skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not reinventing the wheel here, or suggesting anything new - just that focusing on improving these would be a better investment of resources than creating an unsinkable ship.

For example:

* How good are the systems that realise that ships need righting and transfer the ballast automatically before it overturns?

* Refloating may not be feasible once the ship is overturned, but by then it'll be too late. How about self-inflating bags that inflate as the ship starts to sink, buying valuable time for people to escape?

* Automatic navigation is one thing, but how can we improve it? Does it identify foreign objects above/below the waterline? Does it have stabilisation assistance? Does it pump ballast around to ensure the best possible handling under any condition?

Just because these things already exist doesn't mean they can't be improved. In some cases this could potentially be done relatively cheaply.
I agree in the part, that is more human to share with those that don't have. But giving all the basics to those able to work will back fire ( as it currently does in countries like spain), people will go to great lengths to cualify as a "payable non worker".
As politicians earn their possition with votes, they tend to buy votes increasing this "social" solutions. Over time money spent in this piles up and reaches unreasonable sizes(and fuels corruption aswell)
A completely different scenario are the health care, housing and education of on-risk population, I meen kids and old or ill people. Here in Spain the system has been abused (mostly by the lack of value that people gives to Free stuff felt as a IS their right to enjoy no matter what, on oposite to Ariely's studies).
I still find great that anybody may have access to the latest cancer treatment or heart surgery( while the per capita cost of health is lower than in the US).
I really like reading source code, that's why I put together some advise how to do it:
http://himmele.blogspot.de/2012/01/how-do-you-read-source-co...

From reading source code both for fun and for purpose e.g. like the Android, Minix, QNX, Linux and NetBSD, network protocol stacks, filesystems, web frameworks, CouchDB etc. I got a lot of insights into interesting software technologies and architecture patterns.
Good software engineers and architects should be good and fast at reading code.
Don't do it. Learn how to use turbo tax online. It costs $50, and takes about 2 hours. I don't know about your personal situation, but you are likely very far from owing any US taxes.

You don't need an accountant. Just do it to the best of your ability. It is pretty simple. Income, AUS taxes paid, foreign account list. TurboTax will tell say you owe nothing, then click the e-file button.

Don't trash a US passport over $50 and 2 hours. Once you do it once, it will take about 30 minutes the next year.
I should have put a disclaimer that I have no idea how much companies actually make from being affiliates. I was just guessing that was their concern.

Thanks, but I actually work at eNotes.com right now and going to be doing a startup with some friends. Always good to know, though :D ML is fun; when I was in high school I worked for a company which made a product recommendation engine called xPatterns and it was a lot of fun.
Gotcha. Thank you.
BKF Repair Tool
With the help of SysTools BKF repair tool, you can easily repair BKF file from corrupted or damaged Windows backup database and restore BKF file. This BKF Repair tool has powerful features including quick scan, deep scan and range based scan.
Why is there no Facebook for programmers & hackers?
Designers have Dribbble, Behance, etc. Businessmen have LinkedIn. HN is nice for simple article links but is hardly a robust network. Where are the social networks for programmers/hackers?
A love letter to potential Python developers
Self explanatory if you read this letter. Just thought folks who are in Austin, TX (or thinking of moving there) may be interested in this company. Especially if you're interested in executing a startup properly and/or personal development
Rejected as well, but I feel, Oh so good! Sorry to hear that so many people got their dreams crushed. However, lets stop having a pity party and start pivoting, building traction, and being bosses! Lets get educated and move on, and by educated I mean check us out at www.coursegain.com ;P
Isn't it funny, when the Chinese don't loosen their currency, it's called mercantilism; when they do, they "pimp [the CNY] as a reserve currency". A case of damned if they do, damned if they don't?
Spotify Patterns
>Google will assign a real person to talk to if you have more than ~30M views / month or something.

...or if you pay for their paid services (Google Apps).
Yahoo Store Designing
Custom yahoo store designing by our yahoo store developers, RTML programmers for custom shopping cart development, ecommerce website design & yahoo store customization.
We are PayGuard and we're building a payments platform that would specialize in long-distance/cross-border transactions. http://stark-river-6968.herokuapp.com/ We do this by combining your normal payments gateway with the global network of an international money transfer company (Western Union) with the twist of "escrow". We got our rejection letter too but we are forging ahead with launching our beta late this May. We believe eCommerce will globalize and payments will be at the forefront to make this happen. We want to create a world where anyone can buy or sell anything anywhere. We would appreciate any candid feedback on our idea....intellectual honesty is the best weapon against self delusion.
> so you can easily run your tests in production

I would be wary about running unit tests on my production box. More specifically unit tests that muck with the database. Sure you might have it setup to point to a test database, but is it really worth it to run the tests there on the off-change that the config gets screwed up and your unittests mess up your production data?

> Also, because the tests and the code are part of
> the same top-level Python project, you don't have
> to mess around with setting Python's import path
> to get the tests running

Within the source directory, there is no need to set $PYTHONPATH. You can just run:

python setup.py test

You just have to point setup.py at your test packages. Note that this is only for the default unittest tests. I don't have experience with pytest or nose.
We also did not get the reply yet. Don't know what it means, but since we're not rejected yet, it could be good ;)

Patience is a virtue.
Sounds like the Minecraft of AI-driven gameplay... I would like to subscribe to your newsletter :)
That page does mention some good design principles, then proceeds to just throw a couple gradients and Gotham on a Photoshop mockup. The HN thread about it discussed at length why it's a weak redesign.
A relevant read is To Dissect a Mockingbird: A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus with Animated Reduction at http://dkeenan.com/Lambda/index.htm
Absolutely agree! This is good news IMO - Google has far more storage redundancy than Dropbox does, that's for sure. In a pinch, who do you trust to make sure your data isn't kaput? The answer is obvious.
Thanks Phil!

I went to grad school about 5 mins walk from your office, but right now the plan is to avoid ever again becoming a US taxpayer.
If I were in that position, I'd try to participate in advertising scheme for concert tickets for the very same artists whose pages you visit. That's something that could even add value for the visitors.
There is, it's called github ;).
More seriously, we don't feel the need to update our status every day. pushing code is our status, isn't it?
I'm looking forward to 0x10c as much as the next hacker, but I can't help but wonder what effect this DCPU is going to have on the gameplay experience. Is it going to be a programming competition rather than a computer game?
I thought that most of these online solutions bail very early if you don't live in the US.
+1, Really not sure why these reviewers are going on about its rendering capabilities, its quite adequate for learning python or C++ on and totally overkill for any embedded projects (Think Arduino on steroids).

Once some optimisation work is done I think people will be amazed by what it can do.
Inspirational reading for those rejected for YC
I actually stumbled across this yesterday, but didn't post it for fear of seeming try-hard or as a suck-up so close to the YC announcements. I guess that violates the principle of not caring what most people think.

This has probably been posted before, but either way, it's one of the most inspirational and practical articles I've ever read and well worth revisiting.

If anyone has any more articles like this to share (or re-share) today, I'd love to hear them.
I actually stumbled across this yesterday, but didn't post it for fear of seeming try-hard or as a suck-up so close to the YC announcements. I guess that violates the principle of not caring what most people think.

This has probably been posted before, but either way, it's one of the most inspirational and practical articles I've ever read and well worth revisiting.

If anyone has any more articles like this to share (or re-share) today, I'd love to hear them.
Julio jones jersey
I estimate I spend two full work weeks a year on doing my nontrivial US taxes (and that's on top of paying a professional to actually do that -- that's just the "homework" he leaves me with, which he cannot do himself because he doesn't know the country's internal tax codes and language)[1]. This is an additional 4% tax on my time that is counted nowhere. And the tax professional's fees are not actually deductible because I'm in AMT regime. My effective tax rates turns out to be 10% or so above my official bracket all things considered -- in the sense that I cannot avoid paying those 10% (even if they do not go to the government's coffers -- they come out of mine)

I have income coming in from another country, which makes things complicated. I have to file there as well; I think it amounts to about 5 hours collected over a year to file (and that includes reporting my US based income to that country).

The federal US tax code is 73,000 pages. If you're an average person (you don't have fisheries or hundreds of the other special cases and exemptions), then only 5,000 pages or so are relevant to you (not the same 5,000 to every person - of course). And those 5,000 pages change ever so slightly every year.

If you've been doing your taxes by yourself, it is almost guaranteed that you are either overpaying or did something wrong (or both). Even if you are using a professional, the chances are extremely likely you are overpaying and/or wrong.

And if you are living in the US, you have state tax codes on top of that. Living in NJ and working in NY? You have two tax codes to work with and reconcile.

This is a complementary insane and broken part of the system to what's discussed in other responses to this posts.

In most european countries, if you are a salaried worker, you don't ever file anything with the IRS equivalent unless you have a nontrivial, uncommon situation (e.g., working for two employers at the same time _and_ you do not want them to know about each other; or income from abroad).

[1] No, I haven't been able to find someone who is qualified enough in both jurisdictions. My situation is complicated, though far from unique -- and no, as the "other way around" shows, a reasonable tax code can make filing trivial even if the situation is not.
Here's an idea that I'd like you to try first.
Pay what you want subscriptions. Offer a subscription service that is completely voluntary. Do not label it a donation system. It is simply a subscription service. People will pay an amount of their own choosing to support the site. Offer monthly and yearly subscription packages. See what happens. I bet you will get a significant conversion rate to paid members, all whom enjoy and want to continue using your service.
I've found myself saying "not my job" the other day. I took this as a confirmation that it's time to leave the company (something I felt was approaching for some time now).

This is because I'm very much the guy that "makes shit work" (comes with being a jack-of-all-trades kind of hacker, or maybe just with giving a damn about my work). "Hey, remember how we've set up that postfix-to-python email bot three years ago?" - I do. "Hey, the finance data import on the MIS is broken" - Ok, let me have a look .. there, I fixed it. This I don't mind. In fact I quite enjoy it.

However, in turn I do expect something back. The first and obvious thing I expect is that you don't mind that the software project I'm working on is going to be a few days delayed because I spent time digging in the bowels of some open source tool or staring at Wireshark. The other, and maybe not so obvious thing I expect is that you a) listen to my suggestions and b) don't get in the way of me working efficiently. What this means is that if I suggest you should go with solution A and not solution B (which your pricey external consultant suggested) and I take the time to show you several good reasons (not my job either, but comes with giving a damn) why solution A will work reliably and solution B will come biting you in the ass later, then you at least hear me out.

And then when solution B comes biting you in the ass and you come to me to work it out, at least give me the means to sort it out properly instead of forcing me to follow your pricey consultant down the slippery slope of exceedingly horrible workarounds, all of which I have to handhold him through and waste massive amounts of time because he can't use email and needs to do schedule a conference call in several days time with subjects such as "confirm the VPN is working".

Because once I'm sufficiently annoyed, I will gladly tell your consultant that something "isn't my job" just so he stops bothering me. And then I write my notice, because I don't like working like this.
This is biting Dropbox in the arse in more ways than one: Dropbox has had years to improve their service, add a huge amount of features, and take this concept to new heights. What have they done? Redesigned their Web site? Gee.
I would recommend checking the NextBigSound to make the best of your site.
http://nextbigsound.com/premier/beta
3 founders 1 idea. The idea to aggregate notes, textbooks, internships, housing, course/professor ratings, online tutoring, and take a fat dump on them so you don't have to. Check us out at www.coursegain.com
Hey HN: Blogs are projects, too
Pakistan vs Bangladesh Schedule 2012
I'm sure a show like this would fit in the 5by5 network (5by5.tv)?
From what i read rickshaw is based on d3. So if rickshaw essentially works as a high level wrapper around d3, then there is a possibility that we can get it working on older IEs with the usual d3 hacks.
Drink Coffee, Terminal Application Helper for NodeJS
>For better or for worse, Facebook has completely changed the way we socialize

First off don't say "we" when you mean "you". I was socializing on the internet way before Facebook/www. Thinking that they "changed" the way we socialize is naive at best, they just changed the UI. In comparison to something as incredible as the dream to achieve space travel and invent new technology, you are really missing out.
Google Chrome is regularly updated.
Actually, another funny story ...

One of the first programs I ever wrote was a BASIC game called 'orbit' which simulated docking with other space ships and satellites in orbit. No graphics other than things like closing speed and distance from target, sort of like the old Lunar program at the time.

One of the things that always got people thinking it was 'broken' was that you had to slow down to catch up, basically by slowing you moved to a lower orbit and moved faster relative to an object in a higher orbit, and then you went to a higher orbit to slow down (accelerating).
Yeah it is a no-win. Not only for the Chinese government but for all of us--critics will be with us. The Chinese government is taking an action to create its own future. Let's see what happens.

I was a boy living in Africa at the tail end of the Empire. I still remember watching the pound sterling slowly drift into irrelevance.
Quite apart from Americans denouncing their citizenship, this absurd tax policy is surely a strong disincentive for many ambitious and successful global entrepreneurs from considering taking out US citizenship or applying for a green card, since many of the same penalties apply.

In my case as a Canadian, I worked as a software engineer for 4+ years on work visas in California before relocating to Australia in late 2010. My wife is an Aussie so I have permanent residency in Australia.

Although I turned off my US job site profiles, I still get emailed regularly by US recruiters asking if I'd be willing to move back to the US. My answer is always no. The opportunity cost of living under the restrictions of work visas in the US and playing the green card queue lottery in a potentially lousy job before your time runs out is just too high.
Yay CalTech. If you're ever in Pasadena give me a call.
Check out http://headliner.fm. Marketplace for musicians to promote each other and grow their respective fan bases through social media. Seems like a win-win for both of you and you'll gain a revenue model.
Hollywood Actress Jennifer Lawrence Biography...
I was doing each lesson weekly until I got too busy, and your site has since emailed me 3 times saying I should start my Code Year and presents me with info for week 1. I finished week 1 the day you launched, it doesn't seem to be checking my progress telling me to pick up where I left off.
How to use Instagram effects on your photos with Photoshop
Of course they do. Libertarians in general believe that private charity should replace the government safety nets. Private charity is the first response most libertarians will give to the question of what do we do with the indigent.

You're confusing libertarians with Ebenezer Scrooge.
What the Failed $1M Netflix Prize Says About Business Advice
That would be really interesting. Khan Academy for music lessons, except it would also be a marketplace, and maybe live video could be part of it.

I could imagine that all recorded videos and tutorials and stuff could be free, because of the community nature of your site, but it also provides 'advertising' if people want to also be teachers. Then you just provide an easy way to do video chats for classes, for cash, and that's where you collect a percentage. This is pretty easy with Google Hangouts, and there are other APIs one can use too.

This way you get to monetize the site without putting up paywalls, or changing the community ethos of the site. I think everyone understands that people deserve to be paid for their time.

That might really work. Every musician has a few tricks up their sleeve. And there are other categories like producer, sound guy, etc, where tricks of the trade are learned only if you're part of a scene somewhere. If you're a kid in your bedroom in suburban Idaho maybe you can get your parents to cough up some dough for some online lessons on how to be a DJ.
Awesome! Social news podcasts are actually surprisingly interesting. I hosted 6 episodes of a Stumble Upon podcast like 6 years ago; we got a few hundred users or so before SU banned me for using their name in our title.
Ask HN: Are there videos online of Peter Thiel's stanford startup class?
Preferably official webcasts, but any kind of video of the lecture would be good. I've done some googling and couldn't find any, but maybe someone in this crowd has a source.

Also a related question, for anyone who is following the course by notes posted online and not attending the class. Are the online notes a worthwhile read?

Thanks
Stop Cyber Spying
Forrst is supposed to be that.
Apple officially supports 4-year old hardware but not older (or at least, did in the past). All Apple software produced 4 years after the last PPC apple was sold had still supported PPC, and only then it stopped. I think that's reasonable. While it's technically easier to support a 5-year old Intel Mac compared to a 5-year old PPC Mac, I still think Apple is reasonable in not doing that.

It's not like your 4-year old hardware or software stops working. It's just that newer software gradually stops being available for your old hardware.
If you interview a guy/girl very good technically buy seems to work on shitty, boring and otherwise inane projects more often than not, you might still have found it. For a lot of corporations that's where you send the programmers that eat it up and just do their job...
Going through all the comments, there are some great ideas. We are bulding a community website for entrepreneurs/startups and could probably use some of these ideas ourselves.

Here are a few more:

- Allow musicians to offer "live" concerts to their fans or to a worldwide audience, using the free Google+ hangouts or air feature. I think they just released an API. The most popular ones can be sponsored or you could just run ads on the Youtube videos and share revenues with the musicians.

- Setup a buy/sell section on the site (or on a separate subdomain or website) for used music instruments, accessories, books, sheet music etc. and either charge a small fee for listing or a transaction fee. If you don't want to run an ecommerce site, just let them list their stuff on Ebay or Amazon, but allow links to it from their profiles. These could be affiliate links and you could split the revenues with them (with full disclosure on the site).

- Have targeted email newsletters, for different interest areas. Sell advertising within the newsletters (it won't clutter your site).
I work till 5pm. Have done for about 2 years now. Whats happened?

1) I haven't burned out
2) I have retained good relationships with my family and friends
3) I enjoy evenings out

Previously I worked all hours. If my partner had let me I would have brought the computer to bed and typed into the night. I burned out and jeopardised my relationship.

I get that there are times when you need to work longer. When you have a deadline or something really needs to be done. However.. if this is every day for a long period of time then you are probably doing something wrong.
Some lessons from MySQL Conference 2012
This is another attempt at segmenting a market for goods depending on the price that can be extracted for that good in a particular market, while keeping the cheap versions from being marketable in countries with higher discretionary income. Somewhat similar to DVD region codes, except applied to books.

Publishers sell (or sell rights to sell) lower-quality texts abroad because they can make a profit. Then they get pissy when people resell those international editions in the U.S.

The market says that people want cheaper books and they don't care about colors or paper quality. Textbooks often end up mauled after a semester anyway. Publishers don't listen, people try to fill the void, and they get sued.

"While the written content of books for the domestic and international markets is often similar or identical, books intended for international markets can differ from the domestic version in design, supplemental content (such as accompanying CD–ROMS), and the type and quality of materials used for printing, including “thinner paper and different bindings, different cover and jacket designs, fewer internal ink colors, if any, [and] lower quality photographs and graphics." (from background in the 2nd circuit ruling)

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1577369.html
FYI here's a presentation of Pud's that I was listening to just by coincidence earlier this evening: http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/08/big-omaha-video-se...

Also heard Pud speak at the Open CF Summit http://opencfsummit.org/ in February but I don't think that talk is online yet.
For those who aren't aware, this is an adaptation of a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which went "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

I've also seen it attributed to Mark Twain as well.
its called rsync