skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
IANASalesman. But I think the key is interest in your client. What are they doing? what do they need? what have they tried, what was good what wasn't?

_Your_ ability will show, or won't, in the general knowledge and individual focus of your questions. If you can't ask good questions, you aren't ready, and your product surely isn't either.
This. My representative (Adam Schiff) is one of the cosponsors. I find hard to believe that anything a lowly college student can say will seriously affect his chances of changing his vote.
The installation from non-market sources is disabled by default. The users have to go to settings and check the checkbox allowing side-loading of applications. So they will not install it by accident, it has to be wilfully.
Why Steve Jobs cried
Sure. In Baltimore, I witnessed debate prior to a vote on a highly contested bill (smoking ban). Several city council members gave a 'call count' of the # of constituents in favor vs the # opposed, and voted strictly in line with their constituents' preferences. I'm sure there are many documented instances of individual politicians doing this, although you can never strictly be sure that it's not just coincidence that their constituents are on the side of their big donors.
It has been explored. One example: http://www.spatialrobots.com/2009/08/augmented-reality-instr...

I seem to remember another car manufacturer planning to make a mobile owner's manual where you hold up your phone in front of the offending car part (e.g. the gear shifter) and it pulls up information about it.
4) Watch as nothing happens.
Of course it does, but he isn't the only one doing it anymore, and I suspect has a team of people at each company that assists and supports throughout the day, which was likely not the case in the very early days of twitter.

The required mental focus and energy to get one thing "off the ground" - past bootstrapped startup phase - is considerably different from keeping something going - and even growing - once it's hit an operational level that twitter has. I won't profess to know both sides from direct experience, but can see that they're not in the same place they were operationally/financially as they were 4 years ago.

OT: I was probably downvoted by someone who considers Twitter and Facebook as "startups".
I believe they need your name, address and occupation for their records to take the donation. There are exemptions for donations of less than 50 bucks but I'm not sure which circumstances they're valid in.
No, been 10 years or go since I worked with one, and that was in Norway.
OR profitable but not as profitable as the things the companies with those resources were working on during those years.
How can you make people stop sending messages?

How can "recording to disks" make some change? What do you think is being done otherwise than writing some databases?
With the benefit of hindsight, though without looking up any numbers to back up this claim, I'd be willing to bet that during the dot.com era the real demand for software and web development was, in fact, much lower than it is today, but the hype around the potential to 'strike it rich' just as great (perhaps greater).

I'm sure there will be a high percentage of busts, that is for the most part true for any entrepreneurial ventures. I will say though that today's situation isn't the same as the past. During the dot.com days one of the RIM founders stated at a conference I attended, that many companies were being funded almost purely on the number of comp sci. and engineering graduates they had hired.

Sure, it's still a rush. There is more hype than realism in the air, but certainly not nearly as much, and the opportunities are far more tangible this time. Make no mistake, gold rush or land rush, hard work is typically a necessary condition to succeed, but my argument is that success is a realistic achievement, given willingness, talent and drive. No amount of that will manage to squeeze gold from a tapped vein.
Tablet PCs Shop - Best Android Tablets Review & Discount Tablet Sales
We have to get off this rock asap before the next planet killer asteroid hits earth which is due soon.
Looks to be a water treatment centre. On a rather large scale.
A land rush seems like a better analogy, partly because it's going to take a lot of work to capitalize well on what we've got here. There could be a funding bubble (there certainly isn't any more in VC, but maybe for angels), but that's different from a "startup bubble."

I think we're going to be reminded that when factories aren't a significant advantage, you can have a much higher proportion of entrepreneurs and the self-employed and still have everything work well. Mom and pop grocery stores aren't such a huge historical anomaly that we can't do that again -- now that the "grocery" doesn't need the resources of a giant multinational corporation behind it.

Some things will still always be done better by giant multinational corporations, but so far "managing artisans and figuring out what they should make" isn't in that category. And the few multinationals that are any good whatsoever at that are legendary for it (e.g. Disney).

I think we're going to be reminded that small companies are always how good artisans have tended to organize themselves, and architects, civil engineers, lawyers and doctors have always tended to operate independently or in small partnerships.

Programming is headed that way.
GitHub is one commit away from being the ultimate blog engine
I just realized the title might sound like I'm putting down GitHub, that's not the point. I love GitHub.
> Are these some sort of alignment or targeting grids for space weapons or what?

Obviously. I like his thinking.
Posicionamiento Web
Posiciona tu web en los primeros lugares de los buscadores mediante la optimización seo tanto interna como externa en tu web. www.seoestudio.com
The Bathroom Monologues: Making Ideas
Very helpful, thanks. And for what it's worth, this is what I (and xyzzyz above, I imagine) wished you would have said initially, two comments up, for a higher HN S/N.
Underground nuclear testing facility that collapsed?

Maybe it's their version of NORAD underground?
Yes, in this case though the virus was apparently a keylogger on a system that isn't (supposed to be) connected to the internet. So while it may have gathered information on what the operators typed in, it wasn't getting any magic passwords. Most of that (if done properly) would involve some secret keys that operators don't directly access.
Well, without wanting to regurgitate that which has become trite, it has been acknowledged that a little delusion-masked-by-confidence in an entrepreneur isn't an entirely bad thing!
Diabetes Will Strike One in 10 Adults by 2030
It's an interesting question. In my opinion, it's probably more serious to have the ground station compromised than the onboard software. The Predator is just a drone and the onboard software is going to be pretty dumb, so even if an attacker were able to take it over completely, it couldn't actually do much besides crash the plane or launch its missiles. (That sounds serious, but it really isn't. If you're using a drone in the first place, it's safe to assume it's somewhere where you don't have many friendly forces to begin with. That might change if the US keeps turning into a police state, but that's another discussion.)

If an attacker compromises the ground station software, on the other hand, he gets to try to snoop on whatever intelligence information comes down from the network that computer is on. Things like lists of likely targets for the operator to watch for, or anticipated positions of friendly units in the area, and so on. You get the idea.
Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theor...

Generational theory is interesting on the surface, but often I take these meta-analyses with a grain of salt. They seem to be grandiose astrological interpretations that would be applicable to any generation.

I'm part of the "Nomad" generation type. Nomadic definitely describes my life fairly well for the past 10 years. I've lived in 2 countries and 5 states. The post office should just start OCRing my mail and sending it via email.
Why does it cost you that much money for a judge to see your argument?!
1) I don't know about (I'm not a US citizen either), but you could just write to US representatives pretending to be one of their constituents. They're not going to do some ID check, and it'll count towards the "X number of people have contacted us about issue Y" count, which'll count for something.
Anyone know a good place to get old satellite imagery? Be interesting to see if you can see the construction process.
If you hit them where they live (personal Emil addresses and public facing forums) at least they will have to respond. These people are elected to represent the public if they aren't responding during their normal work day, we have a right to pester them until they respond.
Too good to be true? It seems the guy has been talking in Ted too (http://www.ted.com/speakers/justin_hall_tipping.html). They make quite remarkable statements, but at the same time they are quite vague. At least they are not promising too much too soon nor do they refer to some "official" research that would make them right like some more suspicious companies always seem to do.
Is Bing worth using at all? I set up a campaign on Microsoft a few years ago before it was Bing, but never really got any clicks out of (a few clicks a month) using basically all the same key words and ads I was using on Adwords and getting thousands of clicks a day there.
> JSON.parse is a library function. How can it judge whether the caller can continue or not just because the JSON cannot be parsed?

Don't make assumptions about the caller, throw if your library can't continue.

> So although try/catch avoids the hassle of checking state after each operation, you pay for it on errors.

If your language supports RAII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Acquisition_Is_Initial...) you get a free ride. Otherwise you have to write non-trivial cleanup code regardless of how you return errors. Try/catch (and especially finally) helps a lot because you get to group all your cleanup in one place. With error codes the code looks something like:

a = acquire(A)
if (!a) return

b = acquire(B)
if (!b) {
release(a)
return
}

c = acquire(C)
if (!c) {
release(a)
release(b)
return
}

...

This is a maintenance nightmare. It's hard to see what the code is doing because the real logic is hidden between piles of error handling stuff. If you add a new resource acquisition in the middle you have to go over every statement that follows and modify error handlers. And don't you dare changing the order of statements, because that basically forces you to rewrite the whole function. Believe me, you don't want this in your code, exceptions are your friend :)
WP has an image of it[1] and states that it is a Potassium Chloride factory at Lop Lake[2]. It's not visible on Bing Maps[3], so perhaps it's relatively new.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lop_Nur,_Xinjiang,_China....

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lop_Lake

[3]: http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=40.509883876307235~90.7...
According to wikipedia, the average loss on the power lines is 7%. Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo...

That's not what I'd call "huge".
Using Gossip Protocols for Failure Detection, Monitoring, Messaging, etc...
OK, fair enough. The marketing copy and a description of "features" is still forthcoming (not my strong suit).
A massive Keynesian Stimulus program, no?
Python is most certainly not a systems language and if you think a PEP for this would go anywhere, you clearly don't know the devs very well either.

Guido would never, ever allow anything like this into Python. Not when he's been campaigning to get rid of itertools.
That's the Gobi desert. There isn't a whole lot of water to treat, let alone polluted water. It looks like salt production on a truly massive scale.
I'm always left scratching my head when the "walled garden" (what an annoying phrase) is criticized, even though that's how consoles have done it for decades.
I'm a big believer in jazzed-up images.
Using Puppet to Deploy with a Push
All T&C changes should be posted as diffs like at ScraperWiki
Social Network Users' Bill of Rights
The image displayed in the article looks reminiscent of a Voronoi diagram.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram
It's coming. There's a spec here: http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webevents/raw-file/default/mouse-lock....

Implementations for Chrome and Firefox are bug 72754 and bug 633602, respectively.
I think that area is part of the Turpan basin which has been a salt mining zone for centuries. I'm totally guessing here, but the Google Maps images look like a massive salt evaporation facility.
a few things to do:

- if you have money, donate to the organizations opposing it: EFF, Public Knowledge, etc.

- if you have time, call your Representative. get your friends to call their representatives.

- in any case, help get the word out: share links on social networks and email, vote stories up, bring it up with your family over Thanksgiving, tell people about EFF's action alert at https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?... and other feedback mechanisms
Great point, well made.

To counter-point, for some businesses, the cost to acquire a customer even with the efficiencies you describe is still too much. For example a consumer product that's $99 per year with 50% gross margin needs acquisition costs lower than even your plan will provide.

In that case -- which is common in high-tech startups -- cold-calling can still be an effective way to start, because the learning you get is more valuable than revenue at the start.

Still, more companies could succeed with your strategy than who are willing to try, and you're right they're missing out.
a set of programming techniques called HTML5 is rapidly winning over the Web

A set of programming techniques, orly?
I might have considered throw and catch as I wrote the library, but right now, I cannot think of any good reason why I haven't used it. Will check that again. Thanks for the suggestion.
Warren Buffett once said (paraphrasing) that you should only invest in what you know.

Most American VCs don't know all of the legal and cultural intricacies of building a startup in another country, which can both be huge factors.

It's way safer for their investment (and possibly even safer for the startups themselves) if the VCs only invest in startups in environments where they do understand those things.
By far the best Facebook campaign that has ever been created
Yes, I'm the typist - just trying to lighten the mood a bit.
> Take a look especially at Exhibit D, where there is a long detailing of the incredibly insignificant patents Microsoft has the nerve to use against Android, claiming control of the entire operating system with what is pretty much a handful of stupid patents no one really needs or which are so trivial that the fees it claims become outrageous. At least that is Barnes & Noble's position. It made my blood boil to read it.

Doesn't sound like pj is doing much critical thinking either. Just accepting B&N's assertions at face value, because they line up with common "knowledge" about patents.
Or evaporation mineral collection ponds or something of that nature. The facility in Wendover on the salt flats is pretty large too though there's no ponds like these images appear to show. There's lots mineral collection ponds like this in California and Nevada.

Wendover:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.696778,-113.939209&spn=0.4...

Owens lake has evaporative collection ponds that can be really bright red some times, the salt itself is pink:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=36.411336,-117.892742&spn=0.1...
It's like a QR code for the planet.
What I've noticed is Berkshire Hathaway public stock investments tend to fit two criteria -

First, does it pay a dividend? Yep, IBM does.

Second, is it integrated into the overall economy? I think of it as if imagining what would happen if the company just up and vanished over night. So railroads, power companies, this would result in a lot of other companies would have big problems.

Then of course there are all the other details like the companies finances, executives, and so on that you hear about over and over again in any literature about Berkshire Hathaway.

Consumer oriented companies dominate the news and books because all the inner workings are like a soap opera to the public. But, you can learn just as much from all of these other companies. Most certainly it hones your research skills since the details aren't being delivered to you on a silver platter.
> at least they will have to respond.

No, they won't.
And from that Wikipedia article, it appears they have some applications in mining. Maybe that's related to the salt mining comments above?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=51039
Speaking about this side, I agree with you. But it always have been this way in our society, a lot of disposable efforts.
Perforce is unpleasant to use, but it scales effectively to positively massive codebases with large binary blobs and many developers.
Wow, I was just thinking this morning how awesome it would be to make a desktop app that could crawl websites with jquery. And since node.js has a windows installer, it sounds like a much better solution than the C# HtmlAgilityPack I've been using.
have you used an e-reader? it's not really anything that needs fixing. when you see it on youtube the flicker looks annoying, but when you're actually reading a book you don't notice it at all.
NORAD is built into a mountain for a good reason. China has plenty of mountains, so if they have a NORAD I assume it's under one of those.
Genius DIY: Bread Clips as Power Cord Labels
This is not true in all cases. Adwords has plenty of niches where the number of clicks per day is very limited, no matter how enticing your ad.

If you already have a good idea of who your customers are the shortest path to those customers is likely a much more direct one than waiting until they happen to see your ad and click on it.
They've got a pool table out in the middle of the Gobi? I'm feeling a little underprivileged.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=40.469935,90.856934...
Advice on selling company and domain name
I need some advice on selling my company. I own a socially responsible web hosting company for entrepreneurs and it has been in business for a over a year. It has great seo rankings and decent revenue. I don't know whether or not I should sell the whole company or try and sell the domain separate and then sell the clients to another web hosting company? Any thoughts or tips?
"There is a difference between doubt and an issue that can be resolved."

I agree that a doubt and an issue are two different things, however having a doubt is an issue in this context, and it should be acknowledged that some issues have the potential to be resolved (solved or disappear over time).

Because of this, I don't think dealing in absolutes is always warranted re: such dilemmas, though I do agree with your conclusion.
I remember seeing window screens in a similar pattern in China.

For an example, see

http://www.chinesefurniture.co.uk/symbols.html

or

http://ww.pacific-home.com/shop/dining/dining-chairs/cracked...
"If you are an entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley and don’t visit the Bay Area on a regular basis, you are way behind."

Come on. There are successful entrepreneurs based all over the world. The Valley is not a requirement.
I'm genuinely curious: how is returning undefined any different from returning null, in this case?
Ask HN: How to get VC/investor to take notice?
Hi all -

Mitch Kapor gave an interview the other day on CNN where he states that the purpose of a pitch is to get the investor to learn/walk away with 4 or 5 key things.

My question is - How do you get to the pitch?

If you're not in an incubator, and are just starting to build your network, you're most likely reaching out to investors/investment groups via e-mail. Is there anything an entrepreneur can do to improve their chances of getting their company past the initial screening and raising the attention of investors?

Thanks!
Does anyone have the lat/long for http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/china-we... ?
Link
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=40.458148,93.393145
Further, I guess pulling their users email into their system makes business sense for them, but that has always struck me as an unusual technical choice.

I always thought it was so they could provide mail using a protocol that was optimized for battery life. Constantly polling a mail provider for updates is not exactly a good use of power.

They couldn't really expect everyone who runs a mail server to install the necessary infrastructure to support the devices, so the next best thing is to have computers operated by RIM attached to power mains worry about collecting the email and then notify the wireless device only when there are changes. Apple uses the same basic model for their push services.
Looks like a salt evaporation pond to me. like:

http://g.co/maps/8d83k

or a little closer to home:

http://g.co/maps/tr7w5
Yes please! This was the first thing I noticed, maybe my netbook is too slow but I do a lot of coding on the little thing.

The way I solved this in a similar auto-complete app was using a setTimeOut to prevent updating or requesting data unless no key had been pressed in the last 0.2 seconds or so:

var updateId = 0;
function searchKeypress(e) {
if ((e || window.event).keyCode == 13) {
updateCookie(radioStations.selected);
document.location = radioStations.selected.links[0].url;
}
clearTimeout(updateId);
updateId = setTimeout(searchUpdate, 200);
}

Disclaimer: this piece of code is about 4 years old and as you can see it doesn't even use jQuery, but I trust it demonstrates the principle well enough.
They should have told you write f = (x -> x^2) or so.
Ex-Apple Designer Aims To Kill Reading
This seems like a good way forward for Google. Though it's not perfect, this increased transparency makes me more likely to continue to use them.
If they put a more consumer-friendly face on it, they could probably go toe-to-toe with many other platforms out there. Not quite their core business, though.
Voronoi Polygons have been used in mining to estimate the reserves of valuable materials, minerals or other resources. Exploratory drillholes are used as the set of points in the Voronoi polygons

Interesting idea, but I don't see why they'd then construct a huge set of roads to connect every vertex. Or why they'd drill that many drillholes in less than a square km.
Internally, at google.
The third image, the circular one, is just a solar array, right?
Agreed, I'm a student at Pomona College outside of LA looking for a summer internship too. I'd love to talk if you're interested.
definitely not their core business, but it seems like it is such a short distance to get there from where things currently stand. And I really like Jekyll and using GitHub to host.
Direct link to the prototype: http://worrydream.com/Tangle/
You are completely missing my point. Scarcity is the problem in other cities.
MendelMax RepRap 3D Printer
That's not the Gobi desert. It's in Eastern Turkestan, not in Mongolia.
Here are the original photographs and video if you want to see the astronauts' work in context with explanations:
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/
> They're not going to do some ID check, and it'll count towards the "X number of people have contacted us about issue Y" count, which'll count for something.

First of all - yes, they do check, and they have no obligation to listen to you if you are not a constituent.

Second, calling someone who isn't your elected official is legal, but calling and pretending to be a constituent is not.
A neat little Mini-ITX system
This video is pretty incredible. It's so amazing to see how visible the storms and city lights are from around (I think) 250 miles away! The northern lights look surreal as well.

It's cool that there is so much to see by a change in perspective.
10 Must-Have Gadgets