skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't speak to how it usually works. I am just thinking about both of your positions and 25% of each and every month seems like a good deal on both sides.

Of course this assumes you assume insignificant other costs for setting up a new customer.
The Roundup - Lodsys and phone-books
(modernizr lead developer here)

Something this article brings up and that you touch on is: coupling your use of CSS3 to JavaScript being enabled.

There is an incorrect way of using Modernizr where you always surround your use of a CSS3 feature with a `.feature .box` class, which is generally unnecessary and leads to the issue the author was concerned about.

Modernizr classes are best used in the `.no-feature` case, where you do something like use background images or another clever CSS use to mimic the feature or handle the fallback situation. In general I like to code my styles optimistically though.

I left a comment on the site saying it's hard to address this subtlety of the "right way" to use Modernizr classes. We're launching a new site very soon and hope to better document this approach so people don't go down this tricky road. :)
I'm curious, if you knew nothing of the two men in the picture would you draw such strong conclusions.

Body language accounts for a lot, but don't put too much stock in a simple snapshot.
Nobody knows unknown unknowns, but good programmers will be able to enumerate the kinds of errors they're guarding against.
Because Python 2.4 is still AWESOME!
Manhattan Borough President & AgSquared at Slow Money NYC Showcase
Being in the ecommerce space and a possible end user of the product I would charge based on the size of the deal without a monthly fee. The idea being to reduce friction even more than the 30 day free trial.

For example: widget costs $20 dollars if 50 people buy and take a percentage of the total so 1% (I would a/b test the percent and possibly ad a flat rate fee per an offer) would be 10 dollars.

I think this would align your interests more with the end user. The more they use your product, the more they pay you.
SMSified Launches - Simple, REST-based API for sending and receiving SMS
If Google thinks inflation is going up, why are they acquiring more cash?
I tend to be slower than most at doing this. All the uncertainty and fragility paralyzes me more than most people, it seems.

I think I'm just spoiled because I have more experience with less dysfunctional setups.
The article is a bit disingenuous. While this might bring the cost down, it's certainly not going to be an alternative to commercial flights.

Let's look at a flight that I would love to take right now: Phoenix to Seattle.

Here is a map of the route you [could] take for this flight:

http://wh98.fltplan.com/mapgenerator/index.cfm?UdTimer=40838...

This 1028 miles, but lets say (for ease of calculation) that it's 1000 exactly.

Now for an aircraft. The Citation V is a nice plane, holds about 7 people, and is something that would be appropriate for what the article seems to be describing. Cruising speed for this aircraft is 495mph[1], but again, for ease of calculation, say 500mph.

Flight time is 2 hours each way, for four hours total. The citation 5 burns 210 gallons of fuel per hour of flight, so this means that round trip (4 hours), you're burning 840 gallons of fuel.

Current fuel cost at Cutter Aviation in Phoenix is $5.58/gallon, so total fuel cost for this trip is 840 * 5.58 is $4687.

That's just fuel. If there are 7 passengers, that is $669.6 per person.

You still have to pay a crew, pay maintenance on the jet (which is an enormous cost), pay airport fees, pay administrative overhead, etc.

[2] Estimates that cost/mile on a Citation V is $3.81 - My trip to Seattle costs $7620.0, or $1088 per person ($952/person if we use the jump seat). This now includes maintenance, but not administration, pilots, etc.

I don't know about you guys, but that's not even remotely close to something that I can afford.

According to hipmunk[3], even a super-short-notice flight to Seattle that leaves tomorrow is only $500. Even a first class flight is only $700. $700 is getting close to something comparable, but implying that this is something that is for more than just "the wealthy", is kindof wrong.

Cool, but there is a reason only the very wealthy fly privately: flying privately is an absurdly expensive thing to do.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_Citation_V\

[2]http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:edFt-3bDiGgJ:w...

[3]http://www.hipmunk.com/results?to=SEA&s=swz7fkx5vev&...

edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying that this is a bad idea. The aviation industry has been screaming that this is the direction that commercial flight is going to take for quite some time now. I'm saying that the article's implication that the everyman can now fly "like you're rich" is a misrepresentation of what this service is actually aiming to do.
It's the implementation of patents that has legal and monetary implications, not the idea/ideals of patents.
Great step-by-step walkthrough that will help people not familiar with all the tools. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!
Start-Up Marketing Tips
State space explosion in program analysis and crypto
The emulator code is just 86 kb, and it isn't even aggressively minified!

http://bellard.org/jslinux/cpux86.js
Video: SMSified and CouchDB. SMS Awesomeness in 5 Minutes
I'm speculating here, but I'm guessing the reason it was downvoted (if it was, I never saw it dimmed) was because the whole "section 3.2.2" thing seems to have been settled around a year or so ago. That is, anyone who was concerned about it being a problem should probably know by now that it ended up being resolved and left MonoTouch unaffected. For a lot of folks I presume it's "old news" and some folks may just think euroclydon is trying to spread FUD.
>I've worked on this on and off for the past 3 years but never really put my heart into it. All feedback welcome.

Things are cliche because they're often true. Ideas aren't worth anything. Execution makes all the difference. If you've spent three years on it, but aren't enthusiastic and it hasn't gone anywhere, give up on it. Pretend we all said it was a bad idea to make yourself feel better.

Or, you could suit up and actually do something with this. Start small. Choose a single (small) marketplace and moderate it yourself. Put off as much as you can, just code up the basics and launch. You can backfill features if you get any traction.
Not to nitpick, but they're engineers. The previous President, Jiang Zemin, was also an electrical engineer - before that generation, most leaders were educated by their experiences (i.e. the Long March) and not formally schooled.

It is interesting that not only are there cultural differences in the ways Chinese and western leaders approach problems, but also there's the "engineering" approach vs. the "legal" or "social sciences" approach more often seen in western nations.
This is a really good app. I talk and do business with clients & contractors in California, Romania, India and Philippines and it is often very difficult to schedules meetings that are reasonable for myself and the other party.

Thanks for this! Good UI good performance. Good inspiration!
Ask HN: Silo - SSL certificate safeguard web app - do I go ahead and build?
Hey everyone,

I am deciding whether to go ahead and build Silo (http://getsilo.com), a little web app which safeguards SSL certificates. The idea came about after I ran into the following annoying, yet easily avoidable problems:

1. Real - I make some changes to a client's web server and restart apache. Apache demanded a pass phrase for a SSL certificate on one of the domains. I don't know it. Without it apache won't start, meaning all websites are offline. The regular sysadmin is away. I email / phone anyone who might know this key but as expected no one knows. A panic vhost disable of the SSL domain, and all websites are back up except the secure one which is down. More panic server changes to setup a self signed SSL certificate. Then I go through the process of buying a new SSL certificate. Time lost, money spent, website glitches, and unhappy visitors complaining when their browsers say the website is not secure. All because of an unknown pass phrase.

2. Real - A visitor emails expressing their concern that their browser is telling them that our e-commerce website is insecure. I take a look and see that the SSL certificate has expired. I buy a new one and go through the process of verifying domain ownership. E-commerce website looses customers, and therefore sales, for 2 days till the new certificate is active.

3. Hypothetical (hasn't happened to me) - The web server dies and there are no backups of the SSL certificate, private, public keys, chain and vhost config. I now need to go back to the various companies that sold the certificates, login to their management areas, download the certificates and go through the process of getting the SSL certificates setup correctly using their various setup guides and documentation (often a somewhat trial and error process).

Silo would store your SSL certificates, keys, chain files, pass phrases, and send out SSL renewal reminders to solve these three problems. From my own experience I know this product would of saved me time, money, and stress. I am interested to hear if anyone has had similar problems, whether people 'get' the idea of Silo, and finally would be willing to pay for this simple product (pricing at http://getsilo.com/plans).

Many thanks for your time,
Ollie Rattue
Disclaimer: I helped implement this.

I think it's a great idea. Many news sites have been displaying "visits" or "hits" next to their news stories for a while but it's never exactly clear where this comes from and how it's measured.

By pulling this data directly from Google Analytics we are speaking the same language as everyone else and displaying metrics like time on page, bounce rate etc I think reveals a greater level of data than most.

We're following in the (awesome) footsteps of people like Fred Wilson (http://chartbeat.com/demo/) and I hope that by displaying this data it will help our community keep us heading in the right direction and of course it should motivate all of us to keep pushing the numbers in the right direction :)
I think this article would be a good eye opener for you: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/world/europe/17secrecy.htm....

French journalists themselves question how in their quest to protect private life, they are being used by politicians.
I find these benchmarks slightly confusing. There are protocols/technologies mixed in with applications (or sites). Isn't there going to be huge overlap in these? Facebook vs. HTTP? Flash video vs. YouTube?
Why can’t humans create what nature created? Creativity is not magic, I see no reason why it should be in principle impossible for humans to build creative systems.
Also Yulia Tymoshenko, rightful heir to the throne of Ukraine, is a cyberneticist. It seems to be a regular trend in former Communist countries, that political leaders have a technical background.
Rich People Are Really Interested In Buying Hot Startup Stock ‎
Five Design Demigods On Overcoming Failure [video]
How much power does it draw?

What's the price?

When will I be able to buy it down my local Wilkinsons?
A first step is in removing all records below a certain k-anonymity threshold from released data sets. Of course this brings in sample bias and reduces the usability of the set. Better educating researchers in the theory and practices of privacy is another thing that is urgently needed.
Geographically densest Wikipedia coverage
Exploiting Google news with query deserve freshness
I think there are two different things happening here, which are not quite pinpointed. We have to work for both, but they are different kinds of work.

With physical things, you want them to keep doing the same thing, but they degrade themselves. With software, it just stays being the same, but you want to keep changing what you do with it.

Are there not rather different kinds of knowledge-work demanded there? With keeping things the same, you have a basically closed-ended aim -- you just gather more knowledge and you have it cornered. But with changing things everything is always open-ended -- what you will need to know seems basically unpredictable.

That is why there is subtle mistake in trying to design software to be adaptable. It is a contradiction. Design is using knowledge to make something, but the whole point about the kind of change we are facing here is that it is basically unpredictable. You cannot design for the future, because you cannot design for what you do not know. You just have to adapt when it arrives.

Or something.
No FUD here. I remember the 3.2.2 thing being news that transcended the realm of just iOS developers, but the resolution, I don't remember that at all.

A year, wow, it doesn't seem like that long ago!
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http://www.almstba.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20957
http://www.almstba.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20957
The point is that Google already has $37B in liquid assets, which are unlikely to yield more than 3.7% returns. As a point of reference 10yr US treasury bonds only return 3.3% and are definitely illiquid; 1 Tbonds return only 0.22%. I haven’t heard of any current liquid asset yielding anything near 3.7%.

If they really have investment opportunities that they are convinced will surpass 3.7% return, why aren’t they just using their existing liquid assets. I agree with other commenters that these funds are either in preparation for a large acquisition or just a dumb decision resulting from irrational and inefficient buracracy common to all large companies.
WhereBerry (YC W11): A Social Network for Making Future Plans
I love the concept, but a piece missing here is how many "goals" / "conversions" each post generates.

From my own adventures in blogging I found that # of visitors isn't the right metric to measure success / fail.

EG - this somewhat technical post is low visits (~1500) but consistently generates leads at a high conversion rate:

http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/05/how-to-track-co...

Vs this link-baity post which generated lots of visitors (15,000+) but generates substantially fewer leads than the technical post:

http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/12/%E2%80%9Cmerry-...

That's not to say that there isn't inherent SEO / brand value in high-traffic posts but again, in my own experience, I'd rather have a handful of posts that perform like example #1 vs. a dozen of example #2
And it does not even have the latest movies available for streaming. By latest I mean good interesting movies released in the last year or two. It does better with TV shows but still does not have many shows. All I am saying is the traffic is only going to go up.
Ah, I see. There is a list of servers with notes here: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supporte...
Boston’s Hidden Gem: Website Performance Companies
IPad Art Show in SF June 6th
Cloud VPS in the browser. ("Please standby while we create a browser tab for your new instance...")

"The browser as the operating."

Someone must buzzword the hell out of this and then create a new startup based on it.
Ask HN: Good terms for first employee in pre-funding startup?
I've been asked to work for a startup as their first employee(1 of 2 is a technical founder).

They offered me 1% equity, that will be held in a trust, so I don't actually have any 'power'. As soon as they get funded, I will get a salary in accordance with the general market(they talked $3000 ballpark).

1. Is this a good deal?
2. Are there things I should know or ask?
As someone who blogs on SEOmoz, you can bet this is going to make me up my game with my posts now everyone can see how widely-read my posts were vs. my colleagues'.
If there is high inflation, then the lump sum of principal borrowed will be easy to pay back in 10 years. Of course they must invest the funds in some kind of real asset to realize this benefit.
I disagree to a point. One key part of a worms match is to be able to make your move in a fixed amount of time. Playing in a scenario like WWF, it could easily take that time just to reacquaint myself with where everyone is.
Top 5 Developer Skills That Will Get You Hired or Promoted
My assumption is that it's shorthand, as in "HTTP" actually means "HTTP excluding <others on list>". Could be wrong.
Is it being recorded too? Not able to watch it live, but would love see it later.
Bing Adds 'Like' Button
"That puts Netflix above HTTP websites (18 percent), BitTorrent (11 percent), and YouTube (10 percent) as a source of downstream traffic during peak times in North America. (BitTorrent still accounts for half of all upstream traffic)"

I don't understand this -- surely every downstream requires a corresponding upstream? Are they only counting upstream from domestic users? Or is the vast majority of bittorrent traffic to american users coming from seeders outside the US?
"Someone who could write large programs that have a high probability of being correct"

No one can do that.

I can write a number of small programs that are correct, however.
This is easy, because I can check all of the inputs and outputs.
When I combine them, I get another small program that is also correct.

P: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this"

D: "So don't do that"

This is the reason for FP, DSLs, etc.
Arnold Schwarzenegger admite tener un hijo extramatrimonial
Web console with Node.JS
It's really funny. I built freearchive.org for archiving my del.icio.us bookmarks (tagged with fa:archive). I tagged your draft sometimes ago (http://www.delicious.com/adulau/fa:archive+qemu) just because it was a good summary of Fabrice works. But I was not really expecting the archive to be useful for someone else...
It frustrates me when something is labeled "free" but I have to tweet to my friends to get it.

Social capital isn't free.
I have worked on this in the past and work on a side project in this field. Would be willing to discuss more via email if you wish. (Email's in my profile)
Those Node vs Erlang web server benchmarks? We figured out what the problem was.
Don't Sell my Twitpic
> The `once` distinction is a product of bad design and it only exists when you have a language that is both the templating (view) language and the processing language.

PHP takes it's cues from C -- that's where the idea of include() and require() come from. These functions pre-date the existence of OOP in PHP. There was a time when even the _once() functions didn't exist and you had to manage that yourself.

It's best to think of these functions as low-level building blocks you can use to build on your own abstraction layer. I never call those functions directly.

> The error handing should be done with exceptions.

PHP supports many styles of development. If you prefer errors, you can have those. If you prefer exceptions, you can convert all errors to exceptions with only a few lines of code (there is even a built in exception type for this purpose).
It's amazing wot CSS can do
Please give feedback on our site on Startups and Technology
The site is focused on the startup scene in India. We're a month old and have been getting an increasing audience, but there has virtually been no feedback. Any comments, positive or negative, will be appreciated.
This is a good article, but it does miss one incredibly important piece of the puzzle - the possibility that US citizens have an economically rational aversion to PhDs in science and engineering. A recent RAND study supports this point of view:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html

I think it's critical to make science and engineering a desirable career path for young americans, but simply "making it cool" isn't the way to go - and could (as the article points out) actually be destructive in that it would cause harm to students who responded to the pr campaign only to find long training times and poor career prospects relative to their friends who did law, dentistry, medicine, mba, etc.
Heh, I get 'Illegal instruction' when I compile and run:

long main = 0xc8c70ff0;

That used to crash my old Pentium box.
I think what they are doing is getting some practice issuing bonds. Since they are Google, they can't just dip a toe in the water.

They have a great name and their ad business is looking more like reliable cash cow. Over time it makes sense to leverage stable cash flow. My guess is they will continues to issue bonds over time.
Actually, investor and rating agency decisions are influenced by their history with the company. So it can make sense to "introduce" a company to the debt markets before it has an actual need for the capital.
I would think it would take more than "one small change" to get this added. Never as easy as it seems.
website, demo, screenshots?
Upstream: sending data. Downstream: receiving data.

With HTTP and media streaming you send very little data ("I'd like this web page, please") and you receive lots ("here's the entire content of the web page"). With BitTorrent you send lots of data (fragments of files to other peers) and you receive lots (the fragments of files you're missing).
French 3 Strikes Suspended Due To Anti-Piracy Security Alert
It's like programmers using plaintext for a protocol instead of binary and getting the front page of Hacker News.
I think it's aimed at the space between the average consumer - you or I - and Wealthy McGuy who owns or rents his own plane. The whole idea is aimed at people who can schedule a vacation for an indefinite time period - because there's no guarantee that the flight you want will actually fill up, you have to be very flexible with your vacation days, and that's not available to everyone.
I don't remember it either, probably because I decided that I would just try to make my website work well on mobile and skip the app altogether. Became convinced of this strategy when A decided to take 30% of my sales through an app also (or did they rescind that also?).

Anyway, downvoting without comment on something like this is poor.
If you were educated in a communist country at any time from 50s to 80s you would pretty much by default be either a scientist, an engineer, an architect or a doctor. Most likely an engineer.

It's like trying to predict the behavior of a Model-T buyer based on their color preference.
Thanks for the tip. The site looks good.
What would happen if we let high school students not go to school?
Sequoia Leads $3M Round in Onavo, The Must-Have Data Shrinking iOS App