skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be irritating. What I was intending by the use of "quaint" was to say that the following ideas will be considered quaint in 5 years:

- "ebooks aren't 'real' books"

- "in-progress books aren't 'real' books"

I did not mean to imply the following:

- "any book that's is published on paper is quaint"

- "any book that is finished before being published is quaint"

You brought up Dickens and serials. I totally agree with you! I've been bringing up Dickens when I've been talking about Leanpub to authors (and a room full of publishing industry people) for years.

I am absolutely not claiming that Leanpub invented serials, self-publishing or beta books.

Serials in fiction go back to Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Arabian Nights, etc.

What we are calling "Lean Publishing" is the act of self-publishing an in-progress book. Specifically, here's my full definition:

"Lean Publishing is the act of self-publishing a book while you are writing it, evolving the book with feedback from your readers and finishing a first draft before optionally using the traditional publishing workflow."

The notion of self publishing is not new, and the Pragmatic Programmers, O'Reilly and Manning have all published and sold in-progress technical books for years. I think the Pragmatic Programmers were the ones who did it well first.

I wrote a manifesto about Lean Publishing, which is where the above definition is from. It's freely available here: http://leanpub.com/manifesto

I'm also selling an in-progress book of it, of course. My intention is not to promote that book, so I won't link to it, but to bring it up to ask questions about whether you would consider it a book. It's short: it's currently 50 pages, about the length of On Bullshit (a real book). Almost all the content is in the free manifesto, which is an essay on a web page. So is Lean Publishing a real book? People have bought the ebook and read it on computers, Kindles and iPads. If it's not real yet, when will it be real? When it's printed? When it has an editor?

Finally, you focus a lot on mediocrity and the role of publishers. I've thought a lot about this too; my ideas are here:
http://leanpub.com/manifesto#what-does-lean-publising-mean-f...
If you don't mind me saying, it sounds to me like you've come into more money and success than you've ever had and now you're feeling guilty about it. You SEE yourself as a guy who works and creates stuff, not a capitalist on a yacht; but, when you glance at your accounts, your mind is telling you that you are, in fact, a fat capitalist on a yacht telling everyone down below to row.

This is creating guilt and cognitive dissonance.

But that isn't you. The amount of zeroes on a bank statement does not a man make. The reason you went out looking for jobs even though you didn't need them is not because you were bored. It's because you wanted to convince others (yourself, really) that you haven't let success go to your head.

Well, I can tell by your post that you haven't let it go to your head. And you know what, it probably won't. Those people who get rich and then turn into complete douche-nozzles... guess what? They were douche-nozzles to begin with! Money tends to amplify one's personality, not alter it.

So relax!

Give yourself permission to:

- Buy that car or boat or whatever you've always wanted. Just keep the Tercel ;-)

- Travel, explore, learn, teach, whatever. If money is no object, the first thing I'd love to do is drive trucks for 6 months or so. The next thing would be to get my PhD. Do what you've always wanted to do if you didn't have to work... because you don't.

- Create! Use your coding skills for yourself. If you don't have the urge to write code, don't. But if you do, don't worry if it doesn't have a market or an exit strategy, just write it and feel good. Share it. You'll enjoy it again.

Bottom line: you have worked hard, developed a great product, saw it through to a nice exit, and are in a position to enjoy the fruits of your success. We at HN hereby give you permission to do so ;-)
Congrats!

I love these guys. Custora validated Campusfood's customer lifetime value. Without this service to validate our internal data we probably wouldn't have gotten as high an acquisition price from GrubHub.

Note: we also did CLV analysis using an outside accounting firm and it took them 3 weeks to come up with pretty much the same number. But, it cost more and gave us no actionable insight into our users.
How To Add The Twitter “Follow Me” Button To Your Sidebar
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Required experience and knowledge:

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* Open source contributor is a big plus.

* Expert knowledge with HTML, Python (or Ruby), Javascript, JQuery, CSS

* Strong sense of design and end user experience

* Highly creative individual

* Proven experience in development of cross browser compatible web applications

* Excellent communication skills

* Ability to work in a fast paced, collaborative and iterative programming environment

Contact: john@luminate.com -or-
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This is sad for the rest of EU-nationals as well. Being in the trade- and political union was supposed to protect us from such attacks and pressure against our political sovereignity. "If we are part of a bigger entity, then it's harder for the bullies to harass an individual nation." That's how the Union was sold for many of us.

But right now, not only we face pressure from big foreign powers, but the Union itself is moving towards greater centralization of power. Especially financially.

This does not look good.
Well in New Mogul's case, nickb has been gone for a long time, and has basically vanished. The domain expired a while ago and he stopped paying the bills when he vanished.

BrainRacer's edu news site was shut down due to a lack of traction mainly, but it would probably be best to actually ask the founder as to why exactly.

Fwiw, I also ran a short-lived HN clone for a few months (also for education news) but killed it; mainly because of a lack of traction, and I didn't care too much to keep it up. Only about 15 registered users were on it, and only 4 active submitters, including myself.
Funny how we both fully fund China and spy on them at the same time.

But no commerce with Cuba except leasing land for a prison.

Oh and billions for secret military space shuttles is fine but no more civilian space program.
The code example given seems a bit disingenuous, since the same level of complexity is present in the code, only the parts of it are broken up into single-purpose methods that may or may not be overkill depending on the needs of the project. For example, you can swap `$this->file` with a different object to write to alternate logging backends, but you could just as easily replace `$this->logFile` with an alternate stream wrapper to do the same thing in the original example...

For reference, here's the first example:

public function log($message, $level) {
$f = fopen($this->logFile, 'a');
if (!$f) {
throw new LogicException('Could not open file for writing');
}
if (!flock($f, LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB)) {
throw new RuntimeException('Could not lock file');
}
fprintf($f, '%s [%s] %s - %s', $this->machineName, date('Y-m-d H:i:s'), $level, $message);
flock($f, LOCK_UN);
fclose($f);
}

And here's what your improved example would actually be:

/* In $this->file's class */
public function append ($message) {
$f = fopen($this->logFile, 'a');
if (!$f) {
throw new LogicException('Could not open file for writing');
}
if (!flock($f, LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB)) {
throw new RuntimeException('Could not lock file');
}
fwrite($f, $message);
flock($f, LOCK_UN);
fclose($f);
}

/* In Log class */
public function createLogMessage ($message, $level) {
return sprintf('%s [%s] %s - %s', $this->machineName, date('Y-m-d H:i:s'), $level, $message);
}

public function log($message, $level = 'notice') {
$message = $this->createLogMessage($message, $level);
$this->file->append($message);
}

Just a nitpick, but sometimes we over-abstract because we're too used to doing so. To me, a separate `createLogMessage()` method that just wraps a `sprintf()` seems like a sign of that.

(not saying I haven't been equally guilty of this 1000x before :)
Agree with most of the comments here - taking time off, traveling, getting inspired again by things you like might be the best. Then you could consider meeting people and seeing if you can help people out - as an advisor to get your energy and ideas back to full mode.
I would love to discuss with you about your experience with the sheet music store for iPad - contact me if you can
> owning .. a printing press is not dependent on third parties after an initial transaction.

Consider:

- You have the right to "bear arms" but "you do not have a right to purchase bullets".

- You have the right to "free press" but "you do not have a right to purchase ink".
What kind of jobs are you applying to? Are you applying to be a product manager then they start grilling you on code? The people want you to code is because that's what they need. Look at what your resume is conveying and only apply for positions you're really interested in. Try taking the specific technical experience off your resume and submit it to a few positions.
You checked Facebook to post that comment on HN?

You missed the point. You use all those other services (aside from Path most likely) anyway. I just use them more and more-deeply.
Yea, you don't need money to be healthy in a civilized country. Someday, America might catch on, but I'm not holding my breath.
We shouldn't be surprised if the other religions sue them for lost profits.

I probably shouldn't write it and give them any ideas.

If those other religions sue them following MPAA, RIAA, etc practices, the Kopi-ists may claim the other religions followed their precepts of copying.
I once was asked the SAME puzzle at two interviews (for different companies) two weeks apart.

I'd never seen it before the first interview. In that first interview, I broke it down quickly into its component parts, and figured out where the trick had to be -- and from there quickly solved it on the spot.

In the second interview I spent a couple minutes trying to remember the solution from the first interview, and completely flubbed it. It wasn't the first part of that second interview that I flubbed, either, including arguing with one of the interviewers and basically telling him he was wrong.

Oddly enough, I got the job with the second company and worked there for almost six years. For the record, I love doing those kinds of puzzles. But I do video game development, so maybe puzzles are a bit more relevant to my industry (in that 80%+ of what we're doing is figuring out how to solve puzzles in the form of how to do something with less CPU or why a particular video card is behaving in a certain way).
Kodak did do the QuickTake 100 and 150 with Apple...
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Renewable Electricity
Generating renewable electricity from the power of the wind and solar energy sounds awesome. Just imagine having costless wind and solar power running in your entire household. How do you like that?
What a privilege to learn from him. Sounds like a hilarious and engaging man.
Rutan is a mechanical engineer who designs airplanes and has achieved some measure of celebrity doing that. I'm not sure how his entry here really improves the debate. He's not an expert on the subject, and is being indirectly presented as one precisely because he's famous.

Would people click through the link if it were the aileron design team lead for the A380 writing it instead?
Java will never free the mappings created for memory mapped files. If you use them in long-running programs for writing many different files, you'll end up with a process taking dozens of gigabytes of virtual memory.
It's amazing how diverse each side is in terms of democrats vs. republicans considering how partisan every other recent issue has been. What's the dividing line? Education about tech and the internet maybe?
Confidence of the Mobile Web
I believe we could really start teaching code at a relatively young age too, or at least start teaching them the ability to have the mindset for programming.
In reality, they may not be dead/suspended, and due to poor programming by the developer it could be sitting there wasting resources (read: battery). This is not acceptable.

Now, I know Apples current method of working with background apps is correct (easiest for everyone). Apple does need to do something about it though. Google Latitude for example can 'run' (I'm not actually sure what code is executed, if any) even after being removed from the 'tray'. This all adds up to a pretty shitty experience for those who have no idea on how all this actually works, be it Apples fault or not.
I've heard that Larry Page could not pass the Google interview today.
I would definately support a permanent blackout of Paypal. Please turn off and don't come back.
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I had no idea either but he qualified his statement saying he would explain what it was. I just looked up the wikipedia entry which explained it pretty well and I would think that you'd have no problem building a prototype given your listed experience. The point he is making is that he will give you a problem (and Pascal's triangle seems to be a fairly simple one at that) to then be involved in your analytical process. It sounds fair to me.
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Short Sharp Science: Newest Canary Island pictured rising from the deep
It gives you time for genuine discovery. Burn out, if you've ever experienced it, is not about exhaustion. It comes from forcing yourself in one direction so long that you forget all of the other things that are fulfilling to you. It takes time for all of those old desires to percolate up to the surface where you can recognize them now that you're no longer focused on that one thing. A month is great if you're balanced but exhausted and need a vacation since you're not trying to change your thinking habits. It just takes longer to recover from burn out because changing your state of mind is exactly the point.
I agree with you on everything you said. As for the SO, or anything in general (as far as learning is concerned), I guess the more you learn the more you realize how little you know...
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I'm not sure if you an immigrant to US, as I am. It is perhaps not surprising that naturalized Americans who have fled to US precisely for "liberty" and know first hand what a tyranny looks like, are more sensitive to these matters than the native born citizens who have come to take many of these matters for granted.

I must tell you it is very frustrating. Where to go now, if we don't roll back these clearly authoritarian steps (Patriot Act, NDAA, and now SOPA) in America? (Please don't tell me to move to Canada!)
RIM reportedly agrees to license BlackBerry software to Samsung, HTC and others
It amazes me how many commenters here seem to be missing the point. The point is not to take these sites offline in a kind of "do what we want or you can't have our services" move, but to bring the issue to the attention of everyone who is unaware that this may affect them. These sites have the eyes of millions of americans who are completely unaware of the SOPA threat and turning the sites off for a day, or even showing a "stop censorship" notice will spread the awareness that previously was missing.
Kanye West Launches Design Company: DONDA
This article is fantastic. I’ve been on the receiving end of these “puzzles” and they do nothing for the candidate and pretty weakly show how the 2 parties would work together.

My response, in the past, has been that it doesn’t truly reflect my ability to solve their real problems. Most just move on.

Networking has a tremendous effect on the ability to fill a position and find a good working match. We’re working to make this easier at http://meeteor.com.

Meeteor matches people with employers and industries they’re interested in. We’ve had some great feedback and would love more.
And on reading, it gets much worse. Check out this ridiculous straw
man from the second slide:

"When co2 is greater in the atmosphere, plants need less water to
thrive. [...] If you promote a green healthy planet, then you should
lobby for a co2-fertilized atmosphere, not a co2-starved atmosphere."

Yes, all that those hippies advocating "green" stuff want is more
trees. Sigh.
Also, as an entrepreneur you've officially graduated beyond the resume/interview/application process. The only people who fully appreciate those entrepreneurial skills are other business owners and executives; if you come in and ask me for a job coding awesome stuff, I'm mostly going to care about your code skill because someone else is handling the promotion, design, and management.

Of course you could work in a small business where having lots of diverse skills is valued, but you'll probably be vastly underpaid and overworked.

Sounds like you want to be appreciated though. Offer to work for free! If you don't need the money, help someone you identify with. Give back, pay it forward, whatever. You'll have a great time, learn a lot, and make new friends for whatever happens next.
"You're reduced to the size of a nickel and thrown into a blender. How do you get out?"

If I were asked such a question in an interview, my response would be: "Dunno. Let's talk about some real-world problems you're facing right now instead."

I dislike trivial questions, especially during an interview. I'm a professional, not a circus animal.
Who cares, he's not a Climatologist and his opinion will be necessarily uninformed. You may as well ask him his opinion on the latest heart surgery techniques.
This is another company which is going to die a slow, painful death. I think the overall consensus is they're done, but they continue to plod along, losing money as they go.

They can only continue to churn their losses for so long. At some point, it's going to go from a slow drain to a quick exit. I'd keep an eye for them buying their stock back and layoffs.
iOS 5 date flaw allows access to photos on locked device
"It's a simple, mathematical fact that the current people paying for films and television are paying much, much more than your hypothetical $30/month."

"New content is simply not available at the present quality level for the price you are offering."

I'm not sure either of these statements hold up. People may be spending more than $30 a month on movie-related entertainment, but a large portion of those dollars don't end up in the pockets of the content creators. It's like saying that a $10 CD can't be less profitable for a musician than a $1 MP3.

A large percentage of the dollars that consumers currently spend on entertainment go to the channel rather than the creator. I'm sure if Louis CK had distributed his recent video via traditional channels, the total dollar volume of the purchases might have been 10x higher between pay cable, DVDs and downloads. But he, as the content creator, might have made less money (and certainly would have had less control.)

As for downwards price pressure, the average price of a movie ticket has been rising for years while studios watch ticket volumes decline. Where's the price pressure there?
Sounds to me like you already answered your own question. It also sounds like you might be second guessing yourself and need some reassurance. That's alright, we're only human.

If I were you, I'd take a good long break. Regroup for a third of it and relax. Then do some solo tinkering and see if anything gets you excited. Maybe you'll want to go another round with a new business at that point, maybe not.

Join another team only if you think you can handle not being the top dog. Make sure that whatever position you get, you're happy with the amount of control you have while still keeping in mind that this is someone else's baby you're caring for now. If all that's a good fit and agreeable then continue on that path. If not, do your own thing.

As for being type-cast as Engineer-Only, well, it's tricky... maybe you should leave out the part where you know how to code. You don't have to tell people you're a programmer right away. Get into the area of the business you'd like most before mentioning your other skills. Definitely mention your other skills, just not right off the bat.

Other than that I'd say congratulations, you seem like you're doing very well and have luxuries that a lot of us (me too) are striving for. It's awesome to see people like you who want to keep going round after round in entrepreneurship. Its people like you who prove that when you something out of love, not money, you truly succeed. Hopefully I helped. Good luck to you!
It's about awareness, there are many many people that aren't educated on SOPA that use these services. If a service like FB or Google does something that interrupts your routine, makes you notice something you might not have understood completely, then something's been accomplished. That's thousands more people that might not have contacted their representatives, that after a 'stunt' like a blackout, may very well make that call or at least send an email.

As for the time article, I don't know how you could be disappointed. It's global. It's Tunisia, it's Egypt, yes even some of the Occupy moments, and others too around the world. Protest, dissent, the idea that you can make a showing and try to make a difference, is important.
Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture
I'm always amused by interview questions.

Primarily because I do terribly at white board problems thanks to disgraphia(terrible handwritting), and secondily because while the questions might give some indicator of whether or not you can code hello world, or a binary tree depth first search algorithem they do a terrible job of testing your actual domain knowledge.

For instance, when interviewing for a SDET position i've never been asked a single question on implementing a DI framework, designing custom asserts, designing a test object/mock object, etc.

When interviewing for a web development position for high volume sites i've never been asked about cache invalidation, reduccing http requests, designing an ajax event system to reduce unnecsesary calls.

Etc.

I have been asked a bunch of IQ tests masquerading as mid-low level programming questions, and random trivia questions on language features.