skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here is one simple attempt to explain the value of many of the startups that are otherwise dismissed by such naysayers, although coming from a heavy tech background I am the first to admit that some of these startups are incremental and featurettes at best.

We are in the age of sensors and A/D conversion. Many (not all) startups today do operate at the app layer... they are web / mobile apps etc. They produce tools that enable us to consume and produce info... at scale... we're talking millions of people are slowly but surely doing the analog-to-digital conversion for a future. At a mass scale, the result will be x,y,z,t,status,interest,social,connection connections/graphs for many things across many verticals. Privacy issues aside (they cannot be ignored, but bare with me for a second), the end result is a real-time layer on the world that exists in the digital domain, not the analog one. We are creating a world of installing "sensors" through market forces.

There is a step function in innovation (a new S-curve, if you will) that will occur at some point, that will be dependent on the world where things are digitized (the one we are creating now) in order to unlock innovation further. Not just technically, but from an adoption/diffusion/comfort level in society. We are going through that now... so the outcome ain't so bleak. At the end of this particular journey (call it a bubble, call it something else), we will have 1 billion+ people who a) are comfortable with sensors / digitizing their stuff and themselves b) and are doing it.

We are converging on a dominant design of what a digitized world looks like, through market forces! And in more recent years, the big data techniques emerging that will also be pushed by market forces. The best way to think about that is the following: In the ABSENCE of the incremental innovation (instagram of x, pinterest for y), I can imagine many future business and technology plans saying: we would like to build this technology, but it is not feasible because it requires a world where everyone is a sensor. Or even better, our new technology can change the world, but it assumes that people / things are digitized.

tl;dr: current crop of startups are creating sensors for big data and other processes. This can create future innovation opps that leverage this big data in new and profound ways. The absence of such startups is a blocker for that future class of innovation.

Hope not too incoherent... typing this at 30,000 feet in a cramped seat.
Tiny MVC for J2EE
Borderlands, a Granular Sampler
This is great, the spreadsheet not the bomb threats. Nicely done.
Just a heads up, OP; I thought the title implied that js.js was somehow faster than javascript.
Mozilla to launch Boot to Gecko phone in Brazil in early 2013 | The Verge
Tango steps it up to compete against Microsoft/Skype, raises $40m
Seriously? This statement is synonymous with, "If you have nothing to hide, then you should have nothing to fear." I expect this fallacy from politicians but I'm pretty surprised to hear it from you.

I've noticed you seem to dedicate a lot of time to denouncing privacy and civil liberties issues on HN lately, but that statement is absurd.
haha touche. I've also noticed I've become completely unable to spell words with more than five letters, as spell checkers have been doing it for me for so long that I forgets my wurdz.

#grammersux
I think we should cut the guy some slack, here. He's laid out a structured plan for anyone to freely follow if they wish. Even if they don't follow it step-by-step, there are still some great tips to improve language-learning efficiency.

Personally, this looks much more effective than the textbook I'm currently using so I'll give it a try. We have no idea whether his timeframe claims are true or not (in which case, how can we criticize?) but any outcome of following his advice is going to be positive.
Javascript sandbox for node.js:
https://github.com/gf3/sandbox

It allows you to run potentially malicious js code on the server.
Not really. Valuations are base upon the expectation of future cash flows. That boils down to two things- how fast will those cash flows grow, and how much risk is their in those cash flows.

I don't have the energy to figure out the growth rate implied by a 50X multiple on sales, but I can assure you it is astronomical - unreasonably so.

But this doesn't mean that a company can't be worth more than its cash flows would indicate. Suppose the existence of a company (lets call it Instagram) threatens lots of cash flow of another company (for arguments' sake, call it Facebook). How much is Instagram worth to Facebook?

Instead of using Instagrams cash flow to value the company (easy! zero!). You have to use the incremental (and negative) cashflows of Facebook due to Instagram's existence. If Facebook stands to lose, a few hundred million a year to competition, suddenly, Instagram is very valuable indeed, but only to a small, small number of entities - Facebook, and probably Google.

In the end, it's all a speculative judgement call. But don't fall into the trap of evaluating small startups based on their own cash flow.

All that said, I agree. 50x is stupid.
Beamed propulsion gets around the rocket equation, but trying to beam energy to something receding at exponential speeds doesn't sound that much easier.

If you're making a mathematical argument, be sure to do the math. Nothing's going to be receding at >exponential< speeds. (It would be nice if we could do that trick.)

to get around the diffraction limit you'd need an exponentially increasingly large collimation mechanism.

Yes, this gets pretty freaking huge. Robert Forward worked out the mathematics for this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Interstellar_flight

Change targets to Proxima Centauri, use magsails to decelerate instead of jettisoning the outer mirror, and the power and lens requirements go down by a lot. I suppose your point would be that they remain freakishly huge. True, but if humanity continues to progress into the solar system, it should be feasible for the much larger and more advanced economy.
I would point out the fallacy in your statement - but I will let you figure it out in the next 5-10 years.
Sorry about the error. We hit our outgoing email quota due to the unexpected response from all of you guys. We're working on getting that fixed.

User file uploads currently get uploaded to S3 for a short amount of time until your application can retrieve it. We don't do any processing of the files.

We plan to release SDKs in the future for easy integration, including one for RoR. We also plan to have this up all the time since heroku is pretty reliable. For those rare cases when this fails, we could revert back to a normal file picker on your page.
Innovation Night Success: Oxygen & Deals
Six months ago, OpenJDK had already been declared the official reference implementation for Java SE 7 (for several months, in fact), and the OS Distributor License had already been withdrawn -- almost two months before that issue was closed.

"Things change quite rapidly" indeed. Is JetBrains not able to keep up?
"Saturday morning rolled around and I headed into the office..."
> The FBI are not police, are not detectives, and are not competent in these matters.

Actually the FBI is a law-enforcement agency with the statutory power to investigate and arrest people for the violation of certain federal laws. I'd consider that police.
We fixed it now. Try getting an api key again :)
Like the last bubble, it will likely end when the Fed raises interest rates.

Until then, party on.
The 1984 version of ASN.1 should die, but the 2008 version is widely being used in many industries. Digital Certificates still use it. Air-to-ground communication uses it. Financial services are using it. LTE (the next generation of mobile telephony) uses it. Electric Utilities are using it in monitoring power lines. Toll Roads are using it for those electronic payments so that you don't have to stop at toll booths. Incident Management - Fire, Ambulance, Police, Trafic Control, etc - use ASN.1. I could go on naming other areas as well. The 2008 Edition of ASN.1 is definitely NOT dying!!
Whoah whoah whoah! Is a remailer really === a kilo of cocaine? Seems like it's more like a car sans license plates, operating in a state where license plates are optional. (But hey, if you use that car to transport a cool k...)
dont believe everything you read
Not in Japan, unless you are working for a non-Japanese firm. Even then, you will be mainly surrounded by Japanese.
I'll buy that, but not without a chuckle about the fact that, based on my limited research, you can use any sync-enabled mobile RSS client you want, so long as it's Google Reader or a client of Google Reader.

(Please, please refute me: Tell me a good iOS feed-reader that syncs my read status between my iPhone and iPad, but doesn't require me to use Google Reader.)

Google may not technically own RSS, just as they don't technically own Android, but they own Google Reader and Feedburner. Maybe that's not a mousetrap, strictly speaking. But I still feel stuck.
Speaking of professionalism, I'll quote from the history of the agile manifesto:

In order to succeed in the new economy, to move aggressively into the era of e-business, e-commerce, and the web, companies have to rid themselves of their Dilbert manifestations of make-work and arcane policies. This freedom from the inanities of corporate life attracts proponents of Agile Methodologies, and scares the begeebers (you can’t use the word ‘shit’ in a professional paper) out of traditionalists.

-- http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html
Here is a similar service, also using your gmail account https://yearinreview.toutapp.com/
evernote really sucks I cannot believe how anyone could find their service useful
Ask HN: Should I sell my Google IO ticket?
I got a ticket for Google IO this year, but now that they're offering most of the talks online I'm considering selling it. I don't really care about the Google swag they typically hand out, and I don't really have enough web/android dev experience anyways (I do mostly iOS and ML). Is the atmosphere and networking at Google IO enough to warrant going? Are there other benefits besides just the conference talks? Can anyone who's been before talk about the experience?
how do you find this post? do you have google alerts set up? just curious
Of course, possessing a kilo of cocaine is illegal. Hosting an anonymous remailer, is not.
6. Reboot? But I don’t want to reboot!

I never understood why it has to have a system reboot either, and I'm on a Mac. I don't like rebooting, I just like to let my Mac sleep!
玫琳凯之窗顾问订货
I am not interested in any of the "we are in a bubble" posts as much as I am interested in "What the fuck will happen when this bubble bursts!"

I have been in tech in SV since 1997. I was here for the build, frenzy and pop of the last bubble.

In 2001 I had a BBQ at my place - 50 people came and we ate and drank by the pool. Of those 50 - all tech workers - 4 had jobs.

I was out of work for 18 months (6 of which I traveled the world) - and luckily I have more than just tech skills which I was able to fall back on.

On HN we are really focused on technical ability - but there are millions of employees in all our tech companies that are not technical: think of any department outside of IT and Development == Sales, Facilities, HR, Marketing, Finance (although this is the class of people most responsible for this problem), etc...

ALL of these people are at the greatest risk - what will happen if this bubble bursts. We will be FUCKED.

What will it look like
If you watch Code Rush, which I highly recommend, you'll see that they worked crazilly hard at Netscape back in the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig
I use and pay for it (over 7,000 notes and counting). Apparently many other people do as well.
There's also caja (http://code.google.com/p/google-caja/) which goes about solving the problem in a slightly different way
Out of curiosity why is it embarrassing? I bet that if I'll ask some female friends from the industry what they think of the article, none of them will complain about this.
It is being used in much more than just telecom and cryptography. Even the UPU use it for tracking packages that get shipped. Take a look at Space Link Extension (for space communications) that uses ASN.1 also.
Glou Ft. Voltio - Ahora Me Rio Yo |Official Remix |Prod. by Musicologo & Menes|
What recourse do the people have when voter fraud occurs? How much monitoring is done through those channels?

*I know it is not a react quickly because human lives could be at stake - but considering anything tied to a presidential election could lead to a person voted to office that could jeopordize a nation.
The Pitt subreddit actually informs me faster about bomb threats than the school's notification service.

Here is a blog someone started to keep track of bomb threats: http://stopthepittbombthreats.blogspot.com/
Prysenter 1.0
"You are using Internet Explorer 6.0 or older to view the web." (chrome)
The biggest injustice is that innocent private parties are forced to carry the costs of something that (allegedly) will benefit the public.

Investigations of crimes benefit the public, and so the public (taxpayer) should pay the costs of the investigation, not whatever private party the costs happen to fall upon. Taking this logic to its conclusion, in a fair and just society, if a law enforcement agency executes a search warrant, it should have to pay those affected by the search warrant the reasonable costs of that seizure (e.g. the cost of renting and deploying an acceptable alternative until the equipment is returned, or the cost of lost business if it is a purely for-profit organisation and loss acceptance appears to be the cheaper based on the information available to the business at the time). This wouldn't apply if the court was satisfied following a contested hearing that the person having assets seized was a party to a crime being investigated.

While the above would be fair, it is not how the law works in many jurisdictions, because politics works on what politicians can fit in a sound bite (lower taxes! more law enforcement on the same budget!), not necessarily what is fair to minorities like innocent parties having their equipment seized.
I guess I'm the only one that doesn't have any problems with iTunes on windows, eh?
I've never understood what people don't understand about illegal. Reminds me of mega upload users who claim they had no idea illegal activity I.e copywriter files uploaded was taking place. I call it major ignorance this story above falls in line.
Ask HN: Any startups looking to hire a contract engineer?
I live in Silicon Valley. I am trying to start my own company but need some work to pay the bills. Any startup looking to hire an engineer on a contract?

My primary languages are Python and PHP. Can do MySQL or NoSQL databases. Good experience in scaling. I'd be great at a startup having some scaling issues or just starting out and need to build core features. I can do front-end work but only bug fixes and things like that. I wouldn't trust myself to be a full-time front-end dev. I've worked at 2 startups that have been acquired in the last year and another startup that is really hot right now.

If you are interested or want more information on me email me at hncontractacct@gmail.com (it forwards to my real email) and I'll be happy to send you my resume/LinkedIn.
I don't expect the same level of carnage. THE bubble, the late 1990s, was so enormous that I have trouble explaining it to my younger peers who did not live through it as an adult. They just can't grasp what was going on because it was so damn crazy.
It's kind of hard to find stock on buyvm since everytime they got something new, it's selled soooo fast. Sometimes you can find some stock on their irc channel and their mailing list.
've been a customer since about a year ago and can't be happier.
>comparing yourself to another company’s valuation based on some metric like registered users

I really doubt anyone does valuation like this. What is more interesting is engagement and time using product. # of people is more a 'vanity metric' - it looks nice, but it doesn't mean much.
Same here, I use Thunderbird with DavMail on OS X.
I've seen a lot of this back-and-forth on HN of late, but I can't help but wonder what difference it all makes.

Even if we are in a bubble, I doubt we have any real chance of turning things around gracefully. Everyone participating and benefiting from this bubble are inclined to support it, while those outside the bubble have no power to change the current trajectory.

The true losers in this scenario are the entry level players, and other support folk who become collateral damage when things finally come tumbling.
Backbone.js Plugins
And animated gifs. They all have thier uses though.
It's harder to think anything useful for blink.

The cops needs the blink tag for thier emergency ASCII,

_<blink>o</blink>___
____/ _| _ \___
| o o |
Billing is not automated. I'm months overdue and I just got a personal email asking if I still wanted my account. It doesn't matter. Prgmr is hands down the best hobby VPS provider (I can't comment for other scenarios).
My friends swear I'm an idiot, despite having written my own music library software because I couldn't stand the others, but I've had the same problem with iTunes being slow as shit. My initial import takes thousands of times the time it takes for other software to do the same thing and it has a nasty habit of "forgetting" where your library is if you don't leave it at the default.

I love it, I just reloaded OS X and it keeps trying to start iTunes. Everytime I just deny the TOS and it slinks away. Good riddance.
Since it is on a Air with a SSD I assume your library is on a external drive.

Mine does the same since it is on a external USB HDD. On a internal SATA drive it is instant.
Funny, they've been saying this ever since the last one.
I'm aware of the Sino-Indian border war, but fighting skirmishes in the border region is not at all the same thing as long-running, high intensity combat deep into the opponent's territory. There's a reason why China unilaterally withdrew back to the pre-war line of control afterwards - it's just not feasible for them to take and indefinitely hold large chunks of Indian territory. The same applies to India in reverse.

This is important in the context of strategic nuclear weapons, because the only situation that would justify using such weapons is when national survival is at stake - the risks are just too high otherwise. National survival isn't threatened by short-lived border skirmishes.
Smaller and faster is great, but does it have semi colons?

I hear they're out of fashion..

Edit: posted this 4 minutes ago and already got 4 downvotes. Some of you guys really care about this don't you?

Carry on, not like I was gonna save up karma for a free plane ticket or something :P
Hah, that's definitely not what I meant. It was in reference to the previous time js.js was (prematurely) posted to hacker news
There are two perspectives on HBO and piracy. The first is that they are losing money due to piracy.

The second is that they aren't losing money, just not gaining it.

I suspect they are betting on the second perspective. Foolish, but seems to be there business plan.
that joke got old fast
There's narcissus too (https://github.com/mozilla/narcissus)
Ask HN: 25 year old web hacker considering in person San Francisco job hunt
Hi HN,

I'm playing around with the idea of traveling to SF to try to find a job at a tech startup, and I have several questions.

Does the job market in SF live up to the hype?

How receptive are SF startups to people either dropping by or calling to setup meetings in town?

Is a week enough time to make the trip worthwhile, get a feel for the area, and meet with a lot of companies?

If I go the AirBNB route, what neighborhood should I try and stay in for best walk-ability to the startup heavy areas? (Alternatively, anyone want to rent their couch to me for a week? =)

Thanks for reading! Also, any other tips or links you want to throw in would be much appreciated. Things like http://paulstamatiou.com/atlanta-to-san-francisco-moving-cross-country and http://al3x.net/2009/10/04/so-youre-moving-to-san-francisco.html
spot on
+1
Thanks, I'm in New York. I assume that if state law restricts the assignment, I can't legally sign away those rights by signing this document.
Smart devices require a significant shift in thinking
Each incremental company, to some extent, dilutes the values of others.

Ask yourself: Are you part of a herd? Is your company doing what the next one is doing, just slicker and faster and with a twist? If the answer is yes, and you're trying to do a startup, then you are part of the bubble that will pop. (In a bad way. Worse still, you may be part of a "reputation bubble" as in the music or fashion industry.)

Also ask yourself: Is there an information asymmetry on your side? Do you know something that most everybody else doesn't? Is there something that scares everyone else away, or that everyone else hasn't seen yet? If not, then you might be in the part that pops.

For those standing off to the side: Are there an awful lot of startups doing similar looking things?
Probably the easiest way to solve the aliasing problem is to pre-calculate a series of square waves, each with successively fewer harmonics. You can then just select the right square wave for any given note and play it back via linear or polynomial interpolation. This is what I do in my iPad synth app.

The main downside of this approach is that it takes more memory, but it's very easy on the CPU.
> As for the "thousands of characters" scare for Chinese, I've read estimates that for daily communication you can make do with less than a thousand characters.

It's not that hard. After years of frustration at being essentially illiterate in Japanese while having a decent level of spoken fluency, I've finally buckled down and started learning the kanji using Remembering the Kanji in combination with Anki. It really is possible to learn 20 kanji a day if you dedicate about 45 minutes of time.

There's a similar book called Remembering the Hanzi (both Traditional and Simplified versions are available) that you can use to much the same effect. At 20 per day, you can learn the 5000 hanzi that are said to cover just about everything you might come across in day-to-day life in less than a year.
Also just took a break to look at desktop.ly Very interesting concept, though my desktop is a bit of a mess and probably shouldn't be shared :D
You should discontinue doubting that. Valuations are done using every available metric (users, revenue, etc) and some metrics that have to be "triangulated".

Valuation experts select the one they think is most relevant or mix several metrics to arrive at a value. Some acquirers view different metrics as important depending on what they need. Some companies need top line growth to keep their multiple so they buy less profitable companies with a better chance to grow revenue for example.

You can argue all day whether you think that is right/wrong, dumb/smart, but that is the way it is currently done and the smartest people in finance constantly work on new ways to value companies but most of those ways involve coming up with new metrics.
Pioneer Anomaly Solved
Its more like a commercial airplane being seized because one of the passengers smuggled drugs. I think its reasonable to assume that during the life of a commercial plane, a passenger will eventually commit a felony(smuggling drugs/contraband) on it.
Will this handle what you're considering? https://github.com/kripken/speak.js
Couldn't tell if you wanted something for your pages or something to submit pages to and receive audio...
Somebody needs to get this set up with The Ruby Racer[0], and run a JavaScript JavaScript implementation in a Ruby JavaScript bridge.

[0]: https://github.com/cowboyd/therubyracer