skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What email sending services do you use?
We have a large list of people waiting for invite codes, but we're having problems with our mass emails getting caught by spam filters. We're looking for a service that will help us see how many emails are bouncing or not, as well as sending emails with domainkeys authentication. We've looked at http://www.industrymailout.com, http://www.campaigner.com/, http://www.jangomail.com/, http://www.authsmtp.com. What do you use for sending mass emails? Any tips for getting past the spam filters to our legitimate subscribers?
As I think about this novelist mindset connection once more, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with LE Modesitt who is the author of some of my favorite 'Hard' fantasy novels. He has an extremely large base of readers who are engineers. They really love the logic and problem-solving he introduces in his magic system. Interestingly, another large lobe of his fanbase is female readers looking for intelligent romantic fiction.
A week in, Facebook Connect trying to complete the connection
Wow. This is both genius, and despicable. It's amazing what kind of profit they drive, yet it seems like they're really taking advantage of people with gambling addictions, or poor money management skills.
I have noticed for years how my Mac laptops are very quiet. When I go into a conference with someone who has a Windows laptop you can constantly hear hear the hd making noise. It wasn't until when running vmware that my hd would make noise that I put it together. Any idea what Windows is doing?
Sony to unveil an "iPhone killer" at CES?
Well yes, in theory those are not UI - but how many times have you seen someone create two divs for the semantically same data just so the CSS styles will play nicely?

The problem is that CSS is not powerful enough to do rich layouts, and that forces developers to cripple the semantic goal of CSS/HTML by injecting presentation into what is supposed to be a presentation-free markup.
Make the world a better place: Share solutions
I've noticed this kind of mindset helps with debugging. I use it to eliminate possibilities and to also keep going. The latter is especially important when I think I've already tried all possibilities. It's a constant check that keeps me from thinking it's a problem on the computer's end, instead of a problem on my end. I can think of a number of times when I've been able to solve the bug precisely because I kept the right mindset.
Don't write about viagra.
Gotta love Shirky. I've spent countless hours listening to his talks on youtube. Dunno what it is about the way he delivers it.
Campaignmonitor.com
"Entertainment Shopping" is their slogan. I wonder if that's going to be their legal defense. "You're paying for the entertainment..not the item"
cakemail.com
i also used campaignmonitor
Ask HN: Review my startup - CloudFire
Last year 50 billion photos were taken. Less than 10% of that were shared online. We think the reason is that sharing photos, and especially video, is just not as easy as it could be. We built CloudFire to solve exactly this problem...

CloudFire lets you share ALL your photos and videos in less that 5 mins. There is no manual uploading, reorganizing, or transcoding...just share it and we do the rest.

http://www.cloudfireit.com

Would appreciate any comments/feedback...
The Big 3 are disappearing right now because they can't receive credit, and consequently can't roll over their debts. Exacerbating this, demand for cars - even for Japanese cars - has plummeted as consumers are scared and are pulling back on all purchases, to say nothing of having difficulty securing auto loans. This in turn makes it even harder for the Big 3 to secure already difficult to receive credit.

The proximate cause of this potential bankruptcy is the credit crisis. If the Big 3 disappear because of the credit crisis, and suppliers go bankrupt as well, experts estimate that could mean the loss of 3 million jobs. Suppose you worked for a fairly well run auto supplier, and suddenly you don't have a job. Instead of considering buying a car - or any major good or service - you wouldn't be able to. If you worked in an industry either directly or tangentially related to autos - say auto dealers, gas stations, hotels, steel - you'd likely start to fear losing your job. Just the fear of losing your job would change your consumption habits. Fear becomes a self fulfilling prophesy, creating even lower demand, necessitating even more job cuts, lower prices, and even less demand. A Big 3 bankruptcy would lower aggregate demand, and have potentially massive consequences through the rest of the economy. An event can both be the result of supply/demand, and create new supply/demand - financial markets and the economy are a chaotic system. That's why it's so hard to predict exactly what the consequences of a Big 3 failure would be.
As for the term "meaningless," I think I can see what the researchers are saying. For example, when I first started programming in QBasic, I was trying to modify a game called Gorillas that came with the language. In the game, there are two gorillas that try to destroy each other by throwing exploding bananas. I saw one variable in the code was called 'banana' and thought changing it to 'baby' would make the gorillas throw babies at each other (yes, I was a strange kid). Anyways, that would be an instance of looking for meaning where there isn't any. I ignored the syntactical context of the variable in favor of the semantics of the variable name, though this was more due to me not being familiar with code.

So, the tested students who focus on the syntactical context of variables and keywords will probably be better at understanding programs than those who focus on their understanding of these words' semantics. The problem is not "meaning" itself, but that they are using the wrong frame of reference to derive meaning.

Perhaps a better distinction, then, is objective vs subjective meaning. Those who look for the objective frame of reference to infer meaning will understand programs better. Once they do so, they can analyze programs more semantically. For instance, now that I've been exposed to many languages, I know something called "print," occurring in a certain position on a line, probably outputs textual information somewhere, such as stdout.
Reminds me of the old party game, Dollar Auction. Bidding's in 10-cent increments, and the prize is $1. The twist is that the top two bidders pay their bids, but only #1 gets the prize.

Bidding will go far past $1 because, even though it's a loss to pay $1.10 for $1, the 90-cent bidder would rather lose 10 cents than 90. I've heard of bidding going up into the $20 range.
One of recommendations from good web designers I've heard is to use actual content for drafts. If actual content is not available, write something that seems like an actual content.
Okay Newt, now we have something we can compare!
Because I claim that SR can handle such a case. I propose that I will give the answer as I calculate it from my version of SR, and you can give it from GR or whatever you think is necessary.
Does that seem like a worthwhile comparison to you?
Let's say that our travelling twin takes a trip of one second (not one year, to make the calculation easier).
Let's say he goes in the following trajectory: x(t)=0.9 c sin (k t) /k
Where k equals (pi/second).
How older will the twin be after the journey? I got the result of 0.7459255 seconds. What is yours?
Pardon my ignorance...

Why does the author call this website illegal? I'm not sure what laws they are violating.
"Since no ISP can compete with free, omnipresent Internet access, this plan means that virtually all online users will be herded into the government-controlled Internet. And as the history of radio and television has shown, once the government guarantees ‘free’ access to a communications medium, ..."

I don't think his assertion is accurate given the number of DirectTV and cable users. There's a market for XM and SIRIUS as well. I think this shows that people pay for things that are better.
I was in a game theory class and we were learning about auctions. Just don't ask me how much I paid for his $5 bill in his "all-pay" auction - it would have been evil if it didn't go to charity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction)
An idea for getting people to read each other's tweets.
I'm working on this idea now. Check it out:

http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/c4820fbb9bb296d7

BTW, I've been using the term "CAPTCHA" incorrectly. It stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."
What I describe here isn't automated. Users must submit a question to test comprehension of their tweet selection.
But like a CAPTCHA, we want to make sure this is not a computer (or mindless clicking by a human).
I think that largely depends on what type of website they are working on. I think the majority of our clients' users are still on IE. 6. :(
Not sure, but I'm pretty sure these guys are not licensed by any state gaming boards to operate as a legal gambling establishment.

So I guess the author thinks this qualifies as gambling (and it probably does) and therefore these guys are in violation of said laws. Remember, when you're a legal gaming establishment there is a mountain of red tape and paperwork to stay legal... and this company is probably engaged in enough shenanigans that it would be considered a Bad Thing.
The ones with the O masking the photo looked like they were using the Bliss wallpaper from XP.
I refused to clickthrough to this link after noticing it's a page from AynRand.org. Most overrated writer of all time. Back to the gold standard! Free market rules all!
I think they are using 'meaningless' as 'lack of significance' more than 'lack of meaning'. Programming rules obviously always mean something, but they don't always seem significant. People who get programming are comfortable with that lack of significance and just go about following rules. People who don't get programming try to find significance where it's not and end up being inconsistent.
He doesn't say that it is illegal, only that it's so shady that it's likely someone will make a law against it. It could fall under gambling laws, since you're basically buying chances to win the opportunity to buy something at a low price.
qmail. You need to email Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail/whoever, answer all their standard questions, and they will eventually stop sending your email to spam. I've done this personally about a dozen times.
I hope the FCC does take this lead in trying to censor the net, ahead of requiring all the "private" carriers to do so. Government attempts for increased control have to come sometime, and I'd rather have that happen on a single network so that the workarounds are developed before the majority of people are affected.
It will likely be called a raffle because buying the "tickets" costs money and you will very likely get nothing for it.

In almost all states in the USA, raffles are illegal as part of the private lottery statutes. In practice, enforcement agents usually look the other way for small non-profit raffles like the kind held in church basements for pies and such.

They are extremely unlikely to look the other way in this case!
The expression "profitable until deemed illegal" is used when what the business is doing is so obviously despicable and evil that if it continues the government will probably pass a law against it. (This is basically an offshore gambling site we're talking about, though, no more and no less. Therefore, I'm not sure how apt the expression is to what's actually going to happen.)

Or, to put it another way, it's so fiendish that no one though to ban it before.
Ask HN : White-labeling your service
We are a start-up and one of our potential client asks us to white-label our service for him to sell it to his own clients. Our company name will be written in small on the service we'll provide to him.

What do you think about that kind of contract?
Don’t Design for your Client, or Yourself
If I had a dime for every time a co-worker said it was a problem with the compiler, I would have retired years ago...
Russian Entrepreneur Patents Emoticons
Do people do independent research anymore, or is it just too likely they'll reinvent the wheel, lack resources and information, and not receive useful guidance? I'm interested in the university route, but it seems like there isn't as much freedom as in the case of bell labs.
Ah I see what you're saying. Good point sir.
IE Web Developer toolbar for DOM / CSS inspection and tweaking, and MS Script Editor (from MS Office) for JS debugging. Wireshark for net requests dumping.

But of course Firebug is much easier to use.
Web Help Desk offers now a free version of its help desk software
returnpath.com
Was just telling my coworker about this and we talked about the optical illusion of how the moon looks bigger on the horizon than straight overhead. I always thought it was because the atmosphere acts like a lens, but it turns out I was wrong. Its just all in our brains. Interesting reference link to the phenomenon http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/top5_myths_020903-2.ht...
This is awesome. They must be raking it in.
Oroscopo, settanta « cipressino
Isn't that what most businesses do?
What's the channel for contacting them about this?
Oroscopo, sessantanove « cipressino
Its funny, all these right-wingers who bitch and moan about how big government is bad and needs to get eliminated, then turn around and want the government to step in to control everything in our society.
Radical turtles fight aliens? Man, this is hard.
Some useful IE Addons resources:

http://ieaddons.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa753587.aspx
It's helpful for me to see these articles pop up since I don't currently use a revision control system such as subversion or git. Granted, I'm not looking for one at the moment, either, but it does plant seeds in the back of my mind for when I do need one.
You'd better ask "It I started this position two months ago, what kind of things I'd be working on by now?" It takes a little to accustom yourself to each work environment, and a little longer to get into the flow of the place (know your collegues, the work process etc.). That said, yours is a darn good question, and on my next interview I'll be certain to ask it.
No, the books he likes seem to require way more intellect than the average book on Oprah's book club.
Did our cosmos exist before the big bang?
I immediately thought the same thing.

It's nice to see that they developed so many different styles, you really can't have to many rough drafts.

They ultimately settled on the best one.
First off, Ayn Rand is dead. She didn't write the article. Second, this is basically an ad hominem argument. I agree Ayn Rand was overrated, but that doesn't mean that this article has some truth to it, despite coming from an objectivist.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=301155
Generalisation.

Making money and creating value are independent of one another.

Good businesses do both.
There are tons of sites with this concept, or at least the variant of "least unique bid wins". The most evil part is how they manage to get so much media attention, now even our beloved Coding Horror has been reeled in.
I can understand the good internet connection cost, but don't most countries have a dependable source of electricity?
Really interesting look at the evolution of his logo.

"The strongest logos tell simple stories"
Sounds very similar to pyramid reward schemes to me.
Sarah Palin goes away, Hulu's traffic drops in November
Upvoted because I'd like to see more posts of this type here. That said, I suspect interest in PHP gigs here is rather low, as most people here seem to dislike PHP.

If you're not attached to PHP, you'll get a lot more people interested - me, for example.
We Agree: Get Froze
There is a slim possibility that buying stocks today is a bad idea, but the "magic" of cost dollar averaging means you don't need to chose when to invest. And the advantage to having 30% in something other than stocks is so you can buy them when the market tanks. If you live to be 90 and start investing at 20 you have 70 years to ride out the swings in the market.

Edit: Ok, post retirement swings can be frightening but diversification and the 30% that's not in stocks should give you 8+ years to ride out most bumps. Anyway, once your nest egg is significantly larger than your draw down it stops being important.
Very evil, but I'd love to see the data that comes out of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys
What's despicable about offering a service people want to use?

Isn't this just like offering poker games and other gambling, or selling beer (you pay for something that harms your health, and the only saving grace is that people enjoy it)?
I thought the current requirement was that websites were required to verify age before allowing users to enter?

You make it sound like the ISPs are doing this job, which I wasn't aware that they were.
I like how your first line is a response and the rest is a preemptive defense of the response.

I do agree with you though.
No one contributes to the community for the money, yet most of you guys are constantly talking about getting rich -- or at least profitable. Paradox?
Check out a project I'm working on: hellocreature.com. We have a rails plugin you can use (or you can just use our REST api) to send emails that are signed with DomainKeys and DKIM, and are stamped with HashCash. We also support SenderID, SPF, etc. We also have standard pricing that is lower than those other companies' highest volume plans.

We're obviously in beta now so the site's marketing copy has a bit of work needed yet, but I'd be happy to get you set up today for a free trial. We've been having superb deliverability with our clients so far and we have a bunch of other nice features you may want to use.

Just email me at matt (at) hellocreature.com
Fact is, "You're gay" is still a common, juvenile slam.
well, for the second part of your comment, dell did it for the PC industry, which was viewed as a commodity business. for web hosting, just think what amazon is doing these days
What they're doing is most probably not illegal. What they are doing is leveraging a lot of little things to make themselves good cash.

Let's be very clear - they use auctions. This is not a lottery. At the end of the day, the high bidder "wins" and pays the amount of the high bid to win the auction. Then Swoopo adds the (.75 * number of bids placed) to that figure. It's not inconceivable that that sum is less than MSRP.

At the end of the day, you can ensure that you win by placing the last (and highest) bid. Because there's certainty of winning - it's not random - it's not a lottery, and as such, doesn't need to be state-sponsored (as is the case with lotteries in most jurisdictions).

What's fascinating about that is that very few retailers use auctions to sell goods that they own/control/are obligated to ship. Auctions historically have only really been done by venues - eBay doesn't sell their own goods on the site; neither does eBid; and neither did Yahoo Auctions or Amazon Auctions (remember those?).

So Swoopo reinforces online marketplace psychology and eBay-style dynamics by having auctions. This is even though Swoopo is the retailer and has to ship the good (whether Swoopo's dropshipping or not is irrelevant; they still make sure the high bidder gets the item or its nearest equivalent).

On Dawdle, we initially launched with a structure that eliminates the "sniping" problem that you have with eBay. We had a structure where you could name your own price and any seller that had what you wanted could sell to you. However, your offer was blind to the seller and the seller's minimum price was blind to the buyer. It was very similar to the Priceline model, except that on Dawdle, the selling price was limited to the amount of the next highest offer + a bid increment. So when the listing ended, the price that the item sold for was the 2nd highest amount + bid increment. (On Priceline, whatever the offer is is the selling price; we wanted to give the impression to the buyer that they were getting a deal as they were paying less than what they had offered.)

I bring this up only to show the difference between having a different kind of auction structure (like Dawdle did, and we retain in a limited fashion with our StandingOffer technology) and what Swoopo is doing. All Swoopo is doing is charging people to bid, setting the bid increment, and being a retailer disgused as a venue.

The question is, can this last? Given the limited amount of differences between Swoopo and eBay, my guess is probably. They'll have a branding issue if people keep attacking them, but at the end of the day, it's transparent.
Nope. You need to be profitable to continue doing what you love. There's no paradox if your motivation to make money is to continue being able to contribute for free.
Given the market ahead, you need to keep your eye on any and all cash coming to the table.. so yes, pownce on that.
"Yeager recalls, two support staff members, Bosack and Kirk Lougheed, asked him for his original program so they could modify it for the new system. Bosack and Lougheed removed its ability to route non-Internet protocols, keeping its network operating system and related features and improving its Internet capabilities. Later, they added back other protocols.

Yeager said he didn't know that Bosack had recently incorporated Cisco and asked Stanford for permission to sell the Blue Box commercially. He had been denied." [1]

Their whole business was built on this "borrowing" principle, but eventually some of it fired back [2] on the "original" gang, when they went "public" (Sequoia, hated by Lerner).

In essence, the following quote sums it all up:
``The fundamental problem is: how do you negotiate an equitable agreement with crooks?''

[1] http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/cisco.html

[2] http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/serving_suits/cisco.html
Bernie Comes Out of the Closet
The Obama campaign did such an amazing job marketing itself and it really shows that the power of a logo is its simplicity. The others were all more relevant - most of them were more topical with the "'08" or "change" in them, but the final logo just works so well.

Obama's logo reminds me a little of Bank of America's. They both evoke an image of the American flag as well as farming/middle America (BofA's logo looks like farm plots to me and the red/white stripes of Obama's logo make me think the same). The blue semi-circle looks somewhat like the arc of a rainbow over the horizon evoking (for me) a hopefulness that something is better over the horizon and an idea of inclusiveness.

It's one of the best logos I've seen. I'm guessing he'll use it again in 2012 as it's an instantly recognizable symbol.
Yes, to be more specific, responsibility means that if I do not like my life, it is in my power to change it. Before, if I didn't like my life, there wasn't a lot I could do about it. So, since the social structure wasn't conducive to my personality, I would retreat from it all, leading to the depressive cycle.

Thanks for the discussion, you've helped me clarify my ideas on depression.
If your tweets are of their interest, they will find you. I search twitter all the time for topics that interest me such as Django.
aren't the 4 different types of arguments useful? I end up hacking it into my ruby code because it's missing. Crap like

def my_meth(options = {});
options[:named_arg_1] ||= 'bob';
options[:named_arg_2] ||= 'blub'
end
The only thing that is gonna kill the iphone is not the phone but the platform for development. Nokia should just get it over with, buy Yahoo, develop SuperSymbianPro in conjunction with Adobe, make a bad ass developer platform and then focus on cool phone tech.
Google Pack: Chrome Replaces Firefox in Google Pack's Default Browser Choice
Arguably two of my favorite authors.
"But as JavaScript matures, it makes you start to wonder why you even bother with HTML at all; you can simply dynamically generate DOM nodes in JavaScript."

SEO