skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think a big part of the value for MS will be skype as a voip development platform.

https://extras.skype.com/

for the corporate world, MS can probably do some big upselling into the PBX world.

I think their could be some interesting tie-ins to getting an integrated system working between the pbx of the company you are contacting, and web-based support. Theoretically skype could provide that for their already installed base.
Control doesn't create obedience, it creates rebellion. Whatever obedience that controlling the system seems to have created was there in the first place.. Controlling the internet will do more harm than good in my opinion.
I have been BEGGING Google for this in the Android Market for a year. Seeing a customer post a comment with a question I have no way of answering directly is maddening!

What other kind of business in existence, anywhere, is it actually impossible to communicate with your own customers????
Thomas Jefferson complained about slavery at the same time that he owned slaves, and he wasn't the only one. It's easy to condemn them for that now, of course. But we no doubt have our own such contradictions.
Sometimes I know there is something wrong with my app because someone writes a bad review, but I can't do anything about it because I can't contact them to figure out how they got that problem.

So I made the "contact us" functionality front and center in the app and started getting a lot more direct feedback.
>"No one is going to quit their job for a 3 week contract even if they're really unhappy at their current job. So, with this approach, you've just removed the biggest pool of talented prospects there is."

THANK YOU (THIS THIS THIS)
It is a firefox plugin
I'd really like push support to the app, like the Handoff app, but in reverse. http://www.handoffapp.com/
I wish they had prices, and was less specific. Sometimes it will be Friday, and I'm like "Man i don't care where I go, but I want to go on a weekend vacation."
Then we'll have to agree to disagree.

I agree that the principle is possible because I view almost every principle as possible. But I think the achievement of said principle is far beyond man's capabilities. And I think the primary limiter is us, that we cannot produce something greater than our own intelligence. (I have seen many try, and fail, to build something that reaches even their own intelligence.)
I imagine its a fair-weather solution. Raining? Everybody gets wet when anybody gets in or out. Kids in the back? They scatter before you can get out. How about arm rests? My Mom is 82, and uses the door to help get in and out. Any controls on the door? How would that work? Wiring would have to be creative. And forget about map pockets.
These fissures expand the surface area of the cerebral cortex and allow for complex thought and reasoning without taking up more space in the skull. Such foldings aren’t seen in mammals such as rodents or other animals.

So, maybe this is just a gene which will enable a real life "Secret of NIMH?"

How folded are parrot brains? They've always struck me as being very smart for their size.
How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise, and Get Paid to Change the World
Which carriers offer this?
There is! (if I understand correctly)

It's hacky, but if you keep the webpage open, any links you send from your mobile will "push" (technically, it pulls) to your browser!
Yeah, just because I'm interviewing with you doesn't mean that I'm 100% on board with your "mission" just yet. It took me about two years with my company to really really really get behind what we do and believe that we really are the best at what we do. It took that long because I, by default, probably like most other sane people, don't just trust blindly. The company had to prove itself to me. Trying to hire based on the inverse of that would be misguided.
Open source alternative for Android/Chrome: http://www.2cloudproject.com/

The experience is really nice because it uses the native Android 'share link' dialogue.
Needs full site / images for examples, IMO. The dribbble is nice, and I think shows good taste, but a 400x300 corner-image is not a website. Demo what you're selling, not just your style, and either way, more!

edit: and FYI, yiipu.com is coming up with broken images, and roll-overs for your buttons aren't loaded either. Though it seems your site is now being HN'd, so that could be the cause. For the buttons specifically, eager-load those things, a load-on-mouseover generally strikes me as an oversight.
99designs.com fast
Getting the same thing on Google Chrome 12 on Ubuntu 9.04.
All of that is very true. You illustrate the point that things can seem fantastic or "dreamy" until you start to think about the logistics of some of it. Although you can't simply let that squash an innovative idea.
You seem to be saying that if Gates didn't support the decision, then he would try to get Ballmer out. I disagree -- this isn't a big enough issue for that. (Edit: I should clarify. It is a big issue, but Ballmer wasn't acting on his own. Replacing him would accomplish little.) So while Gates is a long term investor, it still makes no sense for him to speak his mind on this at the cost of stock price. It might not affect him much, but why discourage others from investing, even the slightest bit?
> ...the Yale School of Medicine and Turkey...

Medicine and Turkey, that's an interesting area of study!
DotPeek - Free .NET Decompiler is Available for Early Access
This is a direct result of elections. People chose those who are more like themselves.

In China, the political elite also choose those who are similar in outlook. If the original ones were engineers, so to will the new rising stars be engineers.
Respect if you don't have a better argument. Better in terms of logic, facts, and science. Respect if the other person is following logical implications. Religion is very easy to prove wrong, using logic, facts, and science. Disregarding another person's opinion just because you disagree, without explaining by way of logic why you're right and the other person is wrong, is axiomatically wrong.

By the way, and this is just a suggestion to HN, those that down-vote based on whims or disagreements should be heavily penalized. It's correct to down-vote spam, trolls, offensive postings, or comments that add nothing, but it's very wrong to discard what others say simply because it's not the music that the powerful button clickers want to hear.
Does it work pretty well?
I hope everyone realizes that these are going to be held on stage, and that if you do this, a lot of stuff of the type that companies usually like to keep secret is going to get
discussed in front of a roomful of people.

I also don't know if it's going to work. I compressed the time slots about 3x to make it interesting for the audience. Since I won't know the startups already and the time slots are so short, the result will probably be more like YC interviews than office hours.
Right -- and these are all companies with multi-millions in revenue. There are many other companies, many with only one founder, that are doing $200K+ with no funding. And these people are often treated like tech-world outsiders!

When I lived in NYC there were tech community events filled with people trying to launch an idea with no traction (ie. users, customers) and in many cases these events required an invite! I have more than one profitable bootstrapped web app and I can't get an invite!
Fox publishes some of the most sensationalistic science reporting I have ever seen. The paper itself is an extremely interesting result, since it provides some information about the folds in our brain (as Gunel is quoted as saying at the bottom of the article), but Fox's story is an insane distortion.

First, the only thing they're reporting on is a link between changes in LAMC3 and " complex bilateral occipital cortical gyration abnormalities". They make no mention of intelligence. In the conclusion the scientists draw parallels between this finding and the unpredictability of other genes that work on the same structures, with the intent of highlighting how little we understand about the relation between genetics and neurology.

Second, the scientists identified a grand total of four individuals out of a population of over 1000 that was already relatively at-risk. This is barely twice the incidence of Down Syndrome, and certainly not a large enough sample size to make any conclusions, especially about something as ill-defined as intelligence.

Third, both of the test subjects mentioned in detail had average intelligence. One had minor neurological issues. There is no data to support the headline or the reporting.

[edit: I may have found this from a different source or the link may have been changed. This post was in response to a Fox News story about the same paper, not the Yale press release.]
Ask HN: Review my Startup idea - Sync Things Done.
(Sorry about the mispost.) I've been looking at both desktop and web-based software for David Allen's "Getting Things Done", but one thing I haven't been able to find is a service that lets you sync your project and action lists between the web, computer, and smartphones, si I've decided to fill that gap. Does anyone think I'll be able to succeed in this alresady saturated market? Or am I wasting my tmie?

As always, thoughts, comments, and suggestions are always appreciated. Thank you.
Is there a way that BizSpark fails to help here?
Nice idea, but it is a failure in safety - imagine a side impact..
Same here. I had two solid phone interviews, then they flew me out, put me up in a cool hotel, rented me a car, and put me through a good day on campus. Of the five interviews, I think I nailed four and blew one of them. Oh well, heard back around a week later that I didn't make the cut.
Using the wifi/unlicensed spectrum is also a lot more efficient use of the spectrum. You can broadcast shorter distances and therefore squeeze more users onto the spectrum.

It would be logical to see major cell companies doing something similar (more towers with shorter ranges) in urban areas. It would give them much greater available bandwidth as they try to scale to a situation where more people have data plans.

(I don't think that they will, because the telecoms can simply charge more for less using weasel words in contracts, most people won't know any better).
EFF on new electronic privacy bill - government will need to get warrants
What's to stop some economically significant entity (like a government) from starting a new Bitcoin-like pool of coins, with different parameters? This would allow them to control the overall supply of digital currency.
Ask HN: I need equity advice.
Hi HN! My company recently got funded by a prominent YC-like incubator (will not name for now, but they're closely tied to YC). I'm having trouble figuring out "deserved" equity for each of my team members.

To preface, I started working on this project two years ago. It was not a business, just a side project with no funding. It gained 3000 users and I decided to take it on full time. I made this decision nine months ago.

Enter Jake. I had a feature for my product that I wanted built and he was perfect for the part. He has worked with me for the past 4 months and we just received our incubator funding. I offered him 10% of the company (vested) when we first started. Some people have told me that I should have offered him 1-3%...what are you thoughts on this? Not that it matters, I'm locked into this agreement now but...

On the other hand, we have my friend John. John hasn't touched a line of code in our project so far (he just finished up his year in college), but he is an obvious choice to us because we need another talented programmer on our team. I offered him 5% to join us if we got funded. After the successful interview, he said he wanted 7.5% because he's leaving school to come and work for me (and his parents aren't particularly happy with that).

I feel like 7.5% is way too much for someone who is joining after we have been accepted into an incubator. The risk is now so much lower than before. Did I give Jake too much? Is John asking for too much? HELP!

UPDATE: Thanks for all the replies. I got the answer I was looking for and feel validated in my decisions. I'm going to leave this thread here for future founders to look at; the comments are gold. Thanks again HN :)
If he wants to invest in more startups, it may work to point out to him how tightly connected the founder community is. He may simply not realize the cost of maltreating you. But an investor suing a startup he invested in is so rare that a story about it could not fail to attract the attention of every other startup in his market.
This kinda sucks. It just goes to show you innovative and developer friendly technology can't sell itself.
Not true at all. I could trade anecdotes but pivot tables are an essential tool in the analyst toolkit, without requiring external data.

Great opportunity for someone to develop and share a standard spreadsheet for capturing and reporting usefully on iTunes appstore data.
8,000 BMW Z1s were made with this type of door: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Z1

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_door_(vehicle)#Vertical...
Anyone know a rule of thumb to equate number of moving parts to failure rate? I've always assumed a positive correlation but don't have any numbers to back that up.
I'm going to guess you probably work near a Google office which does different things than your target role. I live in Chicago, where Google has an office, but they flew me out to Mountain View to interview for a software engineering spot.
Journalist held over article on hacking
Play on Zynga: BadDoggie ;) Think its for sale.
Everything posted here suggests that these guys are WAY past the point of amicable resolution. Given the (now total) destruction of goodwill trust between the parties, there is no reasonable expectation of their salvaging a working relationship. Accordingly, the only course of action is for both sides to cut their losses and move on.

Unfortunately, the investor seems to have little interest in simply moving on. Assuming that the OP is being accurate about his own limited finances, it's fair to say that the investor has no hope of recovering even a fraction of his ~$150k. Accordingly, this is not a rational (if exceedingly hard-nosed) attempt to recover money. Rather, it looks like an emotional, vindictive, and exceedingly ill-advised attempt to destroy another human being, which is pretty much the opposite of moving on.

This would remain true even if the OP had actively defrauded the investor, who'd naturally feel that his attempt to inflict pain was entirely justified. Indeed, in the event of outright fraud, the desire for serious retribution would be normal - even healthy. But the fact remains that, faced with an individual whose only discernible motive is inflicting maximum personal damage, you have precisely zero room to negotiate, unless you considers a discussion about which kneecap to sacrifice a 'negotiation'.

Assuming that the OP acted in good faith (which his own significant financial contributions suggest he did), he still has some leverage in his ability keep what appears to be egregious conduct on the part of the investor confidential. Obviously, a trial would mean full public disclosure of the guy's true nature - something which could have significant impact on his other investments. A good lawyer would recognize this immediately, and use it to maximum effect when responding. More importantly, a good lawyer would be able to make credible threats a way that it consistent with the law, which is something that the OP is almost certainly unable to safely do on his own.

One more thing the OP has in his favor is a clear appreciation that a loss would be personally catastrophic, which makes him far more dangerous in a fight. Indeed, the investor may have overplayed his hand by insisting on his full pound of flesh. With bankruptcy a foregone conclusion, the investor's irrational, go-for-the-jugular approach frees the OP to become VERY aggressive in his own defense. This is something else that a good lawyer will recognize as a valuable piece of leverage, and will use to maximum effect. As a wise fortune cookie once said, "never chase a dog into a dead-end alley".
It reminds me of disturbingly common ideological standards at corporations that require all in-house software to be written in the-one-true-and-blessed-language, under the guise of a short sighted notion that this directly translates into understanding by all.
Writing software is harder than writing books
I submitted my resume to Google and filled out their top X language survey, but never even so much got back an email from them after waiting for over a month.

Oh well, there's plenty of other companies who were happy to talk to me.
tapthatgames.com
"you know you want to"
"Can you tap that?"

I own the domain.

Short, easy to remeber/spell, memorable, good branding/design potential, a little cheeky, "tap" relation to tapping game buttons etc.
Teagueduino 0.1: Arduino just got a whole lot easier
100%. There is no point having a rating / review system if customers can't trust it to help make decisions. If an old review is faulty because the software has changed, the vendor should be able to reply. That helps the customer know a) the review is out of date and b) the vendor is responsive.

On a related note, why don't most app marketplaces show the number of ratings next to the rating? It's disconcerting to see a 1 rating 5 star app next to a 100 rating 4 star app.
Can you imagine there is one new invention that pertains to your job each year? Now consider the number of different jobs there are. Now consider the vast number of other activities outside of work.

Or think of it this way, a mobile phone: it could have novel programming, novel chips, novel screen design, hinge, case plastic, button return springs that last longer, easier to use touchscreen, stronger glass, more flexible, brighter, etc., any of these things might give it the market advantage. How many other things do you use each day, each of them could potentially be improved and that improvement be registered in a patent.

The parent spoke of applications for patents anyway. Granted patents in the US are apparently about 40% of this.
AND you can't use the car door as self-defense tool (or offense)
We've used QML in a recent QT/C++ desktop app and it's performance is comparatively poor compared with WebKit rendering and its CSS subset support is woefully inadequate.

The HTML/CSS/JS dev model is fine as it is, there's no need to hope for nirvana grass-is-greener frameworks that don't exist.
Learn HTML5 like the rest of us.
"Is it better to force the user to give feedback on five crucial search results? Or should you show 50 results and have the user cherry pick results that are particularly good/bad?"

What metafore are you trying to support? Is the system one that learns (think child) or one that adapts (adult).

If you present a system as one that needs to be taught you will invoke a whole different set of expectations than one where it is assumed to know a great deal but can adapt.

Personally I always recommend forcing a user to teach the system (see Netflix new user flow) because it breaks the assumption that the system will 'just know' which is often unreasonable.
if you put something like

host *
ControlMaster auto
ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p

in your .ssh/config, any additional ssh sessions to a host reuse the original connection, so a new link doesn't have to be renegotiated.
Duct tape RFID tag #1
I'm a bit confused. By "magically appears on my computer", do you mean "open email and click link to open webpage in browser"? Or does it actually just open right away, somehow?
I like the idea of seeing something more like a YC interview than office hours. I look forward to seeing the video.
Ask HN: Has Steve Jobs ever posted to HN?
If you keep the webpage open (extension to come), it'll open the link that you sent to the service. It'll be there waiting for you when you get back to your computer

See my reply to derek
Unicorn + Bluepill + Nginx
All great points. Not to mention the additional cost of the hardware, and extra moving parts which will inevitably require maintenance that cannot be done by your average mechanic.

All of this for a solution which provides zero-to-marginal benefits over a normal car door. I don't understand the appeal. It seems to me that almost every industrial designer I've ever met has a dream of re-inventing the world's commonly used objects (doors, umbrellas, mousetraps, etc.) - an obsession so strong that they usually ignore the object's common use cases and completely neglect cost-benefit analyses for the sake of cleverness.
Your information is incorrect. Google does all its own recruiting. It is not outsourced.
Your post comes off as complaining. 70 MB of RAM? I'll bet you have at least 1 GB. RAM is meant to be used. An alarm clock? Then download an alarm clock app if that's what you want. Do you want a kitchen sink too?
Would you consider doing this as a teleconference on a regular basis (ex. once a quarter)? It would be valuable access to a much wider audience.
BBC: The secret Life of Chaos. From Turing to evolutionary biology
Have you thought about using a bookmarklet instead of e-mail on the phone?
First, watch "Fuck you, Pay me."
http://www.vimeo.com/22053820
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ydqjqZ_3oc

Then with your newly minted contract, estimate total billing for the project. So if you are charging 100 USD a hour, and expect it will take 100 hours, you would be billing for 10,000USD. Rather simple so far. Then determine how you would like to be paid. Common models are 50% up front, the rest on delivery; 100% on delivery (usually for F500 firms); or 100% upfront. Billing by the hour, will annoy your clients unless the amounts are small. Some firms also have payment terms which means you may not see any money on a normal invoice for months. Just make sure its clearly outlined in your contract.

If you really need to make your invoices look good, here are a number of services. But nothing special is necessary. It should not be email though. Put it in a word or pdf document so they can print it out, put it into their files.

And there is no problem in asking questions. Or being a newbie.

Just remember, "Fuck you, Pay me"
I'm glad someone got it! You wouldn't believe the number of people who spell the company name as iActionable. How dare they turn it into an Apple product!
Sales "infrastructure" for a startup
Hi! I have a startup and am about to lock in my first customer. I need ASAP to get a sales "infrastructure" in place -- i.e. an invoicing system, CRM, etc. I was wondering if anyone had a "checklist" of sorts to make sure I don't miss out on anything when setting up all the various systems? Also, I was wondering if anyone had any specific recommendations for companies to go with? Thanks!
Very handy guide
Worst PPT Slide Contest Winners
Your email doesn't show up in your profile.
How long ago did you launch?
This is the sort of feature that vendors want, but consumers don't. When did a consumer ever say "I wish I could read a bunch of marketroid responses to every complaint"? The marketplaces are more focused on pleasing the consumer.
Your email does not appear automatically, you need to write it yourself in your about section
Microsoft already has a VoIP stack for enterprise through their "Microsoft Unified Communications", and its already integrated into many of their products, esp office (though my knowledge/understanding of this product line is limited).

I think the value behind the Skype acquisition is as a consumer-facing VoIP solution; think of integration with windows phone, windows messenger, and xbox. Its great for consumers because its a brand that grandmothers are familiar and comfortable with.
Facebook Gets Broad Patent on Digital Media Tagging