skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, I really hate them too. That's why one of the first blog posts I wrote about Decal was entitled "How we built a web application and didn't launch it in 482 days".

I've made a submission each week over the past three weeks, each with decreasing dev times because, hell, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

The first was http://cueyoutube.com/ "My Sunday Night Project", then last week was "My 15 minute project: PimpMySalary.com" and now this one isn't even a project, it's just a 10 minute idea.

Whilst my link bait titles are a bit tongue in cheek, there is a real reason I'm doing this: it's therapeutic! I've found that just releasing software serves several useful purposes:

1) It's a fun escape from the "real task" which is building decalcms.com which is a very hard, complex task that's taking a really long time and which I'm worried about monetising (and represents a huge investment of time and money)

2) It's a way of engaging with people and building an audience. Every time I do something like this, I pick up a couple of Twitter followers, or I get to engage with the people that sign up to discuss the product and of course I get the name Working Software in front of a bunch of people

3) It gives some little ideas validation (or not) so that when I feel like a little escape I have something that I can work on and know that there are at least a few people that will care. I'm also building an ORM for SQL lovers at https://github.com/iaindooley/PluSQL/ - I just find that if I don't do something with tangible (or "releasable") results every week then I get very bogged down in the marketing, monetisation and completion of Decal - this helps me regain perspective on life.

4) It's conceivable that if I just so happen to execute one of these right, it'll turn into a real product, who knows.

5) It's good practice for releasing. Putting something out in public is really nerve wracking and I'm not that used to it (same with sending bulk emails). Doing this over and over again desensitises me to it in a way that's kind of quirky and fun, and not offensive (hopefully) to the people involved.

But I'll cool it on the "my 45 second glint in the milkman's eye" titles ;) I've had my fun.
Oh, how I wish you were right about "for the good of society". I completely agree with you. However, a large section of the rest of the world talks a lot about "justice", which as far as I can tell means do they deserve to go to jail, which usually gets simplified to, did they break the law.
The fact that similar Bridgewater stories are cropping up out of no where is no coincidence. They are clearly ramping up their PR. I wonder why...
There's a common confusion between users "paying for Gmail" by buying more storage and "paying for Google Apps" which is what comes with the SLA and support. Buying more storage simply gets you more storage. I'm sure there are horror stories from actual Google Apps customers, but that's surely the case for any company with tons of customers.
Hi, thanks everyone for commenting, sorry for the delayed responses - I'm GMT+10 so I put this up before bed :)
Looks pretty cool! I like the simplicity of the design. I'm running a very similar startup UpOut.com targeting different cities from you.

I think the difficulty in all these sites as I have found is seeding the initial users. I'd love to talk further as we are also hiring ;)
Good tools can help a lot with successfully managing the complexity of computational models of biological systems-- models that might end up being used in developing cures for all sorts of diseases.
Whoa.

Good point.

Shit just got real. Thanks for creeping me out even further.
Video: Introduction to Git with Scott Chacon of GitHub - Marakana
Thanks, tokenadult. We surely disagree about many things but you are indeed a seeker of truth.
If this statement were directed at particular parts of the Internet where there are known problems, it would make a lot more sense. But as a blanket statement about the entire online world, it's nothing more than exactly what you'd expect a Facebook person to say; they are obviously in a business that benefits from this, but no one else really does.

We have insecure protocols (e.g. E-mail is wide open), and there are places where it would help to be very sure that something came from a particular person. There have been solutions, but none of them is sufficiently widespread. Is Facebook ponying up some money or resources to help solve that? Probably not.
To really increase the realism of the metaphor, in the future when such content is stolen, they should refuse to serve it to library users. They could explain that, regrettably, the journal issue I seek is currently missing due to a recent theft, and assure me that they are working as fast as possible to recover the stolen documents.
The article has been updated with information from Brian Chesky where he clarifies that AirBNB have offered financial compensation and are trying to go "above and beyond".
One friend? The majority of my friends don't use gmail. Its just not that good of a service, exchange, and big services like that make it laughable.

Plus I've found it unreliable with certain ISPs, mail just doesn't arrive. Black holed, never making it to the spam folder, not being bounced back.

So sorry its amatuer mail and I'll let people choose there own life style, but I will not recomend it for work related stuff.
I think that's 100% correct. I have 25 years' experience and am employed making less today (in a startup) than I did then (also in a startup) in constant dollars.

Is 25 years' experience worthless these days? (I didn't sit on my technical butt, and I'd give any kid today tough competition.)

I'm tired of hearing about the shortage of kids going into STEM careers -- this just proves that the kids aren't stupid.

If there were really a shortage of engineers, their salaries would increase; since salaries are not increasing....
I hope this was sarcastic, unfortunately I fear you're actually serious.

Scary.
Not everyone needs a closet
Patrick- this part is especially interesting to me -
"This might be shocking, but many of my software buddies do not have fully automated fulfillment. If you buy their software, they get an email, and then they have to do something to get you what you bought. This is insane in this day and age for commodity software purchases. BCC will automatically generate a Registration Key for you (for the downloadable version), and takes a variety of steps to automatically upgrade the software without the customer's interaction. If they ordered a CD, it uses an API at SwiftCD to arrange for that CD to be shipped without my involvement. Bookkeeping entries get made automatically. etc, etc "

Although some of that process will be eliminated as more "app stores" proliferate, it's still a huge and "non-core" part of the process for most software application providers which should be outsourced, as credit card processing has become. I remember the days 5 or 6 years ago where you had to write your own payment gateway, etc, etc.

If you are interested in reselling this as a package to startup software companies let me know, I would love to be involved, I think it fits a need.
If you look at the history of this person, you'll notice they are a member of Nodejitsu and/or are shilling on behalf of them at the moment.

Also a quote from a person who isn't me from some time ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664327

milkshakes 40 days ago | link

it's marak squires, he has lots of sock puppet accounts.
-----

http://twitter.com/#!/maraksquires/status/81591561602863104

@maraksquires
marak squires
I've decided I'm going to create a new account every-time I post any comment or article to hackernews. Take that.

>>>>

Go ahead, call me a liar.
Your reactions here are completely emotional. This is understandable, since the story is about a potentially emotional topic, but your response to it is not helpful for making a rational business decision.

Try to divorce yourself from the topic and read your reply again, realizing that you've set up an impossible standard and blanket-judged a complicated balance of liabilities as "pretty simple."
No different than a usual apartment building? As long as the walls are insulated enough, I would guess.
Agreed. Plus, he had upto 2 expensive wars to fight, and now a hostile House of Representatives who clearly do not understand anything about economics.
This is a general trend, dating to the 80s, of treating Scary Computer Stuff as somehow much more dangerous than other kinds of stuff.

Related: the kids who ran LOIC to send a few megabytes of data to some websites are being charged with crimes that carry more jail time than is typically given to people who throw bricks through windows as part of a protest. Heck, you could probably burn a cop car without being in greater trouble.
Those large single-platform client-based OSes have not produced a cloud OS because it would be too radical of a change for their current business model.

Some company with the explicit goal of developing a cloud based OS could do it today if they wanted to. Monetizing it might be a different question though.
Why on earth would you feel bad for AirBnB? They're not paying out any money, they're not taking any responsibility, and for that they are receiving a lot of negative reaction. If you feel bad because they are getting negative reaction, that is ridiculous. They are simply reaping what they've sewn in this instance.

They could be out there making this right but instead they're hiding in their offices. Not even any meaningful words. A check for some reasonable amount of money accompanied by some nice words would go a long way. Something as simple as, "We were appalled by this story. I wish words could convey how deeply the AirBnB team regrets that this crime occurred to one of our customers in the course of an exchange that was arranged through our service. Please accept this check that we hope will cover most of the physical damage to your belongings along with assurances that we will be looking into exactly what we can do to mitigate the possibility of this ever happening to anyone using our service."

Anyway, don't feel bad for them, that's ... misguided.
Took office Jan 20, 2009.

That chart starts spiking before he went into office.
The explanation is of course that they want people to run Chrome no matter the cost.

They can force people to upgrade to chrome that way. It's a well known way of doing stuff.

Microsoft has done that for ages in the past and got bashed for it until they started to fall.

When Google does it, it's ok tho. Figures.

ps: this is actually doing evil
How Facebook moved 30 petabytes of Hadoop data
The utter destruction of your home at the hands of a service that aims to help you monetize it is ipso facto a bug.

Again, Airbnb didn’t destroy her home. Are you under the impression that someone from Airbnb itself was the one staying at her house?

Intent: create value. Result: destruction of value. Bug!

You’re basically defining what you want the responsibilities of Airbnb’s service to be and then faulting them according to those responsibilities. But those are not Airbnb’s responsibilities. Again, Airbnb doesn’t claim to prevent things like this, therefore it’s not a bug.

If they want to be the "Ebay of spaces" then they need to provide for some basic level of safety and security

No they don’t. There will be business consequences for not doing so, but they don’t have to. They can define their service to be whatever they want it to be. As it currently stands, their service is not meant to prevent this from happening.

They're incompatible, so we won't ever work together.

This came through loud and clear the first time you patronizingly said it.
Implicit upvoting awarded to comments based on the length of "discussion" that they produce.

I've been surprised sometimes how an entire thread will form under a comment of mine, and in the end there will be 2 or 3 sub-comments voted at 20 while mine stays at 1. Shouldn't I, in those cases, receive some votes for starting such a discussion?
No brainer. Build insurance into the site. Renters can either opt for it or not, or AirBnBcan be provided it universally, their call. AirBnB needs to step up their protections. (my apologies if others have already suggested this.)
While the right PR thing for Airbnb to do is cover the damages done, I am a little disappointed by the Airbnb hate I'm reading here. Why should they be held liable for the damages? Were they negligent? Airbnb offers a service. They match renters with houses. Do they make any warranty as to the reputation of the renters? Go to http://www.airbnb.com/terms and read the very first section.

I'll admit that the victim has a good point about the secrecy imposed between the parties by Airbnb, but that's just a policy, not a liability, and it can be changed. It's like buying a car that isn't as safe as it could be. Sure you could pay more and get a very safe car, but as long as the manufacturer didn't misrepresent the safety of the car, you will have a hard time holding the company liable when you get injured in a crash.
If AirBnB comes to the rescue with lots of zeros on their donations to make the person whole. I can envison people taking advantage of this, Have your buddy ransack your house and steal all your stuff, then split the gain of having it all replaced.
It's less that you can spread the blame around than it is that the blame is spread around a bit more. Tasks get broken up, redundancy gets built in.

One of the most important goals for my "parent" company after we were acquired was to make sure that I (as the first and only employee) was not going to be killing the company if I left to pursue something else or got sick, etc.

So you've effectively got it, it's just that, in a big company, unless you're the CTO or in some other relatively lofty position, the buck probably does not stop with you.

Depends on the company obviously, YMMV, but I think the important takeaway is that "big" companies aren't just larger "small" companies - they're very different entities.

There's an interesting talk from Geoffrey West that (if I recall correctly) is somewhat related to this topic (the scaling of cities vs companies) - http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey-west

Apologies if I've left you more puzzled than before!
Government Seeks More Information on Google's Admeld Acquisition
Some bad things are so obviously good that you don't have to provide substance. Examples: the "protection" of intellectual "property", GDP growth, and even death (which somehow gives meaning to life).

Also, they made a general statement, which we could have dismissed thus: "OK, the patent system is a net good. But _software_ patents are definitely bad [a few decades of overwhelming evidence]". This is generally what we see here an HN.

However, I think we can attack their statements more directly, as "Against Intellectual Monopoly" did. I also think we should do so, instead of just defending our corner of the industry. My current position is, the concept of patent is broken at its core. It simply doesn't work, never did, never will. Hey, I even heard that the first patent systems actually were disguised trade barriers, meant to protect the established, local industry. At that, they did work.
Android source for Honey comb is indeed not available and hasnt ever been, so far.
Only the GPL parts (kernel, iptables basically) are open because they're forced by law.

I don't think we'll ever get HoneyComb source. We might get Ice cream sandwich source. Might. Only Google knows.
You're missing my point— "Fraud detection" in Airbnb's case means "ensuring that owners and renters are who they say they are."

Surely that should already be a primary focus of theirs.
or in fact form a fake group to set up a social network for Anonymous users ..except whoops its a honey pot..
Conveniently, you fail to address the point upon which this whole issue is predicated:

"You can't talk to guests until the transaction is consummated. If that's so, it's on Airbnb to make sure that they're not sending a dangerous creep into your arms."

No one thinks anyone from Airbnb blew up her home, dude. I'm not paid well enough to know if this meets the standard of tortious negligence. Yet it was negligence. Had she not used the service, she'd be fine now.

And, I mean, if you've got such a boner for the business side of this, in what universe can you trust a service like Airbnb now? You can't vet people until you're locked in, you have no recourse if you get screwed. This is a business problem, without the morality of hey, it's a good idea not to bring harm into people's lives.
well the live interaction part is a function of design; this doesn't look like it'll be as good for experimenting and creating new patches as your desktop remains, but it does look like a great way to get some of the cool stuff i've only seen done in vvvv onto the web; previously the only 'output' i've gotten out of vvvv are youtubes, so this is a sea change, and a cool one, for getting the platform of vvvv (which started as a transparent direct x wrapper with a pd like interface) into the wider world of open standards.
The difference is that the cars on Getaround are presumably owned by the people listing them on the service. Much of Airbnb's inventory is comprised of rented apartments. Most rental agreements (in the US at least) prohibit occupancy by people not party to the rental agreement without prior landlord approval. Given that dynamic, Airbnb would probably have a difficult time finding a blanket policy for damages. Most insurers just aren't clamoring to cover activity that's in breach of prior contracts.

As a renter, you can of course take out renters' insurance to protect yourself, however, it's unlikely your insurance company would willingly reimburse you for damage caused by an unauthorized subletter.

There's a good reason VRBO has "By Owner" in its name.
Yes the caps would be a pain to get around, but having the BR quality file delivered overnight is a possible solution. Of course when it's movie time you usually select the movie just before watching it (at least we do), so it might be difficult to get someone to accept a 12 hour wait for their 1080p movie.
Sure. I would think that sooner or later, the hoteliers in, say, Manhattan would start complaining about people engaging in hotel business without following the hotel rules. There's a financial incentive as well:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/business/business_tax_hotel...

So yes, at some point I'd say it is likely that AirBnb's records are going to be used against their customers. Some of AirBnb's customers aren't breaking the law, but some are.
Radi 0.6.2 released (my free HTML5 content creation app)
Worst case scenarios could come when the host is the lunatic.
can you share your code for doing the screencaps? there are a few posts about it online but would love more detail on the setup.
A lesson in trouble tickets from the strangest place
That statement doesn't seem based in logic: it doesn't follow. Lots of things are illegal in different countries, but that doesn't stop legitimate businesses operating in countries where such things are legal. For example, online gambling is illegal in the US, but that doesn't stop legitimate (US-headquartered) credit card companies dealing with online gambling companies in the UK.

Also, if it were indeed the case that AirBnb is soon to be illegal, it would make more sense for insurance companies to sign them up: the risk of AirBnb being shut down ought to reduce the likelihood that they'll need to pay out.
The whole idea of national and ethnic pride is silly, I think George Carlin nails it in this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDgmjL6z2jY

Regarding the supposed islamization of Europe, I think a large portion of the immigrants from muslim countries who moved to Europe belong to at least one of these groups:
a)not muslim
b)not interested in promoting islam
c)looking to live in a more secular or free country
d)like cold weather :)

Could Europe do anything to stop the muslim immigrants from wanting to move to Europe instead of deporting them when they are already living in Europe as Breivik suggests? Maybe stop selling weapons to the leaders of countries who kill their own people for holding peaceful demonstrations? Or stop the wars for cheap oil? Too bad there's no way to undo the European colonization of muslim countries, cause that would definitely have helped.
Walt Disney’s multiplane camera.
Such an insurance would probably be pretty much impossible. If you get a legit HTBRAI ( house trashed by random asshole insurance ), you've automatically created a market where these HTBRAIs are priced, bought and sold. That means you are essentially gaming burglary. eg. if I buy 100 HTBRAIs in some dicey neighborhood and there's an incident, my contracts automatically go up in value. That's a huge incentive for crime/arson/burglary.
From an engineering manager that helped scale Facebook: http://www.quora.com/LikeALittle-startup/Why-do-you-need-gol...
Also a recent update was lampooned pretty hard by my friend. They where advertising better ads as a new amazing feature... Really? Im pretty no one uses gmail to view ads on purpose... How about some rules and filtering options insteads... Priorities are wrong...

Also hotmail has caught up on the spam issue, there isn't a real reason to switch except for ego.
Posted earlier and has still live conversation:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813665
I am having a really, really hard time not going ad-hominem on this, but ... I think you're wrong.

Home buyers drive up housing costs, which is generally considered a good thing - and mortgage bankers drive up costs way more than immigrants, and the people selling those houses really don't complain. Employers drive down wages, which is called "productivity", although I'm sure they'd like you to believe immigrants are at fault. Children increase competition for school spots - although their parents help pay for more school spots, so it typically works out well.

Western and East Asian birth rates reflect collective decisions that people have better things to do than have a bunch of kids. If you have a wife, she may understand this better than you do. (Apologies if you yourself are female.)

Puerto Rico is more full than Europe (it surprised me to learn this, too) - but poor, mostly. The birth rate is still quite high there. This alone probably doesn't refute your argument, but I hope it at least makes you think a little.

All in all, though, you seem to be saying that immigrants are at fault for economics working the way it does. I think you need to ask yourself, really carefully, who benefits when you ascribe these things to immigration.
I'll call you a liar. You posted that I "threatened you with a handgun" on Hacker News, which was easily disproven using pubically available IRC logs.

Why don't you take your personal trolling issues somewhere else.

see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2565609
That was basically what I said to pg - "I'm not want to tell me HN buddies about the Nissan Leaf, the interesting part is their use of HTML5 video to create an ad campaign that would have traditionally been the domain of Flash(TM)".

pg's response was that if I want to share an editorial opinion about something, other than just posting the title of the page, then I should blog about it and then post a link to my blog.
Most unfortunate, but letting a complete stranger into your house with VALUABLES was never the best idea, moreover, with a company that hasn't said anything about this kind of issue before. I suppose this system has worked, but it's beyond me how you could ever trust a stranger to live in a place that you live in regularly and store many valuables in.

I want to sympathize with the victim, but it's somewhat hard to given the circumstances. In any case, AirBnB should suck it up, fix this one situation, then go into full throttle with trying to come up with a plan to prevent future things of this sort.