skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wish HN users would submit the actual content, rather than having to click through Mashable or TechCrunch. I'm not going to enrich them by clicking on their ads, anyway. Just point to the original content, thank you very much.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3789022
I don't think that was ever the requirement. I can't even imagine text written only in that form. There's a nearly complete lack of general understanding of what 'passive voice' means, and if you told someone to rewrite an essay to use only passive, I'm pretty sure the result would have non-passive sentences in them. (See http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3876 for the failure of a recent attempt.)

I think the requirement was that people should not use the first person pronoun. Consider this 1968 commentary in JAMA, http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/203/4/283.extract : "When a psychiatric journal published an article in which the author used the first person singular throughout, the editors apologized in a footnote for this departure from "normal" journal practice."

Those who didn't ignore the requirement responded by using the passive voice, as in "the temperature was measured", or circumlocutions like "the authors measured the temperature". People saw a side-effect - passive voice - and thought that that was part of the 'impersonal' writing style of science.
I created my first website (on its own domain, hosting etc), when I was 15 and it involved selling icons on my desktop for $25/each. The buyer would then email me a picture which I converted into an icon, before displaying it on my desktop.
The desktop was then replicated onto the website and I coded it so that the icons were linked to the particular website when you clicked on them.

It sounds lame but, it was profitable and I sold around 5 or 6 of them.
Can you link to anyone besides GoDaddy? I'm sure you've noticed the many reasons around the tubes lately on why not to use them.
Sure, let's agree that an amazing developer can build an amazing prototype for $99 and scale it.

The problem comes here: "guide you on submitting it to the app store." Good luck getting that to be scalable, easy, or worth your time/effort. I've run clients through this process. I've gone through it myself many times. It is tedious, complicated, and full of technical jargon. If someone could simplify the process so that a client can set that up in under 1 hour - I will subscribe to that service.

On second thought, maybe I should pay him the $99 to run my clients through the sign up process...
Great advice. Launch early does not mean throw crap at a wall at hope it sticks. You do still need to make something that represents at least some of the function of your initial vision. Really you should make simple version and have a soft launch (not a ton of press) and when you actually "launch" it won't matter that you were out there with a half finished product because no one knew about you anyway. don't code locked in your basement make a demo and then get out there and show it to people and get feedback.
> There remain plenty of places, even in America, where internet access is
> limited and a young student in particular may not have the resources to
> get consistent and frequent internet access. Similarly, there are places
> where the libraries are not accessible in a practical way.

Ok, I'll concede that there may be cases where it is impossible for a determined individual to learn as much as they want. But in the majority cases, I think the old adage "if there's a will, there's a way" remains applicable.
That might be in the cards. I'm trying to make the inflection point between dirt cheap and impulse purchase and $99 seems to catch a lot of attention.

Like I mentioned, a lot of this is trial and error, but we all have to start somewhere.
I'm sorry, was there a point? All I see is a series of assertions. (Most of which agree with my ill-considered prejudices, but....)
This is an awesome post. Thank you for this. Thinking about a start-up as an experiment, not a business, until it succeeds is the biggest takeaway.

That said, there is some truth to the fact that you need to love it before you can let others see it. It has to be clear to you why you yourself want to use it. We have gone out on many launches. Alpha, Beta, and now launching to the world on 17th April.

None of those early launches stuck! Why? Because it was still a Work-In-Progress. And it felt that way to our early users. It felt like we had to make excuses when presenting the product to friends and early adopters.
Sounds like a plan. Thanks for the ideas!
Here's my take on a couple of them:

1. Syncing of Cookies

This sounds like it could be a security nightmare. Cookies contain login information for sites and allowing another device to sync these could open you up to a compromised login.

2. Sematic Search

If I need to qualify "apple" as a fruit (instead of a company), then I can just google for "apple fruit". DuckDuckGo adds suggestions on their SERP but I honestly don't find it that useful.

3. Simple file-sharing

I agree on this one. Sharing large files is a nightmare.

4. Decent Text editor

Text editors are such a personal taste. Some people want Eclipse while others want VIM. I think OS makers are better off having third party vendors handle this.
Frere-Jones (I think it was him?) recently gave a talk about HFJ's web font strategy. My understanding is that it's going to be idiosyncratic.
Lesson 5 and 6 are CSS "Part I and Part II"...I'm assuming these are introductory and early-intermediary lessons aimed at relative beginners? And so Lesson 7 is "Organization in Django"? Managing a MVC framework seems like too big of a jump for a HTML/CSS beginner.
If comments can stand purely on their own merits, then one person's opinions must be equal to another person's — otherwise something outside of the comment matters. If the only thing that matters is what you say and not the actual expertise that causes you to say it, then your doctor telling you "You need to go see a surgeon right away" is equal to a drunk bum telling you "You need to go see a surgeon right away." That is obviously not true. Thus comments cannot stand solely on their own merits. QED
About a year ago, my co-founders and I were talking about how difficult it is for real beginners to get started making web applications. Between setting up a development environment, learning how to program, configuring servers, etc., the entire idea can seem insurmountable to someone who's never done it before.

We brainstormed for a while, decided we would do a video series, and then went straight to creating videos that would teach absolute beginners how to go from nothing to deploying a site on DotCloud. Twifbook (our silly portmanteau) is the site that everyone who follows every single video will launch, live, to their own domain name (yes, we walk you through that as well).

I want to give a huge shout-out to CodeAcademy for doing an incredible job getting the general entrepreneurial community jazzed about programming. Our goal is to put a more practical spin on it--and get people using their programming knowledge to actually launch things.

Let us know what you think!
Why wouldn't Square want to work to make their payment platform accessible through multiple channels (NFC, their dongle, mobile-to-mobile, etc.)? Just as they should develop for many of the big software platforms, they will probably need to have product offerings that allow payments in multiple ways.
I would bet most of the windows voters use .NET, we use .NET in our main application layer.
What exactly makes you say they are dangerous? Genuinely curious. Certain kinds of programmer error?

(I haven't finished reading the guide yet... apologies if it's in there... but I'd say I'm pretty familiar with signals.)
GoDaddy is the default because it's what most people use.

You can change it by clicking 'change your preferred registrar' link below the red button on the confirmation dialog.
"After all, it is no longer the purpose of programs to instruct our machines; these days, it is the purpose of machines to execute our programs."

- Edsger Dijkstra

By extension, I think it's more important for us to think about our programs than the operating systems they run on.
Ask HN: Resources on Decompiler Theory
There are several well-known books on compiler theory (Dragon, Cooper / Torczon etc.), but I haven't had much luck in finding similarly well-recommended books on decompilers. Do you guys have any favorites?
How many users will you turn away? Do you think it will be a significant portion of your potential users? To be clear, don't you think it's worth having .05% of your total possible user base turned away so that you can understand what the other 99.95% want?
No more blind dates: Date.fm adds video chat to its mobile app
Hey, I actually figured out a way to fix this and will implement the change within the next several days. False positives should drop from around 10% to around 1% within two weeks.
IANAL, but does this violate the part of Apple’s iPhone Developer License Agreement that says “applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript”? The code is “written” in Objective-C, but it was “originally” not code at all.
Right, so bitcoin (and its alternative blockchains). But the fact that there's already plenty of alt-chains that the market values at neglible fractions of a bitcoin shows that copycat crypto-currencies won't easily disrupt the "network effect" of bitcoin and dilute its value, as many detractors used to argue.
Substance in semen slows aging
Traffic is less on weeks when it's not featured on HN :)
Thanks -- you can change the preferred registrar by clicking the 'change your preferred registrar' link below the red registration button.
PDA Nostalgia, Remembering Palm
I think this is an awesome idea. - while I agree with patio11, that there is risk - I think the author recognized this risk clearly in the post.

What would be interesting, as an experiment, would be to see if there is a way to build a larger app from a bunch of $99 app legos.

Break your app down to a range of small blocks that will all link together.

Buy out each block as you go and have money.

Maybe there are larger blocks available. Say - proof of UX concept for 99, core functions for 500, 99 additional change/feature, etc...
Because my dedicated server with a managed host is cheaper and more convenient than doing everything myself.

I use some cloud services, but not all. Nothing wrong with a hybrid solution.
Tacocopter? UberTaco is better and launching today
Tacocopter is vaporware, they never launched. Check out UberTaco...they've got a beta program on the way with tons of drones.
Pinterest Was a Pivot. Funded in 2009.
Depends on what the customer wants to do. When you're dealing with mobile apps, it's tricky to do distribution (especially with Apple) so if they want to put it on the app store, I'm more than happy to help them upload it or they can give me credentials to upload myself. However, that's only IF they want to upload it. These are very unpolished after all.

Every customer gets an archive of all assets once development is complete.
Kitchen Cabinets Toronto
Kitchen Cabinets Toronto: WoodPecker Kitchen Designs Inc - kitchen contractors offers design & renovation services including countertops and custom cabinets, to Mississauga, Etobicoke & Toronto.
I cringed when they called them "beginner" languages.
Pinterest Co-Founder Paul Sciarra Leaves, Ben Silbermann Officially Takes On CEO
Using Joda-Time and Hibernate
Interesting. There was a post about different data analyzed towards Benford's law which caught my attention - about a year ago I think. Would you mind elaborating what you mean by 85% of the problem can be fixed in relations to zipf's law (I thought I was aware of the law, but perhabs I'm missing some intuition since I don't quite get your point?).
There were multiple Android prototypes as the OS was designed to run on different form factors from touch-less candy bars to devices like the HTC Dream that had a full touch screen.

Here's another prototype:
http://www.osnews.com/img/25264/android-phone-touchscreen.jp...
http://www.osnews.com/img/25264/android-phone-history.jpg
showing the latter configuration.

The fact that the myth of Android being a Blackberry clone until the iPhone came out is a text book example of something being repeated so many times that people just think it's true. Of course there was a prototype that looked like the Blackberry but it was just one prototype. There were obviously others.
What are you using for payments?

I want to suggest the site to several friends, but don't feel completely comfortable with the current payment form/lack of transparency. Looks like a great idea for people with an idea but no experience developing.
Glad you like it -- I built it to solve one of my own major pain points: it's very hard and time consuming finding quality available domain names for the products I build.

As far as the search bar positioning, I'll play around with it and see if an A/B test or two indicates it has an impact. Appreciate the recommendation.
Since I always want my app name to match the .com, I rely on this site. Keep up the great work.
Over the last fifteen years, I have taken full responsibility for my own education.

Reading has played the most fundamental role in my education. I have always loved learning from well-written books. At times, it might have been a disadvantage to not have a mentor to guide my progress or to answer questions. I'm certainly not a "gifted" learner and I have often spent long hours trying to understand a page of a book. But it is always incredibly satisfying when I finally do.

I think the most rewarding thing about taking responsibility for your own learning is gaining both humility and confidence. I am humbled by the amount of things I still have yet to learn in the enormous field of computer science. But I have also gained an enormous confidence in my _ability_ to learn. I know, from fifteen years of experience, that I can learn anything I want to as long as I apply myself.

Another benefit is that books are far cheaper than classrooms, they're portable, they go at your pace (you can turn the pages as quickly or slowly as you want), and you can keep them on a shelf to refer to for the rest of your life. And e-books are even better!
Is it time to give Windows Phone a try?
While I agree with the concept, I also agree with blindhippo saying that the author doesn't know enough to know what they don't know.

"A self-taught man usually has a poor teacher and a worse student." - Henny Youngman
Just because GoDaddy is what most people use doesn't mean it's what most people should use. On top of all the SOPA nonsense, GoDaddy has remarkably sexist and degrading ads. I'd encourage you to set the default registrar to be a different registrar by default - maybe Namecheap?
When the average consumer has to choose between two goods they don't understand, they always base their decision on price. As they become more savvy, they begin to understand why the market has other, more complex or expensive, options. SaaS may have been a success in the short term, but our industry tends to have centralization/decentralization cycles. We seem to be in a centralization phase right now, but the downside of that is well-known, it just hasn't manifested in a catastrophic way recently. Once it does, I'd expect a large (but not total) exodus from SaaS back to run-this-on-your-own-hardware solutions like we've had in the past.
To answer your questions:

1) Public urination is a ticket (got one in college, many years ago).

2) Speeding is a ticket unless you are going excessively fast (100mph in 30mph zone; these numbers vary among states).

3) Too drunk on the street will get you taken to the drunk tank to sober up/ sleep it off (not jail).
I think the domain of validations that are independent of server resources is larger that you express. There's the whole "consistency" check - if X is checked, Y and Z must be filled out etc. Also, check-digit checks on values such as ISINs[1] (real-life example).

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Securities_Identi...
Thanks. Me too :)
Republicans Preach Opportunity That Factually Just Don’t Hold Water
You didn't ever try running a different window manager?
Show HN: Startups, this is how design works.
Very true.. But often it's the service providers that think about these hard problems daily, talk to their customers, and attempt at making the world a better place by building great products. In the process it's really hard not to form opinions about the future. :)

Disclosure: I work for Iron.io
The authors of the bill know very well that it won't pass constitutional muster. That's exactly the point; this is akin to the door-in-the-face technique. Parts of the bill will be struck down, but parts will remain and the envelope will be pushed. Thus, the war on freedom and on speech will continue to be won by our governments.
Hang on...

WAT?!

SharePoint is a CMS mixed with Document Management Systems with a sprinkle of Workflows plus a platform for small (but limited features) web-apps.

Some companies chose SharePoint because of the features and the idea of avoiding "NIH" or writing web-apps from scratch.

I think this is where the "hackers" (or geeks, whatever, hackers aren't hackers anymore these days) mindset don't jelled well with internal IT systems: we all want to develop something from scratch the way we want it, the way we know, the way we hope it will be.

Once your users are asking features of Excel to be implemented in your web-apps that use Ext-JS GRID as front-end you'll know what you're signing for...(and at that point pulling a 37signals makes you look...let's just say less useful...)
Motorola MOTOACTV software update allows for pairing with non-Moto devices
The title is a bit misleading. OS/2 (especially Warp) wasn't a failure from a technical standpoint. Rather, IBM treated it like a redheaded stepchild which detracted from its core systems of mainframes and AS/400s, because--you know--this pc on every desktop thing is just hype.

As an aside, this reminded me of an old Dilbert from that timeframe (mid-1995):
http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/...
How to Hack the YC Application
The assumption that people who pay $99 for a prototype are "cheapskates" who don't understand mobile development completely ignores the fact that the market for mobile development is growing like crazy in so many different directions and is at such an incredible premium right now that the bottom end of the market has been pretty much ignored (if you are a great iphone developer right now why would you even bother?)

But it is going to get huge. Think about web developers in 1997. They could charge a premium because there were few of them and few out of the box options (ie ugly template websites where you pay $50 for a full ecommerce site, 99designs, etc.).

Starting out doing consulting means you get to know a part of the market that most people are too snobby to touch (the whole "talking to your customers" thing) - though they are just as legitimate a customer segment as the people who will pay the egregious rates for custom.
MIT scientists code self-sculpting sand
We're using stripe. It's by far our favorite solution. Thanks for the comment though -- we'll add a note to indicate what we're using.
Thank you for answering. At the same time however, I'm not really sure what to think about that. On the one hand future proof is a massive win. On the other no rollbacks seems like a risky way to operate. I hope he keeps regular backups of the data files.
I've given this some thought, subcontracting isn't something I'm super familiar with but it's definitely worth looking into. Things are way too early to tell yet.
$1B - liabilities and other business considerations. $100k in cold hard cash as a good will gesture (in addition to the code contributions, and validation of open source as a business model) and it's not enough. Is this the kind of additude and graditude we want to show?

Unbelievable.
> An added side benefit has been how much tougher the MBP is. I've had it for two years now and it shows no signs of needing replacement.

MBPs are not that tough though, I've a colleague who really shouldn't be left alone with machines, his MBA (which he brings everywhere and takes little care of) did suffer quite a bit, it's horribly dirty and has quite a few dents. A Dell half the price would probably be dead already, though. But he'd probably benefit from a Toughbook C1, that's a step up in ruggedness, MB's aluminum is nice but not that solid.
> I love learning, and that’s why I’ve never been a great student.

And probably a poor employee. In the real world they pay you not to learn or to innovate but to do something. Usually, that something is something you have done many times before, that way you can do it faster and thus more cost effectively for them. The closer you become to machine the more profitable you become. That is the biggest hurdle the smart students face in the real world.
> The only problem so far is - once a year they need to use free windows-only application, that doesn't run in WINE, to calculate taxes. They just go to neighborns for a few hours.

If you're in the US, I've been using the web app tax software and it's been great. Nothing to install locally and my progress is always saved. Maybe not for you if you are in a complex tax situation, but if your life is simple doing it online is incredibly easy.
Disagree, because the context and discussion very much related to people working in various subsets of tech industries. The problem of sexism in, say, IT services varies tremendously from that in, say, advertising.
Most of our clients are using SharePoint and while I'm not working in SP-related projects, I have not heard complains from them regarding downtimes or data loss so far. In fact, they're all happy using SharePoint.

I can't comment on that particular issue.
I think you are right, we mostly agree on this. It is just the way you refer to visual design and usability evaluation what was confusing me. They both come with the design endeavor, but being able to evaluate its impact and to execute based on this is not exclusive to designers. Thanks for the clarification.
Would you have considered it related to HN if the company would have been making beer, or hovers, or cars, or whatever?

Of course not. But it wasn't about any of those things, it was about a tech startup where "all bad-ass code monkeys around the globe can communicate, brag, build their street cred and get found". It's a site both made and used by exactly the type of people that make up the HN audience. How could it not be relevant?

And I'm confused by your comment about political discussions- the GeekList discussion certainly wasn't political.
I hear many raving reviews about the OS so I maybe I'd try it. Except that I refuse to use a device with screen resolution of 480×800. And to think that the limitation was set by Microsoft is almost bizarre. I think they tried to make it easier for developers, but as a user I don't want to go back to low res. Other users might not care though.
My first non-academic project is www.pizooki.com

I made the site first in ASP.Net when I was learning web dev (because I knew C#). Then I later learned PHP developing the site.

It's broken in a lot of places but surprisingly people are using it. $0 in revenue though.
There's a huge drop off in affiliate revenue from GoDaddy to the next most popular registrar. Making Namecheap default would inconvenience most the users and cause a substantial drop in my revenue.

I appreciate where you're coming from, but I'm not sure the pros of switching outweigh the cons.
"Iterate, iterate, iterate" -- for me, its the most important part. I think sometimes people just drown themselves into the perfectionist cycle.
Weekend Challenge: OyunJS - Turn-based game server on Node.JS
Microsoft didn't "just pull support" from NT. The lifecycle was pretty well defined.
Why I'm a futurist. Why you should be, too.