skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Rate this (offline) business concept: Off-campus college tours
I'm considering this side-business idea. Let me know what you think:

----

The problem: college-sponsored tours aren't very good. Among other things, they've overcrowded, overly-formal, generic, and only include on-campus areas. The lack of off-campus information is even more noticeable at an urban school (like mine).

I've proposed the idea on college message boards, and there seems to be some interest. I've also run into (around town) a number of visitors who would find such a tour useful. I'm aiming at $30 for a 1.5 hour tour; you'd book it online and then meet at a specific location for the tour.

The "pitch page" would be something like this (with better copy and formatting, obviously):

----

Why book a tour with OffCampusTours?

> It’s personal and informal; only you and your family are on the tour. Feel comfortable asking questions.

> It’s customized just for you - Fill out the “interests” form, and we’ll craft your tour specifically to your interests.

> It’s not included in official tours - Official campus tours only show you the campus and university buildings, not the surrounding area.

> Moving off-campus is inevitable - Most students move off campus in their sophomore or junior years. Why not familiarize yourself with the area now?

> Supports local residents and businesses - Our tours are led by students and residents of the area. Plus, you’ll find hidden local restaurants and shops.

> Find the necessities - We’ll show you where grocery stores, laundromats, banks, pharmacies, and other essential places are located, and how to get there.

> Safety - As in all urban areas, some parts of town can be dangerous after dark. We’ll show you the safe and unsafe areas of town

------

A few potential problems:

1. The university may not be too excited about the project. Some of the off-campus areas aren't very pretty.

2. Marketing/sales: I don't have a direct sales channel, and my marketing strategy would essentially be posters on bulletin boards and word-of-mouth. The university could be an excellent referrer of customers, but again, they might not be very enthusiastic about the project.

3. I'm not technically a student, any more. I'm taking the upcoming semester off to save some money, take classes at the local community college, and work on my programming skills. My solution is: plenty of non-students live around here, so I can give tours without issue. Plus, I have plenty of student friends willing to give tours.

----

So, if you read that entire thing, thanks! Any thoughts, suggestions, or questions? Would you consider paying for such a tour, if you were visiting the school?
Don't make your mobile site a prison
Actually DARPA has funded a number of small UAVs with bird like properties. The Aerovironment humming bird [1] is one such example.

If you want to see some some overhype check out the video in [2]. Basically it has a the humming bird types everywhere. I suggested to a friend who shared that video with me that perhaps the military would add 'skeet shooting' to their rifeman training so that some members of your squad are designated MAV suppression :-)

Its wonderful robotics, I'm not sure its so great for folks who care about the civil liberty aspects, or the folks who have to worry about a larger threat surface.

[1] http://www.avinc.com/nano

[2] http://video.designworldonline.com/video/vid=0f7d1e1689b1472...
The Eastern District of Texas: "a haven for patent pirates".

http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech-Software/wtr_16280,...
Having fun whilst driving is not actually incompatible with road safety, and I'm not entirely sure why you seem to be suggesting that it is. The cause of this horrible accident certainly wasn't an excess of (driving) enjoyment.
>there's no statute against "public example making". If you don't want to be an example, avoid felonies. That's going to get me downvoted, so can we assume good faith and accept this new emoticon I just made up.

Don't be a dick. You yourself have undoubtedly committed dozens of felonies this year alone. The sheer quantity of criminal legislation makes it almost unavoidable, and nobody is in a position to hurl stones at the unfortunate who get caught in the crossfire.

legal != right

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870447150457443...
Oh. and one more point.

There was an attempt to broadcast a drink driving psa in the US, which was filmed in the style of a UK drink-drive campaign advert.

It was banned. No network was willing to show it, and went so far as to get the FCC to ban it as it would scare people.

How is that in any way a serious attitude to drink driving?

If you haven't seen them, here are a few interesting PSAs from the uk. They are shocking, disturbing - horrible. But they work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQtTREndJKk - drink driving
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iqCcMDByLA - using your phone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm8yyl9ROEM - speed (a classic)

from ireland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om9qq2d4DRk - drinking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzvzqaicMz0&NR=1 - seatbelts

from australia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8QxZJZfU5Q - speeding/mixed

And for comparison, this one won an emmy as a PSA from tennessee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miqGOGv7QPs

Seriously?
Knockout.js vs. Backbone.js – Part 1 « If & Else
It does appear to have been merged now:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git...
If there's evidence yet to come that Swartz intended to anonymously push the corpus he took from JSTOR up to BitTorrent, the crime is no longer minor.

Welcome to thought-crime, folks.

1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless! ~~ Cereal Killer
"the death penalty is commonplace."

This is why you're being downvoted so heavily, in case you were wondering. Such flamebait is not appropriate.
Knockout.js vs. Backbone.js – Part 2 « If & Else
for general, non-mobile use, a 3.5-4" screen does not outperform a 12" screen.
Simple SaaS: The 3 most important metrics for investors
It appears that they may be trying raise the profile of "hackers" to pave the way for public support of new "cyber terrorism" policies:

"States have an inherent right to self-defense that may be
triggered by certain aggressive acts in cyberspace,” says
the policy. Indeed, such aggressive acts might compel a
country like the US to act even when the hacking is
targeted at an allied country.

"Certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could
compel actions under the commitments we have with our
military treaty partners,” says the document. “When
warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts
in cyberspace as we would any other threat to our
country."

United States International Strategy for Cyberspace (PDF) - http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/int...
I definitely agree with you that improving and expanding what the web platform can do is an important mission and I'm glad Mozilla is taking this up. Whether building an entire operating system in order to accomplish this is necessary is yet to be seen.
I don't know if it's related, but I remember a gender inequality talk in a conference where surprisingly, Switzerland did not rank well in many statistics, including wage discrepancies which seem to be at 20% [http://wikigender.org/index.php/Gender_Equality_in_Switzerla...]
I'm not a lawyer, but I think there's a sense in which this comment misses the point and a sense in which it's simply wrong.

First: to prevail in a criminal proceeding, the prosecution has the burden of proving two things: actus reus (an actual act that causes social harm) and mens rea (criminal intent). The prosecution's failure to establish mens rea will in a wire fraud case lead to acquittal. So, his intentions are very valid.

Second, even if Swartz fails to actually publish documents on BitTorrent, if the prosecution can muster evidence showing that he would have, were he not thwarted in his attempt by MIT, JSTOR, or the DoJ, then he's culpable for the attempt. To prove the attempt it needs to be shown that Swartz intended to commit the offense (maybe he emailed his friends about it) and that he took "substantial steps" towards committing the offense.

Criminal law is fun. I want a law degree.
This patent crap is getting ridiculous. We should create a script to auto-generate Patent Violation Notices in masse to be sent to patent trolls. Business should be about creating value, not leeching and hurting others to steal their value and make it your own.
Humans suck at driving. As soon as we have the technology we should let machines do it. I’m willing to bet that there will be ample opportunities for those who are willing to take the risk to drive without endangering others.
Doubt it. JSTOR subscriptions have a public price list; if MIT is paying "tens of thousands of dollars annually" for it, they are getting a deep discount. If every organization of MIT's size is paying tens of thousands of dollars for it, JSTOR is generating millions annually.

Yes, by the way: it is "hacking" (computer fraud and abuse) to violate a site's ToS knowingly, recklessly, or purposefully. To preempt a recurring stupid message board article: it is tremendously difficult to prove that a blog commenter or a site visitor knowingly violated some random clause in your ToS, which is why tiny little ToS violations on blog sites don't get prosecuted.
I believe that it refers to the Eastern District of Texas, where many patent cases are filed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_fo...
Sure you can, and many of us do. Freedom trumps damn-near everything as far as I'm concerned. And how many of us are planning on living forever anyway?

This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm.

That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.
Well, say the patent goes to court and Rovio begins to argue that they did not violate the patent, what would they say? This is my question, what specifically is violating? If they have to prove that they are not violating, what will they say?
I'd argue that using the real name helps the community in the end, because people behave "better" when taken away this anonymity. I have the feeling that up until now the conversations i had on google+ and the content i have seen has a far better quality then facebook or twitter.

If this is worth the trade-off is up to everyone himself...
Why waste a ton of money on cancer research that has a good chance of saving no lives, when you can invest money into driverless vehicles that are guaranteed to save lives?
You can write your members, and maybe the members on the two Commerce Committees, but I don't think Congress ever met a monied patent holder they didn't like.

My impression in the last five to ten years is that the sleeping bag is looking like stuffed sausage with all the members and IP interests squirming around in there.
I wonder how one would ever see that it was necessary. Seems a hard hypothesis to falsify, if you will.
Just a friendly tip: Try to verify whether Fail2ban actually works and keep monitoring your log files (Logwatch). I once found some dumb ass trying to brute force his way into my Postfix server, unfortunately Fail2ban didn't catch it and I only noticed when Logwatch showed me the authentication failures (several hours and thousands of attempts later).
I think that's the point: using social pressure instead of legal. Parent's statement - it being a private event - does not necessarily conflict with embarrassing and disdaining the members.
"the DoJ sees someone bent on forcibly publishing every
closed database pertaining to the public interest, laws
be damned.

...longwinded rather tangental story about your
childhood...

† I don't know Aaron Swartz personally and am not
asserting any of this to be true."

classy...

Anyway, the primary issue with your little story here is you are taking a single encounter with a single person and making a generalization about an entire profession with it. A positive generalization sure, but still a generalization (and as someone who on occasion reads the news, one that does not jive with my perception of reality).
To me, they are both victims of a paradigm shift. The only thing that saddens me is that their employees will pay the price for their lack of vision.
This is the point where, on reddit, someone would post the image captioned "civil disobedience is still disobedience". And they'd be right -- activists who campaign for big changes often end up in jail (multiple times, or for a long time, or both) along the way. It's not nice and it's not pretty, but it's reality.

True, but I hope your position isn't that "the rest of us should sit on our hands and shut up while it happens." If it is... well, sorry, but I don't accept that. My chance of having any meaningful impact in terms of "changing the world" before I die might be small, but I'll never stop arguing and fighting for what I believe in. I mean, what would be the point in living if we did that?
They added EA, Atari, Square Enix and Take-Two as well.

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/lodsys-sues-rovio-ov...
I've been hoping for a patent frenzy for some time, where all the major holders sue all the major violators. Maybe freedom and innovation will rise out of the ashes.
If by "thought crime" you mean "establishment of mens rea", it's been 1984 since English common law.
It is interesting, if only because I've heard a lot of talk from C/C++ developers who believe that by compiling to native code their programs will always be faster than the equivalent C# code running on the .NET CLR. It's nice to have some data points to debunk that theory.
I'll take you at your word regarding your examples of "thrills", although I would note that the horse is probably less impressed :-)

I'm not sure about your last point. Enormous strides have been made in designing road networks that are far more tolerant of heavy loads. But gridlock is also in some sense a social problem, and so a purely technological or algorithmic solution is perhaps unrealistic.
And how exactly do you propose to do that?
What's interesting to note is that, as revealed on an episode of NPR's This American Life [1], Lodsys has the same exact address (down to the room number!) of Oasis Research, which is known to have a "back-end arrangement" with Intellectual Ventures.

So Lodsys is pretty much a front for Myhrvold and his despicable company.

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/25/138576167/when-pat... (this is pretty much a full transcript of the show)
How do you make personalization user friendly?
Thanks for the feedback, Mike - appreciated. We're working on a product tour that should make things clearer and will def let users know that they should add multiple tasks.
the car database cleaning up (HUGE amount of work there)

I can only imagine! FYI, I tried BMW E36 - which is the 3 series, and it listed old 5-series instead. But I really don't envy you that task ;)

I really like BugMuncher, BTW - just please hire someone to make the Feedback button a bit prettier :)
So ... keep at it Lodsys! You're doing EXACTLY what we need to happen before we can revolutionize the system!
I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Are you offended by the idea that someone might have an interpretation of the actions of the DoJ other than mendacious pettiness? That literally seems to be the only point you're trying to make: "you said something positive about the DoJ".

If you read the comment more carefully --- I apologize for making that harder for you by being long-winded --- you'll see that I'm not even defending the prosecution; just offering a theory for it other than pettiness.
Why you may need a second passport
I thought this was going to be about a method for destroying pigs in structures by accelerating birds through the use of an elastic or spring-loaded device.
I work as a Systems Engineer/Developer for an ISP, so unfortunately I've been exposed to the difficulties of configuring a decent antispam engine (our use case is different to that of a personal MX however, and some of the techniques we have to apply to scale wouldn't apply). I'd consider a decent antispam setup one which:

* performed a full validation at SMTP time of the various protocol bits and bobs (ie. the sending SMTP follows the RFCs)
* respects DKIM and SPF
* performs an AV check (clamav is fine here)
* greylists
* performs a bayesian analysis
* uses RBLs like DNSBL and the like
* supported encryption/TLS for SMTP

Overall, setting something like that up isn't so difficult, but it is time consuming and fiddly. A turnkey virtual appliance which configured Postfix, Dovecot and all the other extensions would be very useful. FWIW, after posting this yesterday I found http://www.iredmail.org/ which actually does all that - so fired it up on a Linode and was very impressed :).

I believe there's a market for it because I believe there's a growing amount of users who want to switch off Gmail (and other cloud email providers), considering posts like this. The threat of losing your communications infrastructure is pretty terrifying for most; I funnel mail from 3 or 4 different domains to my Gmail account and if it got taken away I'd be screwed. As people become distrustful of cloud providers - where else would they go? A simple "run your own email" appliance would give those concerned with their privacy and security online the ability to setup their own instance without having to delve into the arcane magic that is configuring an MX in this day and age :).
well the other option is to build web applications that need these technologies, kind of like PDF.js and jsmad have done, but for some of the other missing technologies that you have listed and see what is missing. You don't have to build an OS to see what is missing - that's my point.
Manufacturers price consoles below cost because most of the revenue will come from game sales (which they license rights to)... getting a chunk of $60 transactions is much more lucrative than trying to monetize with ads.
Be prepared to be shocked - What company wanted all their employees to know how to program (even the secretary!)

(Hint, it wasn't Google.)

But I think this is best summed up by an (admittedly paraphrased) quote from our good friend, Steve Jobs - "Engineers are the only kinds of employees I really hire, everyone else is expendable, because everyone else isn't very smart."
Chrome OS Alternatives to Netflix - What's Available?
The SMS part was only added later... the proposed "solution" was: SSH buddy!

I don't know why this was linked here and got all those upvotes. I don't see anything special about it, really.
I've always heard that VMs can do JIT optimization that may be hard to get to with native, and for the most part I've never heard of the .NET CLR being any better than any other, except for perhaps the LLVM which is better, for reasons specific to it.
Good point - Thanks for the tip!
Grandson Of Browser Wars: Open Source Is Not Enough
It's just as fine of a line that you have to walk with a product. We had more we wanted to do but, do we need more? At the end of the day we, as a conference, _need_ to get people together to talk and spread information.

Also, it's just the right thing to do.
Why we think HTML5 will definitely overtake Flash, and how we're going to help
Mine patents. Build grunts. Give all grunts the same unoccupied office suite in Texas. Sell patent to grunts with revenue sharing clause. Select a grunt, scroll to target, right-click.
I found this comment greyed. How does anyone downvote this? It's a single sentence with two clauses both of which state objectively verifiable facts relevant to the thread and responsive to the parent comment.
Deaths in the US from driving have come down from around 120 a day in 2000 to around 90 a day now.

In other words, one 9/11 every month. I refuse to believe that's as safe as possible.

I'd invest that money straight into cancer research.

Well, you'd have to look at the marginal benefits. Cancer research already gets lots of funding; it's unlikely that a relatively small percentage increase would result in drastic improvements. If we're going down that road, I'd rather invest in SENS and try to knock out all age-related diseases in one shot.

I'm a bit surprised at the opposition to this. I'm much more libertarian than average here, but I recognize that driving is by far the most dangerous thing I do on an average day. If automated cars can mostly eliminate that danger, I'd have no problem requiring them on public roads (or strongly encouraging them via insurance premiums). Plus, saving lives is only one of the major benefits. Look at rush hour traffic: ideally, automated vehicles would eliminate traffic jams, and even if not they would still allow commuters to do something productive or entertaining instead of slowly inching forward.
I think it is necessary for the same reason it was necessary for Google to create Chrome to get the other browser vendors to get serious about Javascript performance. Today Javascript is no longer a blocker.

If Mozilla can force other mobile OS vendors to get serious about exposing lower level APIs to the web through (open standard) javascript, it will mean a major win for all smartphone users.
Nice look at Lion's new Quick Look options.
I doubt the marketing rationale. Most G+ accounts will be connected to older Gmail accounts, which are themselves likely to be the point-of-contact for most online transactions (and, if not, it's going to be same_name@yahoo.com, etc.). So it seems like Google already has the best identifier it could possibly get, the Gmail name, which can be cross-referenced even to otherwise anonymized data.
Please tear the messaging for my web app apart - Feedback needed
Airbnb Raises $112 Million Funding Round
A User's Guide to the Digital Revolution (WIP)
Here is the complaint that lists the patent numbers.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/60587096/11-07-21-Lodsys-Amended-C...
"I think people on HN don't fully appreciate the extent to which prosecutors and judges take the law seriously. They've dedicated their life to it."

That is what I object to. Your story is not evidence of that assertion.
You may have a cell signal but no (or prohibitively expensive, in the case of traveling abroad) data access.

Then again, if one of my servers was being hacked, I think I'd be ok spending $50 in data roaming to shut it down.

Although, there's the case of a really slow data. On T-Mobile I'll occasionally get an EDGE signal too useless to even establish an ssh session, let alone be interactive enough to use ssh. A text message can often be much more reliable and easy to use. Not sure about the security implications related to SMS remote control, though.
Remember folks.. MS has been using scare tactics for 20 years to keep firms form choosing Linux..with those efforts being dismal failures and at times including patent trolling..this is the new MS Patent trolling chapter of Linux..
>32,000 deaths a year from driving in US. 500,000 deaths a year from cancer in US.

My personal favorite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...

Suicides at 11.1 per 100,000 per year, or about 33000 per year. You're roughly as likely to kill yourself as to die in an auto accident.
The thing is that I was actually in the same position as you. I've been keeping a list of ideas (most crap, but some good ones IMO) for the past 5+ years. The only thing holding me back was technical skill as well. Now I finally have the skill to build it. I've been thinking about this site for at least three years.
Down With O.P.C. (Other People's Code)
I don't tend to agree with groups like Lulzec and Anonymous, but please think about Lodsys as a target.