skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A New Way to look at Networking (Van Jacobson, 2006)
I can't tell if you're being serious or if this is a joke, which is unfortunately often the case when I run into people willing to defend modern Wall Street online.

sigh.

Assuming you aren't joking...

"If someone offers you a lot of money to do something unethical and you accept it, how is it the fault of the other person?"

So if I offer you $1 million to kill someone, I have no fault when it comes to the murder? I mean, it isn't like I killed someone, right?
Ridiculous? Based on your reply here you are suggesting completely revamping your home's heating and cooling.

Maybe a $250 thermostat won't be as game changing as your suggestions, but if it saves someone money over time, or quickly reduces their energy use with a simple install I don't see how it is ridiculous.
www.musicx.fm
Worthless Ideas
What a fantastic idea. I would/will use this.
My new project is about to launch on Sunday. It's called Skmmr. We got featured on the Next Web yesterday (http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/10/24/skmmr-is-aiming-to-be-...) and are collecting some great interest for our beta.

Skmmr is a web app that focuses on small, intimate group content sharing. Create a circle of people around an interest or hobby, limited to 8 people, drag our bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar and when you find something you really want to share in that topic area with your close friends, drop it into that circle. We send a digest out every evening with the newest links shared in the last day.

Skmmr is run by 2 seniors at the University of Colorado and we're excited to release our beta on Sunday!
Here's my most recent recruiting cold call:

Him: Hello, I need to speak to the person who manages your servers.

Me: Uh, who is this?

Him: I need to report an issue with your servers. Are you the person who manages the servers?

Me: What kind of issue?

Him: Do you manage the servers?

Me: I manage the office. What's the issue you need to report?

Him: Oh! I'm calling because I understand that it's very hard to find good Linux and Ruby on Rails people in Chicago and-

Me: You're a recruiter?

Him: Yes, and-

Click.

Our current recruiter policy, at least in the Chicago office: $50 to the person in the office who can keep a recruiter on the phone the longest using only Emacs Eliza.

In terms of actually recruiting people:

* It's one of the key jobs for the management team; for instance, it is the thing I spend the most time on after billable work.

* We do increasingly generous referral bonuses for good candidates.

* We're doing a number of outreach programs (free classes and the like) to meet candidates.

Ultimately, like SEO consultants and direct sales people, the problem with recruiters is adverse selection. There are good recruiters out there, but they can more or less print money; they aren't cold-calling you. Anyone who is cold-calling isn't a good recruiter. There aren't many good recruiters. The most useful shorthand is "all recruiters are terrible".
I haven't written C in a while, but I dereferenced null and my program crashed. No stack trace, no exception? Really? This reinforces my preference for dynamic languages.

How about we stop painting pictures of languages from one specific difference.
Facebook Usage beats TV Usage
This is beautiful. I signed up for the purpose of receiving updates from you - I have many friends who will adore this and cannot build their own sites. Do you have plans to do more with this? How are you monetizing? Ok, I just went to publish and it tells me.
This is terrific.

Some small comments:

* When I click on "checkout", a few things are not clear: how much is shipping (seems to be free?), how long will shipping take, etc.

* I put something with an "&" in the title into my shopping cart. On the PayPal landing page, it turns into &amp;. Also, the item description is "shopid: x, itemid: y", which is not very helpful, especially if it's two months from now and I'm trying to remember what I purchased.

* The list of item in the shopping cart should be links, not text.

* It's an MVP, so I'm sure this is on your "next steps" list, but it would be nice to delete specific items from the cart instead of having to clear the whole cart.

* There's a Login/Signup link at the top, but it's not clear what the benefits of Signup would be. Clicking on the link doesn't reveal the benefits either.

Again, this is awesome.
Good insulation is orthogonal to a thermostat. Regardless of how good your insulation is, you will occasionally need to adjust the temperature by active means (in most climates). For that, you need a thermostat.
HTML5: Who stands to gain, or lose, the most
"Wences Casares, a co-founder of Lemon, said the company checked with 300 merchants and more than 95 percent accepted the picture in the phone, while the rest requested a printed copy of it."

... It wasn't that long ago that every company required the original receipt. It's basic fraud prevention.
What kind of events? I'm curious about this question because as a cofounder of a bootstrapped business myself, nobody seems to care too much about what we do or how we do it. It's a world apart from the experience of funded companies, who get enormous amounts of press, attention, and interest( from other entrepreneurs, anyway - we have no problem getting the interest of our customers ).

If you get a lot of questions, I may be completely wrong about my perspective, here.
This strikes me as a non-sequitur.
There's a lot of bad stuff you can do without actually committing a crime. Especially if you have enough money to influence the law.

And it's the Government's job to make sure that "bad stuff" (ie stuff that actively and deliberately hurts people, not just standard non-optimal stuff) is illegal.

If a legal moneymaking niche exists, somebody will fill it. Even if it's immoral, because... hey, people are extremely good at convincing themselves that anything is moral if it happens to be in their own interests. The government's job is to prevent any harmful yet legal niches from arising, and the job of the people is to make sure that pressure is put on the government to eradicate said niches... even when they'd much rather take campaign contributions from the people in 'em.

This comment is free of examples, because I don't feel like discussing any specific cases.
But it only walks downhill.
I really hope they support existing protocols, Insteon being my first choice as well. But, it also won't suprise me if they go Apple-style proprietary, and I won't be a customer.

If they truly care about efficiency then interoperability is a must. It's wasteful when you have to buy and create new products just for compatibility.
Basically, you want that rarest of birds - shy sparks who aren't nestled in a large company yet.

Too introverted to be really aware of their market value and have a life and smart enough that they're going to be obsessed with the work and work at it all the time.

Considering I'm having a hard time finding "reasonably competent" Rails devs, I can't imagine how you might hire for that kind of position.
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I'd love to see which specific officer would be named in the warrant.
There is actually a wellspring: quantitative finance.

There were many people drawn by the allure of finance back in 2006-2008 and are now thinking of leaving. Generally people have enough money to carry themselves for some time on a low salary, have the risk tolerance (after all, they can cover themeselves), and can work at all hours.
As pg notes above, the best hires early on often come from your personal network. Our first hire I had worked with before.
A walkthrough for adding a vector and reasoning in Forth
How are you going to track stock levels?
as soon as you've exhausted this source you should start hiring recruiters.

Did they present any evidence to support this position, or does "should" in this case just mean that this is what they did?

There have been a few times when I've talked to technical people at startups and come away thinking "if it weren't for Tarsnap, I'd totally go work for them". In contrast, every time I talk to a recruiter, I come away thinking "if this is the sort of people they have at X, there's no way in hell I'd ever want to work there".

I'm not sure what the best solution is here, but it seems that recruiters are far from perfect.
> I've worked on a lot of PHP projects. I've worked on WordPress and Drupal and CakePHP.

Well, that's your problem right there. Don't blame C for Windows XP.
> How the hell can you hold such a paradoxical statement?

I think in this case, the paradox unravels if you realize that I precisely chose the words "having a child" instead of "raising a child."

The decision to mate is usually selfish, and the decision to spawn offspring is also selfish (except where it's careless). People don't have sex because it's their duty. People don't try to conceive a child because they feel responsible to anyone but themselves. They decide they want the experience of raising a child, and so they do it for themselves. The experience itself is, obviously, a mixture of selflessness and selfishness.

Also, the word "selfish" has slightly more negative connotations than I would prefer, but I can't think of any suitable words that wouldn't require a whole paragraph to qualify.
> If you want car drivers to respect bikers, stop running red lights and stop signs.

Sometimes this is true, but often it's not. Often, the person in the car is just jealous and angry that the cyclist breaking rules and getting away with it.

I ran a red light a few months ago, and as I did I heard a guy in a truck yelling angrily "Red light! Red light! Red light!" I ignored him because I've been through this intersection hundreds of times and it's infinitely safer for me to cautiously ride through the light and ride the next 50-100 yards on a clear road than it is to wait for the light and try to stay with the flow of traffic, which faces a simultaneous sharp curve and lane merge. These conditions are ripe for road rage, which can be fatal to cyclists.

If I ever get ticketed there for doing that, I will pay the fine and keep doing it. I don't think that will happen, though, since any time an officer is there I just give him a quick glance and he waves me through.

I do get irritated at cyclists who ride too fast on the sidewalk, though, and blow by pedestrians ringing their bells and such.

Also, cyclists could definitely apply some patience and courtesy (eg don't ride all the way to the front of a line of cars stopped at a stoplight and then take the lane as soon as the light turns green, forcing them all to wait for you.) It's not technically illegal and there aren't really any safety concerns, it's just a dick move. Have a some pity for the motorists. They are trapped in huge boxes of steel and forced to communicate with monotone honks and crude signals.
Charging them the same taxes as everyone else would be a start. Capital gains my ass.

Then we can maybe look at the market failure that led their pay to skyrocket over the last 30 years while getting worse at their job of efficiently allocating capital. (Blowing up a bubble every 5-7 years does not look like a good job to me).
Galaxy Nexus: 1080p Video
Why don't we compromise and just say that everyone involved is an asshole?
It's a cool concept and you could go a lot of directions with it.

My main feedback is that I don't know which step to take next. I see 6 links in the yellow bar ... be a little more deliberate/forceful in directing me on what to do next.

Not that you asked, but here's some wacky/random ideas off the top of my head:

- Do Stripe checkout in addition to PayPal (ask for Stripe API key & secret over SSL)

- Provision a Twilio phone number for each list after registration. Use it as a temporary way for sellers to call the buyer, for notifications, and to add/remove items via SMS

- For quick mobile integration, use MailGun to post incoming email messages to your app and turn them into listings. That way people can add items & pictures from their smartphone. I've done this and you can literally get it going in < 1 hour.

- Allow me to sell a digital file. If I add a [d] to a line item in my list, prompt me to upload a .zip file or high-res JPG. BOOM, instant store for selling stock photography, ebooks, or WordPress themes.
Gamers can now play the FIFA 12 demo from YouTube
I wonder how many other people on HN have grown deeply suspicious of Taibbi's reporting on Wall Street. Presumably he's more in his element in a story like this that doesn't require him to understand the concept of, say, a market maker. I enjoy reading him... when he's not setting off my BS detector.

As fun as Taibbi is to read, though, this isn't hacker news; it's a good submission to /r/politics. I flagged it, and you should too.
The United States was constructed in the shadow of centuries kings and tyrants. The US government was built to be feeble, and thus accountable to its people.

What the founders could not have predicted was that one day, that feebleness could allow the country to be hijacked by powers that make kings look cute by comparison.

Our system isn't built to withstand the manipulation of corporate interests. There's not a lot I can do about that from where I'm sitting. But the fact that the store was left unlocked by a shady employee doesn't exonerate the thieves who made off with its contents.

There's often no distinction between those who spend money and those who make the decisions. The revolving door between Washington and big financial interests is absurd. Healthcare and finance are both in a state of regulatory capture that would be comical were it not so tragic.
Biggest lobbyists with records. Hard to track all that money going into PACs these days what with the recent court decisions.
Like The Patriot Act? Yah - that hasn't been abused at all - nope.
We're working on adding (minimal) inventory control. You'll be able to put +Quantity on a line, ie +5 if you have five to sell. The site will then track stock level, and you can edit the quantity in the list at any time.
Are you selling Android apps in the Market? If you are, have you experienced any changes in peoples propensity to purchase Android apps in the Market?
Quantity does not mean quality.
That was a lot of paragraphs to say, "Despite being pretty great for its time, Windows XP is pretty outdated, and somewhat annoying to deal with."
Not really. There have been a couple of clones but non are active anymore. You could, however, Use Wordpress+Buddypress so create a very powerful community oriented site.
LightningJS: safe, fast, and asynchronous third-party Javascript
You're not getting the point. You don't have to respect anyone to be a hacker. All you have to do is hack.
Don't forget about http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1971200
Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price
Kilo, mole, kelvin, and ampere finally being linked to universal constants
Researchers find holes in the cloud
Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah's Dirty Picture Movie Photos
Now Vidya Balan is in the news for her upcoming movie Dirty Picture. It is an upcoming suspense film, where Vidya is playing Silk Smitha and other stars are Emraan Hashmi, Naseeruddeen Shah, Tushar Kapoor are the male leads.
Show HN: Streaming/Search API for realtime mobile Pictures
Polymorphic Malware On The Rise
thanks! so far we're working on the following for the text field:

+quantity for multiple item sales, ie +5
#tags for categorising, ie #electronics

further ideas welcomed
Ask HN: Anyone interested in becoming the second co-founder of my startup?
Hello Friends,

I have developed a couple of (I think) extremely interesting ideas for new startups in the field of social networking and I am looking for a hacker willing to become the second co-founder together with me.

The idea is to develop a beta of the idea, see if it gets traction and then seek funding (or maybe apply to Y Combinator).

Anyone interested?
The Difficulty of Having Faith in your Worth and Ideas
Good developers are hardly ever on the market. The majority of them are happy at their current jobs, and they know they could go anywhere else they wanted because their skills are highly valued.

I'm sure it gets annoying when they frequently receive emails about "Technically Forward High Frequency Trading Firms" from recruiters who happened to find them through playing buzzword bingo.

These recruiters tout that this new "opportunity" will give more money, benefits, responsibility, good looks, and sexual prowess, but never do the due diligence to make sure that their client is actually a good fit.

It's the shotgun approach that most recruiters use that turns good developers off.

Maybe once these recruiters treat developers with more respect, so will they.
Agreed. Political discussions rarely go well on HN, and anything written by Matt Taibbi is not a good basis for a political discussion anyway. He's a deeply dishonest writer, and even on topics where I agree with him I can't stand to have his axe-grinding in the discussion.
I think you have something interesting here. Elegance and simplicity are far more important than previously thought. Clearly this is part of the legacy left by Steve Jobs. Fantastically engineered products wrapped in beautiful design. Elegance and simplicity...it just works.
I was trying to be generous. Some students come out of college nowhere near to being half-good at anything. ;-)
Google Buzz is going away, but your posts are yours to keep
Going to keep most of my crazy opinions to myself on this one, but a few points:

1. If someone dropped several thousand dollars in seed money in my lap today and said "Hire some people, establish a profitable business," I would feel more enthusiastic about an interview with someone who'd dropped out of CalTech, MIT, OTIS, Art Center, RISD, or Parsons than one with a graduate from anywhere.

2. Not that it necessarily matters, but whenever I encounter the argument that a university education is or should be considered a required component of "success" or "learning" my opinion of the person making the argument drops significantly. Specifically, I find myself treating their judgment of what constitutes "success" or a "learned" person with complete disregard. These feelings are especially strong when they're directed toward someone older than me. (Is there a fake formula to measure how forgivable someone's stupidity is, given their age?)

3. If you're between the ages of 16 and 24 and have convinced yourself that you must be "successful" by the time you're 25, you'll probably feel like a failure whether you drop out or not. In the event that you matriculate/graduate, you'll just be more likely to have picked up a lot of debt, and maybe a nasty alcohol and/or adderall habit. Worse case scenario: you'll be 21-23 with a fancy piece of paper, the false impression that you "get it," and not much else.

(To be fair, I met my best friends in college—which is now a huge pain in the ass since everyone's scattered across the country—and the majority of my favorite memories are from that time. But after meeting those people my freshman year, I could have dropped out, done enough design work to cover food, gas, and rent in Pacific Beach—I went to school in San Diego–and had largely the same experience.)
X-Men Retro Posters
Could Hacker Spaces Hatch the Next Generation of Biotech Innovators?
I'm very sorry, but I heavily object to the notion that we should treat everyone like criminals. It completely invalidates the assumption of innocence, which - as far as I am informed as an European - is part of the Constitution).

Besides, as the grandparent mentioned, the potential for abuse is too high. Especially in the hands of a government who shows clear tendencies towards a police state - which most western ones do, including the US.
The Government Is CONSTANTLY Pestering Google For Your Personal Information
I don't think that's the only way to scale it. There would be compromises involved, of course, but I can immediately think of another way to scale this idea - I'm sure others can too.
Here's another side of the story: I just moved to SF, and I'm looking for jobs. Two friends sic'd a bunch of recruiters on me, and it is awesome! Here's the process:

1. They email or call me, and I send my resume and short summary of what I want.
2. They send me streams of awesome jobs. (Two have sent bad jobs, but gmail has
a hotkey for that :D )
3. I say I want to talk to XYZ at one of these times, and they hustle to make it
happen.
4. They tell me little nuggets like "The last guy I placed here made $X"

I'm running my own processes in parallel, and I can tell you that they suck a lot more. Non-recruiters -- and even in-house recruiters -- are hard to herd.
Does anyone know if the government, Canadian in my case, will accept computerized receipts like this for tax purposes?

90% of the tax documents I keep are receipts. It would be nice to get ride of most of this stuff.
Well, the most perceptible tuning AF does is turning on HTTP pipelining for image requests (which are off, by default). Other than that, it's just small steps to use HTTP correctly as much as possible. </admittedly vague cop-out>

I understand and respect your skepticism, since by using NSURLConnection, its performance is bound by the same thing most other libraries are (although ASI was wrapped the lower-level CFNetwork APIs, FWIW). It's the stuff around the network activity--the way the application interacts with the data that makes AF fast. I've gone out of my way to design a minimal API that is performant no matter how you (mis)use it.

But you're right: I'll have to get around to writing a benchmark app at some point :)
i've had an ecobee (http://ecobee.com/) thermostat for a few years and it's little more than a way to bump the heat up while i'm lying in bed. i work from my home so i can't do much with pre-programmed schedules, and i have a dog so i can't let the place get super hot or cold if i'm gone during the day.

when it first debuted, they tried to charge a monthly fee for the website (which is a key part of the product, though it can be adjusted from the display itself). my brother works for an hvac company and was having trouble selling any of them because of the monthly fee.

eventually they ditched the fee and the website is free for life, and now they have an iphone and android app to easily see and adjust settings.

i setup a hack that watched my wireless router to see if my android phone was connected, as a way to detect whether i was in the apartment or not and let the temperature slide more.

http://jcs.org/notaweblog/2011/08/30/an_ecobee_automation_ha...
The roles that we fill at this stage are highly specialized and generally call for nearly contradictory attributes in candidates. You need incredible good engineers who are not already in golden handcuffs, are crazy enough to join a risky early stage company, do not want to found their own company right now, want to work at all hours, and are aligned with the culture you are trying to build.

It seems that this is indeed what startups are looking for. It also seems that they are generally unwilling to pay market salary. And startups don't seem willing to part with enough equity to make up the difference in the slightest if you weigh in how unlikely it is for employees to see any return on equity.

There may be a reason why these jobs are hard to fill.
I don't think Stormfront are nice guys, don't get me wrong, but hosting threads by people being vaguely threatening, or sharing an ideology but no affiliation with people who happen to have been violent, doesn't seem sufficient for a bank to block donations to them.