skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
maybe it's because of the location of the servers? they seem to be west coast, i'm east coast and can't remember the last time i had trouble loading a tumblr blog
These are surely the feature sets of many successful games, but they didn't all start with hundreds of achievements, hundreds of levels, and so on.

The most successful games started with an original idea. People like the game, so they keep adding and improving.

The real secret to success is keeping your player coming back for more, giving them more opportunities to talk with their friends about it, tweet it, or get seen playing it in a social or populated location.
It is a twelve minute video; a minute comercial is less than 10% of the overall time. It really isn't that unreasonable, in my opinion.

Watching a minute commercial on the internet is a good way to support video on the web.
Zappos is always a class act. I have about 3X the shoes I otherwise would have as a result of their customer service.
Weird, it definitely lists it on my profile settings. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll see if I can fix it. Anyways, in the meantime: <myHNusername>@gmail.com

Edit: I see, didn't realize I was supposed to put my contact info in the about box.
Saying that the porn filters don't work well only damages the case for copyright filters further. If the filters don't work well when people want them to, why would they work any better when people start trying to undermine them?
Understanding the New Facebook Insights: Reach
Why was international traffic disabled?
A Tumblr blog may not be the best solution but spending that many resources on a blog (especially one not featured in the main navigation) is usually out of the question for most startups.

For most startups the amount of time invested for a custom Jekyll setup and a downtime script could be replaced with a new feature or a better product/home page.

I think its important for startups not to spend too much time blogging unless they feel it will provide them some decent traffic and strongly support the product/company. Make the product better first. If your blog host (Tumblr) isn't stable enough, wordpress it and be done with it.
iCloud has been available to end users for three months. Give it time to accrete features, just like iOS.
so I know these guys. still possible for small team of people to hit massive success in the app store. 3 people team. #1 grossing app.
If we answer their lies with our lies, observers have to sort their way through a huge muddle. At that point, the contest comes down who can get their message out the best. And showbiz has the money, and the interest, to buy a lot more airtime than the SOPA opponents.

When you're right, you want to move the argument to principles and facts. You don't want the debate muddled, b/c the more people know the likelier they are to agree with you.

(Unless you mean that Youtube really does mean jail? I haven't tracked the less bad parts of the bill so closely.)
Brilliant! Thank you, hadn't seen those before.
I'm in the amidst of launching my start-up CodePupil.com .

What I dig about Tumblr is how fast Google indexes posts from there due to it's popularity.

Thus, if your looking to HELP get your start-up's name listed in Google fairly quikcly, then a Tumblr or Posterous would be best to use. I posted a Tumblr "About us," yesterday and Google indexed it eight hours later.
LastPass FTW! The attacker will reverse my password just to find a bunch of unusable bits :). What would be even cooler is an API on top of LastPass that sites like Zappos could hook into to force a behind-the-scenes change of passwords, similar to revoking a compromised certificate. Essentially, since there is some lead time after the breach is discovered and before the attacker manages to crack the long, random passwords, their efforts would be futile by the time they are done since all LastPass passwords would have already been changed.

Or we could just stop using passwords everywhere and not have this problem again. Anybody? Anybody?

Disclosure: I have no affiliation with LastPass beyond being a satisfied user.
While the working hours are ridiculous, a couple things to keep perspective:

- It's sensational to focus on an absolute value of 70 cents while ignoring the buying power of 70 cents in China. This still isn't a very good wage, but the cost of living differences are huge; 70 cents should probably be likened to the minimum wage in the U.S. (i.e. think "equivalent to a few dollars an hour" not "pennies" as the article might have you believe). You can Google several cost-of-living comparisons between China and the U.S.

- A huge number of tech companies rely on Foxconn; this is not unique to iPhones nor is it new. So mention of the iPhone is, again, sensational; this manufacturing issue is pervasive.
i worked for a startup (eVend) that tried to tackle the 'hard problem' stripe tackles way back in 1997. You read that right - 1997!

From Stripe's home page: "you don't need a merchant account or gateway. Stripe handles everything, including storing cards, subscriptions, and direct payouts to your bank account."

The problem was - not schlepp blindness - but the fact that this problem was completely impossible to solve in 1997.

Sure, maybe our execution was lacking (I was just a junior programmer at the time) but what really killed it was the banks and especially the credit card companies.

Mastercard and Visa just said no. We will not allow this to happen. Whoever charges the card must be responsible for delivery. We pivoted to take this into account (digital content delivery anyone) but reality was. This schlepp was too hard at that time.

People have been banging on the 'making payment easy' door, for a long, long, time. The fact that Stripe is making progress now is more a fortuitous confluence of events than the fact that nobody else had tried.
I wonder if going after a schlep problem hurts you in the hiring department. Although founders may be motivated to grind out schlep problems in the hopes of a large payoff, the talented programmer who is willing be engineer #1 at a startup is exactly the type of person who is susceptible to schlep blindness.
You don't even need a fancy startup. Interest rates are quite low right now, which makes saving more difficult. But if we assume an average 5%, saving just $6,000 per year once you reach normal working age doing a regular old job will find you with well over $1.2M by the time you retire.

$6,000 is a lot of money, but it's not that much money. An iPhone, for example, costs approximately $2000-3000 by the time it is all said and done and I see a lot of them out on the street in the hands of normal Americans.

With enough time, $1.2M can be made with a regular job. Nobody said you had to be in the 1% of net worth holders by the time you turn 25, or it doesn't count.
One thing that struck me was reading 1984. The inner-party elite of Oceania were barely middle-class by a material standard, and their society was falling further apart every year, but they held a lot of power. Materially, they weren't in an enviable position, any more than kings who died horribly of now-curable diseases are enviable, but the perverse and horrible (like O'Brien) could enjoy the shit out of their power and others' misery. The boot stomping on a face for a thousand years.

Most dictators enjoy their peoples' misery, and they get more out of the power than they would out of the 1-10x bump it would give their financial status (they have enough money, and unlimited means to get it) to be leading a healthy nation instead of a failing one. Kim Jong-il? While he was alive, I bet he was one of the happiest fuckers out there. And the U.S. corporatist-fascist oligarchy isn't morally superior in inclination; it's just that there are social structures (like laws and elections) in place retarding their progress.

Some people judge wealth and prosperity in absolute terms: what we can do, experiences we can have. That's how most of us on HN feel: it's a positive-sum, win-win mentality. But a lot of people see these things in purely relative terms: they like elitism and exclusion, and that others are suffering from bullshit they don't have to deal with. It makes sense when one considers that excessive financial ambitions are usually sexual in nature, and the sexual benefits derived from obscene wealth are based solely in relative social status (being "alpha").

The OP needs to be read by a lot of people (who probably won't read it): people who conflate $400k/year neurosurgeons who got "rich" and startup new-money by working their asses off (who are generally held to deserve their good fortune, and I agree) with an entrenched, culturally underaccomplished, fascistic, and depraved aristocracy of indolent, manipulative parasites that society should be getting rid of+ through whatever means necessary.

(+ To make it clear, I mean we need to get rid of the aristocracy as an institution, not "get rid of" the individual people. I'd find it quite morally acceptable to solve society's problems in a way that finds them bad, if they weren't willing to decline peacefully and gracefully, but I also think revenge is an utterly stupid impulse and find it most useful to not care either way what happens to them, as long as they're removed from power.)
Giulia Borges Winter 2012 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
FYI to people considering .nz: WHOIS Privacy is not allowed in .nz.

I'm very happy with my .nz domain, but it's lame that I have to have my home address in a publicly accessible database.
Friendsheet - A better Facebook photo browser
Interesting (and clever idea), but immediate concerns come to mind:

1) "Wherever it is located" might be the wrong approach. In a place like NYC, I can assure you that if your car is parked on, say, 74th & Lex, you're not going to get away with doing a car wash there. Same goes for almost every commercial parking lot in the city -- they're not going to let a random guy come in and start washing cars (they don't let owners do that).

2) As others have pointed out, there are environmental considerations here, not for tree-hugger reasons, but for legal ones. Car washes are one of those things that many places are quite strict about technically, but when it's applied for personal use it's overlooked. So in other words, Jonny Law isn't (necessarily) going to give you a ticket for washing your car in your driveway and not recycling the wastewater/solvents/etc., the situation becomes completely different when a commercial enterprise is involved. Similar to my point above, you can bet your bottom dollar that NYPD is going to give any semi-commercial car washer a VERY hard time if he's found washing a car on any public street in Manhattan. Likewise for the local PD of a smaller town if it's a guy washing cars in an office parking lot.

This may be the sort of business that works only in suburbia or places where a Cherry-supplied vendor is literally replacing a guy in his driveway - which, to end on a positive note, is most of the country.
Just a precaution while we asses and deal with this. Zappos doesn't ship internationally so we hope this isn't affecting many customers. But to those that are, we apologize. As soon as we can we'll re-enable traffic from outside the US.
Web Piracy Bills Invite a Protracted Battle
and Identica are filled with technical people that have been fighting SOPA for a while

Source? See, just cuz we techies know about SOPA does not mean we are fighting it. It takes a lot of repetition for messages to stick, even to people who generally agree with it. This is why ads are repeated a gazillion times: because knowing and taking action on that knowledge are very different things.

I am a perfect example. Initially when this uproar started, I was like "wow, big deal." I brushed it off. Since, I've been getting hit with SOPA-related stuff all the time...and increasingly, I am getting more passionate about it. And yet, I don't think I have really done much! I haven't gotten on the phone to tell my Dad about it. I haven't reached out to my Congressman. I haven't tried to educate my own facebook fans about it. There are thousands and thousands like me: techies, informed about SOPA, and yet mostly passive until a certain tipping point. These blackouts by so-called tech sites help put us techies over the tipping point. And thousands of techies at work can help put the general public over the tipping point.
Section 102:

(a) DEFINITION.—For purposes of this section, a foreign Internet site or portion thereof is a "foreign infringing site" if—

(1) the Internet site or portion thereof is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States

The term foreign used in this case is quite misleading.
__Probably because he/she recognizes that any such discussion will not lead to any possibly productive output and instead be a pointless match of tilting at windmills.__

Yet he/she takes the effort to right that down? I love it when people take part in a discussion, then, when a reply is on it's way they say "let's not discuss this more". If it's not worth discussing why bother dropping such useless statements? Ever considering not enter the discussion in the first place? It's not rocket science.

__For what it's worth, I'm getting the same vibe from you. Your first contribution to this thread was basically taking a big steaming dump over this young lady's accomplishments. Why would you do that? It didn't add anything to the discussion, and instead makes you look like a colossal jerk. If this were not HN, I'd think you were just plain trolling.__
I strongly disagree. andreadallera didn't took 'a big steaming dump' over this young lady's achievements. He/she simply question them. I have no idea if this young lady accomplished much or not, but how is questioning the same as denying?
Looks sweet! Bookmarked.
An excellent source of wallpapers for people with dual/tri-monitor set up.
Is immersion a core game virtue?
The top 1% won't be $1.2M by the time I retire. For your comparison to be valid go ask someone who was born in the 40's how easy it would have been for them to save $6,000/year.
> ... the US is a plutocracy.

Half of the electorate pays no federal income tax in the U.S.
Kobo store ebook restrictions and DRM
Freudian slip? Wait ... you're making your own version of Hacker News???
How was the compromise discovered?
This is 60 minutes... where we're only 1 year behind the news! This is like their exposé on high-speed trading that came six months after the Flash Crash. Brilliant. Not that I hate the show. But their tendency to cherry pick well-trodden stories always annoys me.
Yeah, they're another good source. I wonder if it would be feasible for you to talk to some of their reporters who cover this beat? Some of them have talked to a lot of people and they remember a lot. One of the articles at Ars went over how Hollywood has predicted "DOOM!" for every new tech, including the copier & VCR.

The best serious scholarly legal works are by a guy named William Patry. His books _Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars_ and _How to Fix Copyright_ are the two most relevant here, though it's quite a long read given that you have like 3 days. You may or may not know that name, but he wrote a huge series on copyright law (_Patry on Copyright_) that lawyers use as a reference. He also worked for Google, though he's sick of hearing crap about that. He had exactly the same opinions about copyright law before & after being hired; namely, that they should promote progress. Congress, meanwhile, cares more about money issues, as always. Still, that's a point you probably do need to keep in mind when talking to them.

Hollywood is posting record profits, BTW. I think TF had an article about that a month or so back. Their numbers are all ass-pulls, not unlike their crazy accounting techniques. Might be worth hitting them on their lack of math, because they've screwed more than a few artists that way. Our problem isn't with the artists, it's with the industry.

Might also want to come up with some soundbites. Find some questions you're almost sure to be asked and have short, witty replies waiting for them. Bounce them off some friends/supports in private first to make sure they work, though. We'll be rooting for you.
On what planet could a cashier make that much money? I need to research this!
The 30% Factor
fuck jews
Mike Cohen, moving to San Francisco in early February. Looking for Mac or iOS Objective C/C++ work.

http://mcohen.me/
I don't think it's intuitively clear to a non-programmer and maybe not even to a non-C-like-language programmer why that while loop encompasses the first if and not the second.
This list just solidifies in my mind why I don't like mobile games. As someone who enjoys pc and console games, mobile games always feel dirty to me. They feel like they've been designed to be addictive, not fun. I'll happily spend $60 on Skyrim, but spending $0.99 on a game that feels like it's been engineered to get me to spend it feels like I'm rewarding malicious behavior on the part of the developer.

I get that mobile game devs need to make money, and I support that goal. I just wish I had an answer that didn't involve what feels like unethical behavior.
also.... "assess" not "asses"
> What would be even cooler is an API on top of LastPass that sites like Zappos could hook into to force a behind-the-scenes change of passwords

How would Lastpass protect against an attacker masquerading as the third party website? (Especially considering this feature would be used when a website finds itself compromised.)
I use firebug to do this
Contact info ninja
Ad-blocker just skipped the commercial :p
The article suggests $300K - $400K income and $1.2M in wealth. As far as being in the 1% when you retire, $1.2M now is not the same as $1.2M in 40 years. I doubt $1.2M will put you in the 1% 40 years from now given inflation & cost of living changes.
Why? Asia is better for manufacturing, Europe is better for banking.

US is the largest consumer market out there, but when the credit bubble bursts, Asia will provide a pretty good replacement with tons of disposable incomes concentrated there.
I surveyed the comment thread; there are some people being pedantic, and some who are annoyed at various things, but I haven't seen a whole lot of hate.

(This comment would be categorized as pedantic.)
HN'ers have a hard enough time accepting:

'more features' != 'more marketshare'

I would caution this making sure to note "it depends on the startup". If your industry pays attention to blogs it's very much worth devoting large amounts of effort to capturing this attention. I as much as the next programmer need the _focus on marketing_ mantra pounded into my head time and time again.

See 37signals blog, seomoz blog, and every piece of advice patio11 has ever written.
but the passion for starting a new business by identifying hardcore users that will invest in you by way of being an early adopter has not changed.
Two mistakes.

1. Time value of money. $1.2 million in 40 years will be about $2.65 million then, assuming 2% inflation.

2. 5% average savings. As far as I can tell, interest rates are no longer exceeding inflation, and haven't been for quite a long time in market-time. I would count on your interest to barely have you breaking even, all in, unless you're taking risks with the money.
This is not journalism, this is a company profile.
Why the video pros are moving away from Apple
Show HN: My first web application - SuggestMeLearn
- After starting and quitting so many times, I finally decided to start small project and created SuggetMeLearn
- This is my first ever attempt to a complete web application
- The idea is to
- let people suggest the way they learnt a particular language or technology
- let people seeking to learn decide based on the suggestion to pick resources and start learning rather than browsing through infinite search results.
- people can vote if they think they also believe that a particular suggestion is a great resource(and suggestions are sorted by votes)

- All suggestions are welcome.
- URL : http://suggestmelearn.appspot.com/
looks really cool!
So, in the last week or so of reading Hacker News, I've been told:

* Don't blog on Google+
* Don't blog on Tumblr

Before I start blogging, are there any others I should know about?
Not that this should necessarily be the final word on the matter, but a recent controlled study suggested that even experienced players can't distinguish old from new violins:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109
I think this is a very important point. The 1% is not the enemy except for in symbolic terms.

The enemy is a much smaller group of individuals/corporations than that, and perhaps even, the enemy is more of a "process" than it is any group. I doubt Wal*Mart executives sit up at the top of their tower and plan about how they can tear apart society for their own self interest, but rather, there is a whole process and system built up that is doing exactly that.
I think the filesystem is one of the last great barriers for non-technical people when it comes to computers. There are people who still can't find files, send attachments by email, or understand the concept of the desktop behind all their windows.
Zach did it again. Love the UI, so much faster to use than the Facebook newsfeed!
In India this is something thats offered by your security guard. They will wash your car EVERYDAY for $20 a month.

I'm kind of saddened that the idea never even occurred to me.

I think its a great idea in practice but they are going to have the environmental police on their ass in the USA.
This reminds me of this book "An eye for color":
http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Color-Olga-Gutierrez-Roza/dp/00612...
Yep, sounds about right. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, 1% of the US is still ~3,000,000 people!
Wow great post. You already touched on this but to reiterate after achieving a certain amount of wealth, freedom and comfort in life, I wonder whats the point of exclusively striving for more. I can understand wanting to not be a slave to your mortgage, employer, etc etc (in fact it is something Im actively trying to do right now to dedicate myself to my own work) and generally wanting to better your life but after a certain point the marginal difference in lifestyle achieved by more wealth becomes negligible and possibly negative.

I know this is going to sound like rainbows and unicorns but its hard for me to understand why the mega rich aren't all motivated to diligently invest a significant portion of their money and efforts into humanistic efforts. It seems like they understand money and investment in monetary terms but they fail miserably at understanding the non-materialistic and 'big picture' returns.
Why didn't you say that at the beginning? (Yes, I'm interested in the answer.)
Startup ideas are so cheap that there are a bunch of resources for finding free ones if you don't think you can come up with one (which I'm sure you could, if you had a good brainstorming session!)

Maybe you could start here at YC's requests for startups: http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html
I think ultimately you will see complaints against almost every service and you will be left with one choice. Host your own. And then that has its own shortcomings. So we can conclude that everything has risks no matter what. It's up to you to assess and decide which risks you can tolerate.
ThePirateBay now accepting promotional home page doodles
Strangely enough I find that I am more inclined to read company's blog if it is visibly hosted on a dedicated blog site, Tumblr and Posterious included. Based on this observation I did a bit of testing of <product>.tumblr.com vs blog.<product>.com and former generated more foot traffic from Twitter link drops. Haven't tried www.<product>.com/blog though, it might well outperform both options.
Pretentious sensationalism. Keep that stuff away from HN, please.