skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>In consulting this is a huge win for experts, since my industry is littered with people who could largely be considered incompetent.

The danger of course is that the entire industry could start to be considered poorly, mean less overall business, and less demand for actual experts.

It's in an industry's long-term self interests to improve the quality of their output (quality meaning whatever feeds the highest demand for that industry's product).
Privacy? What Privacy??
Google Analytics creates the same problem. This is why I use server side analytics instead. I don't want to send a list of everybody who visits my website to Google.
I can no longer edit my post, but here's an interesting source:

"Spammers Pay Others to Answer Security Tests"[1]

choice quotes:

"spammers are paying people in India, Bangladesh, China and other developing countries to tackle ... captchas"

"attractive enough to lure young people in developing countries where even 50 cents an hour is considered a decent wage. Unskilled male farm workers earn about $2 a day in many parts of India. "

"students typically work two and a half to three hours a day from their homes and make at least $6 every 15 days"

"Another operator in Bangladesh who goes by the screen name Workcaptcha on Freelancer.com boasts on his profile page that his firm has 30 computers, up from just five a year ago. Three shifts of workers allow the operation to hum 24 hours a day, seven days a week"

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/technology/26captcha.html?...
They understood full well. The EU has a shared monetary policy, but no shared fiscal policy. Fiscal policy (!speculation alert!) is the next step, and will go a long way to avoiding another crisis.
Google has free music downloads in China since 2009 (with record label support)
You basically have to.[1] I just recently got a notice from AirBnB where I had to verify my info for a 1099 issuance. If I recall correctly, it's fairly hard to ignore this (systematically speaking).

[1]http://www.airbnb.com/help/question/122
Meat Circus for Mac
I wonder what train of thought leads the director of a historical institution like the Panthéon to fail to realise that he sounds monumentally stupid when he sues a group like UX for fixing the shit he should be maintaining, and then actually hires someone to break it again.
You can find pretty much every major label and album:

http://www.google.cn/music/

http://translate.google.com/translate_c?hl=en&rurl=trans...
Speaking from experience, I think you skipped what I believe is the primary and most important skill.

The willingness to take risk on that your idea. Passion comes a close second. I believe there is a correlation between passion and the willingness to take the required risk to fulfill that passion.

==

As an aside, I can only imagine how awesome the event would have been. I attended the first Lean Camp with DHH. Startup events are one of the things I really miss in the UK.
I have heard of people doing exactly this with pornography websites...
Twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now
The administration of Spain’s Extremadura is moving 40,000 desktops to Linux
You don't accomplish this change in people by saying things are fine - you act and do things that show you and the company is strong. That's the only way people will change their feelings. And you better be truthful when promoting your enthusiasm or it'll come back to bite you..
Did I say that all captcha solving services work the way I described? I said "most of them". Haven't tried the service he was using but I've used quite a few other providers.
I am well aware that rats don't have to "understand" these processes. There is a shift in perspective underlying this argument though that doesn't help when discussing whether a rat is capable of recognizing another rat's distress (i.e., empathy) or how it perceives the situation from a subjective point of view.
Depends on the implementation, just as you suggested. There are actually quite a few sites that use really simple captchas that don't randomly destort letter placements, lines, colors etc.
the problem is good films don't sell as well as Movies
In operation, a user will select a set of files from which the redundant data is to be made. These are known as input files and the set of them is known as the recovery set. The user will provide these to a program which generates file(s) that match the specification in this document. The program is known as a PAR 2.0 Client or client for short, and the generated files are known as PAR 2.0 files or PAR files. If the files in the recovery set ever get damaged (e.g. when they are transmitted or stored on a faulty disk) the client can read the damaged input files, read the (possibly damaged) PAR files, and regenerate the original input files. Of course, not all damages can be repaired, but many can.

The redundant data in the PAR files is computed using Reed-Solomon codes. These codes can take a set of equal-sized blocks of data and produce a number of same-sized recovery blocks. Then, given a subset of original data blocks and some recovery block, it is possible to reproduce the original data blocks. Reed-Solomon codes can do this recovery as long as the number of missing data blocks does not out number the recovery blocks.

http://www.par2.net/par2spec.php
Move over Hollywood, here comes Digiwood (2010)
Layoffs at Gilt
Review of Samsung Galaxy Ace s5830 | World New Electronics
Show HN: extract location info from tweets
"but there is a common misconception that if you disclose your salary to an employer, it will limit the potential salary offered. It’s your experience that is indicative of your ability, not your current salary"
OpenGL 2.0 isn't particularly modern (released in 2004), but its featureset is a good baseline if you want to make sure your application works on just about any even remotely modern hardware.

I suppose the "modern" in the title refers to the fact that the tutorial introduces vertex buffers and shaders right from the beginning, rather than delving into antique cruft such as immediate mode and fixed-function pipeline. This is indeed a good thing.
Interesting - in a few days we have articles from the New York Times pointing to Pacific competition in manufacturing, and the LA Times pointing to European competition in manufacturing.

What's interesting is the article on Germany provides a more positive message. "Just a little less consumerism, a little bigger social net, and more vocational training, and everything will be all right." The article on China was, "It ain't coming back."

My bias is the New York Times article more accurately captures the truth for high tech. It's a game of systems and clusters, and it's hard to see us winning. There's little competitive advantage any more, except at our top engineering schools. Perhaps we're better off becoming the world's best farmers?
Perhaps they need to add alternate-keywords so if you search for a word but other word is more commonly used to describe a similar action? :)
If you've already got a nice pad in NYC or SF, is it really that likely you can't come up with $10k? At most that's only a few months rent...
I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you asking whether the TV business is easier to disrupt (for Amazon or others)? I'd argue that yes, it is, precisely because its distribution channels and ad dollars are much more easily shifted into digital and social channels. And because production costs are much lower. The minimum viable product for a TV show is, typically at least, considerably less costly and less time consuming than the minimum viable movie. It's very hard to make a blockbuster movie whose special effects, action, and production values rival those of a Hollywood blockbuster. But it's considerably less hard to make a low-budget, independent series that's every bit as funny as a mainstream series.

Or are you asking whether it's easier to become successful as a TV writer? Again, the answer is probably yes. You stand an equally tough time breaking into the TV writing business, but if you can get staffed on a show, you can make a respectable and steady income. TV writing is much more like an office job than movie writing is. You work on a staff, you usually have an office to which you show up everyday, you make a salary, you can get promoted up the staffing ranks every few years, and so forth. Of course, there's still some uncertainty in the mix. Not every pilot goes to series, and not every series lasts very long. And "staffing season," the period of the year in which shows staff up with writers, is fiercely competitive. But there's a lot of light at the end of the tunnel, provided you can make it there. At the top of the TV writing pyramid, you have show-running executive producers and creators. If one of their shows is very successful, these folks can do extremely well for themselves.
It wounds like the poster has managed two disciplines very well:

- Managing the sleep schedule. (Getting to bed to get up early)

- Managing the work schedule. (Kanban system)

I have no idea what his product is, but it's hard to imagine that he won't be successful over the long term with habits like this.
I do the wake up at 5am routine, but I use it to go to the gym. I think a healthy body helps you maintain a healthy mind. (keep in mind this "healthy body" is very much a work in progress, like many of my coding side projects)
If you're working on a big idea that is slightly ahead of its time, then persistence can pay big dividends -- check out the story of Pandora (http://www.businessinsider.com/pandora-story-2011-6).

If you're working on a smaller, highly tactical idea then persistence is often a waste of time. Anyone who meets a lot of startups will see many ideas that just aren't going to work. The sooner the founders realize it and move on, the better off they are.
Week 3 is "Crawling the web" (the whole Web??!?) and Week 4 is "Responding to search queries"; shouldn't "Building an index" be somewhere in Week 3.5?

Do people need to learn how to build a search engine for the Web, complete with crawling and PageRank, etc., or do they rather need to know how to build a search engine for a specific corpus of documents that they have sitting around somewhere...?
Raspberry Pi demonstrated running XBMC and AirPlay
It's not as if it's either/or. Clearly it is true that new technologies -- say, for example, the telephone -- affect our social lives. Consequently, abstaining, for whatever reason, from using those technologies will affect your social life. To what degree and in what manner totally depends on the individual involved, the technology itself, the way it is being used, etc.

However, one thing is certain, I think. Some technologies may have a transformative effect: The fact that you could act in manner X to get result Y before the technology gained widespread use does not mean you can continue to do so after it has. I'm sure this was true for the telephone, and I'm pretty sure it's true for Facebook and its replacements.
Html5please
Check the biggest web portal: http://www.onet.pl/. The top (bold) news item is about ACTA, and there also is a featured "10 things you need to know about ACTA" article on main page.
Same in all TV and radio.
relevant - http://nimbupani.com/html5please.html
It's definitely a lost art: the page is down.
They knew very well. They just betted that it would kind of solve itself.

This is a pretty well established fact as far as I know.
I was asking about becoming a TV writer, though your first point is also very interesting.
Very cool. I've used AirBnB as a means to travel and live abroad for an extended period of time while working on my startup. I've connected with developers in countries like Germany (lots of iOS developers here) and am building something together with one of them now. It's a fascinatingly global market place.
How Neutrons Might Escape Into Another Universe
I could see this company earning a spot in future versions of 'In Search of Stupidity'. (If you don't know the book, don't knock what I'm saying before you read it. It's one of my favorite reads about high tech business)
"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
— Calvin Coolidge
That's right Colin. I completely agree, however if you break unit tests during a refactor, yet there is no functional change - bin the tests as long as you have end to end tests higher up. I should add that any new code you add should have unit tests around. E.g the new code added as per the refactor if needs be.

With good unit tests you can indeed refactor without fear, but we should not take the stance of never breaking any unit tests. Providing there is no functional change, break away! Such stance relies on end to end tests/pairing/some other process to ensure you are not breaking valid behaviour though.
I guess week 4 would go like "to answer the query X we go through all the data, this is slow, so let's build an index"
Week 4 is mostly about building an index.

The point of the class isn't for people to build their own personal search engine to actually use, but to use the experience of building and understanding a search engine as a vehicle for introducing computer science and programming.
Youtube hit 4 billion views per day
Cyberlocker Ecosystem Shocked As Big Players Take Drastic Action
No, the ones that employ more than one or two people and make decent amounts of money sell services related to GPLed software. (In a world where everyone had proper Internet connections, we wouldn't have companies selling GPL software on physical media at all.) This probably isn't profitable in many cases, especially when distributing directly to the consumer rather than building a product for other business.

There is another special case, but it's selling software in spite of the GPL; home routers, set top boxes, etc. Were they to use GPLv3 software, they'd have no way to protect against another company using their (potentially substantial) work on the software, building/copying the hardware design and creating cheap knock-offs within a few weeks of release, making it too costly to continue.

If a group of companies and individuals wanted to come together to build a new router platform where all would contribute back to it, but they could differentiate themselves on edge features, management interfaces, etc, the BSD license is good enough; and probably a better bet than the GPL.
Who Are These People Visiting My Website?
just imagine the legal consequences if establishing a connection to your computer wasn't regarded as being voluntary
>It wasn't that long ago that shows would air once and never be seen again

And it wasn't that long ago that no-one paid £120/month+ for their TV.

>I don't remember people rioting or breaking into studios to steal the original tapes because shows only aired a single time.

Firstly, can you not tell the difference between taking physical objects from someone thus depriving them of that object, and making a digital copy of an object that doesn't deprive anyone of anything? How is Rupert Murdoch worse off by someone downloading last week's episode from a torrent site than he would have been if they'd gone onto the official website and watched it there?

Secondly, I'm pretty sure there was a fairly large amount of video lending/copying back in the day - obviously far less than today's copying, but it was a hell of a lot less convenient to do it back then than it is now.
"The best time to find a job is when you have one" ... do you have something concrete lined up before you take the plunge?
dupe - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3473024
Very good read.. this post is actually "Hacker News", Seems my Fedora hosts are not susceptible as they compiled with -pie and the kernels at work haven't been updated in sometime.
Really looking forward to seeing how you approach this. I've spent years configuring, debugging and modifying Nutch and Lucene code and have always wanted to start from the beginning. Seems like a good time!

Good luck, and we'll be watching!
Does anyone really do anything assuming the idea will fail though? Unless of course it's an experiment where the outcome doesn't matter - taken as a form of education.

It takes persistance foremost. For myself, I knew there were risks though I would continue to find ways to reduce risk - whether it was problem solving and planning, figuring out what I needed to do next to reduce the risk. This required something at a lower base level than willing to take on risk.

So what's more base than risk? Being able to manage yourself during a challenge, learning your own limits, what you are capable of - which takes self-awareness. The more I've learned myself over the years, my limits, the better I've become at self-regulating, and the better I know what I need to succeed. Any money I've spent so far I've considered an educational expense.

Life's all about learning, and hopefully being able to find enjoyment and being able to help others hopefully find enjoyment, too.
I use https://idonethis.com, it seems similar. They send you an email every day at a time you configure and you answer back with what you've done. It tells you what your current streak is in the email and has a quote of some kind to ponder.
Is it juts me, or has CAPTCHA gotten considerably more difficult to read lately? It takes me at least 3-4 reloads before I get something I can both read and type with the keyboard in front of me.
Sorry you took offense to that. I just thought people would want to see the older thread since it was pretty popular at the time and the comments seemed useful. I love older posts too, and actually include a section in my weekly Hacker Newsletter project just for them.
The last version of Glut, 3.7 is from 1998, according to files dates. Is it really usable?
With 7+ months of experience being an Early Bird I will definitely recommend it.

For me 1-2 hours of a fresh-brained morning work is much more productive than working whole night. I usually sleep between 11:30 and 06:30.

In general it depends on personality, some enjoy working at night and vice-versa.
Rebrick: Lego's social media platform
I think the broader point (I think?) is that first-time founders often run off to consult with a lawyer right out of the gate. As a result, they'll spend thousands of dollars, and lots of time, protecting themselves from imaginary legal threats -- time and dollars that should have been allocated to product development at this stage in the game.

If, at the moment, your startup consists of the proverbial two guys in a garage, it's highly unlikely that you need to spend $10,000+ on a lawyer's counsel and advice. Build your product first. You're not even on the radar yet, so it's not as if Google or Facebook even know who you are, let alone want to steal your idea. And chances are, someone's doing your idea anyhow. Chances are, ten people are doing your idea right now. Your best defense isn't legal action; it's product traction.

There's a time and a place for lawyers, but right up front is usually not it. Unless you've got some sort of truly innovative, groundbreaking technological innovation on your hands.
Show HN: My weekend project, Realtime Stock News (with sentiment analysis)
Joyent gets $85 million for cloud expansion — Cloud Computing News
New student network/hub about to launch
Don't be surprised by how much is all about huge ego and showing them who's boss. Setting example and so forth.

It's a shame, but at the same time it makes it easier to get noticed...
"How I used Airbnb to fund a hit iPhone app"

Is it possible to know how many downloads or how much revenue this "hit" app is getting right now?
Anyone care to share some numbers?
This reminds of an excellent read about "What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial". You can find the full pdf on Vinod Khosla's site (http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/What_makes_entre...).

In addition to the skills listed in the article it's important for a founder to be flexible and open-minded. Being infatuated with an idea, direction, or vision may not allow you to see opportunities where they exist (recently PG talked about this in Shlep Blindness: http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html). Perceptions, ideas, and markets change and one needs to change and adapt with them if it's fitting.
Making F# Windows Phone Development a Little Easier
What was your reason to do both a Ltd in UK and a GmbH in Austria?

We've registered an Austrian GmbH couple of years ago and haven't had any issues with that so far. The break-down of voting rights and shares are directly bound to how the common stock (usually 35k€ in AT) is being split. When it comes to investment rounds, the investors either increase the common stocks or buy it from the other shareholders for the nominal price (the percentage of the common stock value). The whole process is strictly bound to a formal process (a notarial act), which can get quite expensive, which is the only down-side in the long run.

On the other hand, Ltds still have some shady smack for some reasons over here (one is that you're seen as being cheap), so when you're an Austrian or German company, I bet you gonna need to explain as a small startup why you have gone the Ltd path when talking to big potential customers, and I think this is something you want to avoid at that stage ("act like how you want to be seen, not like who you are", and each serious company here is a GmbH). I understand that it's a big turn-off for young founders to put in 17.5k€ in cash from the start (which is the minimum amount to be provided when founding), but it pays off when it comes to reputation, at least when acting in the B2B business.
There are all sorts of reasons to put some effort into your name. But that is primarily if you are expecting to get a lot of your traffic from google.

In most cases though. It simply doesn't matter as long as your aren't being completely retarded about it.

No name is going to save your company.

So instead go with something you like. That way even if your company goes bad you don't start blaming your name for the misery.
Shipment of SSD’s – UPS status says “Train Derailment”
And don't forget about the costs of furnishing, laundry bills, cleaner bills, and so on ;)
they arent really responding. I am sure they are busy preparing papers for bankruptcy filing.
Agree. And I will change it. Sorry if it made a bad impression.

I got this idea sent on twitter.
I quickly did it and ran off to a meeting. I will change it now.
It wasn't meant as a socialmedia hack but as a cool way to interact.

On it. Tell me in a sec if you think it's better.
Why should we? We don't hold referendums on every other issue. I'm not sure you'd like a world where politics was entirely reduced to the lowest common denominator as much as you think you would.
Learn You Some Erlang - Distributed OTP Applications
In this context PowerPoint is used as a description for a style of presentations (e.g. lots of bullet points) I think most people realise it would be the same if that style was done using Keynote or transparencies.

But yeah, it's a shame PowerPoint has become the descriptor.
I agree that those are important... but they're not skills!

Skills are things you do with varying levels of competence, not things you are. "Willingness to take risk" is not a skill. "Passion" is also not a skill! "Risk mitigation" would be a skill, but I think it's not as core as the 12 I listed.
Yea you are right. I prefer that approach.

On it.
Multi-Touch Page Flipping an eBook (concept)