skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If your C++ fu is really, really strong, you might wanna check out OKWS (http://www.okws.org/). The performance is sick, as you might expect, but I can tell you from experience that it's not for the faint of heart. The asychronous coding makes for some really tough debugging situations, among other things.
Perhaps. I'm just advising folks to be careful about things they hear in the echo chamber that is our community (where communit==HN+blogs+web 2.0 industry+etc., I'm not singling out HN, in particular). Just because you hear a loud chorus doesn't mean there are actually a lot of people wishing for what the voices are suggesting--it could just be two or three really loud people who like the sound of their own voice (like me!). I suspect the better way to get ideas is to work in the real world. Maybe work as a contractor for a while, so you see how different businesses work, and more importantly, where and how they fail to work.

Is the discussion hurting anyone? No, probably not. As I mentioned most of the folks here are smart and interesting. Talking to smart and interesting people is generally good for you. But, don't imagine that it's the real thing, or that you'll find your business plan via discussion here--it takes research, customer interactions, and a helluva a lot of work, to formulate a viable business plan. And, talking on the Internet has the pernicious ability to make you feel like you're accomplishing something, when in fact, you're not actually doing anything.

And, honestly, I think that a big bunch of talent is currently being wasted on dumb ideas, and I suspect there is some sort of relationship with the kinds of things we reward in the Internet startup world with our validation, our blog posts, etc. That's not to say that executing on dumb ideas is time completely wasted...sometimes it can evolve into something wonderful (flickr from Game Neverending, or whatever it was called, for example). I think a lot of the dumbest ideas come from looking inward too much. "All the current todo lists can't remind me three times at randomized intervals throughout the day about important stuff, and I'm really bad at remembering to do stuff, so I will make a todo list that can totally do that!"

Just be careful how much stock you put in ideas you read on the Internet (including this one).
This isn't the average iPhone app. As the article mentions, this requires actual hardware infrastructure -- not something your average iPhone indie is worried about.

Did they overspend? Probably. But that doesn't excuse Apple.
You're absolutely right about the two types of inflation. In fact, any argument about inflation/deflation needs to start with throwing both words out the window. Let's use the world "dilution" to refer to increases in the money supply, and "contraction" to refer to decreases in the money supply. We'll use "price level increases" and "price level decreases" to refer to price changes, as reflected in the CPI.

If you inflate the currency by printing money, much of it may be hoarded, since owning money is (in a deflationary environment) an investment.

The government must print enough money to offset the money lost through the collapsing credit. Since the government is committing to keep the monetary base stable or increasing slightly, there is no incentive to hoard. The incentive to hoard only happens when their is a money supply contraction, not a price level fall.

A depression happens when there is a sharp contraction in the money supply due to a credit bubble collapse. Businesses that had grown addicted to credit, fail first. Consumers, expecting their debt to be diluted away, now have to save more and pay off their debts. Asset prices fall, causing a wealth effect drop in spending. The net is that fewer green bills are chasing the same number of goods, thus prices start dropping. Falling prices means less revenue for businesses. The hardest sectors hit are those that are in debt, as they borrowed assuming more money available to pay back the loans. But every sector is hit hard because of sticky wages, menu costs, etc. Businesses start freezing hiring and laying people off. The depression deepens.

The idea is that the Fed must inject money now to prevent the dominoes from falling. If the Fed prints enough money and gives it to consumers, consumers will be able to repair their balance sheets and quickly maintain or return to pre-crash spending levels. Thus all the contracts and wage agreements assuming the pre-crash money supply will be bearable, and no mass layoffs need happen. The crisis is averted

The big key is not too print too much money, or you risk triggering a hyperinflation. But by keeping a watchful eye on the hyperinflation canaries (gold, oil, and real estate) the Fed should be able to get it right.

(poor person buys TV, TV manufacturer hoards money).

That's fine - the point is to stop the TV manufacturer from having to make layoffs do to falling demand. In the real world, the manufacturer probably wouldn't hoard. Depending on their situation they might pay down debt, invest in expansion, or return dividends to shareholder.
8 Steps to Running a Diversified Job Search on the Web
Your comments are very good to hear for people like me who are looking to do something new. I'm in a job where I like the people, but I am trying to push things in a new direction but am getting nothing but resistance. Very tired of hearing "no" and "this is how we do things". I'm at the point where I either want to work for a startup or start my own.
How would you improve my Adobe AIR/Web App?
Me and two other developers have worked in and out for almost a year in this project and we are about to get out of beta and release the 1.0 version with some new features. I would appreciate some comments from the HN community.

s3mer is a digital signage software solution build around an Adobe AIR multimedia player and a web based administration suite. We help small business start their own out of home media networks.
Happy to help. I learn so much around here, it's rare I can return the favor.
Facebook Now Growing by Over 600,000 Users a Day - And New Engagement Stats
Nice! hm. and Python support means that even those without as much C++ foo can contribute. I will check it out.
That's actually not that different from my childhood in the U.S. 25 years ago. We got by with about half a dozen channels, all with shitty reception, until earlier this year. Had a rotary phone at our summer cottage too, until this summer, and no answering machine until I was in high school.

A friend (my age) from Romania was telling me about her life under communism, and what struck me most was how little she had even in the way of basic nutrition. Meat was a once-a-month treat; she had a banana twice in 7 years. And then she started talking about how ice cream was a real treat, and Coca-Cola was for special occasions only. I grew up eating meat for dinner every day and being able to grab a Coke whenever I wanted (though my parents often wouldn't let me, saying it'll rot my teeth). The idea of being unable to afford basic food and shelter is completely alien to me.
3) What are your sources? I had read some stats about small businesses in that era, and it was stunning how much more vibrant it was than today. I wish I could dig them up, but I can't find them at the moment. But if you just wander around an old industrial city, you can see the buildings of the tens of thousands of small manufacturing start ups that dominated the era. The Carnegie example doesn't really help you - it was a startup founded in the 1870's. It was the Google of its era. Does Google's search monopoly prove that 1998-2008 was a terrible time for web startups?
I agree, I just think it is interesting to see what internal projects never get released that the developers spend a significant amount of time an energy on.

It's a side of start ups that isn't talked about much - what technology disappears when a start up shuts down?
Ringo: experimental, distributed, replicating key-value store
Me and two other developers have worked in and out for almost a year in this project and we are about to get out of beta and release the 1.0 version with some new features. I would appreciate some comments from the HN community.

s3mer is a digital signage software solution build around an Adobe AIR multimedia player and a web based administration suite. We help small business start their own out of home media networks.
Sejnowski pushed it back into physics (sort of) with his information maximization work, very interesting...

http://papers.cnl.salk.edu/PDFs/An%20Information-Maximizatio...
Two start-up ideas which are feasible but I decided against:

1) Alumni software which lets universities/companies manage alumni communication and also lets alumni network with each other. A few top-tier unis and companies have in-house stuff for this, but most don't. Facebook/Linked-In just don't work for alumni networking due to trying to be too many things at once.

2) Publisher driven ads service. Current ad systems suck for closed sites (i.e. non-public) or sites which know a lot about the user (dating sites, social networks). Most of the big sites in this category currently solve this by running their own networks but this obviously isn't feasible for many sites. You could probably build this as a CPA ad brokerage service and expand from there.
Chrysler has a history of being on the brink of bankruptcy...current situation is nothing new for them
Google is turning it's back on everything it once stood for(v.adds sound to searchwiki)
Oh, totally. I love posts like this whether the underlying product made any sense or not. We need more "behind the scenes" type stuff like this so your submission is spot on :)
It's worth noting that the guy behind it was Alex Tew, the guy who did MillionDollarHomepage.com (or, rather, it was the company he built from the money he made, but he's the figurehead).

It's interesting that they put it together within 48 hours of the shoe incident and got the traffic while the iron was hot. Development tools and frameworks nowadays make this a lot easier.. so keep your eyes out for news items and the like if you want to have similar hits (not that £5,215 is a hit - not bad for a few days' work though - but the millions of visitors are great).
Scientific Journal to Authors: Publish in Wikipedia or Perish
I'd let them do the snippity-snip in exchange for living to 150. Seriously, I want to see what happens, and I'm not interested in kids. Would rather adopt one if that bug ever bites, but I doubt it will.
.co.nz is very offputting

Giftyapp.com is available. Some other alternatives as well that beat using .co.nz
Thank you for filling in the details. It's amazing how fast they moved and were able to make a cool £5k and tons of publicity. If anything it shows very good thinking even if a bit opportunistic.
i've been using the backtype alerts for a while now, looks like techcrunch is summing up old news (plus the little tidbit about subscriptions at the end
Gift.ly is also available. Only 150 bucks from nic.ly
Interesting how they have a continuity program (monthly payments). It'll be interesting to see how they do this. Give away the app and then when you are in-app they ask for your credit card number?
Whether "fiendish" is the right word for it or not, I think there is an important distinction to be made between the use of such tactics by retailers vs. creditors.

While a store is limited in it's ability to extract money (i.e. time, labor) from a person by the contents of their wallet, a lender is only limited by the length of a person's lifespan.
Design rocks. Very nice.

I think it really needs search. I use Evernote for this and it's super-useful to just start typing whatever I remember and the rest shows up in the results.

Notational Velocity is another example (in a desktop app) of how I think search should/could work. http://notational.net/
Am I the only one who sees this as a bad thing?

I'll concede that I haven't put a whole lot of thought into it, but no sites come to mind that have ever been successful at creating a "community" that had value and interest to all ends of the user spectrum. It seems that targeted sites have always been more successful that something intended to appeal to pretty much anyone (ref: Prodigy, AOL, GeoCities, MySpace (getting eclipsed by FB and starting to fragment into certain niches)).

Sites that serve a point purpose for a wide user base (Twitter) seem to have a shot at success, but I think FB is sinking under the weight of its users.
Check some of the marketing videos. Pretty impressive motion graphics.
Exactly. I've formulated a theory of micropayment success. It requires:

1. A credit card or payment method already in the system, OR, a trustworthy vendor;

2. One click ordering or an Ajax style cart where you don't have to load a new webpage for every step of adding things to your cart and checking out.

3. Large product base spanning multiple product offerings but only one central payment center.

Obviously, this theory was postulated by examining by the most successful micropayment vendor out there, Apple. They're really good at it. Think about it: you don't need to enter your credit card information twice;they have one click purchase; they have multiple product offerings, but all payment goes through them. There is only one person who needs to be trusted, them.

I think the one person to trust thing is really the key point. People don't have time to evaluate online vendors for trustworthyness. But if they're already comfortable, it doesn't matter, and $.99 cents becomes no hassle at all to spend.
Hate to sound cynical, but I have to ask: why would technology like this be made accessible to the average person? What would be the economic payoff? Seems to me that this will be a technology for elitists, first and foremost. Or you would have to 'earn' it in some way. Would the 'unproductive' among us be allowed to have access to technology that increases their lifespans?

I'm pretty sure Larry Ellison is reading this story from his volcano lair about now, just barely holding back his maniacal laughter. :)
This isn't the average iPhone app. As the article mentions, this requires actual hardware infrastructure -- not something your average iPhone indie is worried about.

Even if the $500k wasn't overspending for what they wanted to do, the part that seems crazy to me was that they spent that money before getting the green light from Apple and with full knowledge that the approval process is opaque, often lengthy, and sometimes seemingly arbitrary.

Of course Apple's policy is wrong and unreasonable for developers. But these guys knew that this was the case, and they seem to have acted as if they had no idea.
Where are the rules listed by the way? I just finished my first app but I'm not sure it will be accepted.
I really like this, but I think a lot of the examples so far aren't really taking advantage of what makes this different.

What makes Github different is that it's connected to your version control, so I don't see this being especially useful for things like personal websites, but it could be a great way to supplement the admin and analytics offered by Github already.
Scala for small throw-away scripting
Named Scope: To Lambda or Not To Lambda, That Is The Question
It's absolutely retarded to spend that kind of money developing on a platform controlled by such a capricious and arbitrary master as Apple. As soon as Android has a userbase, you'll never hear this sort of story again.
Yep, Sinatra ain't Rails. But Sinatra is a great way to get closer to the metal that Rails allows you with it's powerful voodoo magic. You can get to know Ruby and still build well-designed MVC style apps.
Wikileaks Posts Secret Bomb-Stopper Report - Did They Go Too Far?
I'm a bit skeptical that we'll see touch screens or Minority Report type UI's replace the keyboard and mouse. The keyboard and mouse are under appreciated. It's really hard to match the following benefits:

1) keyboards are an incredibly fast way to input human language into a computer system.

2) keyboard/mouse operate on flat surface while your arm is at rest. This makes it easy to use for 8 hours a day.

3) A small movement of a mouse creates a much larger movement on the screen. Yet, because the mouse is flat and at rest, it is easy to control.

4) Mice are far more precise at pointing than touch screens. Although perhaps that's a secret disadvantage, since it encouraged the use of small widgets. A good touch screen would most certainly not be able to use anything like our current UI widgets.
I got this idea after building a specialized website for a particular local artisan, but I think the whole method could be generalized pretty easily.

Etsy provides a clean, centralized storefront for individual
merchants / creators to sell their products -- taking over what used to be the significantly more decentralized and disorganized venues of eBay and Craigslist.

This site would be a similar such venue for people who are trying to sell services. A glance at the Craigslist "services" section shows plenty of people like this -- computer repairmen, graphic designers, programmers, housemaids, accountants, tutors, personal trainers, and
many more. Each person would be able to personalize their "storefront" with a list of their services, some copy text and an image gallery, and a section for people to post reviews / testimonials of this person.
You're not wrong, its just not available to the masses. A regular consumer will see the word "API" and the code snippet and move on. Tons of people want to sell stuff and have huge talent in their areas, but are clueless when it comes to coding and whatnot.

Putting a wrapper around this sort of thing is something I think a ton of people would find helpful. Imagine if you could just upload a file, give it a product name, price, etc, and then write your blog post, and when you hit publish its automatically formatted with the buy button, checkout button, sends an email with a download link or directs you to a URL download right after you complete the purchase.Awesome.

Hmmmmm, Tumblr? Are you listening? Just got that VC cash and wondering what to come up with for premium services and ways to monetize? This is something I'd pay for.
1/3 of Canadians are on Facebook
Not bad. You can even allow integration with Yelp so people can get independent reviews.
When they say 1/2 millie they count salaries, server costs, advertisement, VOIP costs, cost to register x thousands of phone numbers, PR (which can easily eat up 3/4 of that) and all that other stuff. I would not be surprised if two guys in a dorm room find a way to make it work for less than 1/10th.
Looks like no one cites Computer Science papers. Not surprising, but interesting.
GitHub is taking over the world. I wouldn't be surprised if non-programmers start finding uses for it.
But has it ever succeeded when tried by non-humans? Its kind of like the monkeys at a keyboard theory. Yes, they can write a sentence every once in a while given enough time, but in actuallity, they're useless at writing.

Original ideas are combinations of other ideas, but they're ideas combined by humans.
The thread off this comment is a great, intelligent discussion of many of the issues we're dealing with at BaseShield (YCW08 - http://baseshield.com). Specifically where the balance between ease of use and security sits for normal users and how software installation would work in an ideal world.

Sorry for the self-promotion, but I'd love to talk more with any of you about how our product is hitting or missing on these points. I'm at pat -at- baseshield.com if you want to email.

Thanks!
Get the Most Out of Your Netflix Account with FeedFlix
My site FeedFlix (http://feedflix.com) just got written up on Mashable! I'd like to hear feedback from HN folks as well.
Maybe the downvoters just don't recognize "Porgy and Bess"? Regardless, it was relevant commentary and not deserving of a downvote.
Isn't that what they said about Unix when Windows was released?
I love the code explanation. grin
Funny Craigslist Ad, as in funny haha
I'm curious why it's off-putting. Is New Zealand that bad a place? :-) Or does it just strike non-NZers as parochial?
Perhaps you have a 100% ajax "client", and don't need AR, or just need simple AR, merb would be ok and save some overhead you get with rails for the 80% of it you will never use. Thats my take anyway.
Haha, i love propane tanks!
I like backtype, but searching for "justin.tv" gives it fits. It keeps giving me things about random "Justin"s, or about "TV"s, which is not what I'm looking for.
Where Is Steve Jobs?
The fact that there is a full-stack version available doesn't mitigate the fact that the multitudes of custom stacks out there are going to mean two bad things:

1. The default full stack will be a lot less thoroughly documented, tested and debugged because a lot fewer people are using it.

2. The chances that I can just jump in and start hacking productively on somebody else's Merb app are slim because it's likely I'm not familiar with some of the components you're using.

I still don't understand at all why I'd want to use Merb. What problem are you trying to solve here? Being slightly better than Rails in a few respects isn't even close to good enough to compensate for the lack of documentation, code maturity, available programming expertise, public success stories etc that Rails has going for it.
Picture this in your mind (or look at this sort of bad example: http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/17/taito-introduces-surface-...)

You move the monitor down, and make it very large. Build it into the desk at a slight angle. Your arms rest on the entire surface, so its very comfortable. The entire display and its interface is oversized, sort of like a media center interface. An iPhone like keyboard pops up when you need it, sized exactly like a regular keyboard. But quick keys on either side of the monitor's face can also input commands.
It's called a metaphor. I suppose he could have said, "you might die accidentally hitting the wrong button on a hyperdimensional panfibrillator," but people don't generally talk like that, preferring more familiar and concrete imagery. Come to think of it, "1000 years" just means "really big number that's way longer than our current lifespan."

When someone uses an exemplar to describe a class of things, you're supposed to imagine the other objects in that space.
I found the user interface prevented me from even making a list. I'll stick to the pastebin for making simple lists, or emacs, or google spreadsheets, or a piece of paper...
The big difference here is that when Rails came out it solved a real problem. Every other popular web technology at the time was much, much harder to use and slower to develop in. Since then it's acquired some inevitable complexity but most of that was in response to somebody's need for a feature. Merb will accumulate the same complexity if it's successful.

To me this just sounds like Common Lisp vs Scheme all over again.
Speaking as someone who owns a .tv, anything other than .com is just a bad idea. People just don't understand there are things other than .com.
Poets Don't Go Out -- They Use Freshdirect
500k on development, 70 days of panic, followed by 30k on PR to pressure Apple to accept it.
Make a society immortal and it becomes afraid of going outside: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunnen-G

Or, you could end up in the bottom of a cave for a few thousand years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorien_(Babylon_5)
You're right, we launched alerts a little while ago, subscriptions are the new addition to the alerts service today.

Hope the alerts are working out well for you. If you're looking to keep track of lots of threads on news.yc give subscriptions a try and let me know what you think. (mm [at] backtype [dot] com)
Thanks for spotting that. If you change your query to "justin.tv" with the double quotes included it will work in the meantime.
Collapsing Fear
"No original research."
USB Flash Drvie Reminder