skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a subtle, rather meta feeling I can't shake when I read "cautionary" blog posts like these. It's the feeling that maybe the author isn't writing it for anyone else's benefit as much as their own. Like the author writes to reinforce that, unlike said "friend" who's making all these cautionary mistakes, they themselves are in it for all the right reasons.

Every time the author makes a, "he" statement, you can just perceive a subtle, "but not me." The faintest signal for both the reader, and for himself. Here's what I read:

- "I let a long sigh." (Because I know better).

- "My friend wasn’t someone I’d call 'entrepreneurial'" (...but I am).

- "He wasn’t doing it because he enjoyed the process of starting and growing a company." (But I am).

- "But building a company requires a lot more than writing code." (All things I'm far more capable of).

- "He’s lived in Silicon Valley long enough, and that’s what people around him are doing." (Me? I'm an island).

Who is the author to make this judgement? Why do you need to fit some mold in order to participate in the exclusive club, without criticism from the author? And who gets to determine what that mold is?
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Minor observation - the last line about YCombinator being "the best place to start a company" seemed a little weird. As a percentage, how many of the recent "startup success stories" have been started at YCombinator and how many haven't?
Nice idea.

I have but one problem, and it's with the site (DuckDuckHack) itself.

Could the author just make the tutorial section scrollable with the rest of the page? The current functionality is quite awkward. It's also ignorant of (most of) the keyboard (home, end, page up, page down, etc.), which is the quickest way to traverse a page.
I remember when open source P2P VoIP was "being polished" in 2002. I guess if we're lucky we'll get WebRTC, but being from Google it may not satisfy the wannabe cypherpunks.
eh, for me? I am type A mostly because I don't enjoy negotiation and hard sales. If you have an expensive product, at least in my sector, you are expected to negotiate, sometimes for months on price. Then you are expected to give a discount to the customers that waste the most of your time.

With low-value products? Here is the price. want it? If you want to change the price, sure, sometimes you need to do that, but you change it for everyone. (In fact, in the VPS sector, It is traditional to change the price for existing customers as well as new customers. Linode deserves some of the credit for making that traditional. In the co-lo or bandwidth business, where it's all negotiated? it's traditional to offer like 50% better deals to new customers and to squeeze your old customers until they leave, like it is in real-estate leases. I recently lowered the price on my low-end co-lo and gave the lower price to all my existing customers, to much surprise. )

Right now, I'm trying to move some products that are traditionally sold with lots of negotiation (Like co-location) into the "here is the price, you want it?" model, which is really in everyone's interest except the salesguy. And salesguys in this industry make a lot of money; two big local co-lo salesguys have contacted me; I know they are good, and that they can bring me customers, as I know a bunch of people that bought through them. The problem? they want 10% of the revenue from the customer for the life of the customer. 10% isn't far from my own target margin for co-lo, and some plans, I don't even make that much. And for the life of the customer? through any upgrades down the road? it seems like a bookkeeping nightmare.

The other advantage of having lots of small customers is that if someone wants something that you don't want to do? (in my case, for instance, people that want password auth to my infrastructure, or people that want to run windows) it's pretty easy for me to say "That's not what I do. Here is a refund; I hear that provider X can help you out" - whereas if that customer was 1/10th of my revenue? I'd be spending all night trying to get a microsoft system working, or cleaning up after a script kiddie broke into a weak password and got into the customer's management interface.
The Awards ceremony tonight should be awesome!
I completely forgot tv channels didn't used to be 24 hour, I'm not sure when it became like that in Australia but I do remember the off the air thing on ABC especially I think.

List is missing the joys of trackball mice and floppy disks.
Just so I understand this: they're switching from direct P2P messages between users (like MSN), to routing the messages through their own data centers first (like Facebook)?

So in theory this will prevent any messages ever getting lost en route to the recipient?

I can't tell you how many messages have gone undelivered between my friends and I when we used to use MSN messenger exclusively (even happens once or twice on Skype), causing serious breakdowns in communication. ("Did you get that message? Did you get that message?)

I always wished they'd switch to this architecture.
I'm in the same shoes with OP. Here's how my Scala skill progresses:

In the beginning, I wrote Scala "the Java way", sans semi-colons. Then I omit dots and parenthesis whenever possible (foo.do(bar) -> foo do bar). Then I learn to use immutable declaration (var -> val) and learn that expressions like this:

var i = 0
if (something) {
// Additional logic
i = 1
}

Can be made immutable like this:

val i = {
if (something) {
// Additional logic
1
} else 0
}

Then I try to make use its functional goodies like map and fold, and so on. I use IntelliJ with Scala and JRebel (free for Scala!) plugin. JRebel allows you to "hot reload" Scala classes to avoid server restarts.

I admit I'm a frequent lurker in SO when using Scala, as its API doc sucks, and I also dislike its integration with Java, although it's not Scala's fault. For API doc, I think it'd be better if it has examples, which reminds me of ActionScript API docs.
I definitely agree, it is a lot easier to fill out an application than to rally around an idea and begin creating a great product. I think it's definitely worth doing some self examination before deciding you are ready to do a startup and understanding the reality of your situation.
The biggest mistake I made when I started freelancing is I had NO plan on how to take care of maintenance after I closed up shop.

Websites are living business cards that are almost always changing. So when you take on 5 projects over a year. You're never really going to get away from them. They are perpetual. You will always get calls later on about "fixing this" and "changing that". And if you think you can simply give the client all the code so they can go on to someone else, it's not that easy. Especially if you're hosting everything for them (which I now understand is a big mistake). Clients don't understand code well enough to be able to do that, and the changes they need are sometimes so vital to their business, you'd feel like an asshole for not giving in. Sure you can charge them for the changes but again: If you get busy later on in life you'll always be haunted by your former clients. It's hard to let go.

Learn from my stupid mistake. Before you even create index.php create a plan on what you're going to do when you get sick of freelancing. Set everything up around the idea that one day you will need to pass this all onto someone else.
I paid 99$/month for few months, but I end up only using keywords tracking tool... 99$ was too much only for that feature.

Any saas offering only keywords tracking? For something like 9.99$/month?
Are You Using The Right SQL Server Performance Metrics?
The Truth Will Come Out: The Power of Crowds
I agree that this could be a problem but in this paper in order for the attack method to work the developer of the App would need to explicitly set the keychain attribute with the flag "kSecAttrAccessibleAlways", making the keychain data available even when the device is locked, "Otherwise the credentials of the app are not affected by the attack method."
I've been thinking the same things lately. Referring to what ever coding project happens to be filling your spare time as your "start up" seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days.
Overcoming Critics of 3D Technology: Consumers Rule
Would You Do This To Boost Sales By 20% Or More?
Oklahoma City, OK
Full Time Engineers with software experience
Citizenship Required

We are looking for programmers who can work with Python, Django, C, and Matlab. They should have Linux/Unix experience. You will work with a company that contracts with the Federal government. This means a very stable job, 40 hour work weeks (Flex schedule available), and excellent benefits; but unlike many government positions, the specific group has stimulating work to do and is not locked in to ancient technology. The work focuses on developing tools for and performing data analysis on the system.

I can get you more information if you are interested:

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If we had 1 good application programmer for every 100 cryptoweenies, the world would be a better place.

Write code or shut the fuck up.
Uber launches on demand Mariachi band for $100
real gem, in the mix. Oh, the definites, very.
Thanks for the Joey Tribbiani strictness.
Sticky Protective Skin Lets You Mount Your iPhone Anywhere [Cases]
Learning to say no is one of the most important things IMHO.

In the Discworld books, there's a bit where the Best Smith In The World shoes Death's horse. It's a thing he HAS to do now and then, because otherwise, well, he's just not the Best Smith In The World anymore, is he? It's a little weird and unsettling, but he does it, and he does it well.

Every now and then a job comes along that makes me feel like that. It's something that the client is coming specifically to ME for, not just because they like my style but because I am one of about three people in the world who could do justice to this idea. And when one of those comes along, I make room in my schedule for it. I warn the client that it may take a while - but it'll be worth the wait.

But most of the time? Most of the time, I politely say "no". Once you've gotten your head above water, this is not a luxury; keeping your workload under control and not having twenty unfinished projects hanging over your head makes you AND your clients happy.

(Underpricing yourself is also a terrible idea, and one this piece doesn't address. Most of the stories of nightmare art commissions my friends tell are of a too-cheap piece where the client demands endless re-dos for free.)
Good to see the grsecurity patch getting a bit of publicity. I think for critical devices it's an essential patch, mostly because of it's integration with the PaX patch which is aimed at preventing many different types of memory overflow exploits.
Ask HN: What is your favorite Continuous Integration Server?
> Stash fits into your environment and doesn’t force you to use a pre-packaged appliance which you don’t have any control over.

zing.

(for those unaware, this is directed at GitHub's enterprise offering - which is a VM "appliance" that boots into a menu)
I wholeheartedly agree. However, I think DDG is even better on the smartphone.

I have it set there as my default search engine, and within the browser and without having to type too much (and frankly, the less I have to type on it the better) I get access to a vast amount of sites.

Since I'm using Chromium, I could probably do without the !bang-syntax on the desktop, but being able to consistantly use the same syntax on both mobile and desktop is lovely and a definitive advantage for me.

That, and the no-tracking-policy is a big bonus as well, I suppose.
SEEKING FREELANCER - Los Angeles, remote

UI/UX designer with frontend skills for rapid iteration of iOS apps.

Email portfolio and resume to ixdesign7 at hotmail.com .
First, your are calculating the total collective wages of a corporation's employees. I refer to the individual wages. Corporate taxes do not decrease individual wages, though they may impact the total number of employees hired...in smaller firms which have less resources. In larger companies (i.e., publicly traded companies), the company's tax rates do not affect hiring decisions. Business considerations other than tax rates affect hiring.

Second, you misunderstand the time-value of money theory. The theory posits that the money saved in taxes, if actively invested back in the business or other investments, will result in sufficient income to completely offset the eventual tax payment when it comes due. Low interest rates may change the expected timeframe, but the theory assumes that the company will attempt to maximize the return on its investments.
If I am regularly working onsite at a client, and I leave early on my own accord, I am not going to bill a full day. How would that be fair to the client? Sure, billing for a full day is optimal for my business, but I don't see how it's optimal for the client.

I do not use hourly increments because my clients are awful or because I am low on the food chain. I choose hourly because it's the most straightforward way for me to provide my clients a hired hand while retaining flexibility on any given work day.
Cool, but the immediate warning dialog flashing in red is kind of a turn off. I haven't been on the site for more than 1 second and I already feel like I did something wrong or I am not wanted.
Bump has one engineer in Tokyo and we may expand, probably on front-end mobile (iOS or Android). Our lead product the Bump app is the 5th most popular app of all time in Japan.
Actually yes I do trust them to the same extent. But that's a choice I have made based on my perceived trust level. I am even OK with advertisers harvesting my photos (not sure if that is possible yet). My main desired privacy control is whether people that are not supposed to see my photos or browse through my galleries, actually get to do that. That's not necessarily a monkey business but an outcome of a privacy implementation flaw (assuming it is unintentional). That will certainly have an impact on my trust level for Facebook. The difference with instagram is that you go into instagram knowing that everything is public and so is the general sharing norm on that platform.
Could you not build up a network of people who you would trust to do a decent job of maintaining the website after you moved on? Then recommend these others to clients if the need arises.

I know some developers will offer "understudy" type services where the code is always available to at least 2 developers. One will do the majority of the work and the second will simply look at changes incase they need to take over.
This is simply brilliant. Travis you are the man!
That's one possible explanation, and I think there's a healthy amount of skepticism required when analyzing moves like this, but it's not the only explanation.

Keep in mind that a large part of Microsoft's business is in the enterprise, and voice is a huge application product for enterprise customers. Exchange has always had some form of voice integration. I haven't used it in years (since back when H.323 was big), so I don't know the current state of affairs, but it is just as plausible that Microsoft is moving to a more traditional client-server structure in a bid to win the mindshare of enerprise purchasers. I'm particularly attached to this explanation because of my insight in to the telecom industry.

Telcos don't want to sell dumb pipes to customers, because dumb pipes are a commodity. Selling a TDM PRI with 23 voice channels is something anyone can do. Carriers are pushing customers away from these products in to SIP offerings that can integrate with customer applications because these products have high exit costs. I can swap out PRIs three times a year without much trouble. Changing application integration is far more expensive. This creates room for higher margins.

Here's the thing: with Skype, Microsoft can enter this space. I don't know exactly how Skype does it, but they manage to deliver a great VoIP product without any infrastructure considerations (network design, QoS, backhaul constraints). I've used SIP carriers who deliver a router with preconfigured QoS that can't call quality as good as Skype.

I'm not suggesting there's magic here or anything, but Skype's product is damned good. If Microsoft were to integrate Skype in to Exchange, that would give them a customer endpoint that could take advantage of a network designed for voice. Exchange could keep intra-office calls local (like a PBX) and segregated on their on VLAN, while aggregating outside voice traffic on separate network interfaces, much like traditional TDM and SIP based PBX systems. This would check all the right boxes for enterprise voice managers. I'm also willing to bet this would push Skype voice quality over the threshold from end-user novelty to enterprise infrastructure.

There are far too many positive business reasons from a straight forward product standpoint to jump straight to the "this lets them mine customer data" viewpoint.
The compact framework can also be used on Windows desktops and can make sense if you want to bundle dotnet with your app (because you want to improve the installation experience) while minimizing download size and you don't need features from the real dotnet framework.
Just to talk about naming for a second....

Isn't a Briarpatch a bad thing to be in?
2012 Toyota Corolla
V8 first stage compiler profiling changed from sampling to counters
Well one of the points of kickstarter (the way I see it) is that backers (even those who pledge $5) get something in return. Obviously with an airplane this would not be the case. No backer would get anything apart from their name printed somewhere. Or a T-shirt.

Nonetheless I think the model looks awesome and I hope some of the big guys/girls notices your effort and opens his/hers wallet for you to build a prototype.

Good luck!
Can't wait to spend a weekend creating a plugin!
We launched http://dialog.gs/ into private beta a week ago.

Dialoggs is a social conversation network that can be used in a number of ways. See my explanation at http://amirmalik.net/2012/04/27/introducing-dialoggs if you're interested.

With ~100 users (~20 active/day), it's been great iterating on the product and seeing user feedback first-hand. Our app is incomplete with obvious bugs, yet we still launched. People love it and understand that we're human, and it's still a work-in-progress.

Don't wait for perfection that may never come, just launch.
Also, the embedded image doesn't work and I don't know how to tell that to the blog's author.
We wanted to build a product that helps people get information about the security issues that affect their apps and servers specifically.

Information security has problems getting everyone to know about the security patch when it is pushed. We wanted to address the issue to help everyone be more secure.
I agree with you that it's not for anyone, other than the man in the arena, to determine whether someone belongs in a startup or not. At the same time, I strongly agree with the observations made by OP. The social pressure is strong in the valley: all people talk about are startups. Its perceived to be easy to work for a year or two with a couple smart friends and get bought by Facebook or Google. Zuck bragged at SUS two years ago that (a) every CEO they'd acquired was still working at Facebook and (b) they'd shut down every product they'd acquired. Many people aren't "in it" to build great companies. That's just how Silicon Valley works. On the other hand, many of the best companies are highly product focused and driven by a desire to do something more. Most people on both ends of the spectrum will fail. Perhaps this is correlated to the underlying motivations, but I don't think anyone has data on that (probably because it's ill-defined). It may be wrong to moralize about this dichotomy, but it's certainly there.
If you're just looking for rank tracking, there's a few I've heard good things about (obviously, I like Moz, but I use a lot of the other features too, and am biased):

- http://www.advancedwebranking.com/
- http://www.gshiftlabs.com/
- http://authoritylabs.com/

Hopefully those can help! And eventually, if you get deeper/broader in you marketing software needs, maybe we'll be worth another shot :-)
Show HN: Making Gmail's theme better
Google recently pushed out some new changes to gmail including a new theme. I didn't like the blandness of it and the High Contrast theme didn't jive well either. So I created a CSS injection script with the help of greasemonkey.

Please take a look! C&C (Comments and Critique) appreciated!
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/132250
The Garden Gates, Maintenance Free, Lightweight and Elegant Fiberglass Pottery
Nick Carr: Pay Up, Yochai Benkler
The perfect startup team: Asterix and Obelix
SEOMoz TAGFEE and Me
Though Google Health was discontinued, perhaps this is a test for Facebook Health?
New to me. Thanks a lot.
“RadicalFlow” – Build iPhone apps with no code. SAYWHUT?
I didn't think that when I read it but I can see where one could think that. I do think he's got a point about the "me, too" start up bandwagon that appears to be growing. I would not try to discourage anyone from giving it a go as long as they are being smart about it. I would if/when the time was right.
Whether the data is displayed live off the wire, buffered in RAM, buffered on disk, cached on disk, or beamed into my skull by space aliens, it makes little difference to me.

I only care that the system is responsive with good quality.
Thanks -- the site looks for the scrollwheel and the down arrow, both of which will open the tutorial after which page down et al. should work as expected. Are you seeing different behavior or just wanted to hit page down initially?