skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Hacking Direct Sales
Hi All -

My girlfriend recently started a position as an "Independent Consultant" with a direct sales company.

She genuinely likes the products (as do I) but she's uncomfortable with the typical cold-calling type techniques that successful consultants recommend to boost sales and bookings.

Does anyone have any alternative ideas or suggestions for getting a larger customer base?

We live in a fairly small metro area (probably ~100,000 people) and the problem is getting in contact with people interested in doing sales who we haven't talked to before. I was thinking adwords/Facebook ads or something like that might be helpful (targeting a customer base that is actually looking to book a party in our area) but I haven't been able to come up with anything else that might be useful.
I am waiting for this app as well. With AR-style overlay of the already placed wireframes over the camera picture, making positioning/sizing very easy: just move your tablet, and press the shutter once the new stuff is in the right place. lets start this with OpenCV on Android.
Yes, but it is worse off because of it.

Also it was already getting trounced by competition (Baidu).

Google in china was like Bing is in the west. The search engine you know, but never use. :P
These sites are meticulously designed to force you into paying for premium access to download files. They have it down to such a fine art people actually make videos on youtube demonstrating how to download files for free from sites like MegaUpload.

After following a download link:

1) enter captcha in top right

2) on the next screen you'll enjoy a forced delay of a minute unless you click one of the many routes to a premium, paid account

3) after the timer finishes a save button will appear, click on that and you'll trigger the download dialogue from your browser unless... free users may only download one file at a time so if you are already downloading a file you'll get a message about now telling you to start again after your other file finishes. If it's a big file you're downloading you'll especially appreciate the capped download speed because you had the audacity to maneuver around their premium account funnel instead of paying to receive a file someone is sharing

You'd have to be delusional, or in torrentfreak's case pandering for ad impressions, to pretend anyone would bother putting their friends, family and colleagues through all those hoops when they have email, skype, msn, dropbox, yahoo, free hosting, $1 hosting, $2 hosting, $3 hosting, $4 hosting and so many other, easier options available for non-pirated content.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO1JabWsVTQ
The preparation really shows -- great job. Ability to present really well is a critical skill for anyone with a product head.
Why try so hard? Just make a UMS map that implements Tic-Tac-Toe. StarCraft: solved!
EXCLUSIVE – Interview with Brook Drumm of printrbot
1 year in jail for everyone who was turned down because of this. 10 Year in jail for every employer notification.
Baidu office in Cupertino?
http://g.co/maps/2j7ra

I can't find any references online to it, and it's really hard to see in GSV, but if you drive by it, the Baidu logo is on the little sign next to the road.

So, what's the deal? Are they slowly getting ready to build a US presence?
It is also possible that on any legally-sized starcraft map the number of nodes in the graph would be so small that the solution would be trivial.

But at the same time it's fascinating that they were able to embed this sub-problem within a starcraft scenario, such that any optimal player would have to solve this NP-hard problem. This sort of argument is a classic in the field, and always fun to read.
New Startup - Buy and pay for anything, anywhere, anytime
Ask HN: Will cash and the dollar bill disapear: Tillify.com
We at Tillify HQ are debating whether cash will disappear.

Will mobile payments and mobile card reading apps like square take the dollar bill out of our pocket.

What will this mean in the real world? Everything we buy and do is declared and stored? Is that a good thing?

Will everything be paid for with a tap of our mobile device, or a card?

Parking meters, buss faryes a hot dog in the park.

Tell us what you think.

Tillify.com is a new bootstrap start-up, we build applications that bring point of sale to your device, not just a store-front.

@tillify
http:www.tillify.com
The public perception of a decline in American manufacturing is highly overrated. It's American manufacturing jobs that have been in decline. American manufacturing itself has grown every year from 1970 to 2010 with three exceptions (2001, 2008 and 2009, recession years).

(cf. also http://goo.gl/ZA1o2 - for the historical stats; the opinion parts and any policy recommendations you can take or leave.)
if you laugh, you know ruby.
Apple’s iMessage is killing the text message, and I love it
There is no excuse for signing a law which effectively puts the US under martial law.

Period.
Page Rage Escalates As Google Cancels Twitter Android Meeting
Eliminating extra traffic reduces the amount of wear-and-tear on a street, which means you can go more years without resurfacing or replacing it. So even if you still need all of the roads, they could still cost significantly less to maintain.

That said, I'm not really sure how the math works: delivery trucks and buses are a smaller number of the vehicles on the road, but they also weigh a lot more than cars. Some DOT probably has a chart somewhere which breaks down road wear by vehicle type.
The audio recordings are a god send. I sleep with that notebook and take it everywhere. I don't lose any ideas because of it.

Yes, we can do a skype call. I'll contact you.
I think you've been taking the wrong history classes. The interesting stuff is the "why" and making connections between different events; and if you're tested on that sort of thing, a notecard with names-and-dates is about as helpful as a notecard with equations in a physics exam.
I'll start a post when I have enough worth sharing. She's 4 now and we're still working with basic math. I've found a few books that incorporate math that she's enjoyed; right now we're halfway through The Phantom Tollbooth. Milo just left Dictionopolis so we're headed to Digitopolis shortly...
The Science of Selling Out
Because US propaganda has got it into peoples heads that "Free-Speech"* = "Freedom"+

Glasshouses, stones, kettles and pots are all coming to mind :P

* Where free speech, is "Free" by US law. And not anything that is critical of the US govt institution (ala Bradley Manning)

+ Where freedom is the same brand of Freedom™ that the US promotes/enjoys(?)
FTA:

>In response Paul Graham, the Svengali of of the startup community, posted an essay calling for ideas that would kill Hollywood.

From Wikipedia:

>The word "svengali", has come to be used as a common noun referring to a person who, with evil intent, controls another person by persuasion or deceit. The Svengali may use pseudo-kindness and manipulation to get the other person to turn over their autonomy.

How, exactly, is this an apt description of pg?
If cash dies selling your surf-board to your friend at the gym will be done using your card or a mobile payment. Does this mean that like Paypal those transactions will be monitored, controlled.

Does this mean one-day they might occur a tax?

Will our constant need to simply everything we do make our lives more controlled and ultimately more expensive?
If a college-level history course is asking students to memorize and regurgitate simple historical facts and nothing else, they're doing it wrong. There are many ways to create history exams that require not only facts but also critical thinking.
City could shut down Hacker Dojo
How does equating rationality with profit-maximization further this discussion in any meaningful way?
// Cars have come a long way, and their impact on the environment will be just about none by the time we could get a ring of walkable suburbs built just outside the perimeter.

Your comment is uninformed. Cars lead to ever-expanding roads, which results in:

- Deforestation

- Poisoning of ground water sources (your soon to be drinking water) due to chlorides in rock salt used on snowy and icy roads, as well as the oils, grime and toxins that are released off the roads when it rains

- More air pollution (you think everyone can afford a Prius?)

- More taxes for YOU, regardless of whether you live in the suburbs or not. New suburbs require garbage trucks to go farther out to service the new areas, as do fire trucks, police and rescue. The power grid, plumbing etc has to be extended as well

- More taxes for YOU AGAIN, because now these roads need to be maintained and fixed regularly

- A greater reliance on cars, more accidents, more death to domestic animals and wildlife alike

- More suburbs, more roads and more driving results in higher blood pressure, road rage, higher risk of depression, flu and even heart attacks

And the list of harmful effects go on. Cars aren't just killing our cities, they are emptying our pocketbooks and compromising our physical and psychological health.
Ask HN: best office space incubator in NYC?
I'm a long-time HN user with 1000+ karma, posting via a throwaway account.

We're currently at http://sunshineny.com/, and looking to move. What are some good office spaces in NYC, ideally around Union Square? We're looking to ideally be around lots of other startups in a fun environment, but with some privacy (i.e. cubicles/offices, not one big open area).

I've found some threads on HN on this subject, but they're all 2+ years old and outdated.
If you are one of the employees who were affected, wouldn't you rather just settle the civil case - after all it's mostly about money, right?

Often the threat of criminal litigation grants more leverage (and is more lucrative) to the aggrieved party than actually bringing suit.
A simple way to figure out how this works is to figure out another way to write it out. For the simpler case (1/9801) = 0.00010203...

0.00
+ 0.0001
+ 0.000002
+ 0.00000003
...
--------------

Each row is equal to x, but shifted over 2x digits. This is the same as dividing by 10^x. This simplifies to the formula:

sum k=0 to infinity: k/(10^k)

This is fairly easily calculable, and results in 1/9801. Try it yourself on wolfram alpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28sum_%28k%3D1%29%5Ein...
Really? You don't think this is funny at all? Maybe it's because I'm in my mid twenties, but I think my father would even find this funny and he knows little to none about programming.
Yes. At Last.fm, Germany was the first country we had to censor our content in.

If you try and view content which is deemed inappropriate by the German government (fun fact: even the list of inappropriate content is restricted), you get something which looks like this:

http://www.lastfm.de/music/Landser

I believe these pages are still available if you try and visit the English last.fm site from Germany.
Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build a retail bank from scratch?
Just because you can recover damages against someone in civil litigation doesn't mean they've committed a crime. What actual crime do you believe has been committed?
"Wat" at the start really turned me off. I realize that was probably (?) part of the shtick, but it's one misspelling in particular that really drives me nuts. Real hacker humor is fairly dry (the story about magic comes to mind); this felt more like script kiddie-level humor. I can see valid points (and humor) raised with the Ruby interpreter, but the delivery could have been better--at least more adult-ish.

I managed about halfway through. I did have the audio turned off, so I'm assuming I missed out on some of the redeeming qualities it may have had. Given the liberal usage of "wat" throughout what I did watch, I suspect that my gut feel is likely correct.
Once again, that's YOUR thought process. It seems that you happen to link events together to remember an outcome. By simply knowing a few pieces of information, it's not likely most will "solve" the outcome. This has nothing to do with writing a well crafted essay that is opinion based such as "I believe person x did this for these reasons..." 99% of the time in history classes you know the outcome, it's not your job to solve it.
The Google+ app isn't a browser. There's no reason you should expect to be able to cut and paste an arbitrary URL into it (except for posting, of course). What should the app do if you decided to paste: "http://www.cnn.com/ or whatever?

To me, Android's Intent setup is beautiful because the apps themselves decide whether they can or can't handle particular URLs (so Google+ can catch Google+ URLs, Twitter clients can catch Twitter URLs, Google Maps can (and other mapping providers could, for that matter) catch map/location URLs, etc.).

Without the right kind of extensible framework, I just don't see how you could do anything similar and usable in iOS.
But he gets those credits whether or not he reports his profit. On a cashflow basis, it will cost him 20%. You are right though, his tax bill at the end of the year would be about 8% of $45k.
Right. It was marginally informative, the meme pics were chuckle-in-my-head worthy but what really got me laughing was that it's on the front page of HN. Its so sad you have to laugh to keep from crying.

Anyway, guess I'm not a hacker either.
Philosophy is about understanding and comparing ideas. "Having a philosophy [of life]" is about adopting a framework for living. These two things are different.
Teens Photograph Lego Minifigure at Edge of Space for $400
> And not anything that is critical of the US govt institution (ala Bradley Manning)

Pretty sure free speech does not, has not, and never has or will apply to military secrets that one takes an oath to keep when they join the military.

Let's get one thing straight. Manning is a hero in my book.. but there is no question what so ever that he broke the law (and his oath). The debate comes in to what we do with him because of what he did.
One of the things that sets cash apart from most electronic substitues is anonymity. Any solution that wants to dethrone cash will need to take that into consideration. BitCoin (arguably) does this, but most of the other electronic cash substitutes do not.
A country can only ask Twitter to censor the information in that country. For example, if Germany doesn't want the German people see pro-Nazi content, they can ask Twitter to censor it in that country. Twitter will then report it in to http://www.chillingeffects.org/.
Ugh are they really using the market app's home screen as a good example? I think it's such a overly cluttered UI.
Zen and Buddhism are much more religions than Philosophy in the sense that the article was discussing. As you say "it's more like spirituality" which is not at all what the article was about.
why do i have to signup to know who much it costs to subscribe. I think it should be apparent on the home page.

EDIT ok my bad it was mentioned on the screencasts homepage
I built a free webapp that may be useful for such Craigslist arbitrage. It constantly crawls Craigslist for search terms in your price range and emails you the results (instantly or in a daily digest):

http://lootlook.com
I guess you had to be there. I can see why someone might find this funny, but honestly, nothing is that funny. Some behavior in Javascript is surprising, but not that surprising.
>You'd have to be delusional, or in torrentfreak's case pandering for ad impressions, to pretend anyone would bother putting their friends, family and colleagues through all those hoops when they have email, skype, msn, dropbox, yahoo, free hosting, $1 hosting, $2 hosting, $3 hosting, $4 hosting and so many other, easier options available for non-pirated content.

I suppose you'd have to be similarly delusional to use Windows Media Player or QuickTime when VLC is out there?

People use poor but popular products all the time. It doesn't make them liars or crooks.
Hello. My name is Karen Willis Hamilton. I am concerned about the US Foreign Aid. I have requested a list of countries and the amount our country spends on foreign aid.
Why do our tax dollars and weapons end up in terrorist countries. I have assembled and installed the fire bottle wiring harness on board the CH-46 helicopter. It has been my honor and priviledge to serve our Marine's in a civilian capacity. I am a dyed in the wool patriot. I want to make a difference. Instead of our tax dollars going to places that hate or guts, keep it and spend it on our defence. The people in Washington think we are all a bunch of idiots. I not Einstein, but I know when I am watching the characters in the story "The Emporer's New Clothes".

Planned Parenthood is another concern. I guess the politicians think it saves money in the long run to have these lives nipped in the bud.
But how wrong they are. They are only Shooting themselves in the foot. Guilt is very expensive. Men and women can say they don't feel bad after an abortion, but they are in denial. To numb the pain the numb out with drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, and anything else that gives an artificial pleasure. I have killed to of my sons, paid for out of my pocket. But I have costed tax dollars for mental health treatment and medications. I have self mutilated, overdosed, lifted things too heavy for a small person to lift as punishment for killing my own flesh and blood. This caused insurance rates to go so high they were unaffordable. Now I am no longer able to pay my bills because of my mental and physical pain. It would have been so much easier to have had my children and let them grow into productive adults like their sisters.
Please help me be heard. The government doesn't care about people. If I could be heard just one time I know I would make a difference.

Best regards,

Karen Willis Hamilton

karenwillis.hamilton@yahoo.com
Read the article please - quote:
“Facebook asked me to pass this on to you. They require it of all visitors to their facilities. It only applies to things that you might accidentally stumble upon while you are there and covers nothing discussed during our news conference. Please either bring a signed copy or be ready to sign upon arrival.”

Which makes sense, imo, given the open work environment at Facebook.
Having a hard time processing how it could be anything but a good thing in the short or long run.

Suppose developers/software companies create a large consumer surplus which they fail to capture. If prices go up, then either quantity supplied will go down (reducing consumer surplus) or companies will focus on efforts where they can capture a larger portion of the gains due to trade.

In practical terms, low cost developers might make a free music service economical. If the cost of producing software goes up, the free music service might be uneconomical, and the developers may refocus their efforts on creating DRM (allowing producers to capture a greater portion of the gains due to trade).

I'm not asserting that this will happen, merely pointing out that it's not hard to imagine scenarios under which rising developer costs might be bad.
It's on the front page, but at the bottom. DAS is a small one-man business, so I did the design myself (and I'm not a good designer). Sorry about that. :)
My Chrome install on Windows has the same thing. I push ctrl+shift+c to load the developer tools, and click on console and it's a very similar tool to what he was using.
Good riddance. I hate when I look around how to do something and it was hidden in the menu button the entire time. It was completely unintuitive when there were menu options to use, and when there were not. That's why I designed the android version of my app, like the iPhone version, and put all possible options in the on-screen design itself. It's funny too because other android devs told me 'nooo use the hard buttons' screw that, even the back hard button is unintuitive at times, better to put it all on the touch screen.
I know little about law, so this might not be what you’re asking, but I can easily find, e.g.:

Price fixing, bid rigging, and other forms of collusion are illegal and are subject to criminal prosecution by the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.

Here: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/guidelines/211578.htm
It doesn't help when making right hand turns* or going straight. In that case, a cyclist has to cut in front of two lanes of traffic (left and straight/right), which isn't very good for either them or the cars.

You also have to consider that the cyclist needs to give way to the traffic from the right. If they've stopped, they need an extra large gap in the cross traffic, since acceleration on a bike isn't quite as good.

* - This is for areas where you drive on the left, obviously.
If you think NYC is great, try Hong Kong... the MTR is pervasive throughout the city, and even the suburbs (New Territories) are covered. Trains run every 2-15 minutes depending on destination and time of day. Taxis and buses cover areas that don't have rail directly. Shopping malls, work centers and sometimes even apartment buildings are often connected directly to rail stations. Everything is automated, with service points for exceptions. They use an RFID refillable cash card that is also accepted at convenience and grocery stores (Octopus card).

Not only is it easy to get around in HK without a car, it's often easier than driving, parking, tolls, etc (owning a car is a huge status symbol).

Whenever I think about mass transport, I'm reminded of the Planetary Transit System [1] from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game... Hong Kong is much closer to the "gas" state than any other place I've been.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eutDVI_egGM
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BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD REAL LIFE MODELS
Corrections to comment. I am not Einstein.
Actually Google decided A was a mistake, and has switched to C: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/google-china-busine...
That's a good point and I am surprised after reading the page you linked to I am surprised Dropbox would have approved it.
This. It takes a lot of work to follow up on leads for 20+ hours/week and lug around heavy items.
This is a corporation. For one, it's incredibly inefficient to set up infrastructure outside of where you're operating. For two, how hard do you think it would be for the great firewall to just block whatever IP's they operate from?

Google.cn being accessible from tor might be a neat idea in theory, but it's infeasible (and just a little bit silly) from a real world perspective where you have to account for your cash and actions.
Web-based Document Sharing, Collaboration and Management
Windows Media Player and Quicktime might be lame but they don't actively work against the user unless you pony up some cash to use the "can open a file in just 2 clicks" version.

Sending your friends/family/colleagues a link on MegaUpload (or similar) was essentially putting a paywall between them and the file you actually wanted to give them. For pirated content it makes sense, you have no concern for who comes along to download it and of course they gave you a cut of the money too: http://www.groovypost.com/howto/review/paid-to-upload-upload...

For <legitimate work> it's just nonsense when there's so many high profile, easier ways to get that file from a to b.
We agree. The loss of cash is ultimately the loss of our anonymity. Sounds dangerous doesn't it.
I didn't laugh because I was so worried that if I didn't laugh I wouldn't be considered a hacker :(
It's not on the article, I implied it because I thought they were going to censor content automatically.