, basic hosting services and php/mysql to start your own business.

No need to quit your job, code a couple of hours at night and use your friends as testers for feedback.

In less than a month you'll know if it is worth it or not and all you would have spent is $9.95 in web hosting and $9.95 in a domain which you can resell to recover your investment.

Unless you want to live la dolce vita spending millions from funders while delivering nothing, like CUIL.
only if deep fried
"Extremely wealthy from stock options that soared in value, 100 of Google's first 300 workers have quietly resigned to go to law school, help poor shopkeepers get loans or simply to live the good life. Although hardly a mass exodus, the numbers are adding up, scattering what some employees considered their second families."

One third gone after ten years in business. Even assuming most of these people joined a few years after Google started, that's a turnover rate of about 5%.

I wonder why the article doesn't mention Patri Friedman: http://www.reason.com/news/show/126198.html . Kiva is neat, but independent floating city-states are at least a little neater.
This is the sanitized version of the payment terms. This is put in as an exhibit in the software contract agreement itself. I do like the idea and after some research, do like the founder and his background. Among other things, he has a phd in the area his product is in and also worked for a company in this space for 9 years. Also has some working core software(he spend last couple of year full time on this). But are the terms fair? Under what circumstances would you take on such a project(if ever)?
--------
A fixed price of $X for completion Phase 1 Milestone and an additional $X for Internal Release Milestone. Payment for both Phase 1 and Phase 2 (Internal Release Milestone) will be made only after delivery and acceptance by Client of Documentation to be made pursuant to paragraph 5 of this Agreement and after Client secures funding. If funding is not secured by February 13th, 2009 an interest of 1% per month will be payable on the amount due for each month after February 13th, 2009.. However, the Client shall pay the Contractor within 60 days upon the expiry of the deadline of February 13, 2009, failing which the Contractor shall terminate this Agreement as per Clause 14.3.