skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The last "majority" was 50.04% of the vote back in 1984

Indeed, and prior to Mulroney in 1984 the only true majorities were Diefenbaker in 1958, once during each world war (both of which were distinctly atypical elections), and 1904 and earlier.
Mark Zuckerberg Wanted To Sacrifice Facebook for a Different Idea
Bigger hack: pay cash.
Not all mobile backend requirements can be solved with cloud storage of key/value pairs.

This statement is completely correct, which is why Parse is adding so many features besides just key/value storage. You can already store relational data, do geo-searches, user authentication, file storage, push notifications, and lots of other stuff.

See: https://www.parse.com/docs/ios_guide

Our goal is to let you write any application without running your own server. If you think you can't build your application on Parse, drop us a line at feedback@parse.com and we will be glad to either figure out how it can be done, or put it on our todo list.
This is one of the reasons I always ask for a percentage up-front (usually along the lines of 30-50%). A client that is willing to do this will more than likely pay you when the project is finished.

Before I did this, I had tons of clients that just wouldn't pay me or lie and tell me the "check is in the mail"..when it really wasn't.

When I was young and naive 6+ years ago, it put me out of business and I had to get a job.
Startup America: Celebrating One Year
Flickr was a failed attempt to understand users and make it simple. It wasn't made for the masses and there was too much friction.
The Lean Startup - LSE talk by Eric Ries
Rising cost of academic journals
Sure, but the forward button hasn't been removed -- you can still use it, but only when there's actually a forward stack.

I think the ratio of back to forward button uses was something like 100:3 in that study.

(I rarely use either button -- I used to use keyboard shortcuts, and now use a trackpad swipe.)
That's just like saying 'programmers' don't want to learn Logo because they are programming by rote in Java or whatnot.

There are many programmers who resist learning another language because it's different than what they originally learned. I believe pg himself wrote an essay about that once. There are absolutely blub video editors.

FCPX might be a good tool for a small time editor that needs an occasional video, but it is not up to professional standards yet.

There are plenty of valid criticisms of FCPX, but this stuff is nonsense: there are plenty of professional editors using it already.
The Complete Guide To The Brand New Buffer iPhone App
An Image Hosting website with no adverts, unlimited bandwidth and webspace
Any collaboration tool that combines the functionality of Trello and Hipchat?
online; open-source or not
Simply im looking for a project management/productivity tool which has chat functionality. thanks
This strikes me as an exercise in futility.

If you can properly document that you should have been paid and haven't, go to court. Posting on a website won't do anything to actually recoup the cost.

If you can't prove that, you're setting yourself up for a libel claim.

So what exactly is the gain of posting there, except giving in to a temporary desire for revenge?
I recommend to ask for payment at pre-defined milestones. Waiting to get paid at the very end is just asking for trouble.
You are using the sticker price for the basis of comparison, which is unrealistic. The appropriate comparison is final sale price.

Regarding trading in a car, I'm not sure if most people in the HN audience really think that they are getting a good deal on trade-ins. Also, trade-ins can be negotiated. You aren't going to get the market price, but you give up some money for the easy liquidity. It's going to take some extra work for you to get the market price.

Also, when you buy a used car from a dealer, you should look up the "Black Book" price, which is generally the price the car would go for at auction. This gives you information on the dealer's bottom line. The Black Book price is going to be a lot lower than Blue Book, meaning that it's well under the market price, and really well under the dealer's sticker price. But using this number, you know the dealer's position, and can adjust yours to drive value for both parties. I don't think it's totally inconceivable to get a used car from the dealer for close to what you'd get it from a private party, as long as you're willing to negotiate and the dealer is willing to negotiate.
no, dumb people just use guessing, actual astrology, etc.

smart people use "pattern matching" because it makes bigotry (which is a form of guessing) seem smart.
HN is becoming 37Signals News.
In nirvana's defence, if you spent any time in video editor's forums when FCPX was launched, it would have been very easy to get the impression that editors, as a group, simply didn't like anything new. The amount of misinformation was staggering. Think of the worst, most misinformed emacs vs. vim debate you've ever seen: it was like that almost everywhere. That isn't to say that there weren't (and aren't) legitimiate complaints, but there was a massive amount of noise.

Your comparison also discounts the fact that the workflow in most modern video editors is extremely broken. Emacs and VIM users can make a good argument for a code editor being vastly customizable or controllable by keyboard only, but there are fewer defences for the way most video editors work: they behave as they do due to intertia, and because editors 20 and 30 years ago had to work a certain way due to the limitations of the hardware at the time. Many of the changes in FCPX are hugely welcome, but many editors -- including "pros" -- can't (or refuse to) see it.
Thanks! I guess my question was, how do you differentiate between context clicks? Say you are a health insurance company. You could bid 30 bucks for a search click on a search of "self employed health insurance plans", and say 1 dollar for a search click on a search of "medical bills". Fair enough.

Going with the 1/3rd analogy, it seems you should pay 10 bucks on a click with a blog post of someone comparing and sharing their experience of buying health insurance while freelancing. You should bid 33 cents per click along with news story about rising medical costs in the nation. But how do you differentiate between these two types of "specific" vs "general" contextual content while placing bids on contextual ads? Or is this functionality just missing in current bidding engines?
> I am seeking a telephony app. builder that can deliver a PhoneGap lie ( non-native) inexpensive app. for a telephony project.

Emphasis on "phony"
The upside is you actually get it on your Android phone :D

But I agree, the Market is way overdue for coupons, discounts and other promo options.
I wonder if an emoticon would have saved them..
I have a few relatively popular blogger blogs and I hope this change won't negatively effect my SEO rankings.
This was also covered by "This American Life" this past week: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/456/r...

The most interesting point from that piece is regarding the way it may incite bias. If it makes xenophobia even marginally more acceptable because "I'm just trying to enforce the immigration laws", then the damage is done. I have nothing against removing illegal immigrants, but if it is done in such a way that legal immigration is also discouraged then economic harm is sure to follow.
So Multicam is back… Will the "Pro" community be happy again? Has FCP 7 stopped working during this months?

For a $300 USD software, looks amazing, if you ask me.
Rs.600 discount on purchase of Rs.2500 by Timtara
I wonder what effect the "cash for clunkers" program had on cars below the rebate incentive for that. It had to have a substantial effect on market for older cars.
If posting links was enough to "create content", we could automate a vast increase in content. Of course, that's nonsense.

What creates content, arguably, is posting the links in a useful context (and something as simple as knowing your friend likes these might create the context). I think that value is real (and is reflected in services like Twitter), but there are some stark limits because my time/interest in consuming that kind of content is limited. Services that help me navigate the sea of data to effectively find the pearls of interest will have value. But just providing more ocean to search through is of limited direct interest...
the crappy marker comment is ridiculous. While it was somewhat entertaining in the story, I cannot take seriously the implied claim that all companies with whiteboards give crappy markers to interviewees

-----------------

you take me too seriously sir :)

Asking people to whiteboard things is appropriate because software developers sketch things ALL THE TIME.

---------------------------------

Right, but what do they sketch. is it code? or is it a myriad of other things like ui's, application flow. object/db schemas? etc? Developers don't spend all day whiteboarding, so why should an entire interview process consist of that?

I'm not saying that you're saying that, I'm just getting back to the central point of the original article

Now as to doubly-linked lists, you can’t cherry-pick an inappropriate question and blame it on whiteboards. Asking someone to whiteboard a doubly-linked list has about as much value as asking them to implement it in code. It’s fine for FizzBuzz testing, but of course we don’t implement doubly linked lists 40 hours a week, so beyond a simple filter, it’s a bad question

--------

We're not disagreeing on that, but in the article that is a complaint. That a CRUD web application shop (for example) is pulling you into an interview and asking about compilers and linked lists when its not related to what they do from day to day (I exaggerate with the compilers, but you get my point right?)

There are good whiteboard questions, and what they all have in common is that implementing a certain idea in code would take too long and/or obscure the underlying idea with accidental complexity.

------------------

We agree. Like I said, white boarding has its place, I just zeroed in on your chef remark because it seemed a little odd to me that you'd suggest that even chefs, who hardly every use white boards (to my knowledge) would have a use for whiteboarding/sketching.

In an (kinda) related note, I think software companies could do with a bit of humility. A good number of places I've interviewed at are disrespectful of the people who come in to interview with them and tend to treat them with disdain until they show they are clearly smarter than they are. I think theres a part of hacker culture that encourages that sort of thing, but the market is tight, and getting the best people isn't a case of just putting up a help wanted ad, and having people jump through hoops any longer, because they have other options.
Re point 3: Also don't forget that while the value of these cars may depreciate to daily driver levels, the maintenance costs don't. Speaking from semi-painful experience as the owner of a '96 Lexus with 160k on the clock.
Not sure that is the real reason. Zsh was not free software in the Linux formative years. It lost its chance, and mindshare, like so much commercial Unix
> But they also don't like to mess with their livelihood and FCPX was too big of a learning curve while missing too many features.

I don't think the learning curve was the issue, these are people considering (or even implementing) switches to Avid or Premiere after years of FCP.

From seeing the outcry from the outside, the issues seemed mostly twofolds: 1. lack of genuinely needed features (not necessarily intersecting from one studio to the next, but editors were understandably unwilling to tear down their whole production pipeline for the sake of FCPX) and 2. fear about the place of "pro" (as in medium-to-big-studios) editors in Apple's medium and long-term roadmap, boosted by a perceived iMovie-ification (real or not) pointing to a refocus on prosumer and lighter work.

> If the creative director of a billion dollar ad agency has found it suits his needs, it's hard to paint it as a toy.

That's nonsense, you said it youself: these are creative directors and photographers, they're not editing big-budget movies or TV shows, they're not dealing with TV stations or juggling with 30 cameras. You're basically saying Acorn is just fine for everybody because professional developers can draw with it.
Where's the Market for Online Privacy?
I may be biased, but I'd second the nominations for Portland, Oregon. A lot of interesting things are happening. Acquisitions and funding have been intense. Check out the list:
http://aaronparecki.com/Portland_Funding_and_Acquisitions
Ask HN: Is Copying HTML Bad and Unethical?
I'm wondering about this, as the result of recent Curebit/37 Signals Scenario. Which has 3 components to it, using design, Linking to resources and Copying HTML Source code including ids and classes.

In this question, I'm sticking to Copying HTML Source code issue only. I've seen Old School internet people talk about, copying other websites source code, and tweaking it a bit, to make what they wanted. I guess, that is one of the main reason HTML/CSS/JS is in the open for everybody.

Am I missing something? Lets say, If I copy complete HTML of a site, and change it with my content, is it bad? Does it count as plagiarism?
This story lacks a summary, so here goes...

Flailing Fast is an underground classic chronicaling the story of two young entrepreneurs. I got an earlier version a few months ago, though it may have been floating around the startup scene for longer. The entrepreneurs meet at a networking event, happen upon accidental success with an iPhone fart app, and finally are undone by a combination of ambition (a fart app platform!), investors, and group psychology. Written in business case style, it could only have been written by an MBA, a bitter entrepreneur, or both.

Though optimistic in the end, Flailing Fast seems to ask, are we really so different from these young accidental entrepreneurs?

(Also, the whole thing is free to read online.)
You're absolutely right. "Simple to use, simple to build" is another thought in people’s minds. They don't realize it's actually harder to build something that's simple to use.
You say that like it's a necessarily bad thing. Remember the post recently about the guy who was doing exploiting exactly that spread on Craigslist?
There's also the bit where attempting to get people to support a piece of positive legislation is infinitely harder than getting them to oppose negative legislation.

If for no other reason, you have to agree with all the parts of a bill to truly support it, while you only have to strongly disagree with one part to be opposed to it.
Startup Closed Down?
Pattern matching is a general term for what you do every time you see a letter and recognize the pattern of light, or hear a word and match it to a concept. Don't give it a bad name just because human pattern-matching is flawed and unreliable in the (relatively rare) edge cases.
It would also alleviate a secondary concern where you have to give the seller your current address to complete the title transfer.

While not as common as simply holding up the potential buyer, it's much easier to steal a car to which you have a backup key and know where its parked.
I feel the same way. Even though I'm gainfully employed, I'm not comfortable spending much more than I already have.

But any chance I get to support developers that release Linux games, I'll take it.
Marketing before the release of Basecamp.Next.
>Granted, most cars ought to pass emissions fine until like 200Kk miles.

Depending upon the state, if it's a '96 model or later and the check engine light is not on, it will also likely pass.

Where I live (Missouri) the smog check consists of connecting to the OBD-II interface and seeing if it's reporting trouble codes. The logic here is if all the sensors are reading properly and showing the correct data, then things are performing to spec and there aren't any emissions problems to worry about.

Used to be that if your car was showing OBD errors or was not OBD-II compatible (i.e. pre-96 vehicle) they'd put it on a dyno and see what was coming out of the tailpipe, but now codes are an instant fail and pre-96 are not even required to be tested anymore.
Reinforces what should be a lesson for everyone: the flipside of freedom and free speech is responsibility, judgment and facing the consequences. Just because you can do a thing does not mean you should. Win a battle but lose a war. You have the ability and right to yell fire when alone in a room at home. But do it in public theatre and there may be consequences both physical (stampede) and legal.
Gojee.com also does something similar.
"Pattern matching" is just another phrase for applied Bayesian probability.
Great post Cing. It would be great to hear your market strategies on how you acquired your readers, before you get rich slowly was acquired by quinstreet?
I recently wrote about my similar experiences (minus the nice analogies). Be warned, it's a long, long post (2 parts, actually) but details the experience first hand. http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=785
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We invoice weekly. Depending on our terms with the client, if they aren't paying on time we stop work. This results in at-most 2 weeks of unpaid work, and typically they have a lot invested in seeing it through to completion because already have (largeish-n)% of their money. We also send emails EVERY TIME a work unit is created in xrono (our open source app-to-run-a-software-consultancy) showing both the current work and their current uninvoiced total.

Our clients never, ever, ever tell us that they were unaware of how much money they'd agreed for us to spend without us laughing a lot. It typically ends well.
why is everything that involves thinking is now called "hacking"? Buy from Craigslist is really a hack? Seriously? Carfax report is a hack? That's pretty lazy. Car arbitrage is a hack - checking a car's title is minimal effort.
Google auto correcting my keyword?
So I have a jQuery plugin called wTip, which google is auto correcting to qTip, a popular tooltip plugin.

Should I consider renaming my plugin, does anyone have experience with this?
Boston Hand Delivery Service|Same day Delivery Services|Boston Courier Services
Org-Mode for Vim
I was about to watch it but the page starts out with an F Bomb, if I wanted to aspire to that level of communication I could have stayed in the Navy.
You're right. The APIs don't need to be implemented, just documented.

I'll go you one further. It's better to work without a functioning API. With stubs and dummies, you can tightly control inputs and test way more effectively. If you're developing against an active api, you add a whole level of complexity that makes it that much harder to debug. I don't know how many hours I've wasted trying to find bugs that turned out to be outside the scope of what I was working on.
Really Bad Startup Culture
Blame everything on the developer who's creating the value for your company.

We developers all know Startups are hard, but do Business and Finance guys understand just how hard it is to create a ground breaking and sustainable technology? I don't think many do

I'm pouring countless hours of my time into trying to develop a concrete product and the thanks I get is blame for any and everything that can and will go wrong (after all you're developing a NEW technology that's NEVER been done before, all with NO HELP).

If the job description read "We give generous 3% equity and fair pay, however, anything that can and will go wrong will be blamed on you personally" I would not have taken it.

I would much rather receive more equity, less pay and be treated like a valued contributor, and not a scrape-goat.

I'm not sure how others Startups are run, but when Startups are run by Business and Finance guys it seems like Beurocracy starts off in full-swing right from the gate

Here's how you (or I) know the Startup culture is not likely to be good:
1) The startup hired a previous developer but "it just didn't work out"
2) The startup hired the first graphic designer (who after only several months) is likely to be leaving shortly
3) The startup has a hard time attracting developers
4) The startup has more business/finance people than any other type of personel
5) The startup is more focused on minutia like absolute placement of elements and font sizes/styles, rather than perfecting hardcore functionality
6) The person "in charge" doesn't accept suggestions of others and believes his/her ideas are always right
7) The person in charge likes Job titles and creating Org charts (can you say ego-maniac?)
Can anybody recommend a service that would let me check whether an email (sent via my or the service provider server) was picked up?
They discuss this functionality in their system but I'm looking for someone I can outsource it to.
This blog post would look nicer if he used Twitter Bootstrap. The spacing is poor, and I'd much prefer it's style to this one.

Anyway, let's tackle the points

1. "If you can't design it, you shouldn't build it."

The argument is essentially, if you can't do every part of the task, you shouldn't start on it.

Where does that stop? If you can't build the operating system you shouldn't make a website? If you can't build your own HTML spec, or Javascript spec, or etc etc etc.

It's an arbitrary point in the sand.

2. "Your homepage will suck and you will have no brand"

Why all the rudeness? Of course you'll have a brand. You'll still be using your logo, your design decisions within the bootstrap template...

3. "You will have no new ideas"

Because I use twitter bootstrap, all my other ideas aren't new?

This doesn't even make sense. I'll stop now. This is rude blogspam that is nothing but irrational insults.
> What's to stop someone from making an account under my name?

Absolutely nothing! But, if you got nothing to fear, you got nothing to hide ... er, ... or something to that effect.
The aggregation of data can be considered content, such as the yellow pages or delicious, which, I think can also be copyrighted. So if your intent is to collect links to content, I would say technically, you are creating content. Look at this site, at least at the top level.
I think 9 times out of 10 I would fail a whiteboard coding exercise based solely on my bad handwriting... which is even worse when done with a fat marker on a vertical surface. In my day-to-day work I am rarely (if ever) required to actually write something down that others will need to read... so my bad penmanship is a non-issue. If you want me to whiteboard something in an interview perhaps provide a computer projected onto the whiteboard (or what ever tech you have) so everyone can see and let me type my response while we talk?

I have a keyboard... and I know how to use it.
I'm curious how you approach #5 Find an OCD Mechanic to a Craigslist seller. How do you ask? Is it considered common courtesy to say "Hey, lets drive it to my mechanic?"
what and where can I find "mindcast"?