skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think it's possible to say for certain, because there are too many factors involved. Here's my mostly uneducated opinion on it though: we're seeing huge valuations and investor commitment in startups while at the same time seeing big co's throwing lots of money at each-other in lawsuits of various kinds. I think these are two symptoms of the same problem: that the consumer market is still stagnant, and will be for a while. Well, that coupled with commodities speculation and other unstable markets.

From an investor standpoint, I think startups are where the smart money is, if you have enough cash to play the game. So, of course capital is going to gather there, and it's going to keep doing it as long as it's the best place to put a few million dollars if you want to make a few million more.

So how long will it last? I think it'll last a while -- until the consumer markets start to improve and other investment strategies become stable again, and there are enough Groupons to seriously hurt the perception of the startup investment strategy.

There's no sign so far of real improvement elsewhere, and right now only the crazy people are the ones saying that startups look like a bubble. So, I'm guessing this will go on for at least a year or two.

Purely from a business standpoint, if you can get access to any of this capital, and if you're willing to play the game and give up some amount of control over your business, then you'd be foolish not to take the money. If nothing else, it might give you a tremendous edge over your competitors.

However, there are no free rides. The capital could come with a big risk: that when the market finally corrects again, your business has been spending beyond its revenues for a couple of years and the adjustment is so painful that it kills your business.

I think this really comes down to how you think; if you think in terms of, "what do I want to be doing in three years", then you should probably take the money and get rich and have a good time, and if the business collapses afterward, who cares? But, if you think in terms of, "what do I want to be doing in thirty years", and if your business is important to you -- then maybe still take some money, but be more conservative about it and make sure you can survive once everybody decides that startups are a bad investment again.

But I really don't know what I'm talking about, and I bet a bunch of folks are about to turn up and tell me so. :-)
It would be neat if you could add different color models to optimize for different kinds of color blindness.
Need iOS advice in the Bay Area
Hi there,

I just moved to SF 2 months ago and I am working on an iOS app as a side project - I am a marketing person (that's my day job) and so far I have tried to outsource it a few times with no success.
I think that part of the problem is me not being able assess the necessary skills that are required for such a project and ending up with unqualified developers.

Is there anyone in the Bay Area (I will drive to Palo Alto etc. if needed) with serious developing knowladge that can sit down with me, validate the idea, and help me put together the necessary requirements I should be looking for in a developer?
The app will involve integration with at least 2 API's (one is gmaps).

My email is israelycohen gmail.

Thanks!
I open new tabs with middle click (scroll wheel click). That works too. It also works for closing tabs.
Identify and avoid falling into an interrupt-driven time management work model
Every restaurant allows people to leave. Pointing this out does not make any particular restaurant stand out. But it does make websites stand out.

Also, we're not talking about privacy here. The question is whether signing up for an account is a lifetime commitment. A FB account essentially is a lifetime commitment; I think it would be good if people understood that. Apparently, a LinkedIn account isn't. That's certainly a plus in my book.
The pain of charging something regularly aside, solve the cable problem by getting a binder clip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binder_clip - I wasn't sure what they were actually called).

Clip it to your bedside table, desk - wherever - running cables through it. Voila, no more cables vanishing: they're held close by the clip, and most should have heads too big to fall through the gap between the clip and the desk :).
Why app developers should care about SSL pinning
It's not too shabby. It's rough around the edges still, and development is fairly slow. It crashes every few hours, but thankfully it recovers really well -- when you re-open it, all your buffers, saved or not, are there.

I've got a fairly large investment in TextMate bundles right now (lots of custom stuff that makes life super easy for me), so I've been sticking around through the nasty alpha phase.

Overall? It's alpha quality. Just what it says on the tin. But it's not so bad that you can't use it for daily use.
Does this approach have a name? It looks familiar, but I can't place it.
A Visual Explanation of CISPA
I agree whole heartedly! If they are trying to sell you on salary alone this recruiter isn't worth your time. You want someone that is gonna be intent in helping you gain what you want in your next job.
"Ownership" without either voting rights, or an explicit entitlement to a share of profits, seems like a contradiction in terms.
Why "www."?
The Ballmer peak is real
On OS X, you can use Command-click for that.
Listen up, parents: For toddlers (and chimps), the majority rules
Finding a business partner is just like finding a life partner. You have to start out with a business date and see if you can take the relationship to the next level. Running a business is all about conviction and hardwork. You will go through lots and lots of ups and downs and for better or worst your business partner will be there to share your burden. From your post, it appears you are a coder. Are you a good marketer as well? In partner - you definitely want to look for something that you don't have. That person should be bringing you something that you cannot do. If you need marketing help, try your local SCORE. They are usually very good and are completely Free.
The regex thing is amazing: http://www.rise4fun.com/Rex/
Here's a simpler approach that also supports either ST or IO: https://github.com/qpliu/dcpu16/blob/master/DCPU16.hs
How to Hit Bee Hives With Pine Cones
Only just noticed your reply. Thanks for the link, I enjoyed the art. :)
Will the Singularity be Launched in Russia?
Call for Comments: Strongly Typed Notifications [for MonoTouch]
I completely agree but i don't understand how these are opposites. I believe your comment speaks to my "mission aligned" point. My position is that even if I was mission aligned with Yvon, if he views his employees as cogs in the machine to his personal success I would never work for him, or with him.
Similar concept: I like to be able to generate terminals of varying-but-viewable color schemes. I'd like to tweak this to use more an HSV than RGB scheme.

#!/usr/bin/gawk -f

function ranint (x) { return int(rand() * x) }
function hex (x) { return sprintf("%02x", x) }

BEGIN {

mc = 96 # max color

# Seed RNG using nanoseconds
cmd="date +%N"
cmd | getline seed
close(cmd)
srand(seed)

r = ranint(mc)
g = ranint(mc)
b = ranint(mc)
printf( "rxvt -bg \x27#%s%s%s\x27 -fg gold -cr blue &\n", hex(r), hex(g), hex(b) )
}
Lack of fundamentals in web programming education
On a related note:

I really think analysts aren't looking at Google's income statement properly. I don't think Google is doing some kind of financial engineering, but their numbers doesn't look that great if you look closely:

1st Q 2011 GAAP net income $2.3B (adjusted to $1.8B after DOJ investigation, we'll use $2.3B anyway).

1st Q 2012 GAAP net income $2.89B

~$600 Million increase in GAAP net income.

BUT WAIT

1st Q 2012 Traffic acquisition cost totaled $2.51 billion

1st Q 2011 Traffic acquisition cost totaled $2.04 billion

~$500 Million increase in TAC

Google had to spend an additional $500 Million to earn an additional $600 Million net income. And it's the same thing if you compare other quarters YOY. The increase in TAC is almost equal to the amount of increase in net income. It's easier for Google to just withdraw money from it's own bank account and deposit it to another one and call it "net income". ;) jk
I see people tapping every keys on their keyboard :)
How about the top comment for each article included in the email?
Is the Ballmer Peak real? Drinking Alcohol May Enhance Problem Solving Skills
Got me. How do old-school C programmers ensure they don't accidentally use = when they mean == ?

There are actually some decent commercial PHP IDEs, believe it or not. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are able to Warn on loose equality comparisons. I don't have much direct experience with them though.
How Palantir catches bank fraud with big data
Really nice site! I love the UI. But please make it available for other countries too (me: Switzerland!)!
Thanks for the leanlaunchlab link.

True, the competitors argument is the first thing people would cite against continuous meaningful disclosure. The counterargments are
1) Not as important if everyone is disclosing on a level playing field.
2) More information supports better functioning markets==better decisions by the private sector. This is a huge benfit IMO.
3) Often a red herring for hiding weak management, not competitive information.
4) Truly sensitive information can be scrubbed or aggregated. There, a real job for a regulator besides napping.

Bonus point. The startups built around disclosure and analytics could be more interesting than the capital raising jam job companies that are going to be spawned.
Speculating here... but could it be that this is some reasonable safe and isolated method, where the malware does not interfere? (I'm not familiar at all with the malware).
For a novice - absolutely. There are very few languages that make it that easy to develop a web application. Developers that already have experience in another server-side language probably won't get as much value. The exception is PHP developers - you guys really need to try ColdFusion.
What is Big Data? More importantly, what is Big Data not?
Crowdsourcing Freecell
How to resign: by code
The complexity is already there. GH went to the trouble of doing it, why not add another button that sets a cookie. Compared to what they've done it's peanuts. Heck, if the website was here (https://github.com/github) they'd get a pull request.
NASA sent two Nexus S phones to the ISS for SPHERES to test sensors in orbit
Six of the defendants are people other than the Reddit commenters, apparently.
It's not that client-side applications are easier to reverse-engineer. If the application is all client-side, it can literally just be downloaded and reused by a would-be competitor.
What's pretty cool is that if you generate 1000+ the colors begin to become muted and look "foresty". Why's this?
Damn, how has no one thought of this before! Such a good idea. Nice site too.
Do you have any source for that last paragraph? Seems crazy
Net income is after subtracting TAC. Revenues increased by $2.1b, so Google paid $500m to acquire $2.1b in revenue. Of the $1.6b in "real" revenue growth, they made around $600m in profits. In other words their profit margin is roughly 40%.

Also if you're worried about such shenanigans, you can look at free-cash-flow, which was $3.1B for the quarter (astonishing for any non-oil/AAPL company).
Mentions to coups on Twitter
What I mean is that typically these types of companies drive to support all platforms (including web), diluting their ability to execute. Instagram focused on excellent execution for a narrower user base and won over a large number of users. Considering the demand for an Android app, they held out for a very long time, until they were able to bring the same level of execution to that platform.

This isn't "connections." This is called an investment. It is because those investors realized the potential here and invested in the company. Maybe I read it wrong, but your post made it seem like there is some kind of unfair advantage they had because they "knew a guy who knew a guy." Only after they proved their ability to execute did they take significant funding and gain those connections.
Javascript databases may not scale
EyeWire: You can help map the connections in the brain for neuroscience research
Maybe I just want to right-click and open the homepage in new tab. With this feature, I can't do this.
This answer sent shivers down my spine.
" or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website that is integrated with Facebook"

Sounds like clicking a like button on a site.
which violates your copyright.

Microsoft Word is entirely client-side so it too can literally just be downloaded and reused by a would-be competitor.
i don't think apple cares that much about enterprise
After two decades, it (still) doesn't suck.
The Funder Games - Hackademia
You can also type 'movie showtimes' into google and there is a nice interface with maps which shows movies and which theatres they're playing at.
No. According to David Drummond's postscript to http://investor.google.com/corporate/2012/founders-letter.ht...:

"Larry, Sergey and Eric have agreed to subject their shares to a Transfer Restriction Agreement. This agreement will maintain the same link between their voting and economic interests that exists today, even if they sell some of their non-voting Class C shares. If the founders or Eric wish to sell or transfer their non-voting Class C shares, a “stapling” provision in the agreement requires them to either sell an equal number of Class B shares, or convert an equal number of Class B shares into Class A shares. "
Firebase will turn into a chat company :p
They are only selling it if you want it without the ODb licence. I.e. you don't want to share-alike or attribute.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Hey, I just wanted to say that I've sent one or more of those links to dozens of people over the past few years.

I know "business guys" take a lot of shit on programming-oriented forums like this one, but as a technical guy myself, I found your post invaluable in understanding what "the other half" do. And having recently done some big launches (not quite a startup), I viscerally understand how important that stuff is, despite most engineers' derision.

Thanks for the posts, and best of luck with learning to program!
Is Linux Tycoon The Geekiest Game Ever?
Just to clarify.

Taken from http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter%20basics#Doe...

"Does Kickstarter take some percentage of ownership or intellectual property of things made through Kickstarter?

Absolutely not. Project creators keep 100% ownership of their work."

If I'm not mistaken in this context I'm pretty sure "percentage of ownership" is synonymous with equity. At least the way equity as a word is being used in the context of this conversation.

Edit: Clarification
WordPress and the Top 100
a) Geocoder only charges for their data if you need it without the restrictions of the ODbLicence it's released under (basically attribution, share-alike).

b) giving it away for free would not actually change anything legally. You can still get sued for copyright infringement even if you don't make any money on it.
Testing Percona XtraDB Cluster with Vagrant
Nice article about quick XtraDB Cluster setup
I am working on a hardware project and was in the same position you are.. Finding a partner came from an unexpected angle for me.

Since I had no idea what I was doing and I was learning everything from the web on the fly after a while I realized that just talking to the right people helps a lot.

I reached out to a few people that were in the same position I was a few years back and now running successful companies in the industry (old successful kickstarter projects are a great source but, just following the news in your field helps too) - I really reached out just to get advice and to learn from them.

One of them, really liked the idea and offered to help me bring it to market.. it was a no brainer for me, it's been 1.5 months since, he helped me get the patent pending and now working with me really hard to make this happen...

So to sum up I really think that if you just reach out, not even with the agenda of finding a cofounder/partner but just to get advice from the right people you'd be surprised how many people are willing to help, and, you might even find a partner that will be passionate about the idea just as you.
-because your goal is not find someone who's just qualified, you need someone who is also passionate about it at least as much as you are.

Hope that helps...
Kulisha - Read And Interact With Your Twitter And Facebook Streams
مسلسل نبض الحياة الحلقة 7 
مسلسل نبض الحياة الحلقة 7

مسلسل, نبض ,الحياة

http://video.qlbak.com/11124.html
All these are actually pretty cool!
Which is somewhat absurd, since most people agree to hundreds of ToS contracts without reading them.
You raise some excellent points, the kind that stimulate further thinking.

I still remember the bubble years vividly. A couple of indicators of the mania: patent firms were requiring that startups give them a 5% equity piece just to take on their work (this was in addition to paying full fees, i.e., it was akin to a toll charge just to get in); at least one prominent IPO law firm was taking 25% equity pieces for fee deferrals out to IPO (which followed in a compressed time frame of as little as 18 months). Both indicators show that there was a mad rush at the time to get quick sucker money from public purchasers and it had reached such an insane stage that even lawyers, of all people, had become as critical to the value proposition as the entrepreneurs and investors. That is because the value proposition had shifted. At its worst in that era, it was no longer the goal to build a great company. The goal was to package a company profile, fill it with the most extreme hype imaginable, and market it to the public markets via IPO so that both founders and investors could do a quick cash out while leaving the public purchasers holding garbage in the end. Of course, there were also solid offerings but no one can deny - and I certainly don't - that there was a high volume of trash as well.

That said, I believe that SOX was such a piece of heavy-handed regulation that it went too far in choking off the IPO markets. Yes, this means that private equity deals with the dubious stuff, which never sees the light of day in public markets. But, in recent years, it also has meant that a good number of very solid offerings have not seen the light of day either. In practical terms, what this has meant is that founders get short-changed in being left mostly with just the M&A option - this means that (in general) acquisition pricing is suppressed, quick turns of ventures become the rule, and all sorts of conditions are imposed by the acquirers in the deals that further lessen value for founders. The net result is a lessening of founder leverage at the M&A stage because there is no viable alternative for exit. Of course, some companies might choose to go for the long haul, make great profits, and distribute these to owners (as you suggest, and, yes, that is a good thing) but these are by far the exception and not the rule in the startup world.

As to crowdfunding, I have my own reservations and actually agree with your point, even strongly so. I am encouraged, however, by the idea of experimenting with new fundraising techniques that are made possible only by modern technology and I think it is well worth the experiment. If companies use the new provisions to try to load up with a lot of small shareholders from which they seek to get quickie money based on dubious offerings, the experiment will clearly fail in my eyes. I am excited about this but cautious as well.
Gathering for Gardner a conference for recreational mathematicians
Maybe because Software Update doesn't require entering the administrator password.
I'd say the best way would be to add a "No, I just want to get to the homepage!" option to the lightbox. No cookies or saving preferences, just a simple link.

But track how often that link is clicked, and if it really is a lot more than 1% of people, then you know it's a behaviour worth accounting for and can code in your preference tracking thing accordingly. If not, no time wasted.
I think you're thinking a little too short-term here. It seems like a jump in technology that could completely change the way people build apps.
Collaboration is hard. It's harder when you're not in the same room. You can bend over backwards to try to make remote collaboration productive, but the state-of-the-art is nowhere near as good as being in the same room, at least for some kinds of collaboration.
Darpa Selects Boston Dynamics' Humanoid for Robotics Challenge
Obvious solution is to make a charger for the shower, similar to the ones electric toothbrushes use. Since it lasts 7 days, we can surely hope you take a shower within that time period =)
The CommonTerms project (http://commonterms.net) is working on a common framework for easy previewing of TOS documents.

Your feedback is welcome!
Because creating an update named "Flashback Malware Removal Update" would admit that Macs can be infected with malware- something Apple has taken great lengths to gloss over.
Promotional Memo Book Archive
I hate to criticize a clearly awesome effort on MSFT's part but: why are those links not <a> tags? The result being a user is now unable to right click and open the examples in new tabs...
Yes, that's a problem too.
I normally wouldn't write a comment echoing something that's already been said, but I wanted to say thanks for writing this, and stress again to whoever else is reading this thread that this is a hugely important point that I think a lot of people miss. And as you pointed out, it can apply to any group prejudice, including gender, race, etc.
Downloading Microsoft Word does not include all the source code in addition to the application.
Can you try "Lucida Sans Unicode"?
maybe will just stick with the AES, then.

thanks for the info!
PDF: http://steve.io/backbone-fundamentals.pdf
You should work in their marketing department.
Requiring valid credit card may not by enough - it's still possible to walk around it by generating lots of virtual credit cards, even on the fly.
App Health Monitoring,Crash Analysis & lot more for Android Apps
http://www.touchdevelop.com/

nice, incentive to write code on mobiles finally. I guess the mobile revolution will came from microsoft after all. oh the irony.
Is it? Try http://facebook.com/help/delete_account (after deactivating). You're only worried about the depth of commitment because your data is there, i.e., privacy.
Same here. I didn't have nightly builds checked so I'm only just now getting the latest version, but it's been working fairly well. The bugs aren't enough to prevent me from using it for most things but there are times where it's annoying (large selections were an issue here) and I'll do it in TM1. We'll see how build 9090 does right now...
Maybe this is old news, but I really like Om's blog layout. Content is front and center with good typeface and size. Social buttons are easily found but desaturated so as to reduce distraction. Commenting isn't locked in to one auth system and encourages useful discussion. Does anyone know if this is a blog theme or is it custom made?
Twitter informs Fame they are violating TOS
dpark,
other than maybe voting rights, isn't it the same as if Google doubled their Goog shares?
Do you have any reference for that ? (mathematical models of color blindness) ?
project site: http://play-fame.com
Being a Vulcan: no emotions makes recognition & decision-making difficult
Can you point me to something that shows this? I know font family declarations with multiple fonts will fall back but I've never heard of this before. FWIW, the site only declares one typeface "Lucida Grande" so I assume to browser is falling back to the default Sans-serif on windows.
I emailed Andy to see if it's real. Haven't heard back.