skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How do you sell your startup?
We've got a startup that is going great, the numbers are growing exponentially, we have raised over $10M and we are getting VC interest for even more.

The problem is if we raise money it could make M&A nearly impossible. My VCs don't care, they are happy for us to keep taking money.

It is not that we don't believe in the company, we do. We just would rather cash out and change our lives now if possible than go for the moon and risk another few years of hard work to end up with nothing.

Have any of you been in our shoes before? Any advice?
Thanks, I was thinking about writing a Scala version too.

Concerning verbosity I believe Scala to be a more compact language. The point of Kotlin though - according to JetBrains - is to make Java more safe and concise but simpler than Scala.

That said, I/O handling in the Kotlin example can probably be reduced by 2-3 lines using alternative functions from Kotlin stdlib.
I wish I had made newlines more significant in JS back in those ten days in May, 1995.

I wish Brendan was not as skilled a hacker as he was. It's an amazing achievement that he produced Javascript in such a short time. Unfortunately it ended up having the sorts of flaws that are inevitable with such a timeframe, yet it was "good enough" so that everyone decided it was easier to live with the flaws than break compatibility and fix them. If the initial version of Javscript had been worse, we might be using a much better version today.
Yeah, the cat site is coming soon. We wanted to see if/how this was going to work first.
I've invented the beer powered helicopter. It's great. It's a helicopter and it runs on beer. I've a cool drawing of it that works, in the drawing.
Remind HN: Good Luck With YC Application Results Tomorrow
Results day is tomorrow & we've all been hacking away at our ideas!

Good Luck guys... hope you get in!
Probably 90% of companies' blogs don't link to the actual main site. If you encounter a startup via their blog, you have to manually go to the address bar and amputate parts from the URL.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. A majority of the JS code out has semicolons. Key individuals on the committee responsible for furthering the development of the language recommend always using it. Not including semicolons has shown to result in code errors. It can also introduce build errors when your code is minified. It can also create mental overhead when other developers try to read your code. I just don't get it. Why fight it? Then again, I'm coming from a C/Java background and they just seem so natural to me.
Love the idea. I see the initial challenge being that there are many different breeds and many dog-lovers just have very distinct taste.

For example, my ex absolutely adores the pugs/bulldogs family, but has a mysterious distaste for poodles. A comparison limited to the same breed will give you better ratings, but also makes it harder till you hit critical mass.
A billion reasons to beware of the latest dotcom bubble
Yeah, I agree with the above poster, horrible idea. Most cops in my experience aren't what the internet makes them out to be. They do their job because they want to serve and protect citizens and having to "change the power dynamic" and "avoid being talked down to" is just silly and jumping out of your car will put cops on edge very quickly. You don't want that. Most of the time they pull someone over it's because you've done something to look shady or you're actually breaking the law.
Blogger Outraged by ‘Silicon Valley’ Apparently Wanted a Reality Show of Her Own
The #1 thing that'll improve most people's workflow is learning how to use readline effectively. I'm continually amazed by how many people who use shells daily use the arrow keys to navigate around, don't know about common things like C-r to reverse-search through history and other commands that make editing on the command-line a breeze.
so, did you?
Good tip. It seems to be a common thread. I'm still make incremental improvements on the site just about every day.

I'm planning to replace the ads on the main page with incentive prompts to get people to add their own pics. Nothing mandatory, just something saying, "Hey - I bet your dog is cute too. It only takes 30 seconds to add them."
Don't have any advice to offer, but I love the video on http://www.dollarshaveclub.com/
What's your reasoning? Nowhere in the KS guidelines does it say you're not allowed to receive spam, only that you're not allowed to generate spam for your project. Please advise?
I agree, but I think this could be a good way to get raw material.
its funny how people want to think that the iphone was the first smartphone. Palm, Blackberry, and Nokia offered several smartphones and touch devices. The biggest difference was multitouch, capacitive screen and convincing people to buy one.
Show HN: Simple Email Obfuscation JS-powered with CSS fallback
Cheaper printable circuitry is going to bring down hardware construction costs. You may even be able to prototype at home or in the office, which is great for makers.

Also given that hardware backdoors are one of the outstanding difficult threats to assess for computer security, I wonder if this technique could be applied there somehow.
Great, now in addition to people who eat fast food, apply make up, play sing-along, tend to their children, talk on the phone, text message, and nod off in the car, we have to deal with people BLOGGING in their cars?

It's gotten to the point where I refuse to drive anything but a performance car because the kind of shit you have to deal with as a person who actually FOLLOWS the rules requires the ability to accelerate, brake, and handle better than all the idiots on the road who are totally distracted, don't signal or stay in the lanes, and drive 40mph on the fucking highway.

The only way to reclaim your commute is to not commute.
yeps. almost correct. scene started with c64. pc scene / first demo came out from future crew : second reality. also in 1996, smash designs created second reality 100% same fx via C64 (:
I agree with this. I waited 30 seconds just looking at ads while the page was 'loading'. After that I just left because I felt you were more interested in show me ads than content.
clearly, the so called tech bloggers, have an agenda. this explains her childish public reaction.
“THE MACHINE-TOOLED HAPPYLAND” by Ray Bradbury 1965
A good article would have taken the actual source material "The Happiness Hypothesis" and not filtered it through antisec/anticorp propaganda. It's nice that they pointed out the general idea that doing what you love as your job doesn't always work out, but jesus fucking christ, there's so many jobs out there I can guarantee you there's a way to do what you love and make money off it and not grow to hate it. Nothing is set in stone.
In their recent blog entry they say that it is, but in other countries you can sync up with your friends. In the US you can share rss feeds of what you have watched and me and my friends use that.
Oh...and I forgot to mention one more option is to join US Army and earn your citizenship through honorable service :)
I'm on a slow-ish Wifi connection at the airport. It's fast enough for YouTube streaming but not for your site. So far on your site I'm looking at an ad with two things that say "Loading..." underneath.

Using Chrome on MacBook.
Well, yeah. That's a large part of the reason I don't like the hype around JavaScript.

"Here is a feature. Don't ever use it. Here is a simple way to do this. This way is dumb, use a 2321 line library instead. There is nothing wrong with X, you just chose one of the 60 wrong ways of using it."

I don't want to think about this kind of stuff, I have enough to worry about as it is. JavaScript is all right as a language of the present, but I really don't want it to be "the future", like many people paint it to be.
I'm not saying swearing doesn't have its place. However, it is not in a professional arguement.
Indeed, it is a fatal flaw when a language is unable to handle syntax that doesn't correspond to its defined grammar.
Couldn't sleep last night thinking about it!!
Oh, if anyone cares: The site was built with jQuery and Knockoutjs with ASP.NET web service backend. The push updates come from a ASP.NET module I'm working on and will open source soon.

The design was done by a fantastic designer JR Harrell from Drawnn.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1893686

Mentioned in http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/pages/20101122.

JS is becoming the compiler target "bytecode", without needing verifiers or new and complex standards to be adopted by multiple browser vendors.

JS has gaps as a target language, for sure. We are working on filling them (e.g. 64-bit and other int types).

These are easy bugs to fix compared to creating a new, portable, and future-friendly bytecode standard in addition to keeping up with a competitive JS engine. Since JS is incumbent, it's hard for any browser vendor to justify a new thing with zero users at first, and too much risk of non-standardization or JVML-like albatross status.
But Postel's law doesn't really help: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html
Man, I hate people who are successful doing what comes naturally to them.
Anyone else notice the kid in the classroom who is supposed to be participating in the Mars landing simulation but instead has his helmet off and is drawing an unflattering picture of the teacher?

That's one prediction that was dead on and will probably still be accurate in thirty years: kids will always be kids.
“…Explicit is better than implicit…
Readability counts…
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it…”
— The Zen of Python

Ironically, the Zen of Python supports using semicolons in JavaScript. Also, both sides come off like children, but at least Crockford's opinion seems a little less selfish. It's like politics, with the difference being in their premises so they'll never agree.

Also, why can't I (or anyone else) resist commenting on this rather pointless debate? I am disappointed in my weakness.
The difference is that if you forget your key, you know that you forgot your key, and you have to actively call the superintendent to have them "save your bacon." With ASI, you might never know that you had forgotten your key.
I haven't really tried it yet but I wonder if you might get ugly artifacts if the alpha channel is lossy. Maybe it has to be exact.
My accelerated method is to do both at the same time: outsource and learn to code. My very first project ever which was a relatively simple PHP site that I outsourced. I learned HTML, CSS and JS as a freelancer in the mean time. Once I got the code base I learned how the front-end works with the server quickly. Doing so I was able to build new features whenever I wanted at a reasonable pace after like 3-4 months.

That's just the tip-of the iceberg though. There're so many programming discipline that newbies need to learn if they're serious about building a great product and being a project manager.
Don't be a condescending prick, especially when you're the one who's wrong.

Stop, just stop. This isn't right/wrong, because we don't even seem to be having the same conversation. Everything you talk about assumes and depends on having a server and server-side logic. Your arguments all amount to "I can totally do client-side-only, I just have to do X on my server". Like:

Which is then sent to the _server_ and put into a server-side key-value store with the username.

Right, so your solution for Firebase is that they should have more server-side stuff? Good, we agree. Wait:

We were specifically on the topic of adding price validation to a freemium Firebase application; you still have yet to explain what's stopping me from leaving the bulk of my code as-is and using AJAX off my _server_ only for the price validation.

What's stopping you is that in this scenario you don't have a server! So if you want to add this, you have to now add a server. Now you've got your MVP running on Firebase, and a new server-side setup, just to add a feature? Seems like a disaster.

(To be fair, Firebase are talking like they'll make some private quasi-sessions that could act as servers, but setting up conversation between them and the clients sounds like a recipe for callback spaghetti, at the very least.)

The point the OP, some other posters here and I am trying to make is that client-side sounds great -- it's way simpler, for sure -- until you start to think about security. Because, frankly, security depends on things not being in the client's control, and that means servers.

If you disagree with that, please email me, because this conversation is now adding no value to HN.
This is precisely the same thing as a quine. A Lisp program able to "introspect" its own source contains somewhere in the binary a quoted representation of the source code in some format (stored as a list instead of a string if we aren't worried about whitespace, comments and line breaks). Of course, with Lisp, you essentially bundle the compiler or interpreter with the binary. At any rate, the first known quine was apparently written in a derivative of ALGOL, not LISP.
Reminds me of this talk about creativity by John Cleese[1]. The tl;dw is creativity is about getting into an open, uninhibited state of mind where new or risky ideas flow freely. Then getting into a closed, more focused state that allows you to implement the idea without getting distracted. Being able to switch between the two modes is key to creative problem solving.

I guess for me, alcohol promotes the open mode, but pretty completely wrecks the closed mode.

[1] https://twitter.com/#!/Renessa47/status/190802692245950464
Not to mention the vital work of the security services in the international war on dog mess

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/may/22/localgovernmen...
How do you count cardinality of very large datasets efficiently in Python?
I'd love to know how they plan to block porn "by default." Either they'd have millions of people scanning requested images in real time or have a ton of false positives. Tumblr and Reddit, for example, are riddled with porn but are not "porn sites" per se. The same goes for many forums.

A UK judge recently sentenced a 21-year-old college student to 56 days in jail for a series of "racially offensive comments" written in series of tweets referring to a popular football player.

A lot of the laws outlined relate to filtering, tracking, and true violations of free speech. I think this example is poorly mixed in, however. It's certainly a British approach (and one I find many Americans friends have trouble getting their heads around) but having personal harassment as a criminal offence in the UK is a good thing, IMHO, and doesn't even come close to the problems of "free speech" (which is not absolute in any territory) - it's the textual equivalent of punching someone in the face.
We have one: Java. We know how that went in the browser though..
Yeah, standard procedure is

1. "X is stupid" post
2. "But I like X" posts
Of course other buildings simply don't let you leave without your key, but here at the JS Arms we feel that would be way too complicated.
If javascript were any worse, it may have been sidelined entirely before it had a chance to improve, and we would be using proprietary application stacks like iOS even more heavily for client side development.
How tiny Estonia stepped out of USSR's shadow to become an Internet titan
FBInstant Search Engine
required reading: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/541 - don't know how relevant it is now, but still a good read.
I've talked to many lawyers... there is no way to do it since the visa is also expired and I'm already in the states. So options 1+2 are out the door. So is #3... and as for #4, I don't believe I can since you need a SS, otherwise I would of done it.

Thanks for the suggestions tho
If it's anything like the "Email is dead" one, we've got some more coming. We need at least two arguing for Crockford (one with a liberal amount of "hipster" name-calling), someone arguing for @fat, and @fat eventually explaining himself (because it would be a cold day at Oracle before Doug Crockford said anything other than "you suck").
I suspect it is a matter of background, as you imply. Twitter has its roots in Rails, and I believe they also use Scala heavily. Both Ruby and Scala use newline as a statement terminator. GitHub is another Rails shop that avoids semicolons in JS. Zepto.js recently removed the semicolons from its code base, and its author was a core Rails developer.
Learn Backbone.js: Video Tutorial Series
I'm on a relatively fast connection (16mb down) and it took a significant amount of time to load for me (Macbook Pro using Safari). Perhaps enabling caching on your server will help speed things up some.

The site looks good otherwise. Good luck!
What you're seeing is what happens when all the active matches have been voted on and are over. The client is basically waiting for more contests to be created.

Yeah, didn't expect front page of HN. The contests are typically first dog to get 5 votes wins, but there are like 500 people connected at once right now.

I just changed that to 50, so now each contest should last longer and solve the problem...I hope.
I think it was a reasonable decision at the time. The idea was that JavaScript was not going to be some language people wrote hundreds of thousands of lines of code in, and that the target audience would become frustrated if the language didn't "help" them. For example, if JavaScript truly were to always require semicolons at the end of lines then that means this would be a syntax error:

<a onClick = "someFunc()" > ...

> Error, missing semicolon after ")" on line 1

That could get pretty annoying pretty fast, and simple little event handlers like these were probably the main use of JavaScript for the first x years. It also matched the existing philosophy of HTML which was to really go out of its way to make sense of whatever was in the file.

Now of course, the constraints are different: people want to use JavaScript for huge codebases and serious projects, so it makes sense that these decisions are no longer appropriate.
Large US cities have plenty of neighborhood markets / corner stores with fresh fruit and vegetables and meat. I live next to 3 of them in West LA, within walking distance. SF has even more. NY has countless. And yes, they are much more preferable and expensive than supermarkets. The markets in California usually have world class wine and produce, since our state grows millions of tons of the stuff.

But yeah, most American suburbs don't have any of that, which is what you're describing.
Web, the people
Unfortunately for JSMin, browsers attempt to implement at least the ECMAScript specification, not just "the good parts."
5 startup lessons to learn from Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram
Right. To avoid confusion, I updated the post so the sentence reads

"ASI is (formally speaking) a syntactic error correction procedure."
So I downloaded libwebp-0.1.3-windows-x86.zip, there is cwebp.exe inside.

I can't figure out how to compress PNGs losslessly into WebP.

These are the options it gives:

Usage:
cwebp [-preset <...>] [options] in_file [-o out_file]

If input size (-s) for an image is not specified, it is assumed to be a PNG or JPEG file.
Windows builds can take as input any of the files handled by WIC
options:
-h / -help ............ short help
-H / -longhelp ........ long help
-q <float> ............. quality factor (0:small..100:big)
-preset <string> ....... Preset setting, one of:
default, photo, picture,
drawing, icon, text
-preset must come first, as it overwrites other parameters.
-m <int> ............... compression method (0=fast, 6=slowest)
-segments <int> ........ number of segments to use (1..4)
-size <int> ............ Target size (in bytes)
-psnr <float> .......... Target PSNR (in dB. typically: 42)

-s <int> <int> ......... Input size (width x height) for YUV
-sns <int> ............. Spatial Noise Shaping (0:off, 100:max)
-f <int> ............... filter strength (0=off..100)
-sharpness <int> ....... filter sharpness (0:most .. 7:least sharp)
-strong ................ use strong filter instead of simple.
-partition_limit <int> . limit quality to fit the 512k limit on
the first partition (0=no degradation ... 100=full)
-pass <int> ............ analysis pass number (1..10)
-crop <x> <y> <w> <h> .. crop picture with the given rectangle
-resize <w> <h> ........ resize picture (after any cropping)
-map <int> ............. print map of extra info.
-d <file.pgm> .......... dump the compressed output (PGM file).

-short ................. condense printed message
-quiet ................. don't print anything.
-version ............... print version number and exit.
-noasm ................. disable all assembly optimizations.
-v ..................... verbose, e.g. print encoding/decoding times

Experimental Options:
-af .................... auto-adjust filter strength.
-pre <int> ............. pre-processing filter
The back button is pretty broken after voting
Why startups are totally worth your time
Just some feedback - it's something minor but it bugs me every time, I'm not sure about other people. Every new competition in addition to the type of competition dropping down (Best dressed, cutest etc) it also shakes from side to side.

I just find the shake unnecessary and a little distracting.
Over the top is my middle name. I'll have to tone it down. Thanks!
Heh, I was waiting for this post. Coming in the next 24 hours:

- "Why I use minimal semi-colons in Javascript"

- "ASI is broken but I like it"

Honestly I'm shocked at the defense of this practice (of ASI "abusage"). It speaks loudly to Jacob's (fat@githib) ranking of ego-stroking and showboating over creating readable code, particularly for a library "Designed for everyone, everywhere" [1].

I'm confounded that such an attitude can survive in a large engineering organization like Twitter. Google's style guide [2] specifically prohibits this ("Always use semicolons.") and yes, this is the same standard we use internally for writing Javascript.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. FFS, just get over yourselves and your hipster bullshit and use semi-colons.

[1]: http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

[2]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javascript...
Thank you, this is actually a very finely crafted criticism. I appreciate it greatly. I haven't been around very long here (about 24 hours).

My purpose here was to lend credibility to Rachel's claims from my own experience with a mutual cyberstalker and ask for help in the form of feasible advice, recommendations on investigative techniques to help us build our case against him so we can (finally) get the law involved in a meaningful way, and possibly even find some humans who might know a thing or two about tracking douchebags on the Internet that may be willing to lend their services once we can establish credibility in their eyes.

HOWEVER, like an idiot, I lemming'd right into defending Rachel's credibility on this forum, slashdot, reddit, and didn't focus on my original objective. Productive would have been getting inspiration for new tactics and strategies, since we've hit the wall and we're out of ideas.

"And you know what? Maybe Rachel should consider taking a breather, or not replying to trolls, or maybe just trying to get along and be a friendly person regardless of some people being dicks."

Yes, this has been my main argument to her regarding her behavior. None of these posts she's made were coordinated with anyone else in our group. She's pissed some people off because of it. I've explained to her that she needs to grow up and get her shit together so she's not a walking troll magnet.
Continuous Information - The Jenkins Community Newsletter
The newest issue of the Jenkins newsletter, Continuous Information, is now available for your enjoyment. Read about the latest goodness and upcoming happenings in the world of Jenkins continuous integration...