skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Those are both very interesting links, thanks for sharing, I feel like I learned a lot from them. In addition I liked the following link I stumbled upon as it confirmed in large part my suspicions: http://www.artificialignorance.net/blog/startup/the-startup-...

I'm not familiar with how a lean startup is supposed to handle the alpha stage and so I'll need to read up on that.

Regarding bootstrapping, I think our issue was to try to get some funding asap so we can start working on the project full time. We have very few engineering resources as the best hackers are already hard at work at their full time jobs and with funding we could be able to dedicate all of our attention to the project.

My opinion has always been that you need to prove that whatever you're doing is doable, confirm the hypothesis that someone would want to use it, before you go to people and ask for money. We might not have the luxury to be able to wait that long, but perhaps there's simply no other option and therefore it might take years before we can leave our full times :)

Something else I haven't found so far were examples of alpha demos that these now famous startups did back in the day. I've seen collections of demos for TechCrunch and other venues, where for example DropBox already had thousands of users and 10 developers on the team, but that's way past the stage I'm more interested in. I'd love to see, for example, what DropBox looked like when they just had a prototype.
This Wikipedia page is the best piece on incentives of all time:

"The term 'Cobra effect' stems from an anecdote set at the time of British rule of colonial India. The British government was concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes. The Government therefore offered a reward for every dead snake. Initially this was a successful strategy as large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually however the Indians began to breed cobras for the income.

When this was realized the reward was canceled, but the cobra breeders set the snakes free and the wild cobras consequently multiplied."
TechCrunch redesign UX analysis
> I still doubt G+'s ability to make a significant impact.

That's a mistake. I think it's pretty clear that Google+ is already a successful product that's making an impact, but let's pretend for a second that it isn't.

When Chrome launched, it had very little market share for a very long time. However, as it slowly grew, the obvious statement to make was that as other browsers saw it coming they quickened their pace and sped up their JavaScript engines, hastened release cycles, etc. Even if Chrome never did attain much market share (it did) it would have been seen by Google as a huge success very quickly: if all other browsers are faster that's still a win for Google.

So, even if Google+ never gets significant market share (too late, within weeks it has millions of users), it already has made an impact by providing intense competition for Facebook.

Google even launched video chats before Facebook did, showing very clearly that in some places (new features) they are already changing the landscape of social networking.

They already have made a significant impact. And the game is just starting.
This is a good point. I guess the only explanation that doesn't involve cheaping out or questionable market segmentation attempts is that they don't see a jump to 1440*900 / 128 DPI as worthwhile and would prefer something more.

Me, I like my 133 DPI Thinkpad for when I need screen space, so I'm pretty neutral on this :)
One thing about "you get what you measure/pay for" is that if you're clear about your incentives its much easier to see how your expectations and the employee's actions misalign. If you hide your measurements and incentives behind a complicated or arbitrary system you'll never spot the misalignment.
I think he was referring to 4GB as being too little. If you are doing anything involving photos/video/audio editing, you are probably going to want at least 8GB.
As suggested, I use VMs fairly often, but just Firefox + Aptana + random other stuff can bump into 4GB on occasion. I could probably make do with 4GB, but I'm hoping the next iteration will go to 8.
No, it won't. Trying to contact Google when I was working for a major corporation and TRYING TO GIVE GOOGLE MONEY resulted in the exact same issue as the OP, and this was in 2006, not 2011. The only way to get their attention was create a blog post about how I couldn't contact them.
Michael Lee Johnson and Google+ 1, Facebook 0. The new social network war.
WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Stores For Easy, Embeddable Storefronts
Chronoconomists?
Great CEOs are born, not made
I gave it about two hours.

To me it's more intuitive to scroll my two fingers down to scroll down the page.

Granted, it is odd that it's the opposite way round on the iPhone which I use almost as much as my laptop. Go figure!
Yes, that was in the context of Django as well. Look at the trend for MongoDB compared to PostgreSQL (http://www.google.com/trends?q=mongodb%2C+postgresql&cta...).

Because Flask is decoupled, it let's you use whatever tool is right for the job. If you need to store financial data, it's easy to use SQLAlchemy, but graph databases are much better fit for work working with stuff like the modern-day social graph.

And don't get me wrong, I like SQLAlchemy -- I have used it for years and continue to use it -- thank you for all the work you've put into it.
To read i use Http://www.icombinator.net which does not have vote support, but it adds a "read later" button to each submission on the front page.
a lot has been said and done, about this redesign. but i haven't seen a serious panel test yet. this is really interesting...
On resuming application state:

>So, how's that "geek panic" now? Still there, huh? Well, let me try to reassure you. As a committed user of a great Mac text editor that, years ago, implemented its own version of almost all the document management features described so far, I can tell you that you get used to it very quickly. Spoiled by it, in fact. Ruined by it, some would say. Yes, it's a very different model from the one we're all used to. But it's also a better model—not just for novices, but for geeks too.

This works fine with text editors (although I'd argue that if invoked via the equivalent of "mvim" or "mate" they should discard this), but it absolutely falls apart with media creation applications. Photoshop and Illustrator files can be big, and they can take a long time to open. Just so that you can close it immediately and open a different one. Logic Pro currently does this, and it isn't nice or better. It's annoying.

Then there's the privacy concerns. If a designer is working with multiple clients, the last thing he or she wants is a different client's work showing up when he or she is showing something to a client.
Apple OS X Lion Operating System Released
You're confusing high-profit margin with high-profit.

A company can be high-profit without a high-margin (i.e Supermarkets) or it can be high-margin without high-profits (many fashion labels).

Greed is a motivator for high-profits, not necessarily high-margins.
It's just getting worse
No investments = No jobs
Google Plus Is All Ears, While Twitter Remains Deaf
Mobile phone is the second technology that has reached the grassroots in Asia, the first being the radio.

Given the wide adoption of mobile phones, people are trying to solve every day problems sans computers.
Show HN: Scapehouse, a Discussion-Oriented Social Platform
Does Lion "reset" the file system? I have stuff like Perl and Python that I installed myself. Some stuff resides in /usr/local/bin and other stuff in ~/Library/.

Was wondering if that all got wiped on the install?
Ars Technica OS X Lion review e-book, PDF available
How to travel from China to Taiwan using Google Map
‎1. Open Google Maps

2. Click "Get directions"

3. Type "China" as your starting point

4. Type "Taiwan" as your destination.

5. Read step 48(Warning:not everyone can follow this step)

LOL!
Is there a way to get a survey link that doesn't have a link to the results?
I'd heard the version about the French paying a bounty for dead rats, both are great examples of how difficult it is to incentivize an behavior when all you can reward is a concrete outcome.
Trust but verify = Make an informed decision
As of now, there is no way to do so.
One thing that continuously strikes me is Apple's ability to invest great level of detail when they want to.

Take the FileVault recovery key, for example.

For something so crucial like file encryption, not only do they offer you a quick solution but a practical and more "human usable" one; they offer to store it for you.

And then they go the extra mile with those security questions! http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/07/04/lion/file-vault-app...

Remember how typical security questions are "What was your mother's maiden name" or name of your pet? Typically those questions are considerably very unsafe since they are very easy to find out in an innocent conversation.

Compare that to questions like childhood phone number, first teacher in school etc. - they are considerably "safer".
Does anyone know if the Thunderbolt on the MacBook Air supports multiple displays?
Also not a downvoter, but it's hyperbole because he didn't qualify it by saying that he has very particular needs. It would be like saying, "the Ford Excursion is an unusable piece of junk due to the lack of interior space...I can't even fit my 42 foster kids in it for a trip to Disneyland."
I guess my entire interest in VRM is because I do not like being data mined, and you just named _the_ top candidates for data mining that concern me.

EDIT: When the NSTIC was announced, many organisations I respect, and typically agree with, game out against it[1]:

"Shortly after the draft's release, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in conjunction with a number of other consumer-rights and civil liberties organizations[5], sent the Committee a statement in response to the draft NSTIC policy, requesting that the White House provide a clearer and more complete plan to create and safeguard Internet users' rights and privacy."

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSTIC#Criticism
There could be places you could use it (think of the unit portraits in RTS games like Starcraft).

Not to say it would be worth the effort, but there are niche use-cases.
I'm pretty sure "I grew up in the 80s" is not a valid answer to "How did you become a programmer?"

I also grew up in the 80s. BASIC was an easy language to start with, I agree. But BASIC still exists today, along with a ton of other easy languages.

The problem is that there are SO many other things to do with computers these days that slogging through learning to program doesn't seem nearly as rewarding.

Some have attempted to address these problems, but I don't think anyone has quite gotten it right yet. (Not that I have any ideas, mind you.)
How to become smarter by doing less
Ask HN: What Mac Mini Configuration Would You Buy?
I'm wanting to buy a new Mac Mini, and am trying to decide which one's the best value for price. Any thoughts? Currently, I'm thinking of just doing the mid-line Mini with the Core i5, ATI graphics, and 4Gb ram. In your opinion, is the Core i7 worth the extra cost? Or the larger/faster hard drive? (the SSD option on the Mini is too expensive for now for me to justify...)
The segment from 14:00-17:00 is pretty interesting. They discuss the Twitter ecosystem, Twitter's buy/build philosophy, and particularly the social media analytics ecosystem.

"We're not going to build that kind of stuff ourselves...that's not anything we're ever going to do."

Are they going to leave all of that analytics money (and other ecosystem money) on the table, buy up the largest players, or start extorting them for revenue shares? Those are really the only options I see.
3 steps to compile dynamic java source, and run the code
Thanks for the review.

I will be adding better instructions. As of now, all the allowed markup is in the example. So no radio/multi-select etc.

I wanted to keep things simple, so I kept out the required feature.

I'll tone down the title banner - it is indeed too big.
But I like the Ubuntu scrollbars better. There is at least a small line showing there is more content.

The reviewer is also surprised to see he is "missing" some programs (scrollbar is missing). I think this is a bad UI decision.
Google Buys Illegal +.com Domain Name on Domain Aftermarket
Good move by Amazon. I think TV back catalog is the right direction for them to go. I think movies can be decently served by streaming rental with reasonable terms (like a 5-day period, rather than 24-48 hours).

One thing Amazon needs to really beef up on to compete with Netflix is children's programming. The amount of people I know who use Netflix streaming for their kids to watch Dora and Thomas is pretty crazy.

Amazon's top priorities should be:

* Nickelodeon

* Disney

* PBS

* HBO/Showtime (not for children's stuff, but just for extremely compelling programming -- but this may be too expensive).
I just wish it work in iOS5 - at all.
Petabytes on a Budget v2.0: Revealing More Secrets
Probably because it mentioned 'Pomodoro'.
It has always been possible to archive a message by moving it to the "All Mail" mailbox, right?
I've been to a couple of those here in Austin.

As soon as I hear the phrase "I just need a developer to build X.." I discount those guys. They don't get it.

Last fall, I lost my patience with a few and finally said something like:
"so you want a developer to work for your exclusively for three months in exchange for a sliver of equity? In the meantime, you keep your job. You don't risk anything. And when he's done that's when you'll start 'selling'? Seriously?"

I'll give them credit on pushing risk to others..
I'm sorry its a bit hard to have this knee-jerk reaction without at least having some background into the matter. Did Aaron in fact break into any systems? Or did he legitimately access data and then get "flagged" for knowing too much? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Too_Little
Being picky about the childhood phone number: does anyone even remember that? Since I have the iPhone I can only memorise something like three or four phone numbers.
I have seen it discussed but I'm not sure its as clear cut as that.
One of the easiest ways to create a parallel program is to split your data, or split your processing. When you split your data, you can just apply the same algorithm to both sets, and re-integrate the processed data. This necessitates that the processing can be done apart, however. Graphics cards already do this. They have many, many cores that are used for 3d graphics. You can easily split the work done on the screen into small chunks, process these individually, then put it back together. The other way is to have one core do one set of work, and another core do another set. The algorithms should process a similar amount of data though, otherwise you are wasting processing power.

The other problem is representation of data in the programming language. Objects, which are used in a lot of programming languages, can be hard to use when it comes to parallelism. An object can only be operated on by one algorithm at a time, and to achieve parallelism, you must use concurrency (locking). You can switch to a different paradigm away from OOP (object orientated programming), to something like FP (functional programming). Since everything is a function, with data just being passed around, you can abstract a program to multiple cores in a more natural way. FP comes with its own difficulties though. This isn't to say parallel programs can't be written in OOP programs successfully, it just requires a different mindset to normal programming.
D-Link And OpenDNS To Bring Parental Controls To Your Router
Tigers are bigger than lions.
Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology
Apple never does price drops. They have a fixed product line and while the hardware changes over time, the price stays the same.
Third. Traded in 13" Pro for 13" Air two months ago. Especially appreciate the higher-resolution screen on Air (and the weight of course).

In fact, the 13" Air has the same resolution screen as the standard 15" Pro.
I want the i7 one.
Looks like you can punch your serial here:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?...
It already works in 10.6
I don't know what Google's aim is with Google+. If they're not aiming to replace one of the current social networks, then yeah sure, they can succeed.

Chrome was a completely different beast, and I suppose the best way to differentiate is on brand relevance vs brand preference. IE and FF were still browsers. No one said "go internet explorer" - but people do say "Oh yeah, go Facebook me" or "yeah Facebook that kay?" When I think of sharing something online, I think Facebook or Twitter, and not "social network".

Yes, Google has a large market share in a small amount of time. What are their usage details? I still haven't seen anything on G+ that hasn't been on my FB feed, or been tweeted first. Also, unlike Chrome, I don't feel G+ offers any drastically different features.

Ok, this is speculation. But this is all speculation. I guess we just need to wait.
Real time github commits feed
...and in one year you will need 16GB.
New York to Paris is the classic one. They took it down though (big frowny face)
Before diving in -- it's always great to see more takes on utility programming in JS, especially when there's a clear difference of philosophy. That said...

Underscore might be oriented towards performance, but really the main thing -- which it would be great for you to add to the paragraph -- is that Underscore is oriented towards not patching native objects.

To quote from lib/sugar.js, inside of the Object.enableSugar() function:

typeMethods.each(function(m){
Object.prototype['is'+m] = function(){
return instance(this, m);
};
});
hashMethods.each(function(m){
Object.prototype[m] = Hash.prototype[m];
});

Extending Object might be perfectly fine on a webpage that you control, and that you're 100% sure not to include any third-party JS libraries on. But it also means that I'll never be able to use sugar.js in a library that I expect others to use, or in a bookmarklet, or on a large website where third-party code will be included.

Cheers, and nicely done with the great documentation site.
I fail to see how it's worth mentioning. Xcode not being included in the Lion DMG is not surprising, it's "no shit": Xcode was never in the OSX image in the first place, why would Lion be any different?

The only difference is that 4.1 is not released yet, and thus not currently available. That's it. That it's not part of lion (let alone installed by default) is anything but surprising.
10 Things I Hate About Software Development
The new Macbook Air and Mac Minis can recover Lion from internet
Would be good to know if this is available to international audiences as well.

I'd venture that most of the torrenting of popular TV shows happens outside the USA (even the back-catalog ones), in which case this does absolutely nothing to address the issue.
Apple to Offer Lion on USB Sticks | Lion | The Mac Observer
As far as I know, 4.1 is still in GM, not released yet, you need a paid developer account to get the GM. In fact, not only is 4.1 not available, 4.0 is gone from MAS.
I believe the primary responsibility of any govt is to create jobs in the society.
Notice the new MacBook Air does not have an HDMI adapter available?
Remember that you have a powerful weapon at your disposal. If you and a few others mark their emails as spam in GMail, all of their emails could start disappearing into the black hole, putting a serious crimp on their business.
Foster the Factors that Make Startup Work Fun
Latest News From India, Business, Bollywood, Cricket, Shopping
Latest India news, top stories and world news headlines from Chetu News India. Find breaking news from India and in-depth coverage of world news headlines.
you're right, i misunderstood it.
London the greatest city 
London was something truly special. Being one of the biggest metropolitan cities in Europe, and dating back to the Romans, London has seen many things come and go.The best company you could possibly ask for is the company of a beautiful woman from one of the many Escort Services that London has to offer.
Since google officially announced google+ the linkedin shares rose by about 17.6%(as of 07/20/11). I wonder when those Wall Street guys wake up and see google+ as a real threat to Linkedin
Are you just listing a bunch of random logical fallacies? Every one of his points is real, even though they have a (deservedly) aggressive tone.

The "canon is to simple have the better product?" What happens when you're a small developer and a company like Microsoft or Lodsys or Intellectual Ventures holds some ancient patent to an obvious feature you just happened to include in your product? Having the best product in the world isn't going to help you very much.
I want a 15 inch Macbook Air
Well, maybe that point just got me all excited because I had to work on exactly that dilemma of bad security questions a few years ago for a big identity management installation and we would end up with exactly those kind of a bit more personal/specific questions like who was your first manager, lyrics to favorite song, most significant politician...

In my case, being European and only moved from my parents' house once in my life so far - yes, I do remember my (old) home phone number better than the one my mom switched to now.

Either way, it is a surprisingly difficult topic and very dependent on the organization and people.
Interesting point. Anybody?
Move it to the folder Thrash
Nope, and no "Full Screen" mode or "Maximize" mode for windows on OSX.
"Lion adds Emoji support to Mac OS X. So that happened."

:D
tl;dr - Do things you wouldn't normally do, especially if they 'waste time'.

Because really, that's the essence of it. We get so into spending our time wisely that we don't stop and look around. Rather than trying to follow the list, I'd recommend just doing things that you feel like doing, but normally wouldn't because they aren't something you'd normally do. (It's a self-reinforcing cycle.)
is hiring a native English speaker to look at it and make sure the English looks like English that much of an extra expense?

You will be surprised how bad is anything in foreign languages looks in major Hollywood movies. Apparently, hiring a Chinese/Russian/German speaker is too expensive even when their product is exposed to much wider audience.
I just bought the maxed out 13 inch air in October, and it's been a great dev machine (rails, ios) someone please talk me out getting the newest shiniest for no good reason
We Tried to Hack Facebook Ads with Pics of Beer. Here's What Happened.
i want a 15 inch air
It’s Not a Pivot, It’s an Evolution
I had the same reaction like you (I think). This is a current affair and it seems not clear what exactly happened and why. I would not sign any petition before knowing more.
lol That would practically guarantee that I never did anything spontaneous. I'm much more likely to weigh it all out, then finally decide, "Ah, what the heck" and go do it anyhow, against logic and sense.

It stops me from doing anything truly stupid or rude, but doesn't restrict me from doing fun and interesting things.