skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am not nearly as cynical as you. The culture in the US is quite different, and the citizens would have to be scared into letting something like that happen. There would be a huge debate and a groundswell of outrage. Perhaps the fearful, reacting more emotionally than rationally, would eventually persuade the majority. But I don't think so. We still expect a certain amount of freedom and privacy in the US.

The fact that we even have these expectations is what sets us apart from a lot of other nations. Sometimes we (especially those of us, who, unlike you, don't have a public writing persona that lends to the occasional "I wonder what the reaction to this will be" moment) forget to step back and appreciate them. Indeed, many of our discussions are framed around these very expectations.
>>* badnewsbunny.com - delivering bad news for people through a hand-puppet. Still think this one would be a laugh, but a lot of bad things happened around the time I started it, so don't want to touch it.

One of the most ironic things I think I've heard on this site.
breastpump.com - Breast Pump and Nursing supplies for mothers. Medela is currently getting sued for anti-competitive pricing and supplier behavior. If they get forced to behave by the courts and I can get supplied, game on!
So many commenters seem to see the $2.58 as Amazon saying "this is what it really costs us". I'd think it means something more like "this is punitively high so please make your book smaller."
my username at gmail. Look forward to hearing from you! and you do know a way to fix that?
> NewEgg has to hire guys who sit there for hours installing Windows from the non-existent install disks (...)

Your argument hinges on the assumption the retailer is somehow `entitled' to being profitable, and consumers' rights come second.

Turns out consumer protection is not optional for a retailer. Whether they can stay afloat or not in the face of returns is up to them.

And I believe they well can stay in the black, given that:

* `installation' of Windows from a harddrive image is quick, low-tech and mostly hands-off process,

* as a major retailer they enjoy strong negotiating position with Microsoft or OEM for obtaining said images,

* if they really can't be bothered with the harddrive images, shipping the device to OEM for the work is cheap anyway, given they certainly exchange significant volume of cargo with 'em.

EDIT:

It does not make sense for the whole company to reject valid claims and be on the receiving end of geeks' anger. If I were to guess, the whole matter at Newegg was probably caused by some mid-level manager desperatly wanting good metrics -- like `valid customer complaints per thousand units sold' -- for his or her department. Just a case of misalligned incentives.
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek whoever lived.
You have to weigh the results of separating the glass vs. the problems with throwing away the glass. If the process leaves 5 gallons of toxic water and requires $5 of solvent, is it more economical or more environmentally sound to use the process or just throw away the screen?
YouTube tests a new design?
It's ridiculous to criticize a country for jailing people who use a piece of benign software, because other countries also have problems? What?
So to you theres no difference between being fleetingly seen naked whilst changing (eg at a swimming pool) and having your nude self featured in mass media?

Would you at least concede that this wouldnt be true for everyone? Or are you trying to make some sort of impractical distinction between capture and use of an image.

FWIW I'm personally happy to embrace nudism but feel forcing the possibility of widespread exposure on others is going way to far.
Armenia Tourism Informtion
Armenia is a small country that connects Europe to Asia. It was one of the major powers, the third largest state in the Near East, after the Roman Empire and Parthia over 2000 years ago. Now Armenia is a modern country with nice and talented people, ancient history, thousands of historical monuments, rich culture, traditional hospitality, delicious and healthy food, beautiful nature and safe environment.
That's what they charge, but your cost to upgrade is either $200 via Apple or $100 or so via newegg. The 8GB option is two 4GB dimms, and the 16GB option is two 8GB dimms, it's not like buying one more 8 GB dimm and throwing it in.
digitalinfo.com - reg'd in 1998 hoping to sell information products, still holding onto it!

brandvocates.com - brand + advocates = brandvocates :) great for a social media agency, again didn't get past idea stage

productapi.com - self-explanatory, was going to be somewhat of a amazon-style API of products, but with a "ship" function, grabbed this when I was working with drop-shippers and thought that there had to be a better way

affiliateapi.com - wanted to make a skimlinks-style platform, ended up (recently) with a open-sourced JS-library for GoDaddy affiliate links

giftify.com - send a virtual gift through FB, and the real one arrives at the recipient's door (launched shortly after the FB platform became available, shipped approx 20 orders)

dealreel.com - curate your own list of daily deals from Groupon, etc. and publish it for your friends and followers, wanted to address the fact most deals are crap and there are a select few power users that do look at every deal, wanted to put them to work to find worthwhile deals for the masses, Yipit is doing something cool w.r.t this idea based on normalized sales data: http://blog.yipit.com/2011/08/05/introducing-trending-daily-...

dnsrecipes.com - central wiki w/API listing all the cloud services out there and the DNS settings required to make them work, essentially helping non-techies tie their Google Apps, Tumblr, UServoice, etc. services to their domain in a consistent and visual way, still want to do this at some point as my buddies bug me all the time to do this shit work

logocaster.com - auto-generates an infinite canvas of logo variations (much like the entries page on 99designs) and let's a user refine their logo design based on parameters like color, font-face, emotion, etc.

autowatermark.com - automatically watermark images uploaded to social networks, sadly this is not possible via FB's API or others :(

I'm probably as guilty as any fellow HN'ers of being trigger happy on domain registration when struck by a moment of inspiration. I am happy to see some of the great & fun domains & ideas popping up in this post.
Did Bowman remind anyone a little of Colonel Graff?
I think this is true for many people. But apart from growing old, boring and having less free time, I think gaming is a big part of it. I knew some people who would buy a new MBP every year because they wanted to both use OS X and play recent games on Boot Camp.
Of course, if he had a 50 kB book that had a $0.01 delivery fee, it would still be the same percentage markup, but he wouldn't care. So I question whether percentage is useful here.
Anything you feel like you're seeing in there is probably nothing more than pareidolia.
> JSON would do nicely as well.

Until you need to incrementally process 2GB of data.
Install a urinal!
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3519
It is also as surprisingly readable as it is thorough.
>What support does SoundCloud's new single-page interface have for IE8 and IE9?

For IE9: some. Backbone automatically detects pushState availability and fallsback to a hashbang system allowing the SPA to work.

For IE <= 8: none.

> Is there any data on how much SoundCloud's transition to a single-page interface decreased latency during navigation relative to the traditional page-loading model?

Not yet, but that would definitely be a metric we'll be collecting. We're still working very hard on increasing the performance, so it'd be a moving value right now.

> I tried to sign up for the beta but the party was full

No worries -- you're in the queue and we're gradually expanding the rollout, so you'll get an email soon. For everyone else, you can join the beta by signing in at http://next.soundcloud.com
Wow this name alone is easily worth tens of thousands, probably more!
The real issue for NewEgg is probably whether you've blown away the Windows restore partition. Without that, it's probably going to get rejected by their reverse logistics vendor.

This shouldn't be the customers problem, but for them it would be as if a hotel guest took all the sheets off the bed every morning and soaked them in the bathtub - enough people do that, you're going to have to hire extra maids.
* slated.to - bought this before the iPad came out, thinking that it could be an app site for tablets. For example: slated.to/ipad, slated.to/android, slated.to/windows8

* see.io - some kind of visual sharing site, maybe? Or a dating site for CIOs ;)

* join.as - no idea even when I bought it...

I'd sell any of these if someone's interested.
Advice to (prospective) grad students
Amazon only claims "obscene number of nines" for S3 durability (99.999999999%). And this claim seems to be accurate: I've never seen a publicly reported case of anyone losing data. Anytime you read their forums about people reporting data loss, a typical response is AWS staff saying "we see delete requests for those objects on date X" with the users responding "oh, oops, we had this background delete process".

However, for EBS volumes, Amazon is very clear about the expected data loss rate:

"The durability of your volume depends both on the size of your volume and the percentage of the data that has changed since your last snapshot. As an example, volumes that operate with 20 GB or less of modified data since their most recent Amazon EBS snapshot can expect an annual failure rate (AFR) of between 0.1% – 0.5%, where failure refers to a complete loss of the volume. This compares with commodity hard disks that will typically fail with an AFR of around 4%, making EBS volumes 10 times more reliable than typical commodity disk drives."
Thoughts and opinions are mine, not my employer's. So is my Twitter account.
whisperYELL.com
The idea is similar to Klout but instead of measuring online influence it was to be geared toward online privacy. People would be able to measure how much of their information is out there and depending if they want to be noticed (Yell) or go primarily unnoticed (whisper) the site would track their rating on a scale and provide suggestions to move in either direction.

I stopped right before I began development because I decided to partner with a friend on another idea called felpme.com
Synapse creates a non-trivial Class:

https://github.com/bruth/synapse/blob/master/src/synapse.cof...

Here's the documentation, to get some context:

http://bruth.github.com/synapse/docs/#learn

Do you feel that this code would be significantly improved by using JavaScript's bare prototype pattern instead?
Well, if you're having major problems keeping the project's code and comments in sync, no compiler will save you.
Sure, it's possible to relate the two things in a theoretical sense, but reality still matters. Nobody here is going to prison for making a VoIP call.
Five ways Cloud computing is like open source
What's funny is that you hardly have to "pilot" this model, because it used to be the norm all across America (the one-room school house). The evidence is compelling that it works great, and it costs less too.

Which of course is why it's a political non-starter. The bureaucratic imperative is bigger budgets and centralization.
This is a pretty incredible "project". The styling is a little old-school, but the product is incredible. Are you planning to make this bigger? :)
You use EBS and back it up using the built-in snapshot functionality, and/or back it up another way. RDS, which is presumably based on EBS, provides backups and snapshots for precisely this reason.
Why the downvote? Spring Data Neo4j [1] works excellent, it's pretty popular and I'm interested has anyone tried working with TITAN in a Spring project(probably using the Blueprints API).

[1] http://www.springsource.org/spring-data/neo4j
Ask HN: Review my startup (SNS for Creatives)
Prezlog.com is a social network for creatives in Asia to showcase their creations and brand themselves. The site also helps them network with corporations and other creatives.
Right now we are in public beta and trying to get a few users to test the site before launching.
It's bootstrapped by me, and I outsourced the design and development to a web development agency in Nepal.
It's run by Buddypress, and I'd love to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions, especially for those who are familiar with wordpress.

Thank you!

Link:http://www.prezlog.com
tragic "review"
This is amazingly and impressively thorough. He cites relevant caselaw left and right; the two that particularly struck me were:

- "FunnyJunk also alleges The Oatmeal's statements constitute false advertising under the Lanham Act. However, the statements made by The Oatmeal do not constitute commercial advertising or promotion, and therefore section 1125(a)(1)(B) of the Lanham Act is inapplicable."

- "Even assuming that all of the content on FunnyJunk is uploaded by users and FunnyJunk otherwise qualifies for DMCA immunity, it’s possible that The Oatmeal may be able to satisfy the “red flag” exception for DMCA immunity. See Viacom Int’l, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., 676 F.3d 19, 41 (2d Cir. 2012) (discussing “red flag” test and reversing grant of summary judgment in favor of YouTube). It is also possible that FunnyJunk hasn’t complied with the requirements of the DMCA and thus cannot take advantage of its protections. Among other things, the DMCA requires a service provider to designate an agent, provide contact information, and file a notice of designation with the Copyright Office. Without taking a position on the other issues, I’ll note simply that FunnyJunk does not appear to have a notice of designation on file with the Copyright Office. This alone would be enough to undermine anydefense of immunity to claims of infringement that The Oatmeal (or third parties) may assert."

Great lawyer.
Oh, good catch. I'm embarrassed that it didn't occur to me to point that out.
Same here, I also thought Twitter was originally a dumb idea... now I don't call ideas dumb.
Question: Do these laptops that NewEgg sell have a hidden restore partition like most laptops do these days? I think these are normally accessible via some F-key setting on bios startup... so not very difficult unless you have deleted this as well...
I understand what you're saying but if I have configured a Windows system and loaded my own files onto a system that I have purchased, I will most certainly wipe the disk if possible before returning it for warranty service/replacement. Yes, that may make determining if it's a NFF situation more difficult but you certainly can't expect customers to return systems with personal intact. (Although many will if they have no easy way of wiping the disk after a failure.)
Microsoft to Introduce its Own iPad Competitor
The problem with G+ is that it still doesn't offer that huge motivation to anyone to switch social networks. It's still missing the very basic ingredient of "there should a pain and the service needs to solve that pain."

Like for example before Gmail all email providers only gave 2MB of storage space and because of that you had to delete important emails daily, which was a real pain. But when Google came out with its 1GB storage plan in which there was nothing to delete ever, it solved a very big problem for a whole bunch of users. So while Gmail's interface is nice and Ajaxy and spam filters rock.. still the reason why everyone went through the trouble of changing their email addresses was still because of the huge space and no deleting emails everyday. Because if that wasn't there then I would have never used Gmail in the first place, let alone realize the other advantages it offered (like better ui, spam protection, etc)

Changing a social network similarly would also require such a huge motivation. Going after Privacy or giving Free apps is not reason enough for me or most users. They really need to solve a very real pain (unlike email this time it's not very clear what that huge pain is).
Nobody's entitled to anything. Newegg will do whatever they need to balance consumer happiness with their profit margins, and, if they can swing it, that'll include what you want.
Ah, S3 group. The recruitment agency that for some reason feels it necessary to trade under more than twenty different brand names. One of the contractor bulletin boards in the UK puts up a list of the current ones every now and again IIRC. Purely as a public service to their readers you understand.
SteamCorps.com - fancied a Steampunk based RPG for iOS. About 5years into reg fees now :)
howtoroot.com - detailed how to's on rooting android phones.
Kogan Imposing Tax On Shoppers Who Use IE7, charge additional 6.8% “IE7 tax”
I love the summary:

"At the end of the day, a lawsuit against The Oatmeal in this situation is just a really bad idea"

Never has a lawyer summarised a situation so clearly and succinctly.
It only looks odd if you assume it was designed to educate children.

On the other hand, if you assume it's designed to produce reliable, obedient consumers who won't rock the boat, it all makes perfect sense.

You would probably enjoy The Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm).
That is a horrible argument. The distributor should absolutely not assume hardware is in factory condition because it looks like it. They should (at a minimum) be re-imaging the hard disk before sending it to another customer if it has Windows on it or not.
Yes, the landing page is very much a first try and sure needs evolving. The page you link to looks awesome. And also I think a brighter overall design is probably more Mac-like and might appeal more to non-tech people.

Until release if was about development, and it is suddenly about marketing. Predictably so, but still caught me as a surprise. These look like good pointers.
I remember in the early 90s going to most of the computer shops in the local area and having fully usable display models.

It was rare to see a display computer that didn't have MS Paint running with the previous person's doodle sitting at pride of place in the middle of a 320x240 screen (which felt like about a billion pixels back then).

In fact I remember going to one of these stores when I was about 8 and asking the salesman about which games were available on the PC, at which point he promptly dropped the system out of Win 3.1 and into DOS , loaded up "The Secret of Monkey Island" and left me to play for about an hour while my parents went off and did some other shopping.

That was probably the point at which I decided I wanted my next system to be a PC rather than a Sega Genesis.

I suppose Apple is in a similar position, most people are roughly familiar with Windows and are mainly shopping around for specs/price. You could waste a lot of time playing with a system and asking the salesmans advice only to go off and buy the thing on amazon.

With Apple devices they don't care where or when you buy it since they take money either way but since most people are not going to be familiar with OS X there is a definitely an advantage to selling "the experience".
Jagex eventually reversed it's decision on the fixing of prices and returned free trade. This had the effect of bringing back a large number of bots, causing huge inflation of certain items and a large devaluation of item which bots can produce easily.

The economy is now hugely imbalanced, so performing common actions such as crafting a sword from metal will cause you to lose a fair amount of money. There is also no real item sink because the consequence of death from npcs has been reduced (keeping most of the item you where holding when you died) and PvP (player versus player) has been neglected to the point where few players engage in the activity.
Facebook is successful because of its highly engaging product.

G+ is kind of like a trust fund kid: it has 200M users because its rich parents(google) decided to aggressively push it to their millions of users. Their 200M user-base says very little about G+ as a product.
If one could simply get all of the data parsed to a particular format, people using such tools could easily pick which data they need and discard the rest.

Also, there would be "many conversions" - but I'm envisioning that these would be shared in a library, so it would "just work" for most developers.
Transgender and Transhuman - the alliance the complaints and the future
* intense.ly - for something intense, I guess?

* picscri.be - for some sort of picture-based app. also picscribe.com.
I've been using the MacBook Air since 2008 which shares many of the same design choices. It hasn't been an issue at all. The resale value of Apple computers has to be considered too. If I can resell my old machine for 50-60% of it's original list price then upgrade-by-replacement is a good strategy. I only paid about $300 to upgrade from the 2008 MBA to the late 2012 MBA.
That's because the boards are getting more cycles in GPU and cache and things, which are more important than straightahead serial speed.
Performance is definitely the biggest problem with fat client applications. As Twitter found out, by crowdsourcing your hardware, you lose a lot of control of the user experience. If you have a 'traditional' web application and it's running slow, it's really easy to by a couple of new servers and the problem is fixed. We can't buy everyone a new computer (sorry!) and force them to use a recent version of Chrome, so it's a challenge.

In the places where we can control the performance, we do that very carefully: CDN loading of all assets, intelligent caching techniques, and of course, finding and removing bottlenecks in the code.

@jarcoal, would you mind letting me know some of your details which might affect performance (which country you're in, what browser, what speed is your computer)? Email me directly at fisher at soundcloud if you'd prefer not to share here. Thanks.
This kinda highlights the problem with "cloud"...many people, even engineers, don't really understand what they're getting into. At least with a single server, you know what you're getting, and you have only yourself to blame if you didn't plan for a typical, known, documented failure mode.
I plan on using the extra second to read more Hacker News blog posts!
5 Reasons a Startup Mentor Need Not Be Your Friend
> If you bought a phone with a defective battery, would you delete all of your contacts out of it and image the OS before you returned it?

Yes, but of course security/privacy concerns call different rules into play...
I gave it some thought before replacing the title. I'm confortable with what I came up with because the new title echoes both of the article's main points, while the original focuses a bit too much on the "unhackable" side and is, frankly, a bit click-baity. Anyway, I'm sorry if it passed as blind apple love. Wasn't my intention.