skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Never feel like "they got there first" - when someone does a similar idea to your own, consider it validation that you had a good idea!

If it's something you really love, and feel your implementation works in a way you prefer to the other(s), just keep building it.
There's room for more than one version of everything. What if the iPhone was the only smartphone, or Ivory was the only soap?

If it's not too near and dear to your heart, and you like what the other guy has done, just go ahead and use their version and have fun with it, and move on to your next project idea, with the confidence of knowing that your ideas are good, and you should keep believing in them and making more.
Yeah, this is not the official logo btw - @antoinem is the one to contact about the Demo's visual look.
Don't blame us capitalists for the fall of the economy !
Everyone's different, you may find some of this useful to you.

Linode and Slicehost both have excellent documentation, forums and other resources, all publicly available whether you're a customer or not.

http://www.linode.com/community/

http://library.linode.com/

StackScripts, ready-made scripts to set up a box: http://www.linode.com/stackscripts/

Using Linux on your Linode - Linux System Administration: http://library.linode.com/using-linux/administration-basics

http://www.slicehost.com/community/

Ubuntu help for various releases: https://help.ubuntu.com/

11.04 Desktop, Server and Installation help: https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/index.html

11.04 Ubuntu Server Guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/serverguide/C/index.html

20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/top-linux-monitoring-tools.htm...

The Linux System Administrator's Guid: http://tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/index.html

Linux Administration Made Easy: http://tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy/index.ht...

Linux Newbie Administrator Guide: http://lnag.sourceforge.net/

Shell Programming for Beginners: http://ontwik.com/linux/shell-programming-for-beginners/

man bash (i.e, read the man page)

Bash Reference Manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html

Linux Security Basics (particularly the bits on no root login, and locking down ssh): http://library.linode.com/security/basics
Actually patent means they control the right to do this.

It doesn't mean they're implementing it. Hell, they could be suing people who try to do this and making it less likely to be used by others.

It could be just a random defensive patent.
The Next Microsoft
You’re running out of time, 2% a year
> Fair questions: would Apple be facing impending doom in 1996 if Jobs hadn't been ousted and instead been allowed to lead his company?

Jobs didn't want to run Apple - that's why he brought in Scully. Then he got confused.

It was arguably better for Apple and Jobs that they were separate while Jobs re-found his clue.

> Would that Apple be as successful today?

I'd argue that it would have crashed and burned if Jobs had ousted Scully and would have faded if he hadn't brought Scully in.
Apple pulls out the big gun, finally uses its multi-touch patent
by the way, it's not a 35% spike in infant mortality, which would be immediately noticed by every pediatrician in the world. it is reportedly a 35% spike in still births - defined as a non-live birth (not even a single breath taken) after gestational age of 20 weeks. Since these only occur 3 in 1,000 birth events in the US to begin with, an individual OB/GYN would never notice a 35% spike (which would increase the rate to 4/1000). This is the kind of thing only dedicated epidemiologist who are studying it intensely could ever notice in real time. The CDC won't even catch up with such a hard-to-measure spike until their next reporting cycle - several years from now.
mentat, I wasn't saying don't protect ourselves against this. However, harnessing a big enough bot network you can always overcome these measures. Finding an exploit is different, and especially for financial institutions inexcusable to a certain level.
This is hugely valuable feedback. Thank you.

In regards to your second point, any recommendation on how I might be able to communicate to the user that it's worth their while to fill out the second piece of the form?
The article seems to imply that you need a desktop app installed to extract fully-qualified URLs from the open application. I wonder why a better alternative wouldn't be to embed an encoded URL as part of the webpage itself, have the phone extract the URL from the image? Essentially a steganography-meets-QR code approach.
Impressive. What corners had to be cut in order to keep the cost down to such a level.
I've been pretty satisfied ringcentral. 800 number for voice and fax.
An Young Girl Illustrated Primer, or, Diamong Age here we go!
Yep, it is a pretty big issue.

However, WebGL does make it worse: it trivially exposes local privilege escalations as remotely-exploitable root vulnerabilities. It also does so bypassing a lot of the sandboxing work that browser vendors have done to contain browser vulnerabilities.
What startups can learn from bands
I wasn't really interested if someone programmed in their spare time. I was more interested if they had written a program, at some point in their career, to solve a non-work / non-school problem or scratch a personal itch. I just wanted to know they had used their skills without outside direction. I always wanted people that saw their skills as useful outside the office / classroom.
sure it does (reflect poorly on nukes in general). It means we now understand there is no possibility that they can be safely built. Unless you're okay with gradually radiating the entire planet or at least rendering little pieces of it permanently uninhabitable with each natural disaster. Chernobyl = 5% of Europe's farmland lost forever. Fukushima = 50% of the world's tuna spawning grounds permanently irradiated. I like to eat, how about you? How many more of these will you tolerate so your HD TV can have "instant on" capabiilty?
This seems so fishy. Perfect timing considering the last 24 months events. I think it was unavoidable and we'll have to face it and get ready for the consequences.
How much stock to give a short term developer working in exchange for equity?
I recently participated on a team with a developer at a hackathon. The person has their own freelance business, so unlikely to join fulltime later. They expressed interest in helping with my project on contract (which I can't afford) or equity basis. The help would be in terms of basic MVP to get going. The startup is very consumer/sales focused and not tech/software based.

I'm early stage with zero-funding, so I'd like to pay in equity, But as this is not about equity between fulltime cofounders, I'm not sure how to approach this. And this is not regular parttime either, it's more of a finite amount to be done upfront. Are there any good rules of thumb, proxies or templates to use in calculating equity-work exchange rate?

I am concerned about getting this right in order to prevent equity issues with potential employees or fulltime cofounders (I have none yet) and VC in future.
Yeah they're just like you.
Bank accounts usually limit online transfer destinations and amounts. So password secrecy is not the sole defense, and even total ownership of an accountholder's computer is not quite 'game over' for their balances, as it is with a bitcoin wallet.
Everything That's Wrong With Research In Motion
5 Old School Hackers: Where Are They Now
MRIs of teenage brain waves can predict pop hits.
The US branch of OpenStreetMap took donation of several of these machines last year. They're still serving us well! Thanks Rob and Wikimedia!
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 hits US retail stores today
Sure, but we start off already being fluent in the human language we're trying to write software for.
IANAL and I haven't seen the original text of the bill, I believe this sensational title omits one crucial piece of information: unauthorized streaming for commercial purposes (for profit) will become a felony, not "personal" streaming.
I think a lot of conventional analysis of investments is looking more foolish than usual because the market isn't keying off what people think it is. Three major things have dominated market movements since the 2008 crisis:

1) Rock-bottom interest rates (and a depreciating dollar)
2) Quantitative easing
3) Enormous deficit spending

All of these things, through mechanisms both simple and complex, have driven money into equities and speculative investments such as start-ups.

While interest rates will remain low for quite a long time and deficits will no doubt continue, QE2 expires at the end of the month. Additionally, the proportion of the deficit is moving away from stimulus into structural spending such as Medicare. The natural response by the major market players is profit taking. Hence, the IPOs at bubble-like valuations (LinkedIn, Pandora, etc) are running into the teeth of a "smart money" evacuation of the stock market.

If the Fed and government overcome political pressure against further loose policy (always possible if the economy continues to weaken), then I imagine the LNKDs and Ps of the world will pop back up to the eye-watering valuations they attained at the time of their IPOs.

If national fiscal/monetary policy continues to tighten, then the bubble will have been ended before it really began. In which case, LNKD and P will continue to decline, and I would not be surprised to see some of the other hot properties like Zynga delay their market entries. The market for VC funding will also become substantially tighter.
Of if dolphins have a sense of humor all bets are off.

Dophin 1, "Hey I bet we can get that thing to say 'bite me' when it greets someone!"

Dolphin 2, "You think? Ok, every time we meet in front of them you say 'bite me' and i'll say 'wheree?'"
Morally, I agree completely. But I'm afraid that the legal system may not.
So, which part of you doesn't feel that conscious and sentient beings ought to have equal protection?
A couple notes - the "Dear Sir" isn't an element of the debate, but a standard for any commentary (letters to the editor, etc..) directed to the Economist.

It's interesting - I came in believing that we're in a bubble, but Ben has brought me around to believing that while there are anecdotal examples of froth behavior (Linked in IPO, Color) - the technology market, in general, is not in a Technology Bubble. Great, great debat.
Still does not make it okay.
"I can't help but wonder. If those drivers are so buggy, why isn't this a high priority to fix?"

It will come. Raised concerns are not WebGL specific, WebGL is just exposing things about HW-accelerated 3d to more general public that have been here since always and every GPU 3d technology has to face (problems with drivers, fragmentation of market, very wide spread in capabilities).

People will need to get used to update their drivers (the same as they already got used to update their OS and browsers).

Gamers are already doing this since forever, not because of security concerns but for bugfixes / performance improvements.

GPU vendors are actually pretty responsive, I'm aware of driver hotfixes released just to address problems discovered on releases of particular games (in between regular monthly driver updates).
Go to HK. Travel whenever you have the opportunity and that is NOW. Graduate. Get a job with Cathay Pacific and fly free for the rest of your life. Good Luck!
How not to name your company - A Sack of Seattle
How is paying off your house and car, and saving enough to choose not to work for 3-4 years not a bunch of "tangible returns?"

(By the way, kudos on that level of self-discipline; I would be extremely happy to accomplish that much with 8 years of corporate salary.)
Or maybe that Anonymous idealism was a fraud and lulz, as peers, could see the hypocrisy much clearer, as everybody in their community likely do what they do because of the thrills and ignoring the pain caused. Lulz admitting it is likely taking the high road? or is that too tortured as twist.
Another risk of working hard is that it requires tunnel vision. Narrowing your perspective makes you vulnerable and requires faith that it will pay off and you won't get burned by something that happens while you have your head down. I guess this doesn't apply to people who work with their heads up, but it certainly applies to a lot of technical folks.
Is there a site where programmers can post their side projects for the rest of us to look through? I am always working on a side-project... usually something built on Facebook platform. I'd love to see what you other hackers are working on in your spare time.
Right, but if you extend that logic then you're almost forced to do something you don't like professionally.
Resistive screen for one - notice the stylus. Also, probably old hardware and little RAM.

While the difference between this tablet and the Samsung Tab or iPad may be huge, the difference between no computer and this one is far far bigger.
Solving storage I/O performance bottlenecks in virtual infrastructures
Looks like a resistive touchscreen (stylus required) as opposed to a capacitive one.
>You probably didn't read what came before this sentence

I did. I guess what I'm saying is: why does it matter to you if google's search algorithms aren't perfect and could operate better with a bit of metadata from the site? After all, you're free to opt out from playing along. If, like you suspect, it means that their algorithm is optimized for web spam, they'll sort it out eventually.

It just sound like your bitching that the cost of doing buisness has gone up in the meantime, and if only google could be perfect you wouldn't have to worry about it. But this is what you get for relying on the behavior of someone that owes you nothing.
Here's the comment by cheesymogul: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=12774665#post12...
Might that be another advantage of cloud computing? To spread the cost of DDoS defense infrastructure across many websites?
> "suggests...our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you. But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony... watching... abusing..."

Isn't that happening right now and by the people with pens?
tap2tab? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2597841
Why should I support this instead of OIN?
Will the real tech startup please standup?
And, you can work at 100% and have it not work out for external reasons which have nothing to do with you.
So finally David Brin could be premonitory, cf http://www.davidbrin.com/upliftbooks.htm
I'm referring to the decades of interactive mind-mapping software (which are both much more feature-full and expressive than Workflowy and have already been marketed as being based on how the mind works--and while mind-mapping is also overhyped it well known and has been studied in education and learning). This comparison gets particularly glaring when you assert that your software is the first ever to do this. I think you're doing Workflowy a tremendous disservice by inviting comparisons with mind-mapping software.
arduino FTW! just getting into it and caused my first electrical fire. :-) good stories.
Know Your JavaScript Engines
So if you embed a YouTube video on your blog (that you have adwords on, of course) and it turns out that someone claims copyright infringement, you could be looking at jail time and a felony records.

IANAL, and I haven't read the original text of the bill either, but I really don't like the idea of the government playing cop for the media companies. I think there are probably bigger problems that our government could be focusing on, that's all.
Not easier in any way. The openni sdk is much open as it allows the developer to use multiple operating systems, multiple depth cameras and a more permissive license.

So the article and the herd got it all wrong, in fact the world would be better if this sdk was not released, and in my opinion without microsoft (see the latest fear mongering about webgl from a company that takes ages to patch security holes).
The people who determine whether to do a Groupon most of the time are not the waiters and service ppl who have to put up with horrible tips.
110 years old bulb still burning
Did you click the Relaunch Chrome button at the bottom of the about:flags page? I got it working with Chrome on OSX once I did that.
Hmm... glad to hear that validation for a little project of mine to make this easy https://github.com/kevinpet/bender
What's wrong with trying to go rich like that, even if it is because of the movie?
If by "we", you mean everyone on the planet, including the blackhats who benefit indirectly by utilizing the results of LulzSec's exploits, then...maybe.

This is not realistic, however.
My guess is that this article will help the project compete for funding. The name of the project (CHAT) and its principle investigators are very prominent in the article, as well as promising descriptions of the technology already developed.
Agreed. Its definitely hard to convince yourself to go heads down and full steam ahead on a good bet, when there is a chance that there are better bets somewhere out there.
The Power of Theory In Science
Comments tl;dr: Electric fields + special relativity = magnetic fields

This is 'relatively' unknown triumph of special relativity ;-)

"What led me more or less directly to the special theory of relativity was the conviction that the electromotive force acting on a body in motion in a magnetic field was nothing else but an electric field." - Albert Einstein
Replace "willpower" with "gumption" and go read the relevant chapters in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Japan Makes Virus Writing Illegal
I wrote about how I read applications here:

http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=801739
"This time it's different."
None of them have managed it.

I'm glad they didn't -- this way I can still have some privacy.

cracking tools are becoming more sophisticated

IMHO, it's easier to break into someone's home than into someone's server.

The result more predictable too, as you can find tools that can crack open doors, windows, anything. And if all else fails, you can just watch the house until somebody makes an error, like leaving the window open by themselves (although experts don't have to do this).

Real security can only be achieved through serious investments into state of the art alarms, safe-deposit boxes and by being a paranoid.

Another way to do it would be to plant GPS devices in each and every human and track each movement into a centralized database, while good thieves will find ways to block that signal anyway; and that's how all of the proposals for a more "secure" Internet sounds to me - basically punishing honest citizens in the name of security.
A medical study of traumatic brain injuries in the Asterix comics
What gets me, everytime I procastrinate along lines similar to those described in the article, is that the implicit assumption is always then that you're not very talented.

You can develop your talent, or you can sit around and think you're stupid.

Talent IMO is an epistemological quagmire you'll never get out of any other way than by quitting on it. As a sociologist, I like to remind that it is a relational concept - it doesn't refer to a 'thing' but to a way of defining yourself in relation to something.
This burns my eyes almost as badly as Fructose. Fructose, if you're not aware of it, is a C# application that translates Ruby to PHP. (http://www.fructoselang.org/)
Mr. Blank makes some great arguments, and I tend to agree with him.

What's fantastic is that we're so recently removed from a bubble (in housing) that it's entirely familiar. Take his arguments, like the "five types of participants", and apply them retroactively to that bubble. Perfect fit.

Denying the next bubble is futile. They exist; always have, always will.
Well, OIN seems to be mostly Linux focused, for one.
Ask HN: How to overcome my fear?
Hi,

I'm 20 year old. And I suffer from this from the beginning, when I started school at 6. It's the fear. The fear form having a bad result, from dropping, when taking an exam, when you are late for an exam, obsession (kind you fear that you forgot your card or something like that). It started at school, when I was young and has since then evolved.

I have noticed that whether I'll have 17/20 or 10/20 I always have the fear. It's kind of a culture that they did create on us. It's like if you don't succeed that particular exam, your future is miserable.

However, this is not true. And I feel it's useless to convince myself otherwise. I have reduced my fear a lot. By convincing myself that the future can be better, if I decide to make it so. I read a lot and improved my resistance to fear. But this is not enough. It seems that I'm a long way from reaching a fearless life.

How do I overcome my fear? What have you done to overcome it? Did you take mental or brain games? Read a book or something similar? What was your strategy and how was the result?

This is something many people suffer from. At least, my friends. They have a lot more stress than me. I have improved, but I still not prefect yet. I want to reduce it to a maximum that it has no impact on my life.

I think, this could change my life for the better.

Thank you!
The part that fears a warlike alien civilization.
I'd be glad if you could do that.

Might be a lot to ask, depending on the time needed to write a couple of lines - but I guess right now it's most helpful for the people that are already educated on v8 performance.

It's just that you could easily educate a broader audience (cough - like the author here) with a short write up. Some things are 'obvious' (GC pressure), some (everything about 'In hot code', some of the trace parameters) things are opaque and ~meaningless~.
To be fair, it was only rendering the machine unusable, not wiping out your home directory. A simple OS reinstall should get people back to square one. (Unless the OS reinstall script was botched and formats your disk when you've told it not to, which I've heard the latest Ubuntu does.)
Apple, Google, and the Cloud
They succeeded in exactly the same way that the IRA succeeds in bringing attention to their cause when they blow up a school.
Ars article on the model evaluation process.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/06/climatologists-f...
You're assuming Facebook is actively complying with the request of someone's government here, minor or not. I'm betting there's a simpler explanation: there's probably a fast-track mechanism for taking down pages; you request it and it's done.

For example: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/anyone_can_take_down_fa...
Http://www.redhotips.co.uk/article-details.php?id=264
I agree. It seems like all of the sudden copyright infringement is on the Government's priority list, just under terrorism. No doubt the lobbyist kept telling them that if they don't do something about copyright infringement "hundreds of billions of dollars" and millions of jobs will be lost.
packers & Movers kolkata, Packers Movers kolkata
What I like best about what Graham says is the idea that good people will persevere and do good things to make peoples lives better and that he's willing to bet on these good people. That's something universal, not just in the startup world that I wish more people believed in.
“the size and scale of these new markets have never been seen before; some of these applications and companies will reach billions of customers, generate unprecedented revenues and profits,”

Statements like that always come with bubbles too. They are necessary, but not sufficient. The old dot com bubble was all about a new economy that defied standard valuations -- so you couldn't apply historical models to new these new "internet companies".
URL Shorteners are Dead, Long Live URL Shorteners
> It's kind of a culture that they did create on us.

Who is 'they'.

Perhaps it's 'they' that you should be talking to. If they found out what they are doing to you then perhaps they would stop?