skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm actually not making any argument about profitability in the long run. Simply about whether swombat's comment about missed opportunities, or your comment that there won't be missed opportunities, holds.

I am now able to see how your situation would work, so I will abandon my deep skepticism. But I have also come think it's far more complex than any of these comments. They now both seem plausible, and I don't think either of you can be certain without substantial justification. :D
What is wrong with getting support from the government while you are in school?

I didn't think full-time students were eligible for anything. I worked through school but still came out with over $60k of student debt. I would have done anything to reduce that, even take government handouts.

I'm glad you had the courage of your convictions not to apply for the benefits, though.
I can only guess, but my hypothesis is that the level of protest is proportionate to the number of deaths. How many people did the rockets kill?
I don't think it is a good indicator of corporate strategy, but is deeper than just a bad web server.

I tried to get it so I could have a Windows machine for IE testing.

1) It required me to log in with my Microsoft Id. I didn't have one. No link or hint for how to create an account.

2) I clicked about a bit and found where to create an account. The SSL certificate was flagged as signed by an unrecognized authority. It was still a microsoft machine and I had come in from a trusted path, so I accepted it anyway.

3) This new account sent me an email to validate, but allowed me to log in and proceed BEFORE the validation was sent. Probably an abuse vector there.

4) I then get a page with a little green "loading" indicator spinning about. After staring at that for an hour I checked the javascript log and the javascript had blown up on load and left the animated gif misleading me that progress was happening. Don't be updating the loading user feedback device if you aren't loading. That is called lying.

5) Tried a couple more browsers, no better results. Eventually it degraded to 404s and then a "Coming Soon" page.

There are numerous warts on a rollout that is, at least partially, intended to change the media dialog from the negative tone of Vista to a "now things are good" message of Windows 7.
I was saying this in the summer of 2007, partly inspired by the fact that a Mr. Thompson (Fred) seemed to have a good chance of becoming a presidential candidate. It's interesting to see people and organizations repeating it around me now.

By the way, this guy needs to pull out his copy of the book, or at least the Cliff's Notes, on a few counts. Notably, the appropriation of Rearden Metal was hardly immediate.
Eight Random Things I Learned About the Palm Pre Today
You're right about A Confederacy of Dunces, but it seems to me that Ayn Rand wasn't exactly going for funny.

But I am, so -- uh-oh, I said "it seems to me." Better dodge that falling giant copy of Atlas Shrugged that's aimed for my head.
I think the author makes a very good point.

"the fact that offering free, advertising-supported services to millions upon millions of people is not a lean and- mean undertaking"

and

"They figured that the revenue and profits would come eventually but clearly that was putting the cart before the horse"

I see lots of people on HN building great products who have clearly not asked (and answered) the most important question: How will my service make money?

It should be becoming painfully clear that layering advertising on top of a useful service does not work.

Adsense works because it puts relevant ads in front of people who are already searching for something.

FB users are connecting with friends not looking for products.
Mr. Paul Miller, living one block from the world's gayest corner, donated $300. Hilarious.
Few more usability comments related to sign up:

"Login" should be "Username" (username is used on the login form)

"Name" should be "Full Name" or dropped altogether

Log me in when I register, there's no reason to have me retype my details
Telegraph "Domain Names" circa 1920
Chromium Developer Documentation
Yeah but I think it has taken them a long time to realize. What I am getting at is a music advertising/sales marketplace where "any" social network could sign up and promote/sell music. This would be another possible solution to monetizing social networks. So if I maintained a 100k high school football network, There would be an easy way to integrate music ads. And when I say music I mean new acts in general, tours, specific shows, and of course actual product releases/merch sales. As I said, music is very social and everyone likes some kind of music.
Crayon Physics Deluxe released
Fantastic Logos
Makes sense. Wondering what bottlenecks he is running into on the way? Is it that arms are hard to do affordably?
Fantastic Logos gallery
The Logos Gellary
Is that really necessary?

Aren't there plugins to cover the gaps between the two frameworks?
A magnifying glass with bluetooth to project the images on your pc, with a shutter to take snapshots of what you're looking at, with different zoom levels and as powerful as a microscope.

Imagine the kids running around the house taking shots of worms, spiders, ants, etc. and sharing them online.
Good idea. I'd like to see something like this become more integral on Flickr. I've been doing some searching for ideas for album artwork, and I found something on Flickr I'd strongly consider using, but I'll still have to contact and negotiate and it would be nice to have a bit of a framework for doing so, so that the photographer isn't potentially put off or things the email isn't legit. This sounds a lot like what youlicense.com does for music, btw.
Flash is being redefined
Ask HN: HELP Patent troll cruising my industry. What to do?
Ok, this isn't my normal HN username, sorry.

Our startup provides web services/apps to a specific industry. Today I received news that one of our main competitors (although larger) just paid a multi-million dollar settlement to a patent troll.

I'm no attorney, but reading the abstract of the patent is scary–it's so broad that just about any tech company in our industry could be a target. They sued 2 even larger companies in the early 2000's (patent was filed in 2001, so it seems like they're going down the list of targets based on size.

We're profitable and growing well, but not to the point where we'd be "next on the list" ...

What should we do?
One lame excuse laden rant by an author too insecure to let people post detracting comments (Hi Armin - love the selective deletion). Bitbucket copied GitHub. Copying external structure is flattery. Can we all move on?
Who would buy those ads? That seems to be Facebook's problem.

The 'platform' seems to be dominated by idle people who prefer free services that let them spend their day throwing virtual sheep at each other. That's not a particularly valuable demographic for businesses seeking to advertise their wares.

Much better, by far, to purchase targeted advertising on Google.
I've always wanted a GUIDE to good electronica, techno, dance etc because I know I like it, I just don't know whats good... so it sounds like your site may help me! Right now I'm listening to some random tracks I've found... so far so good....

The UI is nice, one thing that would help, though I'm spoiled, is how on the new playlist.com website you can browse music without interrupting your player stream.
Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't realize that Wall Street dealers would be stupid enough to take on what's effectively an infinite risk. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised given how many have blown themselves up lately.

But I think my original point remains valid. As long as short sellers buy sufficient options to hedge their positions, and those options are only sold by investors who actually own the stock, then no one is exposed to unlimited downside. And I fail to see how any trade that carries unlimited downside could ever be considered a "smart speculative bet" from any standpoint, regardless of whether it's economically right or wrong.
I might be on the wrong track here, but one option for assistance with US tax forms for foreign nationals might be to apply for a US stock trading account through a local stockbroker.

I setup a US trading account several years ago here in Australia through CommSec (local bank broker). I had to fill out a W8-BEN and a few other forms but they provided a full guide on how to do it. Just a thought.
a working email to sms app, a better wifi caller for the itouch
This is sad.

I actually love electronic dance music.

But.. I clicked twice, ended up on a page full of from to fill out, and just didn't have the energy to go through with it 'cuz I had no idea what the point was. So as my 4yo (who used all said energy up) would say.. I x'd it.
I usually don't fancy those quizzes (e.g. for music and movie tastes), but yours was actually interesting. Very good pictures, fun to look at, but they took too long to load to keep me involved til the end.

Scaling of fonts / liquid layout could be improved, looks a bit funny on FF/Ubuntu. Layout could use more white space for clarity.

I still like the idea. Good start, keep it up!
Thanks a bunch for the thorough feedback (I was worried cuz no one replied).

Actually, the themes will not be user-editable/creatable by the users once we go live ... we may allow paid users to create their own themes though.

I just have a self-signed certificate at the moment–that's the reason for the firefox warning.

The currency idea is great, thanks. Are coupons popular in the UK/Europe?

Thanks
Quite a different thing, but you may find this interesting: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/
How does the database know who has a TV?
I really like the idea, at least the stock rights part of it. The printing part feels over saturated, but the stock photography part feels like it could be done.

Email me, I'd like to talk more about this.
it doesn't matter how much money you have if you run out of cash.

The problem is that Facebook thinks its Google...when it is not. This is why they spend so much cash trying to hire a ton of people. Just to make people think they are bigger than they are.

What they are forgetting is that Google was profitable before they started hiring people left and right.
I guess Ebert's definition meant to have another word:

"Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires [EXCLUSIVE] authorial control."

Games simply share this authorial control (some games share more than others, like Spore or Little Big Planet). If you take Ebert's definition literally then, indeed, games are art, and it kind of backfires on him.
Palm Pre is .19 of an inch thicker than the iphone, and over half an inch shorter. Great size for an average hand or a pocket. Here are the numbers:

http://palmpre.org/palm-pre-vs-iphone-storm-g1
just run:

firefox -ProfileManager
I'm curious about what HN readers would suggest for a better approach to college admission. Of course, pg recently put himself on record

http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html

as favoring reducing the role of family wealth in college admission decisions. History suggests that, all other things being equal, a society prospers in proportion to its ability to prevent parents from influencing their children's success directly. It's a fine thing for parents to help their children indirectly--for example, by helping them to become smarter or more disciplined, which then makes them more successful. The problem comes when parents use direct methods: when they are able to use their own wealth or power as a substitute for their children's qualities.

What specific changes would help college admission practices improve in this regard?
A disturbingly high percentage of the markers I clicked were Realtors. I also saw one venture capitalist and one Google software engineer.
I would have done anything to reduce that

I sympathize with the aversion to debt but have to note that, empirically, you were not willing to do "anything" to reduce that because you could have gotten a sheepskin from a perfectly acceptable state university for about a fifth of the price.

Now there are many reasons to prefer what you did to what you could have done, but I think paying for your choices is your responsibility, not the responsibility of the rest of us. For example, had you gone on public assistance merely because it was possible due to a bug in the law, you would be transferring money to yourself from folks without college degrees who work much, much harder than you or I ever will. There is no justice in that. The hypothetical availability of that as an option also corrupts your incentives to choose cheaper options like that state school I was just talking about. When you replay those distorted incentives across the whole market, this just increases education prices for everyone.

(This is why I think that subsidies for higher education, such as grants and subsidized loans that I favor in principle, need to be carefully kept in check for them to have any meaning. Otherwise you end up with a bidding war between the colleges and subsidizer for who can pull a higher number out of thin air, with the number eventually footed by the taxpayer. Which is exactly where we have been for the last two decades, with tuition galloping in front of inflation every year.)

I note in passing that you, or any student similarly situated, should be more than willing to take on $60k of student debt in return for any undergraduate education that results in a profession because the delta in earnings outcomes exceeds the loan payments (including interest) by a stupidly high margin.
How To Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic
Vinod Khosla and Cleantech Group's Dallas Kachan - Video Discussion
No, it's judging a book by the analysis many people have given.
"not many people" are the writers/reviewers. Scoble has a good point. The Zune network assumed you were within proximity of another Zune user. That would be cool if everyone had a Zune, sort of. If you're under 35 most of your friends have Facebook accounts and the network doesn't partition when you move 30 feet ;)
You need a lawyer.

You have knowledge of an existing patent and knowledge that you appear to be infringing.

Again, you need a lawyer. Get an IP attorney.
We like anything government-related to happen in the clear light of day :)

I think campaigns of any sort are required to disclose their donors. A quick search landed me here (http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/Measures/Detail.aspx?id...), which appears to disclose the proposition's campaign finances.

I've seen a similar database of donors re:defense earmarks published by the Seattle Times (though it does not publish their locations). Always good for a chuckle...
Also, you can send all of your money here: http://maketheroad.org/ or here: http://www.pathwaystohousing.org/
A remote control program like FogCreek Copilot designed for OMG-SLOW connections.

I want to be able to disable screen updates except for manually triggered refreshes of certain areas, or to block out areas I don't want to refresh until instructed otherwise. I want extremely low bandwidth low detail options that fill in like progressive JPG instead of line-by-line from the top. I want to be able to cancel data transfer and reset to nothing. I want the remote client to screen-scrape and send compressed text and outlines of windows and to be able to send it high level Windows support instructions like "open the control panel" and have it not refresh the screen until that's done.

I can orient myself in a Windows desktop with a small amount of information, but I can't stand hideously slow remote control connections.
This was a rant? Honestly?
"... Having tinkered with the Flickr API, I don't think this would be hard to engineer. And I think there is an easy revenue model (a cut of sales), a low barrier to entry for users, and a large long tail to make money off of. ..."

Why just flickr? Why not all the available images sites?
Yes nice that you allow use of the site right away which then takes you further into the site.

I kept answering like, hate and what not for like 20 rooms, but then got tired.

I thought it would stop, analyze the rooms I liked and give me a personality or the app would design my perfect room with perfect furnishings.

good job and good luck!
It's true Doctorow is accomplished, but it is also true that most accomplished people cannot be objective about the factors behind their success. It is one thing to have all the skills and motivations to succeed; another to be able to report on those skills and motivations with enough honesty to teach others.
Dell Grants Exclusive Photo Shoot of New Adamo Line of Luxury Notebooks
I read this book for the first time, last summer. It was actually a little bit spooky -- OK, very spooky -- to read basically the same thing (metaphorically) in the book and the news most days of the week.
Can you (or anyone here) recommend a good IP attorney?

"and knowledge that you appear to be infringing"

This is what I'm trying to wrap my head around. What defines "infringing"? The patent abstract covers some features that we do, but also some that we don't.

How much overlap is required before it's considered infringement?
Starting with the big one seems prudent.
That's pretty disturbing, considering one of the book's main arguments is against altruism.
I meant that they had ~$200mm in revenues, not profits. As I said, I think it's very clear that they can operate at a profit with those revenues, and are choosing to invest in future growth. Huge investment in growth isn't "sustainable", in that you can't do it forever.

It's fine if you think they're going to fail in their bid to take over the world -- I'm undecided, personally -- but it's silly to claim that they're "unprofitable" without acknowledging that they could be if that was their goal (or refuting that point).
I don't think it is the worst idea in the world, but why not instead make it easier for law abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms? Bad people are going to do bad things, why not make it easy for the good guys to arm and defend themselves?
What is needed to make something a "real" web framework? Ocsigen/Eliom does
handle sessions, routing, page parameters, forms, continuation-based sites,
templating and other things you'd expect from a web framework. The main thing
Rails includes but Ocsigen/Eliom doesn't is an ORM.
Fark.com goes mainstream with Jeopardy appearance
Jobless rate is 16.5 percent using Depression-era counting method
Do we overvalue the impact of start-ups?
A way to replicate data over the copious amounts of spare disk space in a roomfull of standard office computers, including implicit duplication such that some machines being off or broken doesn't matter.

I saw a link here a while ago about encoding redundant copies of data with less duplication than you'd think...
I really don't like the word "sharding", sounds too much like "sharting"
First, get a patent lawyer and try to judge how likely you are to be sued. An experienced attorney might be able to see a pattern in their behavior that you don't, and give you a better idea of what your risk is. Note that this risk is not purely a matter of facts -- you might well not be infringing or their patent might seem obviously over-broad. The real risk is the cost of a lawsuit and litigation, which is a combination of distraction and expense that can easily kill a small company.

Secondly, keep an eye on the patent troll's behavior and on the response from your competitors. If you are friendly with your competitors, see what info you can dig up about the patent trolls. See if you observe the trolls speeding up or slowing down. You might find that a "big" settlement wasn't as big as you might have guessed.

Thirdly, don't panic. There are patent trolls in every industry. I was sued by one once -- for a zero-revenue side project -- and it fizzled, but I worried a lot along the way. If they haven't tried to contact you yet, your time is probably better spent developing your business.
now is the time to hire.

You can pick up some good deals. Right now, especially with the 'just out of college' crowd, and if it's like the last downturn, in a year or two you will be able to find good people who got discouraged and did retail work for a while.
More iPhone App thoughts. I've had an app in the store for 3 months.
It's a little sensationalist, and probably shouldn't say it, but your last sentence immediately brought the Bible to mind.
Adamo: Japanese for "attempts to look like a Mac in the same way Vista attempts to look like MacOS".
Where are you located? It is best to get an attorney near you. I am in Massachusetts.

Whether you are infringing depends on how the patent claims are drafted. That I cannot tell you because I can't give legal advice.

If you want to learn for yourself before going to a patent attorney, pick up a law school textbook and start reading.
The law isn't hard. You just need to understand how the courts have interpreted the Patent Act.

I used this one in law school (used copy will be fine): http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Trademark-Copyri...

Get the supplement, too (supplement gives you the recent updates to the law): http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Property-Materials-Supple...
I think it's a bit of a stretch to conclude from those that peer review is useless.

I don't think that's what the author concludes. But otherwise, I agree with you.
Pictured: The moment a $3million ransom was parachuted to Somali pirates
How so? It sounds more like confirmation bias. If I told you (in more words than I use here) that your previous description of the book sounded like bullshit on a stick compared to the book I read about implementing data-driven improvements to workflow effectiveness, would my analysis count? Or is the title and cover still too off-putting to consider?
It actually makes a lot of sense.

JQuery is a pleasure to use for general UI manipulation, but (to my mind) it just doesn't have the consistency and quality of YUI when it comes to UI widgets / framework. And honestly, it will always be hard for a framework developed as plugins by a diverse group of people to compete in this regard with a full stack framework where every single widget is developed by a crowd of people under the same roof - you get the same look and feel to exacting standards with features most of us don't even want to think about built in (eg: ARIA etc.).

Why not use YUI for doing general ajax work? Well, it's API is horribly verbose, to borrow a term from Zed Shaw, it's "autistic". I can't imagine why they really thought it was a good idea to make it that way but they did. So combining the two makes a lot of sense to me.
Why does it have to be about beating Google?

Business acquire companies to make money, to get ROI. That comes well before beating a competitor in any investment, unless its clear that they will damage your market share in the future.

Consumers will still need desktop OS's for a long time and Google isn't competing with Microsoft on the enterprise front (yet).

Live search is only a small portion of Microsoft's revenue, but $44 billion is a significant amount of cash.
I'm in the Northwest
over their lifetimes on facebook? i'd bet that facebook could easily get a substantial fraction of its users to pay that much every two years or so; whether they want to go that route is up for debate.
I don't think that prisoners should be counted simply because they are incapable of finding real employment. It's despicable that the prisons only pay between a nickel and a quarter for an hour's labor. Worse yet is the private prison system that is funded by the government but can sell goods manufactured by what is, essentially, an enslaved people.

For this reason, those two million Americans cannot be considered as part of the real workforce, as their labor is essentially free.
It feel like this is another case of slogans gone wrong. "Music. Gather. Share." Huh?

It seems like the message should be something like, "Listen to full DJ sets, searchable by track."