skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In my experience, the best way to know whether you would actually like work on your own start-up is to work for someone else's.

You don't mention where you are located. Are there any startups nearby where you could intern to gain some experience?

I can't comment on the hacking side of things as I am on the business side myself. But I do agree with PG's point that those who work on startups and fail increase their value to other startups... with each new experience you will learn more. The growth rate at most small startups is many times that of large corporations- that is the benefit of wearing many hats.
I suggested stripe instead of paypal, but was told that as nice as they are a 10 person startup isn't stable enough to trust their payments with, similarly with braintree.
I would argue that this is an approach that works only in mature consumer products.

Ask a 50+ iPad/iPhone owner what they love about their smart phone or tablet and you will find that ease of use, ease of seeing and low threshold of understanding (or the illusion of) is 90% of the experience.

Conversely, the early adopter/tech-savvy market despises the 'training wheels' that come with a lot of 'farmville' products.

Design your product for the market you are targeting.
I'm more interested in the day when there are so many drones, they spend more time fighting each other and forget about the humans all together. We may never even see them, dogfighting above the clouds, save for a the perpetual flutter of broken parts falling from the heavens.

Another possibility.. cities protected by phalanxes of model rocket sized guided missiles scanning perpetually for enemy drones.
> Therefore, we do run the risk of making war seem less terrible and, thus, becoming more fond of it.

I think you only have to modernize and mechanize warfare to the point that wars are fought and the horrors experienced by a sufficiently small minority of the populace. That is I think if there is some threshold, in America we've already surpassed it and war has become no longer terrible to us; future technological advances aren't required.

There are teenagers today who can only remember living in the america of this abstract war narrative, yet who have lived in a world completely untouched by it: no death, no fear, no butter rations, no wrapping bandages for the troops, no shared purpose, no end in site. Perpetual war is reality, and as this financial crisis seems to be illustrating, is also the priority.
That's the problem with these robots. The USA has now set the precedent that the robots can go anywhere in the world and blow anyone up that we label a terrorist. This is dangerous and stupid. Of course it was Bush that invented the endless war (how do we win this war? are we supposed to to kill every young muslim that hates us?), but Bush preferred kidnapping people and sticking them in secret prisons, Obama prefers using robots to assassinate from afar, no messy legal challenges that way.

We have a monopoly on the robots now but they are only going to get cheaper in the future and everybody will have them, they will present a threat to all establishments. It is stupid for the USA to be going off on our "might makes right" arrogance destroying all international laws and norms. And for what? Do these dirt poor guys in Afghanistan and Pakistan really pose a threat to us? No they don't.

The only solution in the future will be for everyone to come together to ban these machines, similar to the treaties against land mines and chemical weapons, but the U.S. will have no moral authority to do so.

This future is not very far away.
Yes. Because the sort of person who hurtles through space in a giant metal tube for a living is the sort of person who cares about customs.

(Pun intended - if that even counts as a pun.)
Because Wozniak is a kindhearted man and because Jobs did eventually pay it back with 10000% interest.

Wozniak would never have become a millionaire without a salesman like Jobs.

The greatest hacker will never overcome economics.
Guy is a very insightful person, fallen victim to the 'The more people that hear me, the more I matter' theorem.
Oracle Launches Social Media Tool for Businesses
Do not downvote this man, as he makes an obvious and valid point.
It is not quite that simple. In most jobs, you will learn confidential and proprietary information. Posting about your interview shows that you care more about publicly sharing your internal knowledge of a company than you do about providing value to that company. That choice is not a trait that I want in my employees.
This article completely misrepresents the email. Chamath Palihapitiya seemed to take the most issue with the fact that the deal was structured with most of the money going out as a dividend. It's not about the founders taking money out, it's about the founders taking money out without dilution.
I think it means to be explicit about that. The thing is, though, the facts in the article suggest a different explanation. Likely the declining relevance of instant film cameras made Polaroid's own decline more or less inevitable. And it seems even more likely that if there was some change of direction that would have returned Polaroid to glory, then Land - the man who stubbornly pursued Polavision beyond the point of reason - didn't know it and wasn't the man to discover it.

And to be honest, I think that something similar is more likely what will happen to Apple. Technological changes are coming that will make the Jobs/Apple approach less lucrative than it has been, and I think they'll probably arrive before Apple really starts to drift from that approach and those standards. If and when that does happen, people will definitely talk about how Jobs maybe could have turned things round, but I wouldn't have bet on it. Like Land, I think Jobs had one big idea and one strategy when it came to computers and consumer electronics, and all his successes in those areas came largely from his skill at executing that one plan. And like Land, I don't think he could have simply pulled out a new approach - and really, a new set of values and talents - in response to a change in circumstances.
You are using it correctly, so must be missing some support. You might mention what version of Chrome (although, I assume that's the latest given their automatic updates) you are using and whether or not you are blocking JavaScript.
In The Game | Socyberty
If it's only the execs (founders I assume) then this may create unhealthy tension within the company.

Think about the company's employees. Especially the ones who joined early on. They are usually working nights and weekends hoping for an IPO or a buyout. How do they feel about this?
Didn't this fork happen quite some time ago?
http://www.opensource.org/
And for pretty much the exact same reasons being given now?

Although some of the people behind that are almost as embarrassing to be associated with as RMS.
An open letter to NetFlix (or how to treat your customers)
About a year ago, I finally bought a big TV. I did quite a bit of research and one of the top requirements is that the TV had to support NetFlix streaming.

About 5 years ago I finally got sick of Comcast and switched to DirecTV. Getting the channels I wanted from Comcast meant paying more and more whereas, at the time, DirecTV had 1 price for pretty much everything. I signed up and never looked back.

When my big TV arrived, I called DirecTV to get HD. To my extreme pleasure the representative noticed that I had been a good customer for 5 years, and that my current plan was no longer available so I was grandfathered into it and got HD, everything, for the same price. I was happy to pay for the HD PVR receiver and I am a very happy customer.

At first I was happy with NetFlix too. Then they decided to split DVD and streaming. I cancelled DVD since we hardly ever watched any. Getting Blu-Ray is more. Now I cant stream to all my devices. I don't know what's next in their plans, but I started looking for other options.

Now I don't expect NetFlix to treat me special but by the same token, NetFlix is no longer a service I like very much and I won't treat them special either. I do very much like DirecTV and especially how they really made me feel like a special customer that they "cared" about.

It may be that the price DirecTV charged me five years ago was enough that they could offer me HD for free. Or maybe it was worth another 60 payments (5 years * 12 payments). I guess my advice is: try to treat your customers well if you can, it goes a long way.
Yeah I am pretty sure you are not allowed to post this because you would probably have signed an NDA before your interview.

You have to respect the people at LinkedIn who put in a lot of effort to design this interview process by not leaking it out.
The courts do not look favorably on non-competes. So enforcing them is very hard. Its doable at the executive level but for someone who was simply a student intern one summer I would be flabbergasted if the court upheld it. You would have to prove that the student learned enough in the summer to materially impact the business in a negative way. I think it is so preposterous that you could get the declarative relief writ which basically says "If you try to sue these guys we're going to rule against you, do don't bother."
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Redemption Trailer
Some interesting facts in the article, however, saying a font is hard to read because it's too small is a bit of a loose statement. Font family, color, line-height and width (anything over 500px wide is a strain) all contribute to the readability of text. So a pink font at 16px stretching the full width of the screen (let's say 1400px) with default line-height might be easier to read if it were 13px, dark grey, 450px wide with 20px line-height.

The article doesn't target a specific type of site. Article sites or news sites rely on readability far more than startups. The article seems to suggest that you NEED copy to guide users. This statement is incorrect. You can guide users with whitespace, color, images, buttons, hover states etc.

If you have a startup landing page with lots of copy on it, regardless of font-size...you've already failed.
"No Fee Work From Home Opportunity $500-$1,000 a week"
Thanks! I spent a decent chunk of notebook pages and pen ink to get it the way it currently is. It feels really good to hear someone appreciates the design.
Unlocking Government Data with Socrata
It works on SL, and I've heard people use it to block Spotify. There's a free trial, let me know if it doesn't work for you!
I found LSD did not introduce things that weren't present already. Instead, it removed the filters that are necessary on a daily basis for me to get things done, and suddenly I was aware of and appreciating all the things that my subconscious normally sees and dismisses. The most vivid example of this was an awareness of the patterns and textures surrounding us all the time, as well as the relationship between spatial objects (e.g. a sign or a tree stood out as significant, rather than part of the "background").
Can't Miss Hotel Deals And Accommodations In The Best Thailand Hot Spots
Still better than the meebo bar
Update: The problem was related to 32 vs 64 bit kernels, and is fixed now. I also received an email confirmation from everyone who reported the issue that it works for them. Thanks!
And he didn't have to increase the use of UAVs or attack more countries.
There was a post about stripe.com not too long ago. Perhaps you should try checking them out
You are unemployed and the victim of a crime. You are perfectly positioned to take some time to work with a lawyer to make the world a better place and make some money from your troubles.
Apart from suggesting that entrepreneurs are "trying to hit the lottery," the article does not attempt to explain why founders and early employees are taking cash early.

The simplest explanation is that someone is willing to offer it to them. Many of the companies the author mentions had very high acquisition offers at some point. Founders and early employees could have taken the opportunity then to cash out, but they didn't.

My guess is that a lot of this is VCs compensating founders for not accepting acquisition offers and instead going for something bigger.

This is perhaps not an optimal situation, but it may be better than acquisitions in terms of creating longer-term value.
Same way other (orbitz, kayak etc) do it. There is very little money in airline ticket sale cuts. A much bigger market and ultimately how these companies make a majority of their money is thru hotels.
I think we all know what JSON is good for (unlimited documents without fixed schema) and what GZIP is good for ;)
I think at the end of the day, what Jobs clearly did not care for was dogma. And in politics - be it left or right-wing - there remain plenty of dogmas, sacred cows and entrenched positions which he did not care for.
this was one of the highest points in the USA history.
FeeFighters has a pretty good free ebook called "How to Be a Credit Card Processing Ninja" - http://feefighters.com/blog/free-ebook-launch-how-to-be-a-cr...
I used to work in the news business. At every publication I've worked for, the editor asks the author for a short bio. It's almost never changed unless it's too long or too over-the-top.
I'm saying the engineers may know it, but their bosses _do not_.
Learn How To Increase And Get Most Out Of Your Mobile Battery
As a musician & coder, i have always been intrigued by this idea.. it does seem like a tricky process to "play" live - but still - could be pretty fun
Customers don't know what they need?

Not usually, no. The customers know what needs they have that are not being met - that's not the same.

See also:

The customer lacks the imagination to ask for what they really need. This is often encapsulated in Henry Ford's apocryphal quote: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Now this is not to say the customer is stupid; it just means that everybody wanted to get from A to B faster, but since they only can imagine doing so on a horse, that is what they ask for. And, had they talked to a horse breeder, that is what he would promise them; and when they got their 10% faster horse, they would have been happy. The "project" would have been a success. But would you rather manage the horse breeding project or the Model T?

http://geekherding.blogspot.com/2010/07/requirements-dont-gr...
Same here. I feel that to get the most out of an Android phone, I'd have to spend time on forums reading posts on how to modify X or Y. Furthermore, I want to be on the same platform as my girlfriend and family (for the obvious synergies). I could never recommend them an Android phone.
Provided that a company's financials arn't half baked like Groupons were, an early diversification of investments is in everyone's interest.

Where funny accounting happens there should be lawsuits, not a general call for founders to stop taking some off the table.
JS library for Create Interactive Web-Based Communication In Real-Time
Or JavaScript, that would work as well.
What are wisdom teeth?
Because they might pay well?
That, or the motivational carrot to drive to success has been reduced.

It's purely observational on my part, but a founder who is sitting comfortably vs. a founder who is not -- I've seen the difference, and it very often comes down to motivation, drive and determination.

Each situation is different, but given the hungry founder (like, actually hungry) vs. the comfortable founder -- I'll take the hungry founder almost every time.
But this is an argument not that the trend is bad, but that it should go even further and benefit not just founders but early employees as well. I'm inclined to agree. No doubt investors who feel this way are advocating strongly for employees' interests while structuring deals.

Actually, the trend does seem headed this way. Just as the balance between founders and investors has been shifting, so it is shifting between founders and early employees. Scarcity in the hiring market for top talent is one indicator. It is bound to be exacerbated by the fact that creative people who want to work at a startup can easily just found one themselves. We may see the line between founders and early employees blur over time.

None of this seems very troubling. It looks to me like creative people being rewarded more, and earlier, for value they add. Perhaps it is more troubling if one has nothing to add but money. But even that seems short-sighted. Why not maximize the total value created?
You have two types of situations for JSON. Static and dynamic.

For static JSON, you have a flat file and that's that. It's always the same. In this case, all these fancy optimization formats are pointless. GZip the hell out of it once, cache it, and simply serve the compressed version. Binary compressed data is always optimal. The browser will automatically decompress and utilize. CPU is plentiful on the client-side. Debugging is easy, Firebug will display the clean JSON.

For dynamic JSON, you have a problem. You can't optimize or compress. Remember, it's all about total time. It doesn't matter if your data is now smaller if the amount of time it took to make it smaller is larger than the amount of time it would have taken to download the difference between the original data and the optimized data.
Show HN: My Weekend Project
It's been a while since I've seen an HN post where I can give valuable feedback, thanks for the questions!

1. Here is a way to do it, in Python: https://github.com/abunsen/Paython/blob/master/paython/lib/u...

2. Not sure on providers other than that they lend their brand / set guidelines for the banks that issue cards (Citibank). On the other hand, you've got a processor, like First Data who allow you to process cards (on the internet) via a gateway, like Authorize.Net. In some cases, the processor & the gateway are bundled, like in the case of the new Stripe payments.

3. AFAIK: Your cards magnetic strip is converted to numbers, sent to a gateway to be processed as a "card present" transaction (different, typically lower, fees for these) & asked for approval from the issuing bank, once approved the amount collected will sit in limbo for 1-7 days then deposited into Best Buys bank account.
Guitar, voice, imagination. Next I write a few notes and lyrics on paper. Then I start to record for real...
The Highest Rated Antivirus Software For Protecting Your Kids
would be interesting to implement a tun/tap interface that use websocket.
吊带背心
In that case investors will have to get good at identifying founders who are not driven solely by money. There are a lot of those too.
Also known as analysis paralysis.
The upgrade I chose for the MacBook Air still includes a power-efficient CPU, probably with the exact same TDP rating, just a slightly higher clock rating. This will most likely not increase the power drain, depending on what task your putting it to.
传单模板
After hearing the news of Steve Jobs's death, I used the posts on here regarding a guy who created a site selling Snowpocalypse t-shirts as guidance for creating a site selling t-shirts commemorating Steve Jobs. I tried to do this in the most ethical way possible. Half of all revenue will go to the Lustgarten Foundation for pancreatic cancer research.
> You're comparing a compiler (necessary to build stuff),

You may not be aware of this, but people were writing working computer programs for almost 20 years before they invented compilers. People still occasionally write working computer programs today without compilers.

> with a javascript library which makes things a bit easier for newbies?

I've been programming since 1980. I've been doing AJAX (and Comet!) since 2000 — very reluctantly at first! I've shipped production software that kicked Cisco's ass, in the market, at managing Cisco devices. I'm in the AUTHORS file for Perl 5, although I don't deserve to be. Among other things, I've written OLAP systems; user interfaces; music softsynths; 3-D engines, one of which was in JavaScript; full-text search engines; mailserver software; and compilers.

And I think jQuery is awesome.

> If people needed a compiler, they would have built one. Jquery was an optional addition that some like using. It hasn't enabled things that weren't possible before.

No software "enables" things that weren't possible before; obviously if it hadn't been possible to do the things that the software "enabled", it would have been impossible to write the software.

In particular, any software you can write with a compiler, you can write in machine code. It's just more work.

But some software gives you a lot of leverage. jQuery is a good example. A C compiler is another good example. The leverage provided by the two is roughly comparable.
Maybe you should read the article to learn what he specific issue being discussed is.
FeeFighter's ebook and many of their blog posts are a pretty great resource. Another great resource (especially for Rubyists) is Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs' http://jumpstartcc.com/

If you don't want to bother worrying about the details of setting it all up, look into Stripe.com or Samurai from Feefighters
Oh those poor investment bankers!!!

Those innocent investors are being taken in by the cruel and shrewd entrepreneurs!!

Who gives a shit?

They're investment bankers.

I'm pretty sure they can handle their own money and don't need investigative journalists to stick up for them.

Find something real to report.
As others have pointed out, how is this a problem ? If the VCs are offering cash out to founders and early employees - it's just to sweeten the bitter side of a non-acquisition. It's not like the founders will take the cash out and retire to a private island as the author implies. Money is not a motivator for most of these founders and if it is - then the VCs are making a bad choice in not just offering the cash outs,but in the basic investing they are doing in that company. VCs are not that short sighted or stupid.
VBox has an extensive commandine tool suite and configuration language at least on Windows.
This is a big topic. The keyword you're looking for is the four-party system. Take a look at the GAO or Federal Reserve papers on interchange reform, they give a good high-level view. Gateways and merchant accounts are only half of the equation.
You should try out Stripe (https://stripe.com/). They make credit card processing a piece of cake.
Don't be naive. Markets behaving like markets created a dot-com bubble, Enron, and a housing bubble. Just because the market is behaving like a market doesn't make that behavior good.

Besides that, I just don't have any sympathy for founders who don't want to wait a few more years to make their millions. The point of starting a company should be to do something useful for society. It shouldn't be a race to the exit.
Full video: Wozniak remembers Steve Jobs
I've got 100 visitors in the past hour but no sales, does anyone have any advice for me?
New low level IRS investment property project for Mauritius
Read Gus Fuldner's posts on Quora. http://www.quora.com/Gus-Fuldner/answers
I don't think it matters. Some don't seem to realize that when you sign up for any of the PayPal Pro features you're getting a real merchant account underwritten by a real bank. PayPal isn't underwriting it, it's usually JP Morgan Chase or Wells Fargo. You are asked to accept a separate agreement specific to that bank your account is assigned to when you apply for the upgrade.
No market fundamentalist here. My point is that this is one case where the market seems functional. Investors who make these deals will lose, if they're so bad. So what do their competitors have to complain about?

Edit: Your tone seems a bit bitter, no? There are many ways to be useful to society. Helping people travel cheaply to cool places, for example. I don't really want to be told why I should start a company, though. Demand that I benefit society and I will probably just play punk rock instead. But damn it there might be social benefit lurking in that too!