skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That is going to work well when the employees starts to gang up together and give each other unicorns in return for their unicorns.
Stamen announces Field Papers for OSM mapping
Mixture of both is the key. Inc/business in the Valley, R&D in Gr
Kid Who Squatted at AOL For 2 Months Aims for $500K For Startup
my point is, credit cards suck, and there is plenty of space for alternatives. There is a race in peer to peer and micro-payment space, and currently paypal is the leader, but it is far from perfect. I'm not a big fan of FB, but i think this article is on point, and they are well suited to enter this space. Being able to validate identity (thanks to all the information), and having a brand and cash to back it up. As for the new division, infrastructure, and bureaucracy, it would boil down to how well they can execute.
Type 2: kind of an embarrassment to be held up as an example of Silicon Valley innovation. They might be legitimate entrepreneurs and they might make money, but in terms of being world-changing, let’s not be absurd

Eh? Is that really what people consider an embarrassment these days? And since when did "entrepreneur" have anything do with a location?
If you're doing 32-bit hashes in Javascript and are willing to trade a bit, then a 31-bit hash may be at least an order of magnitude faster due to VM implementation: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/v8-users/zGCS_wEMawU/6mConTi...
I live in a country that did just that (Ireland). :)

There are groups in the UK campaigning for a republic ( http://www.republic.org.uk/)
Diesel has been tainted for at least a generation by memories of the black soot and foul stench of 18-wheelers in summer. Diesel exhaust filters have improved dramatically in the last 10 years or so, but everyone that's currently 25+ remembers diesel being extremely unpleasant.
(Please read this comment carefully.) The author's comparison at the end of the article is correct.

It is obvious that it is much better to get the package "2% of company shares, Priority on exit, Invest small part of his capital" for the same $50k (i.e. the programmer's guaranteed lost income) when you are paying the money directly.

Further, investing $50k directly does not even involve working full-time or part-time (except on financials related to the round), and has an equal chance of both lost money (company doesn't get on sure footing), and returns on the money, that the programmer faces.

So bottom line. If you have identified a company that you think has good chance of success, you should simply decline to work for them for equity and a lowered wage: instead, find a source of great personal wealth, and invest a small part of it directly in the company.

Working for your equity means you're getting screwed. Being very rich gives you a lot better deal.
The Drivers of the Experience Economy
> In other words, an investor giving $50K is more valuable than an employee deferring $50K in salary.

You couldn't be more wrong. $50K saved is the same as $50K invested. They have the same impact on revenue, profitability and life expectancy of the company. Sorry to get personal, but the fact that you don't understand that is probably why you're ‘employee #1’ and not ‘co-founder’.

Another point: companies are generally disinterested if you tell them that you have eventual plans to leave. As much as both parties know it's unrealistic, hiring managers generally prefer a long-term commitment without a hint of an 'exit plan'.

> The employee [...] is able to leverage the work as employee #1 to then start his or her own start up later.

Not if they/you don't get access to the company financials, or investor meetings, or insights into the decision-making process (let alone a part in it).
For small teams and solo developers technologies like Puppet are easy to miss because most documentation is geared toward a target audience of folks running clusters of servers. It's actually super useful for small, single server projects, too. This post is a soft introduction to Puppet for smaller projects and dev system setups.
Watch Snow White and the Huntsman
Watch Snow White and the Huntsman Online is based on Snow White by Brothers Grimm which is edited by Conrad Buff IV and Neil Smith. This is distributed by Universal Pictures under Roth Films studio which is planned to be shown in theaters on the 30th of May, 2012 in United Kingdom, the 31st of May, 2012 in Germany, and June 1, 2012 in the United States.
‘Apple’s devices are like beautiful crystal prisons’
I did this for a bit although I got 3% of the company. The resume bullets and name recognition since I left have more than made up for the low salary, at later jobs.
It's called 3-D Secure. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecureCode)
Create good & bad TED talks; statistical analysis
no.
No.
NO.
Just no.
> Or just xrange(num) and then, as in my original code, output *= num + 1. :-)

HN ate your asterisk(it uses asterisk to mark italics), or something wrong with my chrome app for HN. In your post, I saw:

def Factorial(x): output = 1 for i in xrange(x): output = (i + 1) return output
All depends on that first employee, for some that would be an amazing deal for others it is laughable. If I was out of the school but with some skills and liked the company in general I would jump on it. Now the idea, founders, investors would have to absolutely blow me away (order of magnitude higher then anything I experienced). I like to get payed in cold hard cash and now not later.
Boston Real Estate Mixes with Social Networking
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but the Nazis had the right idea: eugenics.

This is not something I am opposed to from a scientific point of view.

We do it with livestock, so why not us?

(Before I accidentally invoke Godwin's law, I'm not saying I agree with the other things the Nazis did or that I agree with eliminating non-eugenic friendly individuals).

EDIT: I actually disagree entirely with eugenics - this was an experiment ot see what happens if you apply plain logic and no ethics to the problem. The number of upvotes was slightly worrying!!! For reference, my daughter is disabled and would fall foul of any appropriate eugenics principles which is not right.
Tim Cook: Apple is "doubling down" on Siri
i have done a shitload of different sitmap.xml logic over the time, the most advanced (which is still in use by a top 500 worldwide website) is a real time sitemap. if a new dataset gets added, it is calculated if the dataset will result in new landingpages or will lead to an update of an existing landingpage. if the new/updated landingpages are within a content quality range the "shelving logic" looks up into which shelve (speak sitemap.xml) it belongs. it then sets the various last modified datas (which bubble up from the landingpages to the sitemap.xml to the sitemap-index to the robots.txt)

we achieved a 97% crawl to landingpage ratio, and an overall 90%+ indexing ratio. (after a lot of trial and errors with the quality metric) on sites with 35M+ pages.

said that, for sites with less than 10M pages i do not care anymore, just submit big complete sitemaps, update them if when a sitemap gets added (or a big bunch of them deleted). the overhead of running and maintaining a real time sitemap for small websites (less than 10M pages) is just too much.
"Equity is the founder's only payoff, so they're going to be incredibly stingy about it, while playing up the intrinsic benefits"

There's also a lot of weight behind the "this is how it's done". 1% used to be very generous when founders had to roll the dice with 12+ months of their life to get seed funding and take big dilution when they did. Nowadays, it's cheaper/easier/faster to start a company, easier to get early stage funding, etc. It might make sense to reward employee #1 with a bit more equity... IF you can't pay them market rate (you buy equity by taking risk-- if you aren't underpaid, you aren't risking much beyond opportunity cost).

See: http://startupboy.com/2011/12/13/why-you-cant-hire/
Um, the MySpace reference seems to highlight Joel and others' point: practically limitless user choice on MySpace turned it into such a boundless cacophony of gangsta rapping cat gifs that it was noisy and unusable, and got devoured by Facebook's "express yourself within our clean, limited-styled approach". It's a bit like Apple's thinking: I know you want true multitasking and dancing wallpaper, but that tells me you'll use it if I give it to you, and I know you really don’t want battery life that is measuresd in standby minutes. Since most people aren't willing to have their phone die after 4 hours of use in exchange for more whimsical, athletic wallpaper, their aporoach was to limit you to what most people would really want if they weighed all the tradeoffs and consequences.
How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet
Yes, on a per-project basis, it's in the best interests of the consultancy to drive up the project costs, thereby driving up their own revenues at the client's expense.

But that's a toxic way to do business, and in the long run it's against the consultancy's best interests. The correct way to think is to maximize the revenue of the account, and the best way to do that is to get repeat business. Also, by referrals. Neither of those will happen unless you're acting in the best interests of the client.

It's a pity that these firms don't realize this. Some do though; I work for one of them.
That's changing though. I can count four friends that have bought a VW diesel in the past 2 years. They all love them. They all also happen to be 32 or under. I think the age range of bad memories of diesel is probably 35+.
They would most likely still have to deal with the credit card cartel in one way or another. Simply putting a nice payment front end up doesn't make VISA suck any less.

Another advantage of credit cards is the credit part and it would seem a big stretch for FB to get into the lending game.

I think how well they can execute is only one part of the puzzle, since they are going to have to deal with the governments of multiple jurisdictions and big financial institutions and will basically be at their mercy.
Real-Time Web Analytics and Complying with EU Cookie Laws
Despite the fact that FB makes money off of ads, do you think people would prefer to have ads on Facebook, or to not have ads?

I think the answer is obvious: people prefer no ads. "Advertisement" is a dirty word. People want a free, ad-less product, despite the fact that it's economically unfeasible.

That's a problem. What happens when it becomes more widespread or easier to install things like adblock? What happens if a browser comes along that blocks Facebook cookies and ads by default, but still allows the basic functionality of FB? Don't say it can't happen. We're just getting to the point in society where having everything about us on someone's server is "normal". Wait until there's a disaster of some sort, a major security breach, and see how fast people change their habits. It can happen overnight.
Perhaps Indian companies can get away with this because of the (possibly perceived) cost differences compared to a US/European consultant.

If the base day rate of an Indian consultant is £100/day, and an English consultant £500/day, then the Indian consultant can still throw on more inefficiencies (5x as much) before matching the cost of an English consultant.

So, in theory, an Indian consultancy firm can afford to throw extra developers, servers etc. at a problem and charge the client because it still works out cheaper.

Please note that I'm not slating Indian firms or programmers, merely pointing out economics that could help explain the above behaviour.
Do they provide a 3 month notice before firing someone?
I used to feel that way when I was young. Sadly there really is no way to explain it to you until you want / have your own. If you still feel like adopting at that time then that's great, well done. But I would caution you against defining people having children as being 'unconscionable' as it won't help you make your point.
If one's condition is a usual one then the doctor is the best approach. Similar symptoms can appear in meningitits or west nile virus (arbitrary example) but the doctor knows how many people he treated in the area recently and can quickly come up with an answer. Others can't have sense of analogy and size. It's the same thing as reading posts regarding NOSQL databases where the best way to learn the caveats is to wait a little for the "why it was a bad idea for us" posts.
If you have some rare condition and you have reached to the conclusion that you can't find what it is, a solution is to try and improve on the symptoms by using simple statistics or machine learning. Here is a simple tutorial of machine learning with WEKA where the guy uses data from his heart condition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7kpIBGEdkI
If you have a rare condition and you found what it is, then be prepared yourself. Unfortunately reproducibility in scientific experiments has problems http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2012/04/the-need-for-reprodu... so it is better to use books that come from established groups or organizations.
What if research was absolutely trustworthy? For more daily things you can read forever (try putting "cognitive" and "daily" to pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed to see thousands of post relating to cognitive function). It's too much work, so stick to what's important for you.
If you have some rare condition and you have reached to the conclusion that you can't find what it is, a solution is to try and improve on the symptoms by using simple statistics or machine learning. Here is a simple tutorial of machine learning with WEKA where the guy uses data from his heart condition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7kpIBGEdkI
If you have a rare condition and you found what it is, then be prepared yourself. Unfortunately reproducibility in scientific experiments has problems http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2012/04/the-need-for-reprodu... so it is better to use books that come from established groups or organizations.
What if research was absolutely trustworthy? For more daily things you can read forever (try putting "cognitive" and "daily" to pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed to see thousands of post relating to brain function). It's too much work, so stick to what's important for you.
No, it's not as bad as it was in, say, 2007 ;) But it's still dominant.

For a large percentage of Japanese, the cell phone is their personal computer (and camera, and wallet...). If they own a desktop or laptop at all, it's rarely used. Obviously iPhone and Android look, to us, like nirvana in such a society but there's hesitancy there because (1) by and large they lack some key features like NFC and (2) switching carriers in Japan is, to borrow a Jobsism, a bag of hurt. It can be done, but you'll leave a lot of yourself behind.
My point is that "Unicorn" is a reporting tool. It still takes peers (instead of just your manager, aka the "old way) to understand and accurately value your contribution.

My concern is that not all actions are equal, but the recognition seems to be.

My question is do I get more "points" for fixing the thread dispatcher in the kernel...or do I get just as many for helping you understand how to upload a file to Sharepoint?

That's where you can disenfranchise people. However, I like the idea and to me it is a good step in implementing 360 feedback as part of a review and bonus allocation.

IMHO, combine peer feedback as an equal component of bonus allocation along with management assessment and I think then you have a winner.
Best Bodyweight Exercises
Best Bodyweight Exercises, best exercises in home, bodyweight exercises without equipment
Patio11 nails it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2950077
Why don't we have vehicles with the speed of airplanes, the low capital and operational cost of motorcycles, the cargo capacity of trains, the cabin space of luxury yachts?

NoSQL is just a brand name for a loosely defined set of engineering trade-offs. It's easier to achieve the scalability and fault tolerance needed for a lot of modern Internet systems if you don't also require ACID and the huge weight of features and old usage patterns that the market expects of a relational (which they read as "SQL") database. If somebody wants to pour $10-50 million into making an open source NoSQL-scale RDBMS, great, but some projects are too complex for any but the most robust open source communities to maintain, never mind create.
I showed that paragraph to be wrong. Not slightly, but wildly in the common scenario where, while a test is running, you make another change to your website that lifts conversion.

The difference in this case is not a few hundredths of a point of convergence. It is a question of potentially drawing wrong conclusions about the wrong version for 100x as long as you need to.
It's not whether Facebook makes money off the ads. We know they do. It's whether the advertisers make money from the ads that will demonstrate if there is a sustainable business model there.
A recent report showed that the minority that click ads at facebook is pretty close to half. Not a bad minority to have using your site.
I hate bonuses. I'd rather get equity or a bigger salary. I'm shy and I don't like pandering for attention. I just like getting things done, finding ways to make it easier to get things done, and shipping code so I can go enjoy a beer. I could really care less for bureaucracy and competition. It's inefficient.
Not negotiating is part of it, but also its not knowing what to ask for. Though equity is the payoff, most founders at the beginning are pretty loose with their equity because it really has no value, so throwing someone a percent or two when its worth $0 to get someone happens quite often, especially when you as a founder have the lions share.

However, the biggest muff that people in this position do, is that they don't understand options and how they work, a little what this guy was saying. Take the options, why not, but treated as money and not sweat equity. You might not be able to get preferred shares and deep informations about the company, and you probably shouldn't, but you can ensure that whatever happens the money you put in vests without strings attached every 6 months until they pay you what you are worth.
Really helpful and cleared things up. Don't understand why we have these stupid laws but glad someone's ahead of the curve!
Thanks Joshcrews!

That's one thing I try to advise people when they ask me about doing something similar: a research driven approach to picking a business usually works much better than trying to pick something at random, or something you're really passionate about. That's what brought me to CB radios. If you're interested in the process / criteria I used, I wrote a free eBook which I offer on my blog - just hit up the link above.

In most areas, especially for sales, if you spent just 2-3 weeks learning about a market you'll know more than 98% of your customers, so becoming an expert in an area doesn't take too long, which makes it easier to pick a niche, become an expert and then market your business.
The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) Is Booting Up
Technically, you're somewhat wrong about other countries. For instance, in France, even if ACTA had no impact on the legislation, it would still require ratification by a law. Because, the list of treaties that require ratification is so broad in France (Art. 53 of the Constitution), that almost only symbolic agreements are exempted of ratification by the parliament (or referendum). And that's the case in most of European countries.
Harsh sentences for rioters is stupid? I know people who live and work in those areas.

• 4 years conviction for (while drunk) creating a Facebook group calling for a riot in your home town, and then no-body turning up and no riot happening ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/16/facebook-riot-calls... ) is stupid (2 different people were convicted of this).

• 6 months for stealing £3.50 worth of water ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London-... ) is stupid.

• Several months conviction (later overturned) for accepting a pair of shorts your housemate looted when you were asleep ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/19/riots-mother-looted... ) is stupid.

I'd argue for the tweeting conviction too

I'm talking about the Twitter Joke Trial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Paul_Chambers ) where Paul Chambers tweeted "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!". He has a criminal conviction and had to pay £1,000. That's silly.

I'm not saying it's all bad, but neither is it all good. As I said, "You can always find cases of stupid judicial decisions in the UK"
Youtube Feather Beta
Banking IT horror story
Best quote: "I know people in IT who retain paper copies of all their internet banking statements"
Was it? I usually see things like that. Do you have an ID so I can check? Thanks.

(pause)

I've just done a search and I can't find it. Are you sure?

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=folklore.or...

Doesn't seem to turn up anything. Do you remember what the other title was?
Cheap Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Moves toward Commercialization
I like Google and G+, but I think the appropriate place for these updates is in Google Maps. I don't know when I'll be searching for food in G+. Probably not soon.

IMO, what really needs to be updated are the Maps pages that look like this: http://goo.gl/RwKqM. Every time I land on one I just end up manually typing the restaurant's name into Yelp instead. That's extra work, but I do it. Then I'm in Yelp and I just browse around in there instead of Google Maps, so those pages pretty much actively push me to use another service.

Generally I go to yelp because clicking the restaurant's picture doesn't eject me into a random site that the picture was scraped from, the reviews seem to be more helpful, and the users all have pictures. All the blank user silhouettes on the maps pages make it feel cheap. A lot of other things could be improved too but I can't think of what specifically atm.
Why Open Source Your Secrets
You can't sign away your rights. No matter what they put in their shitty license, you can still pursue whatever kind of lawsuit you want. It's still up to the judge whether or not to go forward with it, but just because a license says something doesn't make it legally valid at all. It's smart for Microsoft to put a clause like that in there because there are judges that might take it into consideration, but by no means is this a get-out-of-class-action-lawsuit-free card.

Oh, by the way, by readying this comment you (the reader) hereby agree to give me $1,000 within 30 days. (See? I can make pointless claims of agreement too)

My point is that legal-sounding words claiming agreement don't necessarily mean anything. What's important is if they stand up in court. I'm no lawyer, but I rather doubt that clause would get them very far. Legal documents are about covering all your bases, not creating magical tomes of inherent power.
I'm not sure I understand your last line there. The request takes exactly the same amount of time as if you weren't using Rails' streaming support and will occupy a web process for the same duration; it just results in some of the data being sent before the response is complete. This yields no net performance increase/decline; it's merely an improvement of the user experience.

And yes, there are plenty of ways to perform streaming in the web server itself. I'm not talking about that, but please feel free to write up a post of how to do that and achieve similar results; I'd be genuinely interested.
::sigh:: Would love to see this thing in detail and work on it. Frustrating that some of the most promising and interesting technologies in Google (e.g. BigTable) come out of there only in whitepaper or spec form. I can see several business advantage reasons for them to do so, but still... frustrating.