skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree that it is concerning.

The worst part is that I've seen attiudes subtly shift away from real entrepreneurial spirit and towards a "how do we make ourselves attractive to patrons" attitude.

It's a pragmatic choice, if you are going to be the subject of patronage and treated as such then you don't work on building a business you work on pleasing the patron so he and his friends will keep giving you money.

It's an unintended consequence of the very healthy VC/Angel ecosystem and consumer internet sites that are hard to monetize but still valued by the public. Maybe it's just a weird blip and not a big deal. But it's a direction that strikes me as unhealthy.
"If the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County wanted to, it is more likely than not that they could get a conviction for illegal lodging (misdemeanor)."

I mention the risk of violating zoning laws below but I also asked a public defender their take on that aspect as well. They said pretty much that unless you could prove that AOL both knew and allowed this to occur, or could prove that they didn't actively try to discourage such things, you could not convict them of violating the rules. She related a case of a homeless person who was charged with loitering and the business was charged for allowing people to live at their facility in violation of zoning laws, but the case against the business was dismissed for lack of evidence that the business knew about the activity or allowed it. I expect AOL would use a similar defense in this case.
Yeah but I would think that evaluating whether a person can code or not is hard. (From both personal experiences as an interviewee/interviewer and the large number of posts regarding interviews that we see on HN every day). During my limited "oldster" interviewing experience as part of my startup job, I have found that people who have spent a long time out of academia find it (slightly) harder to solve questions on trees, graphs etc. On the other hand, they do cream the shit out of problems that you face in your day to day job in industry. On the other hand, people who are fresh out of school typically have the situation in reverse. I myself again feel the best way to evaluate a person's coding ability is to ask them to work on a tiny project. However, it doesn't seem reasonable to ask a person coming in for a senior position to work on a silly coding challenge.
Agree the comments supporting Facebook's fragmented strategy of introducing new separate apps.

To compete with Microsoft, Apple, Google you need a platform (OS and phone). While Facebook messenger didn't really take off, photos may be more of a popular transition as many send photos to Facebook anyway.

I feel that the mobile app market will mature along the same lines as computer software. Eventually the majority of users will want a simple experience of picking up a phone without having to make choices in an 'store' environment.
I am scraping my memory, trying to find an example of an older coder that I admire, and I can't find one. I think this is really unfortunate for me, because I know they're out there.

This is just an artefact of who you are and where you are in life - and nothing to worry about. How many people outside of your immediate age range do you know anyway? You're almost certainly like most people, who mostly know people kinda like themselves. If you're young you tend to hang with young folk. If you're a good developer you tend to find other good developers. Put both together and it's very easy to think that all good developers are young.

Most of the really good developers I know are in their thirties and forties. That's because those are the people I hang out with coz I'm in my forties myself.

As long as you realise that this is an artefact of who you know - rather than what the world is like - you'll be fine.
I haven't found that, and I moved from California to Denmark, the highest-tax country in the world (most of Europe has somewhat lower taxes). My tax rate is about 15% higher than it was in CA (counting all levels of government). But, I get complete health insurance for that amount of money, no co-pays or deductibles or maximums or employee share of the premium or anything, and I get it guaranteed for life at the same price, with no way to ever be dropped, have claims denied due to pre-existing conditions, have my premiums jacked up due to getting sick, etc. (well, unless I move to another country again). Just complete, bulletproof coverage, with much less bureaucracy too (no forms to file). And I don't have to change doctors or coverage if I change jobs.

If I could pay for that kind of guaranteed-for-life coverage in the U.S., with $0 deductibles, $0 co-pays, no maximums, no reimbursement paperwork, no excluded conditions, etc., for only 15% of my income, I'd gladly do so. In California, I spent around 7-8% just on my comparatively shitty health insurance + out-of-pocket, which had several exclusions and no guarantee I'd be able to renew at a similar rate if I got sick. So I consider the Danish offer a real deal. Even more so if your medical history has any major blemish on it, in which case U.S. premiums skyrocket to much higher than 15% of a typical salary.
This is one of the reasons I sometimes commit code under a pseudonym rather than my own name, go ahead and litigate an imaginary person, I honestly could care less who holds what patents on my code - if it works I'm using it.
Yeah, this was the first time I can remember thinking of "AOL" and "cool" in the same sentence. On the whole I think it reflects well on them.
Ts - Task Spooler - Unix batch system
I had to dig into the FAQ [1] to find what I wanted:

"We removed 97% of search results specified in requests that we received between July and December 2011."

It doesn't say anything about how the requests must be formatted and if they are legally enforceable. i.e. Can just anyone submit a request? Does it have to include any kind of evidence?

[1]http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/...
Google may create a competitor but will not try to prevent you from doing your own thing. That is really the most you can hope for. You cannot honestly expect another company to not enter your business because you thought of it first (except if you have a patent of course).

But Google will not use any of its substantial infrastructure to prevent you from doing your own business. They will still list you in the search results, offer your software in the android store, allow you to buy ads, etc. This is very different from what is happening here.
Hotel Impossible Maintenance
Preventive Maintenance software of the gods!
It's the latter. It's unfortunate for these app developers, but it's not tough to predict when you look at Apple's history with the App Store.
During my lunch break, I write an email to a friend with an interest in whatever project I am working on. This email briefly conveys what I am going to work on that evening, along with a promise to show them what I’ve completed the following morning. The lunchtime email is always brief (usually <100 words), both for the sake of sender and the recipient. When I open my email client after arriving home from work, the first thing waiting for me is usually a brief message along the lines of "That’s cool, looking forward to seeing the results." This is tremendously helpful in motivating me to begin working.

Besides the productivity boost I get from my accountability partner, the act of writing out the email (which condenses the scope of my work for that evening into a few sentences) focuses my attention on whatever it is I'm working on, and leaves me with something to chew on in the back of my mind when the afternoon is growing late. By the end of the work day I'm already eager to hit the ground running.

Several key things regarding courtesy and etiquette displayed to email buddies: Firstly, the emails are targeted; I'm emailing people because I genuinely believe they are interested in what I'm working on. These people can be colleagues, fellow hobbyists, and students I've mentored. If I find myself working on a project and have no one that I feel would be interested in it, it's a sign of one of two things: either I need to expand my social network, or perhaps the thing I'm working on isn’t really such a good use of my time.

Secondly, I don't take too much of their time. I expect them to spend maybe 10 minutes of their attention on the correspondence, and if they spend more time than that it's because they were interested enough in what I was doing to spend more time scrutinizing it. (It helps that my projects can usually be presented visually, with a brief series of photographs that require very little effort to digest.) I don't spend every night working on projects, and I usually have 2-3 things that I’m working on at any given time, so each person I maintain contact with gets an average of one email per week.
Require free access to scientific articles based on taxpayer-funded research.
Shameless self-promotion: If you guys want to have three awesome meals a day, you should check out ZeroCater. We will hook you up with food from the best places around. :)
I listened to rather a nice talk by George Fairbanks at GOTO Copenhagen kinda related to this topic on Tuesday (http://gotocon.com/cph-2012/presentation/Master-builders%20h...). One of the things he brought up was the idea of what you'd tell your twenty year old self to get them to be as skilled as you are now - and it was a hard thing for me to answer off the cuff. After a couple of hours I was thinking about things like that I pretty much totally misunderstood in my twenties.

* Building software is much more about people (both the team and the users) than it is technology. So called "soft skills" are vital to shipping.

* Value starting small and growing a system, more than starting large and solving everything.

* Validate what you produce. Do it with the shortest feedback loops possible.

* Build up abstractions from working code, don't create working code from abstractions.

* Make sure that you build the abstractions from the problem domain/solution into the code, not just the abstractions you need to make the code easier to produce and comprehend

* Always be able to explain the decisions that you make in development.

... and of course the shit load of experience that doing development for thirty years in multiple domains, teams, languages, contexts, etc :-)
Not totally sure how the fundraising process for a TLD works. Can you buy whatever TLD you want? Can I get david.shaw? That would be awesome.

The problem is that even if you get 'jsfounder' status with your donation, there's no guarantee you'll actually get anything other than your name on a petition.

It's a cool idea, and I support lots and lots of TLDs (as they allow creative domain names other than .com et al), but this seems like it might be a sneaky way to raise some capital without having to do anything.

edit: furthermore, do these passionate individuals plan to not organize the petition if they aren't funded?
>Thus, while they're losing $45B over three years, if they keep on track, they'll make far more than $72B during that same period of time. (That's assuming they never make more or less than $6B a quarter over the next three years... in Q1, they made $13B in profit.)

They're not really "losing" $45 billion with the buyback. They're spending $45 billion in cash(which they have) to get $45 billion in stock. The end result, since they don't need to get a loan to execute the buyback would be basically nothing on their books(unrealistically assuming the stock doesn't move at all).
That's great, thanks very much for the advice, those are some really good starting points for me to work from.
An influx of MBAs after the original Jobs ousting was the hallmark, if not the actual cause of, the death spiral that Apple was in until Jobs returned. I worked there for a stint during those stagnant MBA-life-sucking days.

Another one from the article:

> investors now have the CEO's ear for the first time in years

To that, I say, "Oh crap".

Jobs took Apple to greatness because he obsessed over making incredible products. Build incredible products and the money and investors will follow. Change your focus to investors, operations, or accounting and watch as the products suffer.

CNN's breathless and laudatory tone in describing all these responsive changes from Apple just serves as a reminder that reporters should just keep their views to themselves. You can tell that this CNN reporter/editor has a tingle up his leg over Cook's touchy-feely professionalism... as though that's going to improve Apple in any way that matters to those of us who use their products.

Cook may not be a disaster on the level of John Sculley, but his focus on the corporation of Apple rather than on the coolness of its products would worry me if I was long on AAPL.
Thanks for the <3

Yes, it is a lot of work. Creative Director + Copywriter + Art Director/Designer + Developer.

The deck is dynamic, we can change it pretty easy. And/or, we can present with Keynote or whatever else alternatively in person.

We want to make as many VCs aware of our upcoming raise as possible. This seemed like a smart way to do it :)
He used AOL infrastructure to build his company, I'm wondering if he disclosed that to investors as he's pretty liable to them otherwise.

It's lesson number #1 (don't use your employer's computer off-hours when working on your own projects) for people that try to build something outside their company's influence.
What is my IP Address?
Just heard a podcast with Adam Lashinsky. He is the Senior Editor at Fortunate magazine and author of a book on Apple. In the podcast:

"[Lashinsky] shares an insider look at Apple, one of the world's most iconic and secretive companies. Based on his research into the technology giant's internal processes and approaches to leadership and building products, Lashinsky offers insights and surprises from his book, Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works."

Cook was the supply chain guru Jobs employed to turn Apple's supply chain model into one like Dell's. No surprise with this knowledge Cook is now CEO of Apple.

[1] http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2931
First (Successful) No-Parachute Wing-Suit Landing (Video)
"The Xbox 360 violates four Motorola patents, according to ITC Administrative Law Judge David Shaw, Wired reports. Shaw made his initial ruling against Microsoft in April, and now recommends a ban on sales and import of the game console."

Didn't Google just buy Motorola?

This could get interesting.
Also a great deck, the inspiration to create ours!
Yes, Welch started at GE after receiving his PhD. in Chemical Engineering from University of Illinois UC [1]. He joined GE in 1960, and became CEO in 1981.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch
Making sense of shutdowns, takedowns, seizures and more
Speak for yourself. I develop in IntelliJ and use a Mac, and so do many other "software people". I pay for this stuff because it's simply better, to my tastes, than the alternatives. They might not be better to you, and I have no problem with that. Live, let live.

There's nothing wrong with paying for stuff that you want. There is something wrong in stealing (okay, pirating) stuff you want for free. I don't understand why this is controversial, and I do not believe in a fantasy world where everything is free. Ever since there was civilization, there's been no free lunch.
Coffeescript doesn't add pattern matching.
Cook helped create Apple's superior manufacturing process. There are plenty of mistakes on the part of Steve Jobs as well as successful things Apple did that he was opposed to but was overruled.
My favorite image bookmarking site today is designspiration.

Different strokes. The deck shows the direction we're going. Anyone will be able to create any stream. So, you'll be able to aggregate all of the quality images you want :)
Why is this downvoted? Seems like a reasonable suggestion, and I don't see the haters suggesting alternative criteria...
I prefer to work with people that resolve ethical questions ethically, not based on who benefits (or loses).
This. A thousand times.
Congress wants to give another $10 Million to censor more websites for Hollywood
I'm not sure that I see it that way. If anything I'd think Google would find it in its (and, frankly, our) best interests to let the patent war escalate further. The more of a mess it is, the more likely someone in government will step in to intervene. At this point it's becoming routine for every successful consumer electronics device to see a patent ban somewhere. That's not sustainable. I hope.
A little off-topic, but does amazon charge a fee for the authorization that kickstarter does before the project is successful and they charge you? In other words, do unsuccessful projects cost Kickstarter something?
I don't see where copyright law comes into this.
> all bought under Steve's watch

It's on Steve's watch (a Navy term).

/pedantry
That was my first thought as well until I saw that the app was only iOS first....doesn't mean it wont happen, but I'm still not ready to bet on it.
It might not be Masonry, but I've noticed that any site that uses that method of floating content is automatically compared to Pinterest.

I'd assume it's $5 because it took some effort to build and there's no other means of revenue for the time being. The homepage doesn't really do the rest of the experience justice, but the whole thing is really clean and not nearly as distracting from the actual content it claims it is highlighting like Pinterest/Piccsy/Snip.it/Cubbi.es/etc.
I usually work from 8-5, go to the gym for half to an hour. Meditate for 15 minutes and put at least one hour into one of my projects.

The amount of time I put into my personal projects depend on if there is any complex problems going on, I am just starting one or it's in maintenance mode. But I always try to put at least one hour into them. I was hard to actually find time for all of those things, but I finally managed to find a balance.

I must mentioned that as a big soccer/futbol fan the fact that all mayor leagues are in off-season has boosted my productivity.
It's probably too little. I would imagine this is tortious behavior, but IANAL.
Now. With android intents (ok, not cool as pipes, but the idea is there)
There are some pretty massive businesses built on tracking cookies. Clearly they're not worthless or irrelevant.
How does it know the progress / ETA?

I was under the assumption that pipes do not know how much total data is on its way?
Voeding en dieet: crash diëten zijn levensgevaarlijk
> Yeah, #1 is based on my recent experience of adding a newborn to a four year old. 1+1 is apparently 27

Is your spouse stay-at-home?
It costs ~200k to buy a TLD, so if they are not funded they will obviously not be applying for the TLD.
Ok, so you know what you do ;-)

So keep us updated how many VC approached you cold/via intro because of the HTML pitch

> The deck is dynamic,

Just the text content or is everything easily changeable (animations, obejct types, etc.)?
This is the great irony of a free market: that it includes the creation of closed, private markets which are decidedly un-free. (Apple's the biggest jerk about it, but there are many others, such as the game console manufacturers, or Amazon's app store). And as evidenced by the App Store's enormous success, the market does not inherently select in favor of open markets versus closed ones.

Apple of the 2010s is much more deserving of DoJ investigation than 1990s Microsoft ever was. And if I had my druthers, ecosystem monopoles of this type would be blatantly illegal, and manufacturers would be obligated to include jailbreak capability in every single device. (Not holding my breath.)
Wait, electronic artists?

The ones that threw drummers, violinists and piano tuners and all kinds of instrument makers on the historical scrap heap in favor of drum machines, synths, midi keyboards and samplers? And dispensed with producers and sound engineers and session guitarists in favour of a home "studio" that's basically a macbook pro?

And now you tell me they don't even want to employ roadies and tour managers and support live music venues? My God, it's practically cultural genocide...

...or it's opened up a whole new world of musical opportunities that perhaps weren't obvious to those who would have fought to remain in the past if they could?
Guerrilla trend: Make an ad so terrible that it will stand out, and drive clicks
If you give it a file, or specify the amount on the commandline it knows, otherwise it doesn't
> AOL is going to get press out of this that am sure they will find worth the few months of squatting.

That's AOL's decision to make. Not yours, not his.

> Also, entrepreneurs break rules in order to get stuff done.

Unethical people engage in unethical behavior (which is sometimes "breaking rules") in order to get stuff done.

Plenty of entrepreneurs do business honestly, and I'd rather read about them. I don't need a news story to tell me that behaving unethically can provide gains at a cost to others.
This won't help anyone. You don't litigate against software authors. Patent suits are filed (or threatened) against the people who are selling/offering or otherwise making profits from a plausibly infringing device; because that's where the money is.

I think maybe you're confusing patent law (which is a civil thing about damages) and copyright law (which sometimes has criminal penalties). It's not illegal to write and publish source code implementing patented algorithms. In fact: the patent itself is in fact supposed to be an officially published version maintained by the government.

At best, anonymous contributions might insulate you from being subpoenaed because they can't find you.
Ask HN: Would graduate school make you more employable or less?
I'm coming up on the time in my college career where it's either time to start looking at grad schools to apply to or looking around for jobs. What are your thoughts on the two options?
If I remember correctly, it was a breakthrough in Apple's materials research that enabled the aluminum frame for their particular laptop designs.
i've also met a handful of twenty-something programmers who are equally exceptional. but as far as the long tail goes, the kids are much less resistant to new ideas, new concepts (for example functional programming). i think it might be a generational difference, and i think it could shake up the software economy in the next decade

I've had exactly the opposite experience. The young guys I come across are resistant to things like FP finally poking into some bits of the mainstream. The old guys are going "Yay! People are finally taking functional programming seriously!".

I'm in my forties. I'm guessing you're in your twenties.

I'm pretty sure both of our experiences are due much more to selection bias in who we know than any age differences in how developers approach problems and "new" technology.
Thanks, this is one of my favorite parts!
The fictional example forgets to factor in unexpected health costs, emotional distress from no close family and living in a shack in a war torn village.

Okay, slight over exaggeration but anyone could retire early. However it takes sacrifice. It usually involves living away from your family and living in a second/third world country. It assumes you have no unplanned costs (health, weather...). Not terrible but worth considering before quitting your job.
Things Corporate IT Can Learn From Technology Startups
A propos 'intuitiveness' and learnability - here is a great anecdote from 'Making Software', and my interpretation of it: http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/2012/05/on-importance-of-int...
Bending the truth gets you far - I spoke to a trainfan once who told everyone he was a train/locomotive driver/engineer and used that to travel all throughout Europe in traincabs