skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I have a unique position from which to make these statements. For 25 years, as many of readers know, I was an FBI Special Agent..."

I couldn't believe he didn't finish the last paragraph of his background with "I am the most interesting man in the world."
The question is not whether you have to comply so much as what they can do. If you are selling a physical product it has to get into the US somehow (unless you drop it like a drug dealer by airplane of course). So you are either using the postal service, UPS, Fedex etc or it's coming in at a port or some other method. One way or another, separate from a domain name, there is a way for the government to stop that product from being sold here (of course you can alternate your delivery methods and obscure who you are but that's another story).

I regularly get letters from overseas companies offering to put my trademarks into "International Trademark Registries". They charge $1000's of dollars hoping that someone's bookeeper will be fooled and pay. They very very clearly violate US laws in many ways. Yet they still keep coming. The government doesn't go to the trouble of attempting to shut them down (they could block wire transfers or credit card payments etc but the don't). It's simply not important enough to them.

This idea that just because something can happen it will is ridiculous.

It's also breaking the law to go 56 mph in a 55 mph zone. But how many people have received tickets for doing that?
This sounds pretty damn cool. It's like a more humane, more generous implementation of the vision of Mechanical Turk.

When is it coming to London? I'll sign up.
The problem with this logic, IMO, is that they are still ignoring that, in spite of consumers wanting a single device that supports multiple interfaces, they're still trying to cram two very different experiences into one unified experience.

To me, Microsoft and Apple should realize that once you plug a keyboard/mouse into a tablet, it becomes a notebook, and the user should be presented with a new experience -- because it now has a new interface (keyboard/mouse vs. touch screen only).

If they could figure out how to intuitively transform your experience from a tablet experience to a notebook experience without jarring or confusing the user, then they could have an OS that could work with both devices -- or a single device that supports both interfaces.
Apple is working on a games console and only Microsoft has a chance to compete
I don't know if that question is "interesting" so much as "impossible to answer" and "extremely contentious." :)

But my personal answer is that I have, say, 50% more fun writing CS than JS, so there are likely to be personal projects I write in CS that I just wouldn't have bothered with or would have lost steam on before. When you're doing something for the love of it, every moment that makes you think "dammit [Javascript], why are you making me do this?" is a potential moment to walk away and do something more fun. I (begrudge;every;semicolon) in an unnecessary for loop.

So if other people are like me, I expect CS to bring new things to the world, not because it's 10% faster but because the 10% it's taking out was the boring part. If no one's like me, then I hereby award myself one Special Snowflake from the many falling outside my window.

To put it another way: "The single most important lesson that people say they have learned from the Ruby programming language is a lesson that _Why’s work embodies in its code: Programming (or whatever you do) should be fun. There must be joy in your craft, and there is precious value in tinkering and playing around."[1]

Whether CoffeeScript or wire-wrapping individual transistors lights up your eyes is up to you of course -- but we all benefit by giving creators tools they like. Sermon for today over.

[1] http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/15/why-a-tale-of-a-p...
There are actually two groups you don't like: the ones who greet you when you enter the USA are Customs & Border Protection agents. They have a lot of power. The TSA employees are the folks in blue shirts who screen you &/ frisk you once you're inside the US & trying to fly. As an always-clean-shaven-when-flying US citizen, I have never had the displeasure of being treated poorly by CBP, though I know (and regret) it's par for the course for non-citizens.
Badass JS post if you're interested: http://badassjs.com/post/18503583619/coffeephysics-a-fast-ne... Contains a great interview with creator Justin Windle. Check it out for a unique perspective!
Next, U.S. Government declares anyone buying a non us domain (.com, .net, org, .biz and maybe .info) will be considered a terrorist.
Do people basically hotlink the Bootstrap CSS, for example? I just presumed most fork it into their own project (or, say as a submodule) and then host it on their own server.
Is the Zune desktop software still being updated? Yes.

That is rather like saying the iPod mini wasn't killed off because iTunes is still updated. You are unable to build software with the current sdk that will run on a Zune. Zune device software hasn't been updated since before it was discontinued. So no Zune devices were not integrated into windows phone, they were dropped in the dust bin.
US Citizen here. I don't feel any safer. I feel like I'm a cow in a herd of cattle. Every time I see the security line I think about how much more effective detonating a bomb in the security line would be compared to crashing a plane. At an airport like Altanta International, there are more people in the line than would be on a fully loaded 474. I'm far more afraid to stand in the line for screening than sitting in a plane.

All it takes is one terrorist to get this bright idea in their head and then I lose more of my rights to the next level of security theater. :(
There seems to be a disconnect on the points we're arguing here. Task scheduling and routing is (almost) the easy part or at least a pretty solvable equation - there's a whole range of operations and queue theory texts that can make a quick go of managing that.

I'm more concerned with the human element. HR overhead, people making sure tasks are getting done well and in a timely manner. "but she doesn't deal with them like they were IP packets, does she?" - No she (he actually ;-) can't they're people.
They already did. That's why they started patting them down.
Yes, it's trivial to run your own root server. Convincing other people is the hard part.
Privatized? What revenue model do you propose for making a profit finding extrasolar planets?
> Am I the only one who thinks it is sad ...

I think it's fantastic.

> And we need more native apps, not less.

Do you mean "managed apps"?

In that case, you're either talking about special case apps that require low level access or low level management (ex: for performance reasons), drivers, special libraries, or might just be holding on to the past.

.NET, C#, and XAML are the highest legitimate programming abstraction layer in Windows and are the way most Windows apps are made these days.

The unerlining management system (and OS) is written in C/C++ and exposes the win32 API. That's always there.

Rarely does anyone make C or unmanaged C++ apps calling the win32 api when you can have .NET Framework and CLR do that for you.
Soon I hope. London is on the short list of places to expand to!
I really hope you meant to type "prosecute" instead of what you actually put, "persecute".
And here is the thing, Majority of users ARE average-joes. That's why iPad has been an incredible success. It's a power user's nightmare,and yet look at how it has fared. The average-joes are the ones who will dig Metro, and that's a vast, overwhelming majority.For power users, there is regular desktop. However, Gradually, as an eceosystem of apps starts thriving, the power users will start to discover that are okay with giving up a little of that power for well-designed Metro apps that make their lives a whole lot easier and will start shifting away from desktop to Metro. Just as content writers, programmers, musicians etc have started taking to the iPad for their day-to-day work. I say W8 is a win-win for everyone !
Was this thread not enough for you? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3448573 The topic is good, but couldn't you wait a bit more to resurface it?
Probably not quite what the designers intended, but...

I plan to put one in an aluminium box with some SRAM and an anti-tamper switch, store keys in the SRAM and use it to back up TrueCrypted thumb drives.

Should be more secure than mounting them on an internet-connected PC just to back them up.
That's only true if you define "rich" as "I have a lot more than you."

If you define rich to mean "I have way more than I will ever need" then there is ultimately no reason that everyone can't be rich. It just takes a while to get there.

Personally I'd prefer the latter. Eliminating poverty makes everyone better off.
We definitely think this is a great use case. Any companies in the SF area who want to try it out should hit me up at justin@iamexec.com.
Hey Kevin -

OP here. Thanks for the response. All of this is 1) pure speculation without any data or understanding of the underlying business strategy 2) intended as constructive criticism rather than firebombing and throwing stones to be controversial for controversy's sake.

IMHO - showing price consistently (even w/o a shipping address, my item price didn't show), making order modification easy, and placing action buttons below the explanatory elements that motivate clicking that button are fairly uncontroversial points. Maybe they are more controversial than I envisioned.

Moreover, I understand things are optimized for checking out quickly and perhaps bias the UX toward repeat customers, but I don't see why first time customers (who you're fighting to make into repeat customers) are deprioritized or lack their own customized, responsive UX that would enable speed for repeat customers and ease of use for first timers.
Authors sell the rights to their books for income. The shorter the copyright period is the less valuable those rights will be. So it's not a question of "sustained commercial value", it's a question of the value of rights at the time of publication. 2-3 years would make writing a hobby for all but the very most popular authors.
Not really sure what to make of this…been a Blizzard fan since ToD, saw Blizz growing, merging, corporated, massive growth…

3 Major Projects in the Pipeline, 1 Untitled Project, and it lays off 600 people? It's a money printing machine with it's stranglehold on subscription based MMO (as opposed to freemium), I'd hate to think they're laying off people to appease the shareholders and maximize profit.
DotTEL is nice because all of your information is stored in DNS, and so the webpage itself is created dynamically from DNS. Also, it can't go down due to a DOS attack. Well, actually, it can, but then all DotTELs would be down, and so the burden of rectifying it would be on the registrar, rather than on you. Given that such a problem would be treated as an emergency, by them, the response will likely be swift. However, their response might include deleting your domain, but that could happen with any registrar, for other reasons. Anyway, there are other nice things about DotTEL, and I strongly suggest that it warrants investigation, for practical use, by anyone who is already using DotCOM.

I understand why TPB moved away from DotCOM, but I don't understand why they moved to DotSE. However, I do know that they were put on trial for breaking Swedish copyright law. The trial resulted in fines and jail time, with their Supreme Court refusing to hear the appeal just this month. While the trial was happening, I read reports of many strange legal things going on in court, and I read opinions about this being due to inordinate influence of the industry on the Swedish government. Regardless of the veracity of those reports and opinions, it seems obvious that you wouldn't want to use the domain of a country where you have already been in serious legal trouble, and lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay#Legal_issues

EDIT: DotTEL is not at all limited, as long as you can transition to the mindset of decoupling your content from its address.

EDIT: DotTEL answers pretty much all of the concerns regarding speed, in this other HN thread, from today.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3648956
Passive investing through indexing is great. If your investment philosophy is "I want to make decent returns without researching companies or exploring financial statements" then indexing is the right approach.

Note however that the choice between "smart investing" and "hyperactive investing" is a false dilemma. Timing the market and worrying about technical analysis is definitely a way to lose money to traders with quicker access to information and greater ability to profit from arbitrage. Solin's comments on the marketplace of financial experts is right, but indexing isn't the only way to avoid that mess.

Sure, 80% of my portfolio is in a couple of indexes, but that other 20% I don't count as mad money. I don't make blind guesses; I'm very careful about where I put it. So far my strategy of five or six smart trades a year has paid off very well. That's hardly day trading.

I suspect the ratio of 80/20 will get change in favor of active investments as I get more confident.
Nokia CEO Takes Aim at Android
What about artists whose songs take more than 2 or 3 years to become popular? You don't think an artist should get anything if he writes a song that does so-so until it is featured a few years later in a hit movie and then the song becomes a hit?

Or what about people who write books? Shouldn't they get money if their book is turned into a movie? With only 2 to 3 years of copyright, many books will go public domain long before a major movie can be put together.
Most of school is psychological conditioning. This would be a wonderful conspiracy theory if the government was a bit more efficient about it. :)
Where is Premium Email?
Hey kscaldef - some observations I had from my time on the site:

When I visited the site (had never heard of it before) I had an overlay that asked for my email in order to view the site. I was unable to close it - tried hitting escape, looked for a close button, etc. I refreshed and navigated to 3 different pages using the top nav before the site removed the overlay.

Now when I'm on the site (men's clothing) when I try to click something in your main nav (like Baby&Kids) I get another sign up overlay.

Maybe I'm not your target demographic, but your site actively prevents me from browsing your products.
The Case for Letting Iran (Almost) Build a Bomb
Presumably the era of "printing money with WoW" is over, then?
There are many, many businesses other than retail shops that need space.
Georges Méliès's 1902 Classic, 'A Trip to the Moon'
with no api, how are they getting access ? I don't use path but are they scraping a webpage ?
Texting as Evidence of Criminal Conduct?
On the "Serve your pages compressed" section, one should point out that static files (usually CSS, JS, etc) can be pre-gzipped (and pre-packed) to reduce server load. Serving the right version depending on the Accept-Encoding header is usually easy in most webservers.
The comparison between the local state university and MITx is noteworthy. One of the big arguments that I hear continuously for traditional colleges is that they provide opportunities for research and are a place to make social connections. While these opportunities are a very real incentive for top schools, there are a ton of colleges and universities that add little value on these fronts (especially relative to the cost).
Capturing Audio and Video in HTML5
This sounds like a good idea on paper, but I'd think long and hard before building a brand around a domain that you don't own.
I would love to have an Exec for tasks inside my company. The money would be drawn from a company´s bank account. Sort of like internal bounties perhaps. Maybe even complementing salaries, I don´t know. Thoughts?
Test stubbing as an anti-pattern
Honestly just get out of the building. You will be surprised how open people are to talking about their industry and the problems they face.
Didn't know that thanks. As far as I can tell though with static resources IIS caches the gzipped versions so I don't think it would make much impact at all.
Nothing new to see, nothing newsworthy, just the usual bunch of suggestions on how to speed up a website. Sorry to be so negative but this is just random noise and not something I want to see for the hundreds time.
Show HN: okhired - a marketplace for small jobs
My guess is that this is Gilt's model. To them the cost of users like you navigating away (perhaps without entering your email address) is smaller than the benefit they get from getting people who wouldn't otherwise enter their email addresses to do so.

It's a business tactic that arguably prioritizes conversions and bottom line over general user experience. Commonly done but dubious when it comes to whether it is good for the end user.
If you are getting 1 meeting from 50 emails and you're not even trying to sell something, you are doing something wrong.

I have to think that cold calls convert better than emails. That’s probably the real answer here. Get on the phone and start calling. It’s a scary prospect for an introverted nerd like me. It comes down to this: The hustle must overcome the nerd. And it shall.

Indeed!
No more $4 coffee shop work permits -- remember libraries?
There are 316 millions iOS devices, with nearly half of that sold in 2011.

I don't know the actual install base numbers, but presumably it is close.

1 billion isn't far off
I don't know what's cooler, this project, or the index frame on your API page that tracks with the currently viewed text.
Dealing With Dementia Among Aging Criminals
So that means no up to date book on Win32 API even now? I'm not into Windows programming, but from what I know Petzold is the only book that people usually follow for learning Win32 programming.
That's fine, you might not want to see it though but other people seem to want to.

Suggestions on how to speed up your website is only about half the content, I thought it was worth posting because it also looked at why you should do it in more detail as well.
Having a customer service page is not synonymous with being accountable. The thing is, whether or not we are satisfied with them, we still have to deal with them until the government changes it. So they aren't held directly accountable. Instead, we have to effect change in the government in a way that will then effect change in the TSA. That extra layer makes things much harder.
So, here's the skinny:

I spent most of Monday at Justin.tv / TwitchTV. At TwitchTV I mostly work on strategy and management issues. My cofounder Emmett Shear runs the company as CEO along with a great management team including our COO Kevin Lin, who runs all the partnerships and operations, and CRO Jonathan Simpson-Bint, who is the founder of IGN, and runs all biz dev. Operationally the team is excellent, the company is growing well (almost 60 people now between two offices) and my services aren't really required for operational issues. Monday night I work on Exec stuff as well.

Tuesday is YC day. Since we're going through YC for Exec, I'm down in Mountain View anyways. I hold office hours during the afternoon most weeks, and then attend the dinner with everyone else.

Wednesday -> Sunday I'm working on Exec full time, but occasionally do calls for JTV/TTV. I also stop by the JTV office a few times a week just to hang.

Socialcam is being run by our other cofounder on JTV, Michael Seibel, along with two engineers formerly from JTV. It is fully spun off as a corporate entity now. We still have a great relationship and they are part of the JTV family, but I don't have an active role. They are off to the races though and on the way to be extremely successful.

UPDATE:

Re-read this and it makes it sound like I work an insane amount. I don't want to make it seem like I'm Jack Dorsey-ing it. I take time on weekends and nights to relax and have a social life. I think working at a sustainable pace is important. Luckily (for me), I enjoy working at so many things because they give me a chance to exercise / learn different skills (strategy and growth at JTV, programming and pitching at Exec, talking about business ideas at YC).
I really think technical needs a more specific form. Technical how? Engineering degree? Great programmer? Car mechanic? Math major w/ background in machine learning? Chemist? Derivatives trader? All technical, but might not be useful for your startup.

There's a lot of different kinds of technical, so isn't it really someone that understands/has/can get the inputs necessary to produce the outputs necessary for your business to function that you want? Someone calling themselves "technical" is too much of a blanket statement, and it doesn't mean anything.

As Warren Buffett says, "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." So yes, a CEO should kind of know what they're doing wrt their business and what they're making and why. If it's an internet software business, that probably means web programming knowledge along with about 20 other related/unrelated skills.
>Of course, the replacement of ICANN will never happen

What's the reasoning behind this? I agree that we will likely not see a new body in charge of that which ICANN currently does, but there's no reason why a parallel system couldn't arise should DC go overboard with its malfeasant retardation.

ICANN has inertia, but if it continues to fail to protect the Internet, something else will pop up.
The Armed Geek
DNA, security and privacy
So what's causing this trend towards smaller, slower stars?

For a telescope in our solar system to see an exoplanet in transit, the planet's orbit must be lined up edgewise to us. "The probability for an orbit to be properly aligned is equal to the diameter of the star divided by the diameter of the orbit," a spokesperson for Nasa, explains.
...
Kepler's looking at thousands of stars, but because big planets are more likely to be found, they're going to come up early in the data.

They didn't get that quite right. While it's true that the transit probability is greater for large planets and that we'll find more of them, that doesn't explain a fractional increase in planets far from the star with time.

It's simpler. Planets far from the star take longer to go around. To confirm a transit and calculate the period, you need at least two, so the experiment must have gone on long enough for the planet to go around at least once. The long-periodicity planets are just beginning to show up because of this.
Everyone everywhere is subject to US law. On the extreme end of the spectrum, the US will send their military and remove your government if you are non-cooperative.
Conversation Escalation: Make Small Talk Sexy Review
Well I was going to respond to this, but I can't because I don't have tumblr account and I don't want one. So...premium aside, where is your e-mail?
The Rise of Pinterest : Pinterest Drives More Referral Traffic
Trend Micro Technical Support Provides Instant Solutions
Virus threats are present throughout cyberspace, for preventing these you need to install an effective antivirus program like Trend Micro technical support that will meet all the requirements of protecting your PC..
Chargify to Increase Prices In May, Asking For Customer Feedback
Google Bugs out on February 29
Really? I'm fortunate that my parents recently built a house and wired ethernet everywhere (I'm tired of helping my dad try to configure transcoding servers to stream to broken DLNA implementations that vary between the 3 different Samsung LCDs he bought within 3 months) and I'll be doing the same.
I agree with what you say, but this

> [. . .] while aisles of dust-collecting books are taking up precious public space nearby?

is unlikely to be helpful, and is likely to be harmful, for your message.