skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you agree that people should be rewarded for their contributions, then you should support a system which does that. The system of paying for zero-marginal-cost copies at least attempts to reward people proportionally to the perceived value of their work. Surely that's better than no system at all.

Creating a system that rewards desirable behavior is the job of regulators. I don't see why we should succumb to defeatist claims like "It's all over. Just accept that your work is now worthless". No, we should do something about it, just like we are tackling pollution, crime, etc.

One crucial step would be to make it easy for a creator to sell their work over the Web with a one-click interface, like buying an iPhone app.

(BTW, I agree with the "less badly" assessment. Capitalism has been known to reward total crap.)
this has to be a talent acquisition. i wonder how long before gowalla product is mothballed? also wonder how little of a return their investors got?
Show HN: crowd funded journalism. Kickstarter meets Huffington Post
http://gojournalism.ca
Those Quadruple Extra Large instances are $2/hr. The 24 of them used for postgres would be like $35k/month just for that part alone. I'm guessing they are spending >$100k/month on just hosting 100+ instances. Not to mention disk, bandwidth, dns, s3, public ip's, etc.
After working in finance I've come to believe that most wealth is accumulated through brute force. You get money by using leverage to take other peoples money -- its actually very simple from an intelligence perspective. It may take some genius to gather the resources necessary to forcefully gather wealth, but the actual gathering of it is not a matter of 'smarts'.
headline: "buy".
Building New Billion Dollar Companies
I hope that when this happens, I have lots of money stocked away.

I will wait until a smaller, successful company's copyright expires after a year and I will replicate it exactly. Because I have more resources, I will be able to easily compete and most likely put that company out of business.

After a big block-buster movie comes out, which costs a million+, I could make t-shirts and all sorts of things to make money..and I didn't have to put any of the work into creating it.
Uh oh, what will happen to the Gowalla api?
Seriously? It's a VCS and that's all it is.

Your comment doesn't address the parent's comment at all. Moving VCS is hard in any team with more than a few members, especially when the change is coming from a few and not everyone.

I remember my old company moving from MS VSS to svn, all we hear was 'why, VSS works!', even though it was a nightmare compared to svn. Of course the change had a bunch of teething problems and the conservatives pointed and moaned more.

But who in their right mind would say VSS is better than SVN?

Any organisational change is hard, no matter how 'obviously' better it is.
Zoe and her debt story
Zoe and her debt solving and money management, money saving tips and how to be rich.
They're just trying to throw their customers (the carriers) under the bus at this point.

They really don't want to shoulder these oncoming class actions alone.
I've heard the occasional story of Amazon freezing a customer's access to his books because of unrelated issues with the account, like returning too many items. If I do get a Kindle, which I am currently thinking of buying, I will probably create a separate Amazon account solely for use with it.
Wow, that's pretty evil. I definitely won't be using name.com (I've been happy with Dreamhost as a registrar for years anyway, but would be interested in trying someone else in the future). Thanks for the heads up.
I love. LOVE how the HN community downvotes me for merely having a differing opinion.

I chock it up to insecure computer geeks. I would not want to live in a world where I am silenced for my opinion.
Sad time when HN doesn't downvote your non-contributing comment out of spite for my comment.
I'm not an Apple user, I just look in from the outside.

I don't understand this seeming tension where Apple restrict choices in their systems for usability, homogeneity, etc, while also being the system of choice for many hackers.

How come Apple machines are still geek-friendly?
I know that this is probably a recruiting-inspired post, but detailed posts like this genuinely benefit the community. Thanks for specifically mentioning the reasons for choosing particular technologies (i.e. why you switched to Gunicorn from mod_wsgi) -- this makes the already excellent post even more helpful for someone trying to build things.
By my math, the bill for their app and database servers would be approaching $30,000 per month. That doesn't include storage costs, bandwidth, or any of the other aspects of their infrastructure.

That's crazy, if you ask me.
I remember an article about how Gowalla was bringing SV talent to Austin. Heh.
>And for the average investor, next quarter's earnings are much more important than earnings in 2015.

I hear this all the time, and it's just not true. I see stock moves all the time based on the prospects for distant future earnings - Amazon is a prime example. So is any stock with a high P/E.
Can it handle multiple invocations of same argument? For example:

./foo.js -x 1 -x 2 -x 3

(should give an array [1, 2, 3] for 'x')
I personally don't think it's a problem, because I don't agree with your classification of the action as "stealing." It's problematic enough with content I do actually want (copying is not directly analogous to stealing just like potential income is not the same as income), but when the business doesn't offer a product you want (so there isn't even lost potential income), obtaining such a product in a way that doesn't cost the business anything (such as copying a file) from a third party is not stealing.
Building JSON
Talent acquisition? Given the fact that they are transitioning Gowalla employees to Timeline, that would seem to be the case.
Non-smartphone browsers will often use a bastardization of https that does allow the carriers to perform MitM interception.

This should* not be the case with smartphones however, particularly when connected to wifi and not even transferring data via the carrier.

*The carrier may have planted an SSL trusted CA cert on your phone before giving it to you.
Wealth accumulation roughly follows the process of "1. Earn money 2. Don't spend it" - It doesn't strain credulity that IQ might be correlated with the former, but not the latter.

I'm curious as to the effect on quality of life - measuring wealth in dollars is easier, but a pretty imprecise measure of the overall effect on someone's life of a few IQ points.

I'm even more curious as to the effects on happiness...

Edit: Not much, apparently:
http://www.quora.com/Happiness/Is-it-true-that-less-intellig...
For the small percentage of crashes related to the physical key presses.

Does the software log physical keyboard presses (that is, the letters, not navigation buttons)? It should be easy to test. (I'm not saying you should, but if people are this concerned, then that should be the kind of information we have.)
But Play 2.0 is moving away from Java Servlets, IIRC... how do the modern solutions compare in that regard?
Congrats Gowalla!
Watch New Year's Eve 2012
watch New Year's Eve 2012
Fireworks will light the sky over the Inner Have on New Seasons Eve after a variety of idea from The Baltimore Sun granted managers to satisfy their fundraiser objective for placing on the yearly present.
The water pump story was primarily an elaborate screwup.

This story has some very interesting reality under it and the details are still being uncovered.
> You've probably seen one or two talks of Mark Pincus talking about "doing every dirty trick in the book" or something like that.

Is that not true? Didn't Zynga make a huge portion of their early money from SMS fraud? The kind of money that gave them a huge leg up over their competitors?

In my opinion, Zynga is an indictment of capitalism itself (and I say this as someone who likes capitalism). It's lowest-common-denominator, race-to-the-bottom, zero-ethics type stuff. Not just their products, but the way employees are treated there. It's no surprise that most developers find it revolting and wish it would just die.
Nobody can say for sure yet, but I doubt it'll be around very much longer.

If you're looking for a check-in API, Foursquare's seems like the best bet at this point. The Venues (ie. places) Platform is especially good, with rate limits starting at 5,000/hr: https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/venues.html
So, when you say "obscure blowup", do you mean, "someone posted any issue whatsoever"?

No, I mean "random malfunction without clear indication of what happened and how to fix it".

Several of those are feature requests, or node-core bugs

Might be a mindset thing. How many of the 8 bugs qualify as feature requests/node bugs for you?

gist or it didn't happen.

The gist is that npm needs to become more defensive, clearly state its own dependencies, and not barf random stack traces in the face of problems. You should also have a unix-guy fix the installer. Demanding 'sudo' is not only an embarrassing but also a potentially dangerous mistake.
This is a perfectly fair point of view, and I definitely see the author's point as far as freedom goes. Still, a counterpoint.

Part of the problem I've seen with this point of view, though, is that the people who espouse it that I tend to deal with (which I won't claim is representative) all tend to have some other form of 'giving up freedom' instead.

For example, people who don't buy Apple devices because they want control over their devices, but then buy Android devices and keep all their data on Google's services, tying everything together (Picasa, Gmail, Google Docs, etc). Putting all of your personal information in one place so that a company can comb through it all and learn everything about you, especially when that company can just turn off your digital life arbitrarily, and provide you no recourse.

Case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2794529

It's really just the other side of the coin, and I know a lot of people that are ok with that tradeoff. Still, the idea that some giant, faceless corporation's algorithm will one day return true instead of false for some blog post I wrote and suddenly erase my (access to my) contacts, photos, email, documents, and everything else I've built up just rubs me the wrong way - much as I'm sure the idea of a closed ecosystem bothers people like the author.
It's not no system at all. It's capitalism. I guess I think capitalism is a sufficient system for people to get rewarded, generally.

And I think copyright introduces lots of opportunity for abuse, as well as introducing weird notions (like "intellectual property") into the culture. I don't like that people think they can own ideas. Just look at the state of patents.

I suppose you could introduce technologies that make it so cheap and easy to buy music that it's not worth the effort to pirate, but I don't see that as a very good source of revenue.

I think things like what Amanda Palmer is doing are great. I also think Kickstarter shows that we're only just beginning to see the possibilities for new ways to reward people for their contributions without having to resort to extra regulations.

In short, my attitude is not defeatist, it's optimistic for a decentralized, entrepeneurial, directly participatory future of art and culture!

And, btw, thanks so much for the lively discussion (on this and the other thread) without devolving into flaminess! I feel enriched for having had the exchange.
Also perseverance and luck.
Yes, URLs can definitely contain sensitive information.

There are no hard-and-fast rules about it (the web wasn't designed for privacy or security), but often web servers are configured to not log query string parameters for this reason.
The article implies immediate product death.
Attraction Marketing : ElegantPassage.com
> Sideloading and conversion is nice but not something I want to do on any kind of regular basis.

It's on par with loading podcasts onto an mp3 player, not exactly a labour-intensive task.
If Siri is Hacked in a French Forest, Does Anybody Care?
Thought I share this nugget: http://russell.ballestrini.net/virt-back-a-python-libvirt-ba...

Its a python application I wrote to backup guests using libvirt api.

Opensource and public domain.
Hacker Monthly Issue #19 - December 2011
I once worked on a site with 1/6th the users and only one machine. ;-) Counting users often doesn't match across sites, especially when an Instagram user is someone who has downloaded the app, and might never come back. That's why the 50 photo uploads per second peak is a useful benchmark.
Interesting correction: George Lucas actually started Pixar, not Steve Jobs.
Decent; but not great. Nate is doing http://ingenuitas.com
The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah
Ask HN: I contacted my competitor and setup a meeting, what should I expect?
I contacted my competitor over twitter and they asked me to call them. What should I expect?
They also appear to be a small start up.
From the outside looking in I would say talent acquisition as well.
It's not an unknown number of days. It's 1-2 days.

Major companies with good hiring processes (Microsoft, Google) require 1-2 full days of your time for the interviews, so it's not different time-wise. The difference is that instead of talking to several people for 1hr each, you spend the time coding.

If you ask me, coding is better as a way of judging if someone knows how to, you know, code.
2) Over time, you save money on books. A dollar here, two dollars there; it quickly adds up. Pretty soon, even if you ever had some book removed from your Kindle, you would have saved more than enough money to just go buy the physical copy.

With the Kindle, I started to buy books more often, as they take no physical space. So even if they are cheaper per unit, I am spending more, not saving money.
Except on Thursdays.
Gowalla's been doing some interesting things with Cassandra, so this sounds like a great fit. Congrats to all involved!
This is definitely a big loss for Austin. There are still a few interesting startups in the area, but Gowalla was the one that made it a serious contender.
Monster Beats by dre Solo for sale
I noticed that too. One explanation could be that many really smart people understand that "the game" is inherently stupid/degrading/unimportant and would rather not waste their intelligence and lives fighting other people to "win" it. Maybe they want to further human understanding in peace and not be a tall poppy that gets cut down all the time[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3306361
Best cigar online
Does skill at piano sight reading generalize to other skills?

My experience is that a greater working memory obviously helps with every mental task. I constantly run into the limits of my working memory; problems too complex to grasp.

If I immerse myself in the problem for a while (e.g. 3 days), it often becomes clear. I think that some aspects transfer into long-term memory, until what remains fits into short-term memory. Another deeper effect is when I see a new way of looking at the problem that makes it simpler; a way to divide it into parts, or layers, or aspects that can be dealt with independently.

It's frustrating to have limited working memory, but I console myself with the fundamental truth that everyone has limited working memory. A far more important ability is being able to handle problems that exceed one's working memory - with a few steps, you easily exceed the working memory of anyone.
Another benefit is that this division into parts/layers/aspects is a theory of the problem, which can be transfered to others. By finding a simpler, better way to think about this problem, you can save everyone time and effort (including super-geniuses, because it frees up their working memory). Even wrap it up in a product and sell it, which saves even more. And even if a super-genius could effortlessly grasp it in working memory, he/she would have no interest in finding a simplifying theory of something already trivial, would feel no value in it if they did see it, and couldn't believe there's be any value in bringing a "solution to a non-problem" to others. It takes someone like me. And of course, the real super-geniuses end up working at their limits, same as me.

Of course, it would always be nice to have just a little bit more working memory. One reason to get enough sleep, food, exercise.
UX(+UI) designer? Ridejoy (YC S11) needs you. Engineers, community managers too.
PSA: Refer someone we hire, and get a thousand bucks of collaborative consumption credit! You can pick from among Airbnb, Zipcar, Grubwithus, Getaround, RelayRides, Tutorspree, Skillshare, and Vayable.

Link: www.ridejoy.com/jobs/

Ridejoy is a community marketplace for rides. With over 2 billion long-distance driving trips each year, mostly solo, we have many miles to go and we're accelerating quickly. Come join us now at the start of our journey, and together we'll make it worth your while.

We love well-designed experiences, we have a rapidly growing community that loves us back (and loves telling us so), and we're building a marketplace for everyone who's ever needed to get somewhere.

We've all been employees at early-stage, venture-backed startups. We know what it's like, so we're generous with the benefits and your equity. (Plus full salaries, of course.) We're well-funded by top-tier investors, and we do things like unlimited free food, and free tickets and transportation to Burning Man.

We have a tight-knit team and we're looking for people who we can develop a deep mutual trust with. This is not code for "the same as us"; we want to build a team that's more diverse than your typical startup. We understand that a great company and a great culture depends on far more than technical aptitude.

Details: Located in SF. We will happily pay for and help with relocation for the right candidate.

For designers: As the lead designer, you'll be working closely with two engineers who care deeply about both the visual and interactive design of our product, and want to let you focus on what you do best.

The product is very early, so you'd be shaping it from the ground floor; you'd be our first teammate after the founders, but we're not looking for a unicorn who can do everything: "just" great UX and as much high-personality UI (design only) as possible.

For engineers: Our current stack is Ruby, Rails, Postgres, Coffeescript, Sass, and jQuery, and we're looking to expand into iOS and Android. It's not mandatory to know these coming in; passionate generalists who can learn quickly work too.

For community managers: Be tech-savvy, super scrappy, a good people person, and a collaborative consumer. Everything else is negotiable.
You mean people will be able to make informed choices about their privacy?
Can I use QEMU to run Mac OSX on my Linux box (at decent speed)?
Evernote just moved in. We also have Facebook and Google offices.
Your next move should be to rebuild local government with more control and transparency into public dollars. It's what we're doing at CivicSponsor, drop me a line if you want to talk.
> I don't entirely understand why they do this, since their load balancer simply does 302 redirects to the S3-hosted image resource.

S3 accesses cost money, so it makes sense that they'd rate limit access to them. A botnet hitting an S3 URL could incur large fees for the owner of the file very rapidly.
> [1] My current employer uses SVN and I was told, in no uncertain terms, "The use of Git is a fireable offense." The lead developer really hates Git.

Reminds a bit of this quote in LWN from David Woodhouse (a Linux kernel developer at Intel): 'If my corporate overlords told me I had to use my Exchange "messaging" account for external email communication, they would get a quite clear 'no' in response. My response may also contain suggestions that they use certain other objects for purposes for which they were not designed.'

More seriously, it sounds like someone who had a bad experience with Git at one point got put in an undeserved position of power in which they got to enforce the results of that bad experience on everyone else.
I had never heard of them
Essay writing in school isn't about the art of writing -- its about teaching children to logically organize their thoughts into compartments using gramatically correct sentences, then present them in linear fashion. This is very important!

The art of writing is about expressing ideas, emotions, arguments, and passions through any visceral manner letters on paper allow you to.
And "business acumen" has nothing to do with good decision making.
The blurred line between IDEs and editors - Valletta Ventures
They are not having any trouble with being in contact with the press at this point.

What seems more likely is that they were able to feed the reporter enough material from their side of the story that the reporter used mostly that to meet his deadline. Of course, the reporter may write a story from the opposite perspective Monday.
I'd love to hear the conversation at foursquare right now. I wonder if they're happy for their competitors, or maybe sad? Perhaps concerned that the check-in novelty is really dying off?
Make your donation now - Donate
Public info also makes it easier to steal a domain.

Long ago, I (being childish) stole a domain from some random person who pissed me off in a video game. I spent three days calling the registrar's offices (along with a friend) over fifty times, writing the name of each service representative down so that we didn't dupe up on anyone and raise any red flags. (It was a huge registrar, though not GoDaddy.)

We were able to use the public info available on their whois records to weasel our way into getting additional account information from the employees. We'd simply call and ask for a small piece of the account information in a nonchalant manner, they'd ask for info we've already obtained from previous calls, and usually they'd either give us the info or say "we don't have access to that information".

The hardest part was getting the last four digits of the credit card on the account. Since we had all the rest of the user's information, we called maybe twenty times trying to get those numbers. Some employees would say they can't see them, but they could. All it took was one really stupid representative:

"Yes, I'd like to confirm the credit card on my account before I file a form to retrieve my account back. I have two cards that end with the same last two digits, what are the first two digits of the last four digits"

[she doesn't understand so we confuse the hell out of her for minutes on end]

"uh... 2... 6."

"And the last two?"

"82"

"Thank you, I have the right card. Good day."

Had a good laugh, filed a form, emailed it in, stole their domain before they noticed, and never gave it back. I talked to the owner and eventually redirected his website back, and he forgave me.

Keep your whois info private if you're on a crappy registrar. Likely, the OP uses the same password everywhere and some random kid stumbled on his godaddy account and took the domain from under his nose.
Mutual Mobile too: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/28/most-promising-companies...
[Disclosure: I work at Factual]

There are other good APIs to consider as well: Google Places, Factual, Yelp, etc. Each API has its own pros and cons in terms of query limits, terms and restrictions, fees, etc.

This is a good starting place for research: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-each-Plac...
One "also-ran" does not a "serious contender" make. Or break.
Much respect for making it to the 1.0, that shows great dedication on his part. He earned the break, and I look forward to seeing what's next!