skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You indicate that the DMCA isn't powerful enough when in fact it also happens to be too powerful. It is a bit of a blunt instrument and is frequently used incorrectly for censorship and not just rights protection.

A good "technical" solution might be a search engine that harshly penalizes these types of articles and the domains that host them.
I have thought quite a bit about checked vs unchecked exceptions and come to the realization that there is a fundamental philosophical problem that checked exceptions can never overcome.

The idea with checked exceptions are that they should be used for errors which the caller should be forced to handle. But this property is entirely dependent on the context the function is being called from! For example, if the user is specifying a filename for a file, I should be expected to catch the error and display feedback to the user. However, if I just wrote the file to disk 5 seconds ago, I shouldn't be forced to trap the error!

The crux of the problem is this: the severity and recoverability of an error is known only by the caller of the function, not the function itself. Checked exceptions attempt to foist this information into the function itself, where it is unknowable and generally inaccurate. Checked exceptions are a misfeature if I ever saw one.
My answer to "What 1 thing should Apple work on?" (actively help ISVs)
I quit my 9-5 to work on a startup. I make sure to start and end my day (whatever hours that might be) with reading. It is relaxing and stimulating, gives me inspiration and shuts my mind off when necessary.
paypal can write a facebook app, right?
This would be a good place for me to say that I really appreciate your blog. You are very skilled at conveying the information the typical consumer needs to make a good buying decision without overloading the reader with details.
Most unusual demo day ever? Inmates pitch startup ideas at San Quentin
Personally, I get up around 6:00 every morning and get a few hours of personal work done before I leave for the day job. I find it so much more productive to do creative work in the morning when I am fresh and alert than in the evening after a full work day.
Frequently a market can support multiple versions of a product and the presence of multiple versions of the product create the potential to increase the overall market. If there was only one flavor of linux today a lot fewer people would be using linux
Show HN: Reusing browser JavaScript code on server
Java Long Loops Block Threads, JVM Performance Death
DMCA doesn't force them to do anything, it just says that if you play by these rules then you, as the host, can't also be held liable for damages.
You gave me the impression, in your article, that I would not be able to find failed projects by searching on Kickstarter unless I had been following them and knew their exact names. But this is not true. Your example, Instaprint, illustrates this. I need only to search for (for example) "instagram" or "print photo" and the failed project turns up. I don't need to know that there was a project called "Instaprint". Kickstarter makes it easy for me to find failed projects in any area that I am interested in. This puts the lie to your main point, that they are making it hard for entrepreneurs by hiding information about unfunded projects. That they selectively ban robots from indexing unfunded projects is interesting, but this is not the kind of thing I would use Google for. If I wanted to find out the fate of various types of projects on Kickstarter, I would naturally search on Kickstarter. And this seems to work perfectly.
Benjamin Franklin
>> and (the worst case) basic control flow.
I call it "java-way goto"

I can't agree about Class.objects.get - method must return exactly one row by known pk value.

So it perfectly sane to raise exception for zero rows.

Class.objects.filter is working the way you want.
Bad: We're sorry, but we have to let XX,XXX of you go. Here's your severance packages, etc etc.

Really Really Bad: We're sorry, but some of you will be let go, sometime in the next years. Try not to think about it. Ok let's be productive out there people!
using cheeky viral memes have been in the flashbulb's m.o. from the beginning - in fact he got some good press and buzz when he originally uploaded his album with this disclaimer to filesharing sites upon it's release four years ago. imo the piracy angle is downplayed because he makes most of his income from television commercial jingles for unilever and verizon.
I'm sorry I was unclear - I meant that the scene could have changed since the Street View team was last through.

The Google Maps data is surprisingly bad - we saw several presentations about the Car, and they highlighted how awful it really is.

I don't think that they're preplanning. I think that they're analyzing the scene for differences to simplify and speed calculation. Having good a priori data is really powerful.
What do you mean by "nigh-unlimited?" Even if you have a store of energy that doesn't run out, thermodynamics will bite you if you try to use too much of it at once.

planets become remarkably big targets.

Even 1970's tech has access to huge amounts of energy for targeting planets from space, if all you want to do is to destroy stuff.

And space habitats become a practical alternative. That could be an interesting setting, and remarkably non-dystopian

"Burning Man in the Oort Cloud" has been done. There's still a lot of potential there, though.
The reality is work is quite easy at college if you have the maturity to handle your independence. I'm at a UC school double majoring in CS and Econ and I probably do less than an hour of studying to prepare for midterms and finals. I don't have a 4.0(although I am close), but I instead manage to put 6 or 7 courses into a quarter schedule. I think it really just comes down to doing the learning NOW. Don't understand it? Interrupt the teacher in a 100 person lecture hall. You're here for yourself, and the closer you can put your understanding of the material to when it is being taught, the better off you are.
New business model: Kickstarter for songs.
That's exactly the kind of thing I'd like to be able to do. For instance, I'd love to know which categories have the highest success rates, etc.
Apple’s TV distinction could be portability
Louis CK begs to differ on the viability of a donate model.
I would love to see if this is the same on Linux...
I doubt that it will work. People who are willing to donate money to a band are much more likely to buy the album, instead of downloading it. That's how they want to show their support.
Investment firms warned of Facebook woes before IPO, report says
I'm not an expert on laws governing LLCs in different states, and I'm sure that there are loopholes / exceptions for certain circumstances. But being setup as an LLC vs. a sole proprietorship offers you significantly more protection. If you're targeted in a lawsuit operating as a sole proprietor, I believe all your personal assets are at risk. Operating under a LLC makes it significantly harder to come after your personal assets, especially if you're good about keeping business & personal assets in separate accounts.

Another thing I've heard recommended / try to do is to always sign as a member of a LLC (include your company position next to your signature) so it's clear you're signing on behalf of the LLC and not personally.
Building an entire engine and car in Automation: A Car Tycoon Game [video]
Honestly things are changing. When I make a rageface comic for /r/f7u12 (don't judge me) I really don't care if it gets reposted to 7gag, 4chan, whatever. I'd much prefer assumed copyleft than assumed copyright.
The Sound and the NoSQL Fury
Luca Bolognese (who was on the F# team at Microsoft, and who gave the first talk on F# that I ever watched) left Microsoft to go to Credit Suisse, so that makes sense.

As to other financial firms using F#, Don Syme (the F# lead) posts F# job listings on his blog, and many of them are at finance companies:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/tags/f_2300_+jobs/
It would be an interesting full-circle, since in a lot of ways Kickstarter is patterned off crowdfunding models that were pioneered in music in the early 2000s, like Einstürzende Neubauten's "supporters project" (2002).
I first saw it when I downloaded Soundtrack to a Vacant Life in 2008. I believe the Bandcamp was only added in the last couple of years.
Actually, it's not that difficult. Get GCC to generate DWARF [debugging] information, and then use that to provide the back-references. (Reference: DWARF 3.0 spec, available at http://dwarfstd.org/doc/Dwarf3.pdf. See page 92.) This is how GDB does the same.

The output is a little weird (I've had it execute line 56 before line 55, for example) and you do have to be careful, as not all lines translate directly. But it would be at least be a nice starting point. There are even some nice libraries out there that parse this information!

EDIT: Hmm, I just noticed that the source is on Github. If I get some time this weekend I'll try adding support for this.
All good suggestions, but I'd say just skip the alcohol if productivity is a focus. Drinking alcohol in fairly close proximity to sleep will lead to less restful sleep, and potentially set the Doer up for a less productive tomorrow. Also, regular drinking of alcohol can mess with stress levels and natural stress management, potentially impairing the ability for Doer to be calmly productive. I recommend flavored seltzer water as an alternative. :)
I don't. If I was, I'd still be at work. I have more interests in life than working.
The key word there is "might."

FB and its believers think that the chances are high enough to make big money, or at least that they can make them high enough.

In actuality they aren't. You might think about booking the flight, but the chances of you actually reaching for the credit card based on idly looking at photos are too small to do worthwhile targeted ads.

The idea that FB can just tune their algorithms until they know exactly what you're thinking is a fantasy based on...

1. an overly optimistic estimation of the SNR ratio of the info people put into FB, and

2. on the hilarious fallacies of the aforementioned Market Economics Fairy which assumes that everyone is always a rational actor, and that everything people do has definite reasons behind it which can be traced and understood, and their future behaviour predicted from, and crucially that these reasons can be modelled with traditional reductionism. This is plainly not true.

Admittedly my opinions here are based on guesswork, just like FBs are, but I contend that I have the benefit of drawing my conclusions without a hundred billion dollars worth of wishful thinking clouding my vision.
I think we all saw this coming. I remember when Cook was first chosen, CNBC kept referring to him as the "logistics guy." That's good news for just about any company but Apple.

Sculley was a "logistics guy" and it worked for Pepsi. By 1995 Apple was a bureaucratic, MBA-filled, artist-less mess. Apple isn't HP or Samsung or one of a dozen other bland electronics companies for a reason.
Bioengineers Make DNA Into a Living Flash Drive
I enjoy reading proper security geeks securing stuff. I have a password on my MBA, and some stuff in some encrypted .DMGs.

That's about it. I like telling the people I know who work in security and watching them get a mix of pity and shame in their eyes.
No major automaker will produce self-driving cars because self-driving cars greatly reduce the need for private car ownership. A two-car family might be able to manage with a single car if that car can drive itself to pick up individuals. Groups could pool their money to buy a single car the same way that fractional ownership of jets happens today but on a mass scale. The number of cars parked unused could go down substantially. Self-driving cars are a huge benefit for society and cities especially but a disaster for car companies.
Considering that Kickstarter only makes money if a project is successfully funded[1] I have a hard time seeing how it is in their interests to deliberately undermine future Kickstarters.

Also, of tangential interest on that same page Kickstarter states that the number of successfully funded projects is 'a little less than half'.

[1] - http://www.kickstarter.com/start
The original document was included with a torrent and that greeting was intended to be tongue-in-cheek.
Respectfully, I strongly disagree.

There is no such thing as "easy money" -- hence the term "10 year overnight success." If you implemented an idea first, you will be the space leader, and your competitors won't be able to budge your position unless they significantly improve upon your idea. Look at Angry Birds or Minecraft. They both were relatively easy to make, but hard enough that not just anybody could do it. Despite both of them constantly releasing their numbers, no one has been able to take over their space (there have been many clones, even successful ones, but they are still far behind in terms of monetary success).

What you WANT to do:

Brag about your success. Even fudge the numbers if you have to. Your success will get you in the headlines, which is free advertising for you.
This assumes your goal is to pass exams and not learn. It seems a lot of people still mistakenly believe their goal in formal education is to learn and so instead of focusing on passing their exams (which is all that matters) they focus on learning.
Yeah, that part of Fog Creek has always amused me to no end. ~Developers~ are special and unique snowflakes who need a private office and a personal happy-ending masseuse, but sysadmins can work from the bottom of a shoebox, because fuck those guys, right?
Forrester: Maybe Apple’s TV Isn’t a TV
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amandapalmer/amanda-palm...
Just get a pitch you can say about how these patents are making you fearful and how you cannot possibly take such risks as starting your own business (if you haven't) and hiring (more?) people. Keep it short, be confident, practice in mirror. Check various organizations for talking points.

Find a decent suit, get a hair cut, and make yourself look like the stereotypical successful business man / woman. Find out when your representative will be in town (most have multiple offices in their district), and go to a public meeting they are holding. Be pleasant, nice, and state your point. Followup with a letter and get others to write letters on the same subject. If you know one of the big campaign donors then get them to state the same thing.
Interesting but Tim Cook is not a "sales guy"
You might be surprised. It's a bit more than having to just program in new GPS coordinates. Imagine the car drives the route once collecting tons of data with the laser range finder and other sensors on the car. Now they let the car sit for a few days while they process all the data. Finally the car can drive the route. There's still some pretty hard challenges to solve in making those offline algorithms realtime. Maybe some of it is just waiting a couple years for faster processors, but I'm guessing they might have some pretty intense engineering challenges ahead.
Remember, this isn't a blog post, it's intended as a stop for people who were downloading the album without paying, which is illegal.
That's a really nice idea. How does doing this on the server side effect performance? Maybe ye can cache the result.
Facebook is STILL overpriced
Yes

But when Jobs picked Sculley, he was young and inexperienced. He probably had never worked with 'an MBA' so he didn't know what to watch for

Also, the relationship with Sculley went downside fast. When things don't match, this is usually what happens.
At a time where distributing media is as simple as one click, trying to make money off of distribution is just wrong.

It may be practically difficult to enforce, but asking people to pay for the effort involved in creating content is not wrong. There's nothing wrong with asking for contributions for the effort involved in creating a song, and nothing wrong with respecting that. Some artists don't want to perform in concerts, but like recording and sharing their music.

Personally I don't feel the donate model is strong enough to support music because given the choice most people won't donate, but if you tell people they are expected to pay some small amount, and make it easier than not paying, the majority will be happy to pay for content.

The current system of big labels is not required for creating and selling content, and is not the only way to do it - for example artists can sell direct via the internet. There's never been a better time to sell content digitally.
Good point. I could have chosen a less specific example to point out that "failed" projects still show up in search results.
Have to agree. Working on anything that is not my own leaves me feeling like I have a void that can only be filled by taking some tangible step in the direction of my personal goals before going to sleep. Taking action consistently has created the habit.
Hi il,

Wow I never expected the co-founder to reply, Thanks.

Good to know about that, although my next question is irrelevant to your startup but you might throw some light on it. So here is my question can't we similarly crawl job-sites data since they are also publicly available?

Thanks
The more public you are with your business, the better you need to execute to maintain your advantage.
It happened 4 years ago, and the guy's not rich, but this model supported him enough to release 7 full length albums since, and do quite a few concerts. Furthermore, his attitude towards the music industry (and fantastic creativity in music and other things) gained him a bit of a cult following.
I agree that programmers should learn the 'Unix philosophy', but lumping Perl in there doesn't make much sense. Perl is just a scripting language, like Python or Ruby, and one of which I'm not particularly fond. It does not espouse 'one tool, one task' — "those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl." Definitely learn shell, awk, sed, and co. But avoiding Perl won't do any harm.
Why Facebook Will Be Around For A Long Long Time Redux
"Bad is relative, obviously, since you have to be in the top 5-10% to be making money (once you start playing rake)"
Um. The same columnist wrote on Thursday before the IPO "Here Are 10 Reasons Not to Buy Facebook Before You Buy It Anyway"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230387960457740...
Just a small tip. I've stopped to read articles — I'm looking at you HN! — at work or at my desktop computer. I just bought a Kindle and use the Instapaper or Readability "Send to kindle" feature. Then I read at my sofa, bed or commuting. It increases my focus, I read faster, killed my happy clicking of other useless junk, and make me associate my desktop to a place to work.
I think what you are asking is not how to be more motivated but how to work much more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis, namely on your 9-5 AND your personal projects... if I was you, I would be very careful not to overload yourself and quickly drift into a burn-out! Just because it's projects you might actually enjoy more than your 9-5 does not make it easier on your brain and body - it is still mental work, it is still sitting at your desk and it might even be more challenging then your 9-5 because you are likely working on mostly new things.

I think what you are experiencing, being reluctant to work more on your personal projects, is your body telling you you are tired and should be more worried about resting and doing something completely different. And set time outside your 9-5 days for your personal projects, why not focus it on the weekends or start a 4x10 schedule and use the Friday or Monday for personal stuff?
Quite the opposite, in my experience. I can read my feed on my 'phone, with a better UI than the website (turns out native app beats webapp, even when it's tiny screen vs. desktop), so why would I ever bother going to the website?
Why KISSmetrics founder lives in a hotel
I find it really bizarre that in a forum which generally celebrates the ability to sell and profit from unlimited copies (c.f all the app store success stories), we have decided that such technology should not be available to others. If musicians want to make money, they're gonna have to do it sweating under the lights. Why is that?

Would people here be as enthusiastic if the only way to get paid for writing an app was to sit down and type it out in front of each customer?
Usually, what happens for me is, I spend from 10-6 working on my Master's thesis or occasionally distracted, I spend from 5:45-7:30 playing Ultimate (a running sport with a frisbee) with some friends two days out of the week, I hop down to the stores before they close, at 9pm I get home and cook myself dinner. The days where I don't exercise are sometimes spent working later on the thesis, since I can get distracted on the Internet while at work and nobody bugs me.

That last point is I think the single most significant thing that you have to establish. When someone wants it, you will find it much easier to continue. Most of my projects are unwanted, and are therefore on the back-burner.

I don't mean to blend religion with Hacker News too much, but it is very important to me that we realise the power of ritual, and what we take for granted. So it is just taken for granted that my phone will go off with an alarm at 11:30pm, and then I will change into comfortable evening clothes, brush my teeth, turn off the computer, sit down on a meditation cushion with a pen and paper, and write. These are usually religious writings, and I don't want to get into that too much here, but the ritual, as well as the great importance to me, helps me to practise this skill. Setting an alarm on your phone is a good idea because it can interrupt the distractions.

As for those side projects, what really helps for me is that I walk to my apartment and back. Whenever I talk about the fact that my primary transportation mode is walking Hacker News seems to have pretty tepid responses -- "why not bicycle or drive home and then sit for half an hour instead?" -- but the distractions when walking are very different. Sometimes, I practise my singing on the way home, with music from my mobile. That's generally an indication that my brain wants some rest and I should watch television or read a book. Other times, I am thinking about a physics idea, or superpowers, or one of my projects -- then after dinner, my goal is to sit down at my laptop and write something on those projects.

I think we need to learn two skills of resolve. One of them is flow, focusing one-pointedly and whole-heartedly on something and loving it to death. (Love is always transformative and gives our lives worth and meaning.) Another one is reflection, breaking out of the things which we take for granted and casting them into the void. It is by voiding the distractions that you see the messiness of the room; it is your love of the room that makes you clean up the mess. That is not a complete guide to an authentic life, but it is the most important for what you have asked.
Leaving Facebookistan
How to make a site really freaking fast
What common objects used to be made of (and plastic democratised consumption)
No, that's a good point - if a lot of people would find it useful visiting those Twitter profiles (from the main company page?) that can be added. Thanks for the feedback.
Congrats on getting the product built. The key now, before you perform any additional work on it, is to determine if there is a need/want for your product outside of your current user and potential user, that warrants additional time spent, and can subsequently provide you with the ability to earn some cash.

I'd suggest looking at some of the writing around the Lean methodology, especially Customer Development. For example, you can create simple surveys and send them out to potential customers (find customers on forums, FB, wherever), during which you can gauge interest and if they'd be willing to pay.