skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If I am understanding you correctly, you're not looking for "customers" in that case-- you're looking for prospects.

This site is aimed at people who have developed a solution, and want to get early adopters.

If you're still looking for a problem to solve, your needs (and process) will be different. (Hint: find a domain where you a) already have lots of contacts, and b) already have some understanding of the sales process. If you don't know enough folks in a domain well enough to find out about their unsolved problems, you probably will have significant difficult selling to them.)
Cool, thanks! I will contact them when I am at the end of the internship.
The first case was kinda shocking for me, because, afterall it was Sony who got hacked. Now, it seems just normal. It was a very bad 30 days for them.
> Internet infrastructure here isn't great

I was in Vietnam last year for a longer trip (worked remotely for a client in Germany). I found the internet to be working extremely well in Saigon, so it might just be your region.
For two weeks I worked off Phu Quoc Island. A few times, we had power outage on the island, yet I was able to go online through my 3g connection. Pretty amazing change compared to the last time I visited he country four years back to visit my grand family.
I'll be honest, I'm probably much less qualified than you to say whether their money is being well spent. I'm just betting that the investors, who are pretty savvy, do know whether their financials are good. Of course, you're suggesting that the investors are in this because they believe future investors will pay them back, and so on, but I think the people investing in Groupon are doing so for solid reasons.

'Even if you tell the public, "Full disclosure: I'm running a ponzi scheme, you want in?" it's still illegal.'

Someone mentioned in another comment that a Ponzi scheme, by definition, means that people don't know it's a ponzi scheme. The commenter contrasted this to a pyramid scheme, where everyone can know. Is that true?

In any case, I thought it worthwhile to copy this form Wikipedia:

"A bubble: A bubble is similar to a Ponzi scheme in that one participant gets paid by contributions from a subsequent participant (until inevitable collapse), but it is not the same as a Ponzi scheme. A bubble involves ever-rising prices in an open market (for example stock, housing, or tulip bulbs) where prices rise because buyers bid more because prices are rising. Bubbles are often said to be based on the "greater fool" theory. As with the Ponzi scheme, the price exceeds the intrinsic value of the item, but unlike the Ponzi scheme, there is no person misrepresenting the intrinsic value. With the greater fool theory in mind, some may invest even though they believe the securities are overpriced due to a bubble."

In other words, the only thing that really changes between a Ponzi/Pyramid scheme and a bubble, is that investors think there is actually something of value underlying the investments. Obviously, many people disagree, but I'm not sure that we shouldn't give savvy investors the benefit of the doubt. Especially investors who have a lot more access to proprietary information, and who have had a lot more time to look over Groupon's terms.

* Note: I wrote a lot of things about the definition of a Ponzi scheme which are probably obvious to you. But I'm just now, with all this talk, starting to dig into what these mean exactly, so all of this is new to me.
Even if there are "rubbish" apps in the App store, the fact that they need to be approved to get there gives more "polished" feeling over the android market. But whether it is true or not is a matter of discussion.
Totally agree. I wondered the same. May be - since he is a _famous_ hacker - an update about his location might help those in the area with communities / talks etc?
It seems to be a common wisdom, that whatever "startup ecosystem" is in the Valley, MSFT is doing essentially the same thing, but internally, therefore it is not so visible for outsiders.

My guess is AAPL is the same, only even more secretive. GOOG seems to be in the middle with the 20% working time.

The basic idea is the same. But as Joel Spolsky pointed out with Jeff Attwood, it doesn't make much sense to be an "3ntrepreneur" for a corporation you have little influence on. Many leave GOOG because of this, to make it for their own benefit and control.
Come to #haskell sometime :)
Those are questions you are expected to answer in DS-160 form for nonimmigrant visa.

Some examples:

Are you coming to the United States to engage in prostitution or unlawful commercialized vice or have you been engaged in prostitution or procuring
prostitutes within the past 10 years?

Have you ever been involved in, or do you seek to engage in, money laundering?

Do you seek to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations, or any other illegal activity while in the United States?

Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the United States or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities?

Have you ever or do you intend to provide financial assistance or other support to terrorists or terrorist organizations?

Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?

Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide?

Have you ever committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in torture?

Have you committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in extrajudicial killings, political killings, or other acts of violence?

Have you, while serving as a government official, been responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom?
Running XQuery Universally
At 28msec, we're using XQuery in replacement of a typical application stack (SQL, scripting, Javascript). We've built the following demo in order to showcase the advantages of using a single programming language when building an application: http://xqueryguestbook.my28msec.com
Why not:

while( (foo = bar()) != 0 )
{
/* other work */
}

Or even simpler (since 'foo' serves no real purpose in the example):

while( bar() )
{
/* other work */
}
Because the #1 priority is to make programming, not loading rails, enjoyable. And there can't be two #1 priorities.
Steve jobs talking about the cloud. (1997)
It's the 8th time Sony was hacked this year, right?
Is there something of interest outside of general news I am missing?
Seems like a nice idea to me, but it might work better if it was targeted more for a certain niche of products. Otherwise customers get a ton of offers for products they're not interested in at all.

For instance, the moment I saw those two offers at the bottom, I instantly got turned off from the site. Not only do they look a bit like regular marketing promotions, the services themselves don't interest me at all. On the other hand, if there was a site like this for a niche I'm interested in, I would definitely be more engaged.
If they have a security team (which I hope they do), I feel bad for them (considering the last few weeks). Probably were under staffed and ignored for a long time and now are under a terrible pressure.
It's not the usual use of the term "making money" in business, either. If you run a restaurant that has $5m in expenses, and $5.5m in revenues, you're making $500k, not $5.5m.
I'm sorry, but I think you are confused regarding what constitutes free speech. Either that, or a very poor example you chose...
I'd like to see that too! oded from http://oded.us
The law is not just about porn, but also other "obscene material" like pro-LGBT material, material critical of the regime (Wired is banned because of this), illegal Bibles etc.
while that may be an interesting point, If they did not have any faith in the company working, they probably would have done what every company strives for nowadays, be bought out by google.
It's an artistic medium. While not speech, it's a means of expression.

If a person wants to distribute recordings of consenting adults having sex to those that want to see it, I see no point in criminalizing them for doing so. It's infringing on a basic human right and I don't understand how anyone could possibly be in support of such a frivolous law.
Everyone should write shell scripts
am I right in saying that this is really kickstarter with equity in place of product ?
You have a very good point there which I didn't think about while writing this. Still I think most iOS users have android widget envy... and Apple wants to satisfy them.
Even if some xyz % of apps are rubbish, we can almost take it for granted that other app stores will also have similar kinda rubbish apps %.
The Programmer's Dilemma
Indian Railways RAC and Waitlists concepts explained
This can be further optimized with a custom heap implementation. Once there are k elements in the heap, we know that whenever we remove an element from the heap, we will immediately be adding a new one.

In a traditional heap implementation, popping is performed by replacing the root with the bottom-right-most element and heapifying down. This is potentially 2 * log(k) comparisons. Pushing is performed by adding the new element to the bottom-right and heapifying up, which is up to log(k) comparisons. We can combine the pop and push into a single operation and reduce the 3 * log(k) comparisons to just the 2 * log(k) comparisons. Instead of replacing the root with the bottom-right-most element, just replace it with the new element and heapify down. This not only reduces the worst-case number of comparison; it improves the expected number of comparisons since the bottom-right element is likely to still belong at the bottom and will be pushed down the entire tree, while the new element is more likely to belong somewhere shallower.
No, we are 12 now.

http://attrition.org/security/rants/sony_aka_sownage.html
One obvious problem is management.

Nope. Contrary to its PR image, MSFT is not a software company, not in a full sense. They are more into management (yes, this is an euphemism). If you look at their core products, they are almost all essentially acquired or "copied". (DOS-, NT-VMS, IE-Spyglass, DirectX was essentially NV1 etc.) They are successful at "selling" and doing DM with influential people.

Very few people actually go out and buy their products, which would be true sign of best fulfilling a need in the demand-offer market sense. But most of their cash cows are shipped OEM or are centrally purchased and shoved down the corporate/gvt-al echelons. Others are tied into vendor lockin and the network effect.

Should MSFT be a real software company, it should have no problem competing with Linux/Android/Java/LO etc. offering superior products without any dirty legalese tricks.
Do you find the idea of dashboards for businesses interesting? That's what I'd work on if i had lots of time to research, lots of know-how, and lots of business experience. It's exciting because

a) building these things makes the world more productive, businesses more agile,

b) you can take inspiration from a wide range of sources (science fiction, journals, movies, video games, old inventions),

c) there's very exciting stuff coming to market right now. Microsoft's Kinect, Nintendo Wii (and whatever their new console will be), lots of interest in 3D displays, while stuff like voice-recognition and natural language interfaces and data visualization is finally getting really good

So many combinations of the above to be discovered, and so many industries to benefit.
Read this transcript. Maybe it will inspire you. It inspired me. http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech...
PNUTS: Yahoo’s Hosted Data Serving Platform
Youth Is The Power Of Tomorrow: What is Money
Cool beans! Thanks for helping out.
Police: Man stole nude photos from hacked e-mail accounts
It's possible to overdo "civil", though. Consider the belief that the sun orbits the earth: a televised debate in which several accomplished scientists respectfully engage some crazy is civil and will teach the average layperson something, but it gives the belief far too much credibility.

Even with the extra information, the layperson may consider it more probable that the sun orbits the earth after the debate, which means that the general belief is less accurate afterwards.

[Yes, I'm aware that we live in a relativistic universe in which the sun is no more the center than the earth or any other point; but you get the idea.]
On gender equality, you speak in terms of black and white when in reality there are many shades of grey. For example, you say it "skipped the third world" but I think if you've ever been to the Philippines, which is usually classified as a third world country, you'd see that women have just as many rights and freedoms as in some Western countries. Filipino women can become doctors and engineers, and many have jobs in government.
Second album syndrome eh? :)

Read everything James Altucher has written: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/

He's been around the block a few times, but wears his heart on his sleeve.
If you like Square, then try to build a bitcoin billing? :)
The bitcoin market is relatively small now, but it's growing very fast.
Lots of countries execute people. The US, for example. So I think it's unfair to single out Singapore in that regard, even if you're against capital punishment.
Try developing an idea. When you find something wrong with it, then dive into how you could fix that. And then find something else wrong, and see if you can fix that.

Undeveloped ideas are not interesting, developed ideas are.
Yes I agree with this, based on my personal experiences. It's called "reverse culture shock". The degree to which you experience it is a lot to do with how integrated you become in the foreign society.
Thanks for the citation.

http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_2991.htm...

I asked because my wife entered the United States on the same IR1 visa, quite a few years before you met your wife. There are fairly frequent comments here on HN by other persons advising HN participants who are thinking out loud about how to stay in the United States, and sometimes those comments include advising people to get into a sham marriage. (The link you have shared, which I have repeated here, will be helpful to onlookers who don't know the law on that subject.) That people would even consider getting into a sham marriage to stay in the United States longer, or to enter it for the first time, illustrates the overall worldwide desirability of the United States, and thus the background for the statutory and regulatory changes that have happened in issuing IR1 visas since my wife got hers. It's still my impression, as a former immigration lawyer, that the IR1 is rather a fast track to United States permanent residence and eventual citizenship compared to many other tracks that would-be immigrants pursue.

I can well understand any American desiring to stay and thrive in the country where he met the love of his life. I married overseas, and lived in my wife's country of origin for more than a year after our marriage before she ever saw any part of the United States. I feel much fondness for the country where I met my wife, which, like Italy, has thoroughly undergone the demographic transition and is on a trend eventually to decrease significantly in population. The United States, meanwhile, continues to increase in population and to enjoy net immigration in comparison to almost all other countries in the world. So while it is regrettable in individual cases that previous patterns of fraud have made IR1 visas much more burdensome to obtain than they once were, that is not surprising on policy grounds. A lot of people around the world still think that all the requirements you mention as unduly troublesome are not too much to put up with to gain the right to permanent residence and a fast track to citizenship in the United States.

Best wishes for always have a country or two in which you can enjoy life together and prosper in your chosen careers. Thanks for the link.
Here's an idea. You'll quickly find many challenges/problems with it, but if you can fix those (that's called innovation) you'll have something.

Many immigrants to the US go back to their home country for surgery and similar health services. It's cheaper and often better. Why can't non-first-generation-immigrants take advantage of the same services easily? Ie. why can't you easily go to countryX and cheaply get your teeth fixed?
Summer Reading Rounding: Best Books For Entrepreneurs
"I've always found something wrong with the ideas I've thought of" -> figure out how to fix those problems, that's called innovation :)
yes but hellbanned guy does not know it, which makes it completely different.
The "government" is not acting transparently here, so it's not democratic.
Anyway, my proposition is not applicable to most situations, it's just an ideal one.
If you're in NYC send me an email at kevinlordbarry@gmail.com. I have an idea kicking around I'll be happy to share with you.
It was near the top of the list, but failed on two big counts:

(1) - the air

(2) - Cantonese

I've already been studying Mandarin slowly for a couple years, and though I've heard I could have "gotten by" with English and Mandarin, I really wanted to just focus on Mandarin + simplified Chinese.

But mostly it was the air. :-)
I agree. Before we started our project we had to decide which web framework to use. We chose Django because we're comfortable with python. Also, django seemed to be very well documented. (The others may also have great docs. I don't know cause I've never really checked.)
From the comments from folks here who were hellbaned that then subsequently modified their behavior, the banning options in the software should have some easily review periodic samples of the banned users posts so they can be unbanned if the issue was a short term anomaly.
OKCupid has also pissed on competitors in the past, but the difference is that they were really good at it.
I do not like the whole series. But the design specially was very nice, i believe it does a good job on explaining design principles and patterns for begginers. (if you are not a begginer in the design world maybe you should read another book)
And no malware. Thank Jeebus for the approval process!
maybe you need to take a fishing trip or a place you odd to be but never been. Prefobly with human
Richard Dawkins would probably have been sentenced for long imprisonment without a trial

Can you elaborate?
yep, their filter works :)
but my point was not "queueing for ice-cream" rather "queueing for shitty industrial ice-cream".
I would queue hours for good ice cream.
I mean, they were driven there by some sick marketing effort, brain washed into thinking that there was something there worth the wait.

Imagine people queuing to get in McDondalds in your city.
Dou feel it now? That's what I felt.
Scary....
That is something I do not want to follow.
An introduction of Cosine Similarity and Vector Space Model
What motivated you the last go around? Was it $$$ or the idea?
AirBNB for offshore medical services. That could be a billion-dollar business in fact.
"Race" is a useless descriptor for all four of my children. I've heard a lot of wild-ass guesses of their "race" over the years in public places. More detailed descriptive terms with less ambiguity would serve a lot better for matching photographs to identity cards, if that is the concern. (The internal political history Singapore might might refer to for identifying "race" on identity cards

http://www.mha.gov.sg/isd/ct.htm

http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/2011/01/danger-of-racial...

probably makes for different categories, with different definitions, from the definitions used in the United States, which fortunately does NOT put "race" on national identity cards.) Categorization by race on national identity cards is a matter of considerable concern to human rights scholars who have looked at real-world examples of that practice.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/AboutGen_Group_Classific...

The long answer about how ridiculous "race" is as a descriptive category can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...
That's one thing SomethingAwful---which I believe coined the term "hellbanning" and popularized it---did better than most subsequent implementations imo. It's one of several kinds of bans there, and typically used when the person in question has in fact already been normal-banned before (sometimes several times), and come back with new accounts. Reduces the false-positive rate that way. (It was also more effective for that purpose back in the days when it was used very rarely, and not widely known about.)
Enroll at one of these: http://singularityu.org/programs/executive-programs/
Or get ideas from those: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
Or come to Berlin for a coffee and some inspirations.
Ruby was popular in Japan long before Rails.
No, because this defacing was done last year, and is still on-going, if I understand correctly.
Tagging, tagging, tagging.

I'd use this if I could somehow subscribe to an RSS feed of just categories of things I'm interested in.
As someone with a strong math and science background but who came late to the code game, who has never been able to align the stars for a CS degree or work in programming, Project Euler has been crucial. I can wrap my head around pretty much any math you want to throw at me, but Project Euler gives me the opportunity to know I'm tackling a language-skill-appropriate challenge and immense satisfaction once it's figured out.

That and HN meetups.
This number is far too high to make any sense. Surely there is no point in, perhaps, 395,000 of those applications at all.

This just proves to show that this number is not going to have any meaning anymore.
Why not Taipei then? The area near 101 is quite nice. And it has a better nightlife.