skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Rails 3.2.0: Faster dev mode & routing, explain queries, tagged logger, store
I like the concept.

I would work on improving the copy, especially because this is a writing-related startup.

Fewer exclamation points and fewer words will help.
JSMag News roundup: iOS Orientationchange Fix, JavaScript Patterns, jQ.Mobi
Adding uTest to uberSVN
On the flip side, we might see a lot of "build your own NoSQL store" tutorials in 2012.
Samsung Smart TVs Get Sweeter With SugarSync
In a physical warehouse, keeping people's property would be considered theft as it deprives them of the property. In this case, it's only a copy of the data so there is no theft.
The problem we're dealing with is not understanding the mechanics of what's going on, but of the legality of it. That's why we reach for the metaphors: to relate it to something that has legal precedence.
Apple unmasks the Death Star: iBooks Author
I agree with your statement and I would add that some people (still) do not realize that it takes many years to be an "overnight success". Without arguing the merits of the "10,000 hours of practice" idea, the point is that you have to practice your craft a lot to become "good".

Recently, a colleague asked me, and I am summarizing here, what shortcut(s) can he take to get to my "level" (as a web developer)?

My answer was that there are no shortcuts - it takes hard-work and a lot of time to become "good". This blunt easy can be hard to swallow, but why is there a seemingly sense of "entitlement"?

Without my copy of the current issue of Make Magazine[1] directly in front of me, either Saul Griffith ("MENTORing Kids Into Makers") or AnnMarie Thomas ("Real Tools for Kids") talk about how young people are not putting in the hours - loosely speaking - in terms of learning engineering or science. I think that there's a sense that hard-work isn't necessary - just being "smart".

What happened with getting your hands dirty by putting in the long hours? For me, the pursuit of happiness without the dedication to working hard is a folly.

1. http://makezine.com/29/
there's a comparison vs Mysql here:
http://senseidb.github.com/sensei/performance.html
for insert and query performance
Not quite. Surrogates (http://stackoverflow.com/q/5178202/12048) are UTF-16 code units but they are not UCS-2 code units.
New Google Users Now Forced to Join Google+
> all of sudden bunch of people are being let go just weeks after signing a new agreement.

If I'm reading this correctly, is this not itself a huge indication of the company's attitude and so a warning sign?

I agree with the others: Talk to a (competent, specializing in local employment law) attorney. Start job hunting now. Don't sign it unless you have a good reason (e.g. guaranteed compensation at then-current pay level, plus normal raises as determined in some fashion, for the full non-compete term -- and paid COBRA or equivalent benefits that perhaps extend beyond the non-compete term (because you still need coverage until you actually land the next job); health care insurance can be as important as anything else -- also not forgetting the value of pension plan participation and/or 401k match, and the like).

No, you may not get all of that. But those are all factors to consider in making a personal decision.

From your superficial description and my own personal experience, it reads as if this organization may be turning into crap. I'd suggest seriously exploring moving on.

P.S. Also know the geographic limitations, if any are specified, of the non-compete agreement. In some jurisdictions and/or employment domains, absence of geographic limits effectively makes the non-compete illegal or unenforceable or a judge may modify the agreement to impose such a limitation -- probably the maximum geographic limitation allowed under local law. IANAL nor particularly versed in this; it's my impression gleaned from others' comments here and there on this matter.
I tossed together git-achievements one weekend for fun ( https://github.com/icefox/git-achievements ) and it has taken off as the most popular project I have ever made with hundreds of forks and watchers. There is something about Achievements that people _really_ enjoy.
Untethered Jailbreak For iPhone 4S and iPad 2 Released
Thanks for checking it out! I will definitely make changes to the copy before I launch!
For all we know, you could be secretly storing this data as it passes through. How can a user trust that you aren't?
I'm not a web developer, so maybe I'm misremembering, but wasn't there something in HTTP that let you check the last time a page changed? Scraping the poll pages every 10 minutes seems like it would cause a lot of unnecessary requests to HN.

Also, you probably consider any poll that's not on the first few pages of the 'news' or 'newest' sections to be complete. Sure, they might change, but they're not going to change by enough to affect your graphs.
The difference is this time at least people aren't being beaten and killed over this (at least not in mass).

No, not in mass. Still lots of people bullied into suicide though.
Why you should have sold stock yesterday
Yeah, technology and IT are quite liberal.
>Our biggest issue has been that scala isn't strong enough, I'd much prefer to be using haskell.

I hear that. I learned Haskell because I thought it would help me understand Scala better (namely the type system), but Haskell spoiled me and I don't want to use Scala anymore. Only thing keeping me on Scala atm is Lift, a truly excellent rethinking of web frameworks. If I ever find the time I want to start porting Lift to Haskell.
Yes you can. If you delete an item from your Dropbox you can see it by choosing "Show deleted files" from here you can choose to permanently delete the file. In my testing this also removes any trace of the file ever being created from Events. While Dropbox certainly could be keeping an undeletable log of everything you ever upload, there is no evidence that they are doing so.
You need a big, blue "Download BETA!" button.
A boycott is only successful if you know who owns what. Short of selling my HDTV (which would be way popular with my family), I don't see how I can avoid MPAA content.
I dont mean it 100% literally and dont really write my posts to be semantically perfect and IANAL, so I hope they arent interpreted to be anything more than they are. The hard part is defining "on US soil," because with the internet companies have a much further reach than just their home base.

For the poker sites, they do not [and did not] have a physical presence in the US, but still involve US citizens in their business and it was argued that US banks were involved in money laundering and other crimes that took place "on US soil." So it is pretty similar to the megaupload case; if you dance around the word of the law and profit from US customers, the US gov't will likely pursue you if you are a big enough target
I think the counter-example was to the idea that you have to "burn the ships" in order to motivate people to succeed.
Any "gay marriage" bills should have been argued as "jobs bills". At the very least, by not voting against gay marriage, you are hurting people in the wedding industry (photographers, fashion, bakers, halls, etc).

Never understood why that angle was not brought up against hardcore republican/conservative voters - the type who are usually all "pro jobs/work/smallbusiness" types. Perhaps because it makes sense, and logic/reason isn't typically being employed by people when the "gay marriage" legislation topic floats around.
I like the simplicity of the model.
$12 seems a little high for input from only one reviewer. Perhaps I'm thinking of shorter papers than you are?
Apache Kafka - publish/subscribe messaging from LinkedIn
Overbroad and arbitrary web takedowns
Is YouTube Driving Google+ User Growth?
Interesting: I'm in the US and the vid wouldn't play for me either. Galaktor's link does, however. Perhaps it's something else but censorship?

EDIT: mis-credited the link
Greenpois0n Absinthe Releases To Jailbreak iPhone 4S and iPad 2 iOS 5.0.1
Congratulations on the new job and new life.

I sincerely wish you the very best with both.
It should be noted that Washington does currently provide registered domestic partnerships, which provide nearly all of the legal benefits of marriage. The last expansion of the domestic partnership laws was basically an "everything but marriage" bill. Here are some of the things covered:

Health care decision making and visitation
Inheritance and other death-related stuff
Spousal immunity in court
Community property
Domestic violence laws apply
Tax breaks on property transfers between the partners
Veteran benefits
Sick leave can be used to care for partner
Adoption, child custody, and child support same as marriage

Same sex marriages from other states are treated as Washington domestic partnerships.

Note: I'm not suggesting that this means there is no need for marriage. Just pointing out that Washington is already very gay friendly.
That's the problem - it's disheartening to not see any congress person stand up and admit that they were wrong in the initial bipartisan support that this bill had. Reacting is one thing, understand what caused the internet to revolt is another.

I was hoping this would cause some of the more sincere members of congress to admit that they pass legislation prepared by special interest groups without due diligence. Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but all reaction so far appears to be crowd-pleasing more than sincere.
Let me Google that for you:

http://serverfault.com/questions/2888/why-is-raid-not-a-back...
This is a nice idea. However, I would suggest a better name. Skimling is derived from the word "skim", and "skim over" means to READ SUPERFICIALLY. This is not a good message to prospective students.

You need to think harder about quality control. A simple email-based dispute process is a start, but you need more. How about teacher rating? Teacher credentials, etc.
People who think [the Google page on] Facebook is Google
> but I would have thought justice.gov would have to be patched for compliance reasons.

I don't think that's true. I'd imagine the server behind justice.gov has no connectivity to anything important for compliance reasons, so patching it isn't really a big deal.

Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/932/
Happy to share. I'll enumerate some of my views (which I'm sure not everyone will agree with), as well as some direct answers to your questions.

An uneasy consensus is not a consensus. When founding a company, consensus is critical in matters of finance.

I think we could have done something different, but I'm not sure I'd trade our current circumstances on an unknown. I think that ultimately, losing those two founders was the right thing. They probably shouldn't have been a part of the company to begin with. Maybe I should revise my statement of "find a way to agree" to "find a way to agree completely, or don't move ahead". Finding the line between uneasy and unworkable is something you learn with experience.

I worked with the person before, but only in terms of work. My working contractual relationship was with his employer, with me acting as a third-party contractor. I found myself positioned as a moderate between two extreme fiscal viewpoints, one that placed a high value on the time value of money, and one that placed hardly any value there. I did not recognize at the time that this is a "founder smell" (vis-à-vis, a code smell). I thought that the two fiscally conservative members could bring discipline to the group.

What I later realized is that the behavior of a group is not equivalent to an average of the individual members' personalities. This seems obvious, but you'd be amazed how often people act on this very premise.
Don't you ever listen to the right wing? The 'next thing' will be people marrying their dogs, then their toasters. It's so obvious where this slippery slope will lead :)
Best Hacks ever
The papers can be of any length for the minimum viable product. For the next iteration, I'd like to adjust the pricing of each essay that is graded based on the length of each essay. As a teacher though, if you don't grade a paper that you've been given within a few days, I can resend it to another teacher.
Yes. It's a partitioned system - you just need to have enough replicas per partition. Clients track cluster state by registering listeners to zookeeper.
Bonus points for the racist project name too.
Official Wikipedia app for Andorid
I'd like to get upset about this, but the legal precedent for seizures is already well established. The government takes something, you get it back When They Feel Like It.

Your files are gone. Restore them from your backup.
Wait, so do you agree that co-founders with day jobs should be treated as first employees equity-wise or not? Your original comment seemed like you did, but this comment makes it seem like you don't.

Personally, I believe that having a day job while working on a startup should not be held against you. If everyone agrees that you're a co-founder, then you deserve co-founder equity.

Do you have less work to do because you have a day job? No, not necessarily. Were you there from the beginning? Yes. Are you involved in founder-like meetings and decisions? If yes, that should be qualification enough.
Note the commit message: "Preparing for 3.2.0 release".
When a 'gentleman's agreement' looks like collusion
Maybe that kind of complex question would be better suited to StackExchange instead of HN?
great job, Shishir. are the legend/poll options in the same order as shown on the original poll? i ask because the colors are a wee bit difficult to differentiate. feature request: link to the original page.
Inkling CEO, Matt MacInnis: A Rising Tide
Megaupload used servers in the USA at Carpathia Hosting.
That makes them subject to US law.
SOPA/PIPA was for foreign sites that have no servers in the USA.
A good way to support said finance reform is to follow Lessig's recommendation (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/on-the-signifi...) and help out Buddy Roemer's campaign.
Learn how to code but hire a programmer.

Keep in mind there are wide differences in skill level.

Yes, 4-5 years and most people become OK programmers.

What about someone who did 4-5 years but has been hacking on computers since age 10? Can you expect, at age 32, to reach that same level of understanding? You're a radiologist---you can appreciate the difference in understanding that results in learning things at different ages. Programming in particular is directly related to language acquisition----you may be able to learn Mandarin at age 40 but you'll never get to the level of the 20 year old who knows 10 languages.

What about someone who has done those things but also spent 10 or 20 years writing major software in a more corporate environment?

What you need to avoid is someone who knows enough about programming to get the software done, but not enough to keep it from blowing up or turning into a maintenance disaster. This is because they know how to get a specific thing done but miss out on the larger implications of their code. Then you end up hiring a good programmer and the entire thing has to be scrapped and re-written, which can easily be the death of a startup.

I'm not saying you can't do it. I'm just saying, get a good programmer and do what you can now, but focus on your startup as a whole. You can become a "real" programmer later, when you're 40 and retired ;)
Less exclamation marks!
Great idea.

Copy is dense.

Price seems off. Maybe $12 per semester or something.

How does it compare to the competition?
Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR Imprisons Academic Research
If you're English, which they're not.
Would the 'unreasonable search & seizure' amendment apply to people's files?

I would speculate: no. Once something was uploaded to megaupload, it was made available for download to anyone with the url for the file.

If the file is public, its going to be very very hard to successfully argue that a LEO looking at it constitutes an unreasonable search.

There may have been no comfortable file navigation tools built into megaupload, but I believe they would still be considered 'public' by nature of the fact anyone could download them.

edit: I'm assuming that the public nature of the files would be the best choice to argue that it is not a unreasonable search. Of course there may still be reasonable searches if they're not public, but I think one could make a case that the files were public. Is this what you're disagreeing about?
There's a bit of comflation (implied, not stated) in pg's article of brightness, and willingness to listen and then research and follow through. There's no need to instantly grasp the implications. The thing is, if someone only hears you through their filters they will never grasp things instantly, whereas someone who hears what you're actually saying will grasp things instantly sometimes, and after thinking about it at other times.

As for working in domains outside your comfort zone... it's uncomfortable! If you are smart and willing to give it a shot then admit your ignorance, to yourself and others, and then begin learning what you need. Here's a personal anecdote...

Some time ago, the big boss here came to me with a problem of a malfunctioning instrument. The instrument is one of a kind, on a spacecraft, so we are limited to figuring this out from whatever telemetry is available and there is no option of replacement with a different unit. Now I'm a software guy with no prior training or experience in hardware, and certainly not with this kind of thing. This problem had been given to other people but nothing came of it, so he gave it to me. Knowing nothing, I learned whatever seemed like it could have a bearing on the problem. I thought about it. A lot. I asked questions. A lot. The problem was sporadic, so I tried to find correlations. For two solid weeks I had nothing to show for my time but I kept at it, and then I found a 100% correlation, leading to the instrument people finding the problem and correcting their firmware. I'm not one of those prodigy polymath people. I grasped nothing about this instantly. The only reasons I succeeded were that I kept an open mind, kept thinking and learning, asked for and used any help I could get, and determined to see this through until I had an answer.

I'm sure the process of getting money out of VCs is exactly the same, except all the details are different.
Traditional wine glasses are 1/6 of a bottle.

Modern wine glasses (especially the ones sold supermarkets in the UK) are ⅓ of a bottle each.

Wine, which was 15 years ago 7-10% alcohol is more commonly 14% today.

Thus our 'glass of wine' is regularly 4 of your parents or grandparents'.
On 16th anniversary of New York Times website, a look back
I think it's totally reasonable that, if one founder is putting a significant amount of capital at risk, he should hold a higher share of the company going forward.

I would think that dividing things equally really only makes sense for pretty lean startups.

I'm not sure I really see the point in obsessing over how "fair" the deal you're getting is -- it's not like there's a basket of equivalent startups you're deciding between. Ultimately, your opinion of the EV of the particular business seems likely to trump obsessing over a few hundred basis points of ownership. (At least that's how I justify to myself not being an "equal" partner)
Show HN: Embed your AngelList Profile anywhere
After reading the piece, I think a good case could be made that Visual Studio 2010 is, in fact, a game. I'm already imagining two lawyers presenting their cases to a jury.

(If you think such things never happen, consider the case of Nix v. Hedden, which concerned the question, "Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?" That case went all the way to the US Supreme Court! Botanists argued that they're fruit because they're the part of the plant that contains the seeds. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden )
Improving quality control is probably the most important feature I'd like to add for the next iteration of the product. Each teacher that signs up is approved by me individually; so I go the website of the teacher's current employer and confirm that they are in fact a teacher. A rating system is definitely a critical next step for the product though. I also appreciate your input about the name. I always thought of it as being catchy, but will work on finding one that promotes a better message. Thanks for checking out the site!
The issue I have is with the money laundering charges. When you do something legal and put the money in your bank account, that's not money laundering. So while running Megaupload in the US might lead to money laundering charges, running it out of Hong Kong doesn't. They aren't hiding the source of their money: it comes from people paying to download pirated content. It's China, they don't really care about piracy there.
Generally. There are still assholes in every walk of life. Good that they are being challenged more and more and hopefully, eventually their outrageous prejudices will no longer have anywhere left to hide.
Sure thing,

We total up the cash available and our runway, say $60k for 2 founders and 12 months. Total equity is of course 100%.

So at one extreme, one founder gets $60K over the year in wages and 0% equity while the other gets 100% equity and no wage packet. At the other end, its $30K each for 50% equity each. Somewhere inbetween is a sweet spot.

The core concept is get the cash now, or potentially more later.

Start with the equal split, then begin negotiating for the value per equity point. Eventually you'll reach a point where you both agree on equity/wage split.

The added bonus is you've also technically valued your startup in the process (value per equity point*100) and have an indication of how much your relative belief in the success of the startup.

Since I tend to keep my expenses down and as an example of the last one I took 55% equity for a $7k drop in monthly cash. Cofounder gets a 7K bonus over the year (he was starting a family at the time) and was happy with his 45%.

Voting rights are equal. Always. Do not fuck with these in the startup phase as they give a sense of ownership and control that founders need to commit.
Global economic meritocracy: the way social conservatism dies.

Socially conservative or otherwise authoritarian societies always find themselves on the losing side of the brain drain equation.
The only way to 'listen' to page changes is to scrape it unless the web-page provides a notification service. Since that is not the case with HN, I had to resort to scrapes.
Given that Turing was working on morphogenesis towards the end of his life, a life that had already covered computation, code breaking, and artificial intelligence, I think the more interesting question is what would Turing have decided to work on given a few more decades. It might not have been computing.
There's a tiny kernel of truth - over-commit to others, and you will have a much easier time of following through than if you set goals merely for yourself.

So sign up for things other people expect you to do, and you'll be in better shape than if you just make vague goals for yourself.
In My Humble Opinion
I really miss the numbering, I've got to say. It makes it significantly harder to skim through the comments section, and it frankly has made Hacker News less enjoyable and useful for me as a reader.
Wow, I'm glad you linked to that article, otherwise I would have thought the complexity was O(M^(2N)) instead of O((M^2)N). Although, the fact that I almost mistook that complexity means I should probably spend some time learning about how regular expressions are implemented. Thanks for the link.
My thoughts exactly. While cutting out watching movies on Netfilx and TV is going to be difficult, I most definitely wont be purchasing any movies on iTunes, at Best Buy or going to a theater to watch them. If the tech community could band together to boycott these three huge money makers for the MPAA, we might see better results.