skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I completely and vehemently disagree with your response. You are acting as if the dot com bust never even happened!! I have no clue how old you are, but if you are over the age of 35, maybe you'll remember that the dotcom "boom" was merely a two-fisted cash grab from investors into the pockets of the founders and VCs. I certainly hope that as in industry, we don't make the same mistake twice in 10 years, lest it will again kill future investment in Silicon Valley for the next subsequent years.

It probably sucks to be the founders of AirBNB to have this info exposed, but they have the opportunity to respond to Chamath's opinion. It certainly seems as though they are in an indefensible position, but maybe there's a good reason why they are withdrawing millions from an as-of-yet unprofitable company. As I mentioned in another comment, I don't recall Bezos ever doing this.

You seem to have forgotten about the lessons of the dotcom boom. It's not about the founders or the VCs, it's about the investors. During the dotcom boom, founders and VCs both screwed the investors out of billions upon billions. A great deal of money was lost during the bust, and a lot of peoples' lives were affected. If you were around Silicon Valley at the time, you would know that the amount of jobs lost during the bust was worse per-capita than Detroit in the 80s. As a morbid datapoint, commuting on the 101 got much better at the nadir of the bust, because so many peoples' jobs were lost. The company I was at had half a dozen layoffs in 1 year, and lost 50% of the employees. The last thing I want to see is another round of smash-and-grab VCs and founders bilking more money from investors, and killing investment again, possibly putting me out of job because the SV economy contracts again.

The point that Chamath made is that the money is ONLY going to the founders and maybe some initial investors. Employees are being locked out of this. Say what you want about companies like Google and Facebook, but Brin, Page and Zuckerberg never turned their companies into cash-grabs where only they benefited.

We need MORE transparency, not less, so when seemingly shady things like founders withdrawing millions from the company coffers occurs, I would like more information about this.

I want to know if this is another second-coming of the dot-com bust, where I could lose my job and be unemployed for months/years because VCs, founders, and Wall Street were all complicit in sucking and spending money from investors, and then causing a complete seizing of investment in the Valley.

I have to admit that SARBOX actually did end up exposing companies like Groupon. At least there is a modicum of transparency in the S-1 filings so that people could see the accounting techniques being used by Groupon.
I find it highly unlikely, however, that they would use the exact same image: they would change /something/ about it, whether it just be what the wallpaper is, to the angles of the shots. Given that this is actually the same filename being shared from the other product, it seems much more likely that they haven't put the final images in place yet.
Chamath's response:
http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/01/chamath-palihapitiyas-state...
It's almost useless without 3D acceleration under Linux.
But SVG isn't supported in any version of IE... For me, that's the main reason to use Raphaël.
Taking money off the table implies selling their stake, ie. shares. They didn't sell their shares. They gave themselves a one-time dividend.
Some related material (in the order it should be read) for those interested:

On understanding types, data abstraction, and polymorphism:
http://lucacardelli.name/Papers/OnUnderstanding.A4.pdf

On Understanding Data Abstraction, Revisited:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2009/essay.pdf

LtU discussion:
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3668

LtU discussion of Steele's post:
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3702
Google MegaStore vs HDFS/HBase
Can’t we postpone all this crap 70 hours and go on what will then be definitive facts?
Ah, but if they paid it out in dividends, it would be taxed!

Apple's cash hoard is functioning as a giant insurance policy against Apple's stock price, which if you buy and hold, never gets taxed.
The point is not to connect you with houses 2.5 miles away--it's to connect you with houses 50 meters away that are completely inaccessible thanks to the street layout.
Scientists discover DNA modifications in non-dividing brain cells
Google open sources JavaScript testing tools
My uncle's Google account was just shut down after they asked his age (for "personalization") and he filled in 1-1-2000, which is under 18. He had to send them a copy of his passport to reopen the account.
I found Casu Marzu interesting, having never read about it. It's not possible to kill the larvae through some method? Radiation, etc?
It’s supported in IE9+, and for earlier versions (if necessary) there’s SVG Web or Chrome Frame.
Type in #17 at the end of the URL and hit refresh to step over the page. Shift click doesn't seem to work on that one.
Setting up the Ubuntu One free online storage on Linux, Android and Windows
You mean "Arrington's response?"

Oh how Michael loves to insert himself into every piece of drama he can get his hands on.
Ask HN: How to get well designed ios app icon?
How would you get a well designed ios app icon?

I have been googling for free libraries and can't find much. Thinking about a 99 designs contest.
So your project just fails on IE7 and IE8?
Ask HN: Pivot/idea change - where do you bury the survivors
For founders who were accepted to YC after launching and gaining traction with one idea only to pivot or completely change ideas, what did you do with the users/customers from your first idea? Especially in cases where the new idea is completely different, do you just close up shop and let users know you've moved on? Do you send them to a competitor? It seems like such a shame to see that work go to waste.
GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 - First Impressions
You must be interpreting this article very differently from many others since you're trying to turn this into an example of VC greed, but I don't quite understand how.

My reading is that the VCs for this round are not getting screwed in any way, they know exactly what they're getting (X% of the company for $Y, with $Z ending up in the company's accounts). For them it doesn't really matter whether all the shares they buy are newly issued or whether some are sold by existing shareholders, as long as X/Y/Z are the same.

Any possible investors in earlier rounds are not particularly getting screwed, since they have shares that will now receive a dividend.

But the employees with options are getting shafted, as they have been dilutied more than if the founders' cash-out had happened by them selling shares.
$3M on 12.7M investment is higher percentage wise than what the Airbnb guys are asking. Plus, it's earlier stage.
Crashes on Chrome for me, slow on FF
(Linux)
Different projects obviously have different needs. I’m just pointing out that much of what I’ve heard people say about Raphaël is along the lines of “it’s nicer to use than raw SVG”, and providing a contrary data point.

Often, when trying to figure out what technology stack to use, developers look around at what seems to have chatter and hype. I think that in some cases they’d be better served by just learning the lower-level API, which isn’t too hard.
Spend time reading interesting source code. Follow a forum. Pour over APIs. Read, read, read.

After awhile, you'll grow impatient and want to stop reading and actually do something based on some ideas you got from what you read. Give in to that urge. Start off with something simple and small. Don't be ashamed to share it with others and ask what they think of it.

Above all, have fun and be humble. Personally, I can tell you I got a lot further faster when I started taking myself less seriously. Besides that, it'll make the surprise all the sweeter when someone offers you those first open source commit rights or offers you a sweet job.
You missed the point about cell phones. The technology is over 60 years old, but it took FOREVER to commercialize it. The reason: telecom was controlled by monopolies, and the government owns the spectrum. In fact, the government is still wasting massive amounts of wireless spectrum-- given away free by Congress to their broadcaster crony contributors.

A lot of the problem, across the board today, is the U.S. litigation and regulatory state. So, the reality is that the cell phone revolution happened in spite of our national political leadership.
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
https://github.com/zynga/scroller/blob/master/MIT-LICENSE.tx...

added 21 min ago
If they plan to ship one or two phone models and upgrade them every two years, they had better have lots of patents, because they certainly won't be able to compete in a fair marketplace.
SEEKING REMOTE UI DESIGN WORK
I'm a UI/Branding designer from South America.
You can see some of my previews work at dribbble.com/nicogarcia
*Contact info in my profile.
When TDD Fails
Make the use of open standards in education mandatory
On gmail there are millions of non-personal addresses. Why would google kill those? Gmail isn't an "identity service"...
Personally, I find Netflix does the best job and is easily worth the rating-entry time investment required.

It's not because of the content they show me, but rather because of the accuracy of their "predicted star rating" metric. Netflix showing me a broad spectrum of content I can immediately parse through by looking at predicted ratings combined with all the other standard quality metrics I look for has led me to find an immense wealth of content I never would have guessed I'd like.
Even if you choose to keep three days worth of changes uncommitted, you're still doing local backups of your machine anyways, right? He'd be facing the same amount of information loss if his hard drive died.

If you're on OS X, Time Machine will get you back to where you were recently (except if your home directory is encrypted, then it backs up on logout). Or use Dropbox/SpiderOak/other to keep the last n versions of your changes.
I just took the test here http://www.123test.com/personality-test/ , which appears to measure this "openness" trait, and it says I'm already on the far end of open. My tradition doesn't contain, and I don't think I've ever experienced, "sartori", but if I ever get a tinge of boredom, I start tying to imagine the scale and complexity of the subatomic and relativistic models of the phenomena I'm experiencing (e.g., photons as probability waves moving at light speed and then an infinitesimal fraction of them collapsing in interactions with atoms in my retina), and I'm instantly fascinated. So the question is, would a psychedelic experience really change me?
潍坊柴油机哪家好
Great from a usability perspective!
What Occupy Wall Street Should Ask For
You must think Steve Jobs has spent the last few years working at Apple, when he probably should have been doing something less stressful, because he wants yet another billion dollars?
Making SEO a More Viable Marketing Strategy
Yeah I think Blekko had a search engine monte thing where you could run a search blindly across 3 engines and see which ones were best. At least for me, no search engine came up on top.

The theory I'm working with is that its because they're all looking at the web as a series of web pages, instead of discrete objects or data.

So like a search for "2 bedroom apartment in new york with a doorman" awkwardly brings me results of web pages (that are SEO-ed to the hilt :). Instead, don't I just want a series of apartments that match my criteria?

And couldn't that data be fed from those offering this structured data in the first place such as Roomorama.com (the site I've been working on), or Airbnb or others?

Thanks for the reply :)
艺人助理
So, Amazon had a page that promoted E-Ink over LCD. Then they released an LCD tablet and removed the page.

I don't see the big deal, I think the pros/cons of E-Ink are pretty well understood by most techies anyway. Now that Amazon has a its own LCD table they dropped the page? Seems kinda pointless on their part anyway.
Works great on iPad :-)
Processing-FSM: Simple Finite State Machine library for Processing
John Dvorak has said something similar:

"The problem here is that while Apple can play the fashion game as well as any company, there is no evidence that it can play it fast enough. These phones go in and out of style so fast that unless Apple has half a dozen variants in the pipeline, its phone, even if immediately successful, will be passé within 3 months."

"And its survival in the computer business relies on good margins. Those margins cannot exist in the mobile handset business for more than 15 minutes."

The problem is -- he said it in 2007.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-...
Your "little guy" has been earning a salary for the last 3 years in the startup - in fact he makes more money than the founders.

I still think its okay to compensate the founder for getting the app to this point.
Que Negocio es Mas Rentable - 3 Tipos
I've lived in both cul-de-sac hell (even pizza delivery drove there for years, it was a nightmare), and I've lived in straight grid systems, and I know where my loyalties lie.

If electric cars and alternate fuels can't deliver, then public transportation is our only way out of fossil fuel dependence. And I don't envy the city planners who will have to figure out how to make a bus and train system work with a layout that looks like a small child closed his eyes and took a crayon to a piece of paper.
click on pacman
The management fees do pay for the swanky offices, assistants, expensive meals, strippers, golf, computers, very significant travel expenses (unrelated to board meetings), etc.

And fees are not necessarily split equally across partners. One senior partner might take 20-50% in some cases.
HN is all about speculation and gossip about other people's money, so the answer to your question is "no".
And the Airbnb deal is probably a lot more competitive. Facebook was hot, but the market wasn't.
But the employees are getting salary and have been for the last 3-4 years. Infact all those employees have been making more than the founders for the last 3-4 years.

And if on joining, you were told about 2 classes of stocks - one for the founders and one for the employees then you should have understood that this was a distinct possibility.

This VC is just using this small soapbox to warn Airbnb not to eff with him. And to try to stem the tide in Silicon Valley where successful founders are compensated for getting a company upto a $1 billion valution WITH revenue.

If an employee had written this, I would have been a little (tiny) bit sympathetic but for a VC to act like he cares for the employees -- you HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME!!!
Scotland based training ERP company hiring web devs: www.Administrate.co

(Telecommuting globally OK)
Is 93% really an acceptable amount of the 'giant asteroids that could smash into Earth' to track?

Clearly, its a better number than, for example, 50%; and its great that NASA is doing any tracking; but this is an species level existential threat that's being talked about.

I'd really prefer to live in a world whereby a joint international effort (ideally; or just anyone) was tracking 99.9999% of such asteroids, as a matter of priority.

I think that the LHC, or the moon landings, were great projects - but shouldn't we do this, first?
You're right that selling shares is far more common, but the concept is the same. The founders raised an extra $20 million so they could sock it away themselves.
The Internet isn’t just another pipe. The Internet is an open distribution platform available to anyone, a fundamental change to the business landscape in which we operate. And the Internet is bidirectional, which should fundamentally change the product we offer.

I agree, and that's the first thing that the Big Media Companies (and I have to include Microsoft in this category) are working to change. That's what DRM (Copy Protection) is all about, both physically and economically. That's what keeping people ignorant about how web browsers work is all about. That's what port blocking is all about, and that's what bandwidth caps are all about.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo...
Ask HN: Persevere, pivot, or fail?
Depending on which successful startup company you read about, you hear one of three lessons:

1) We had a great idea and while no one was buying it or giving us the time of day, we pushed forward. Many times only eating rats for weeks on end, but we had grit, if nothing else. And then eventually we sold the company for $1B.

2) We had a great idea that was having trouble, but we realized there was this interesting aspect of our product that we pivoted on and this became MacroWare -- the largest software company ever.

3) We tried for six months, but clearly the idea had no legs. Many said to push for a full year, but I believe in failing fast. So I killed the company, and that is what allowed me to start my next company, that made instantly made billions.

All these success stories face a crossroads where things aren't really going well and they all end with a different "moral to the story" ending. But when you're actually living it in real life how do you figure out which story you're in? Should we hunker down and start eating rats, or fail now and move on to one of the other 50 ideas I have?
Chrome Assault: Firefox, IE Cannot Contain Market Share Losses
If there is only the 4s which is just a souped up iPhone 4, then why did it take so long to provide so little?
Ask HN: Companies using cool languages in EU
Hey,
I'm a last year student in computer sciences and I'm seeking an unpaid internship from
February to May.

I've started using Python a few years ago, and I discover Haskell around a year
ago. The fact is that these languages just ruined my life, as Andy Bower has
said about Smalltalk (http://sumim.tumblr.com/post/344127328/smalltalk-is-dangerous-it-is-a-drug-my-advice-to).

I used Java for 2 years in my schoolarship and I really don't want to use it
anymore. In fact, I'd rather change life and start working at McDonald's to
sweat blood on any archaic Java project.

I live in Belgium, I'm looking for cool companies working on cool and innovative
projects using cool technologies (like Haskell, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, Erlang
...) in EU (thanks to the ERASMUS students exchange
program). Do you know/hold any of these companies ?

Thanks, Raphael.
I like the sentiment of this article, but I don't like the wording of his survey.

> Maps show that your neighborhood only has 1 entrance (through Radio Dr) creating a bottleneck and completely seperating [sic] you from your neighbors to the West, East, and South and adding extra miles to your commute.

This is a really biased question, and will throw his survey results into question.
You are mistaken in thinking you have to be logged in to be a user. I'm still using youtube, just not logged in.

I don't have a problem with an integrated login which is what they've had up until now, and which your family have been using successfully. I do have a problem with an automatically integrated login - one of the reasons I avoided google+, and indeed the Android. It's the automatic behaviour that I labelled 'contagious'. All these convenience functions that you bring up sound fantastic if you can opt in and opt out at will, however it's the automatic nature of this 'contagion' that is annoying.

Don't try to speak for a 'normal person', it's a poor choice of words in any case. Privacy conscious people are not abnormal. I know plenty of people for whom having their photos go from their phone to picasa automatically would be an absolute nightmare, and they have very normal privacy concerns.

I'm sure you do not subscribe to "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide".
Using JavaScript libraries in ClojureScript.
My prior community did this... 50 to 60 years ago. I happened to meet one of the long-retired city council members who was part of that planning, and they chose the street layout -- a modified grid -- deliberately to prevent traffic / cars racing down the sidestreets. A few strategically placed walkways let people move between sections in pretty much a a straight line. It keeps kids off of the main thoroughfares, and it makes walking downtown (these days, more often a commuter heading to the train station, but also trips to the library, theatre, and restaurants) a very pleasant experience. It's also a community where kids can still walk to school (though it's wealthy enough that many nonetheless get rides -- lazy little buggers ;-).

(It's also nice to not be incessantly driving over the uncomfortable alternative that is speed bumps. An annoyance in the nearby city, these days.)
http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html
The financial sector or defense? They operate within a framework where they are pretty much guaranteed profits.
Purchasing Timeshares under Construction = Risky Business
I'd assume that's what they're talking about with the 'use blacklist'. It'd be easy enough to occasionally repopulate it with "obvious" or known-compromised passwords that turn up.

Likewise, I assume they're keeping that list semi-secure to avoid black-hats/kiddies getting their hands on a list of really good passwords to throw into their cracking engine ruleset.
Notice I said "many cultures". For example: in some Arab cultures, if you sit with your sole (of your foot) towards the other person, it is considered an insult. I remember Diane Sawyer(?) of ABC going to interview Saddam Hussein; she sat with her sole towards him and he walked out. Of course, she didn't know; but these things happen.

Before you read too much into a statement (I will once again point out the "many cultures" part), please read what's written. I know, every one's on a hair trigger to jump on the slightest perceived slight on the Internet; but take a chill pill, man.
you are a douchebag!!.. the "little guy" works his ass off for 80-90 hrs and potential upside off some more money if they get to IPO. I am sure the employees in airbnb didn't make 20-30 millions. The app is built together by founders and the employees not only by founders..
Git history is not linear, so numbering commits sequentially is meaningless.

Git already has a mechanism for naming commits, anyway. They are called "tags".
You should probably read this prescient thread a few weeks back. If you go through the comments, the majority of early employees got screwed by the founders. The ones that benefited are the best-of-breed companies like AMZN, GOOG, etc. They took care of their employees.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2958766
Honestly, why should anyone here care that the VC has to pay rent or salary expenses? Are they eating ramen or living in the office?

As a founder, I'm delighted the AirBNB guys are charging for admission to their equity sale. Call the payout back wages paid at market rates and call it a day. And if investors are reacting in shock to the sticker price they can get out of the showroom. Sorry you won't be joining us - perhaps there is a cheaper model you can lease somewhere else?
it's more likely because it's under 13, which will get you kicked from a lot of services.
I disliked the square design until I started using FaceTime regularly. The perpendicular edges make it trivial to prop the phone up vertically for a call. I don't think it's a coincidence that the design changed when FaceTime was added.
Does this fix the data-deleting issue we heard about earlier? LOL
We started on a new project Friday and decided to go with Raphael. I'm amazed at what it can do - awesome stuff. Why on earth would you decide to write your own cross browser (vml + svg) library when it's already been done and the result is already very good?