skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It makes me think: what do I like about Gmail?

* the interface (discussions especially)

* the speed

* the search features (and its speed)

I suppose most of it could be recreated on top of a "regular" mail server but what would be involved?

I'm not saying that would be easy but, wouldn't that be an interesting offering? (open-source or not actually)
Farmers and old people are pandered to by both parties. Remember, it is the Republican in this race that ran against farm subsidies, while the Democrat whole-heartedly supported them. Remember, too, that support for replacing Social Security with privately-owned retirement accounts is solely a Republican idea. Democrats answer to future deficits in the Social Security program is "tax the rich". That seems to be their answer to a lot of problems. I hope they have read up on their parables involving golden geese.

There is some truth to the old Republican saw that the Republican Party is a coalition of ideologies, while the Democratic Party is a coalition of interest groups. It just so happens that a particularly stupid and nasty ideology that most Republicans don't really like has been in the ascendancy since Bush brought it in by stealth. Hopefully, that will change.
The article has been updated to indicate that the rumor was baloney.
How the CNN Holographic Interview System Works
Either I didn't explain myself well or you're not listening.

Equity is not income. Early stage, I'll trade equity for all kinds of things. Income is a completely different affair. Income is cash-in-hand, cash for advertising, mortgages, food, operating expenses. Income is precious -- equity not so much.

Later on, the balance shifts and equity is much more important. Income not so much. But there's a long run through a minefield to get to that point.

Cash is power. Power to make choices and provide value. Equity is another matter entirely.

Early stage I'd locate wherever the people and facilities were that could help me grow. But the internet's a great thing -- after early-stage I can choose to operate just about anywhere.
Ask HN: Correctly pronouncing equations in CS papers
I try to read a few papers a month (like the Bigtable or Chubby ones) to stay current with what the state of the art. But, I frequently find myself stumbling over the right way to "pronounce" the equations in my head. I imagine most people learn this sort of thing by listening to a professor read them out loud in class. Does anyone know an online resource for this?
Ben Franklin: Keeper of his own 'Permanent Record'
One more reason why I have my own server with a reputable host. Not only can I configure my spam filters however I want, forward my emails however I please, keep local and online copies simultaneously... yadi yada, I have full control over my email.
Others have already said it, but to quote Mr. Obama directly: "As a starting point, it means I believe in [sic] that Jesus Christ died for my sins and that I am redeemed through him."

http://rickwarrennews.com/transcript/civil_forum_transcript-...
Beyond running infinitely, this plus the memristor work that HP is doing would also lead to a great deal of miniaturization of consumer electonics as well. The two technologies together would lower required memory consumption; and the removal of the need for batteries in a lot of devices would also greatly help shedding weight and size.
Short Review on Retrevo
Michael Crichton: Aliens Cause Global Warming
The 20th Century's Industrious Designer
I'm kind of in awe that there is such a specialized photo blog site.
Rumor != news

Maybe ban rumors from HN?
I read "Next" earlier this year. Whilst it wasn't the best book I've ever read I certainly enjoyed the ideas he brought to it and it must have taken a considerable amount of research and understanding to write.

Pretty sad.
The emphasis on saving and scrimping is to reduce burn rate prior to profitability. At the point where Obama's proposed tax increases would affect you, you aren't burning any more.

Further, from what I understand, Obama's plan would benefit you on the way up to that $250K/year in profit. I don't know the statistics, but my gut tells me that most small businesses in America are turning less than $250K/year in profit.
Google abandons deal with Yahoo
> For a business, only if you want to remain a business.

Untrue. Disregarding IE6 at say, 20%, implies that you only consider 80% of web users your target market. There's nothing wrong with that.
A great author indeed. May he rest in peace.
Good point; I meant to say "IPTV" somewhat generically. The important point is that it's a digital signal on a dedicated portion of the wire's bandwidth. I think Verizon's FiOS TV might be over IP, although I really have no clue.
By "past" I meant that they've been adequately addressed.
RIP Michael.

I recommend his biographical work Travels -- I found some parts very insightful.
>Income is cash-in-hand, cash for advertising, mortgages, food, operating expenses. Income is precious -- equity not so much.

Advertising and operating expenses offset revenues. A higher tax on profit doesn't reduce your ability to navigate any minefield on the way up unless your tax attorney is incompetent.
Merb Day Atlanta Registration is Open
The site has been around for quite some time. For us auto nuts, it showed us that those who can afford a supercar are not superhuman. And sometimes a good laugh (dependent on the story of the crash of course).
Actually, dhimes seems to have beaten you by a fraction: his post has id=353847, while yours had id=353848 :)
phpBB has an atrocious security record. It's gotten much better since version 3.
I hear what you say and agree, yet from this end it feels like we're playing pointless semantic games.

If I have 100K in income as a business, and I have to pay my employees an extra 20K in salary just to make up for extra taxes, that comes out of my bottom line -- money that could go elsewhere. The categorization of the expense doesn't make it magically go away. People still have to eat. 200K a year, if I remember correctly, is about the average wage for working founders in a startup businesses that are funded and on the way to profitability.
I think I could credibly dispute the record here, but I think we can also probably just agree that today, phpBB is hobbled by fewer design errors and better hygiene than Wordpress. Wordpress is just a scary glob of PHP code.
Quit Exaggerating On Your Skill Set
There are PHP programs with decent track records. PHP doesn't make it easy to write secure web apps, but it's not a lead weight either.
The first book I read by him was the one about the bio-terror attack with a virus. I read it because the New York Times sais that then-President Bill Clinton had read it, and this had lead to some anti-terrorism initiative that I thought was bullshit. I said to myself, if this novel is going to be resulting in bullshit I have to deal with, I better read it.

What a piece of crap that book was. I much of my respect for Bill Clinton at that point, and more with the sexual scandals, although in retrospect he regained much ground and I like him more now.

Then I read Andromeda Strain, and that annoyed me too. It was better written, but a book that tries to be a highly realistic science fiction can't pull a cheaters ending like that. Supposedly the whole cloud of virus just mutates . . . what, every single individual, all at the same time ? Dude, spend a couple of hours scratching your head and come with an ending.

Nonetheless, one of my private dreams has always been to see a wooly mammoth cloned and alive, and if that ever happens it will be at least partly because of his Jurassic Park. RIP.
Not to be overly pedantic, but while I think he was a good commercial author and extremely successful, a great author is something else.
Its a shame he died. He wasn't a great author but he did have a few good ones. Sphere(the book) was among his better ones.
A nice gesture on Microsoft's part, but unfortunately it's probably in vain: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/11/05/crisp-body.html
Why I'm Happy the Stock Market Crashed
Just what I need ... a cheat sheet of cheat sheets.
A startup comes up with a new open source license.
Republican's just added the prescription drug plan one of the largest expansions of the federal government in a while.

Farmers get help from both sides but if you look at who votes on specific bills there is significantly more support on the Republican side.

As to old people when they where talking about privatizing social security they where going to increase SS taxes to pay for their plan and not actually reduce spending.

PS: What I think is odd about Republican support is how their support of these groups is in opposition of their stated ideals of free trade (except for sugar) etc.
I think it more likely that Americans would elect a Muslim than an atheist. We still have a long ways to go in overcoming our prejudices.
Mexican water monster nearing extinction
My advice: Read the good parts version. Then read The Princess Bride so that you know the joke behind the title Javascript: The Good Parts. Then read the definitive guide.

I have the definitive guide, and I'm told it's really good, and I will state that it definitively occupies lots of space on my shelf and that I definitively plan to read it someday. Meanwhile, I've only actually opened it a handful of times, mostly to look up some API function or other. Crockford, on the other hand, I have actually read, and he's really good.
Ask HN: work samples to show in interview?
I am going to interview with a company if a few days and have been told that getting some work samples would be highly recommended.

This is my first interview ever, and I was wondering what sort of stuff would qualify as work samples?

ps: I am interviewing for a developer position
But your reply-to is set to your own domain. Unless someone willfully types in your "@gmail.com" address then when they reply to your email it will go to your own domain.
I don't know if I should smile because this is a nice example of how to find a simple and pragmatic solution to some problem you have. Or if I should cry over all the bugs they are now going to track instead of fixing them, see "Why Bugs should not be Tracked" at http://www.bestbrains.dk/dansk.aspx/Artikler/Why_Bugs_should...
This happened to one of my old wordpress blogs, I had to delete the whole thing. That's why I just use blogspot through Google now, it's not worth the time to keep track of all the updates and stuff.
While I'm sure it's tricky to send and crunch that much data in real-time, it ended up looking really bad. Amateur hour. There was a giant blue fringe around her the whole time. The Star Trek "beam in" effect to start the interview didn't help.

To top it off it was nothing like a hologram--it was all virtual. Wolf was just looking at a TV monitor off set like he would with any other remote interview.
My last resume just put dates (years) next to all buzzwords.
I didn't read the piece but your comment really made me laugh... thanks for that!
People make voting decisions based on all sorts of irrelevant irrational prejudices and on rational, well thought out, heavily researched grounds as well.

The guy who bases his vote on a coin flip has as much right to vote as the person who runs detailed financial simulations of the candidates declared policy initiatives.

That's what makes it a democracy.
Can we stop this argument already?

Real hackers can appreciate every damn language out there. If it weren't for Basic in the early 80s, I wouldn't be programming now.

PHP is a wonderful gateway language for a generation of web programmers. It is installed on every webserver and is always ready to rock-n-roll. No other language has achieved that level of ubiquity.
How to generate sales?
I'm currently bootstrapping my startup with what I can save from my day job. The biggest business related expense I have is my sales force, a sales outsourcing service that over promised and under-delivered. They claimed to be a full service sales outsourcing solution, but have amounted to nothing more than a half-assed lead generation service. My concept is great- it's a product and a service, margins are hyooge, interest is high, but there don't seem to be any closers in the company I hired. What's the next best approach short of paying 7k/month (which I can't afford) to hire a real sales outsourcing service? I've tried commission-only sales reps off of CL but they all jerk around because they're not getting a base pay and lose interest within a few days. Maybe I should break down and pay one of them hourly+commission? I've also tried selling it myself, which I'm still doing with the leads I get from the SoS, but like I said I have a day job and can't sneak away to make calls very often.
Nobody's funding, so that's not really an option (though I am pursuing it on the side on the off chance that I get a bite). HALP!?!?!? Thoughts anyone?? I'm becoming increasingly frustrated as I continue to accrue business related expenses, yet have no supporting stream of revenue, save the day job.
I always thought it was interesting that he was a Harvard trained MD.

It probably took a lot of work to get there and it must have been an interesting decision for him to leave that profession and start writing.
And the next sentence: "In this country you work harder to achieve your dreams and goals."

1: The higher the tax, the harder you have to work to achieve your dreams and goals => the decision to leave certainty for a venture is harder => less people will do it.

2: A tax increase counts twice when you're hiring e.g. cleaning help for your home, since both you and the cleaner is paying the higher tax. Thus, it get harder to pay for cleaning (gardening, construction, mechanics etc), and you're more likely to do it yourself, devoting less time to your family, start-up or work.

3: Finally, higher taxes will make it harder to promote/be promoted. In a promotion, you get more money and more responsibilities. The higher the tax, the less money will be in your pocket after the promotion, and the incentive to accept is lower. Coupled with no. 2, if you're busy building a new bathroom and a garage at home, you don't have the time to accept more responsibilities at work.

By the way - watch out for "95% won't be affected" rhetoric. A functioning democracy can't just be 95% fleecing the 5% - or the 55% fleecing the 45%.
I had always wondered how that whole global warming thing happened.
Very Uncool.com.
7 UI Design Resources for iPhone Developers
I like him for his pro-freedom stance; that's all. It's an unrealistic pick.
Wow, totally didn't realize you could still buy that old horse. Them were the days, mmmhmmm.
Any sort of code is useful. You can tell a lot just from reading a code sample: you get a sense of the candidate's attention to detail, coding habits, desire for simplicity, preferred coding standard, technology background, API design skills, knowledge of standard library functions, and knowledge of design patterns and idioms.

Try to keep things short & well-written. An interviewer is not going to want to pore over a 20 KLOC project looking for something cool. A small, well-defined library that does something useful is best. Like a useful utility class or small project that does something cool.
Keep up posted on the new project!
It might depend on where you live but I think 200k as salary for a founder in a company that is not yet profitable is ridiculously high.
How about "we" quit exaggerating our skillset when "you" quit exaggerating job requirements.

Let's do a random test, shall we? Here is the very first job on Dice.com in New York metro area.

Skills required:

- Systems Development
- Systems Analysis & Design
- Systems Operations & Support
- Knowledge of Cisco LAN/WAN infrastructure
- Knowledge of data center infrastructure
- Knowledge of Windows systems environment
- Knowledge of Network Appliance
- Knowledge of Brocade SAN infrastructure
- Strong understanding of Oracle (both 10g and 11g)
- Strong understanding of DB2
- SQL Server 2005
- Experience in logical and physical design of RDBMS
- Strong understanding of .net technologies
- COBOL/Mainframe programming
- Expertise in desktop software
- 270 Terminal Emulation
- FTP
- IIS7
- Experience in implementing IT Service Level Agreements
- Experience in team management
- Experience in change and asset management
- WMS including Medicaid, SSI, and/or Food Stamps issuance
- Collaborative skills
- Conflict resolution skills
- SDLC Project Management
- Commitment to public service

Salary range? $50,000 to $135,000 tops (again, this is in New York where a small home barely suitable for two adults with one child will run around $800,000 plus $1,500/month in maintenance and real estate taxes).

And hey - you know what I "chuckle out loud" about? When pretentious blog authors talk about themselves in 3rd person:

http://www.codesqueeze.com/about/
So blessed this guy is in favor of net neutrality.
You know what would be helpful? Discounts on Office, One Note, Project, and some of the other tools to run our business. We use Google Docs and 37signals products and the like instead of some of the great MS Office tools - isn't this the franchise MSFT needs to protect more?

Stuff for us to build the site - that's less attractive since we want to explode and we won't be buying Windows Server licenses any time soon.

Problem for MSFT is that only startups need the stuff they're making free; all small businesses are looking for free Office alternatives.
My bad, the link really should be:

http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master/2008-11-0...
Unless you plan on hiring someone to work for you (not some outsourcing deal, but an actual employee, or a sales person on commission who you can get excited) I think you should focus on selling it yourself, since you know it best, can gauge the quickest whether it's actually sellable, and you're passionate about it - the most important thing!

You can always outsource the sales later once you've figured out the best techniques, the most common objections, etc, and can instruct an outsourced team on those issues.

So where do you find the time to do this for real if you have a day job? Take a week of vacation time as soon as possible and work your ass off during it. If the margins are huge and interest is high and you can sell it well, then keep doing that and quit the day job.
Scott Adams startup idea: find unique diversified stock baskets
Call it Pam - Project adapted methodology. The amount of rigor the development process needs depends on the project and the developers. With experienced developers, who are good at communication and negotiation (i.e. no big ego problems) working in a problem domain which they understand (i.e. no big unknowns waiting to bite) this is probably the quickest way to get a great product.
The best way to answer this question is "go look at my website; I've published a bunch of open source code there".
Televised news has officially jumped the shark. This, if anything shows how mainstream and traditional media is becoming more and more irrelevant as the Internet produces better, more relevant, and more focused news stories as a single outlet.

It's less impressive that this was done (as since the Matrix 360 camera angles have been thrown in more Michael Bayesque movies ever imagined), and more impressive that someone had the ability to sell this to a producer as a great idea.
Personally, I got burned listing far too many skills on my resume without quantifying my experience. After that, I got rid of anything that I didn't have strong experience and I think that helped the credibility of my resume.
Apple’s Fadell gets one heck of a (Fa)deal to advise Jobs
I just assumed that Wolf Blitzer was an evil Sith Lord and could make it work with the force.

In fact, I still believe this.
I have to agree. Max says he has two degrees, but does not state from where, or what his concentration was in graduate school. That's fine, but then says he worked with Microsoft, which could mean anything ranging from being an employee, all the way to working for a company to which Microsoft outsourced some graphics design for marketing materials.

Another way the about page is misleading is that it almost reads like he helped develop Visual Studio.Net, and only after re-reading carefully, is it discernable that he's saying that he was one of the first to use .NET in pre-beta. In the end, it does not say if he actually developed anything with it, if he still uses it, or what the point of telling us the previous information is. Overall, nothing states what he has actually accomplished with all of his "eight years of professional software experience", and that is the biggest problem of all in many resumes.
In this country we tax profit.

And payrolls, sales, and real property -- even if there's no profit.
Recent discussion on this topic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=322987
"customers who don't want to do any business with a company outside United States"

Wait. When have you ever not done business with a web services company on the grounds that it was located outside the US? Do you think that kind of thing actually goes on? And that the problem is so endemic it should be cause to stick around, lest you lose all your US-based customers?

It may be so with a brick-and-mortar, or with a business that involves high-cost shipping. But for a traditional web services company -- Freshbooks (Cananda), Netvibes (France), Problogger (Australia) -- I don't think that argument holds any water.
We're Moving to Flash.  Here's Why.
First in a series of posts describing our port from Java to Flash.
This should be pretty easy, given a data set of historical stock prices - I can't seem to find one though... what am I missing?
Absolutely.

Here's a good site I brought up a while back. It covers hundreds of foreign-language media and translates some of their material into English.

http://watchingamerica.com/News/
I just kept thinking: "help us Obama-Wan, you're our only hope!"

And it sorta made it palatable.
Some good advice, however, a few things I disagree with here.

Firstly, regarding the 80/20 rule -- sure, only 20% of your features are used 80% of the time, but it's rarely the same 20%. That's why Microsoft Office has so much cruft.

Regarding fields for MAC addresses, etc, how do you handle credit cards? The standard is currently to have a single textbox, and it's what people are used to. Shifting that to a split box model introduces all sorts of other problems. A smarter option is to have good input handling (that strips out spaces, dashes, etc)

Splitting out forms can actually decrease task completion. If you're going to reduce cognitive load by doing this, you need to let them know where they are in the task.

Also, I was a little disappointed at how common-sense a lot of this was, and also thought there'd be some good "easy fix" stuff for people who already had a completed site. This is going around fixing a lot of stuff which should've been done correctly in the first place.
My last/current resume has a skill matrix of sorts. Along the top I have "experienced, intermidiate, begginer" and along the left side I have categories like "Software Development, databases" etc. I think it looks nice and gets the point across.
hugh, it seems like all you do is go around posting "flagged." to topics you don't feel belong to HN. Looking at your thread history is interesting.
Really? I hated that one. Much preferred Andromeda Strain.
That's a very reasonable assumption but you don't know that. A more realistic scenario is that your new, pared down resume lost major points as far as making it through the headhunters' and HR's dumb keyword filtering software, lost minor points as far as impressing generalist managers, and gained minor points as far as impressing technical managers.

I'd say when you tally it all, you get more points than you lose by listing non-core skills. Technical managers are usually the very last in the process and if your resume gets rejected upstream, you don't get to impress or un-impress them at all. Personally, I have never had anyone question my non-core skills. People usually look at several most recent projects to get an idea of your actual strengths.