skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A power tool mechanism to control your announcements via @twitter stream at footer block of your web place. Amazing!
Sadly, if there was a show called "Kiddies and Command Lines," sites like reddit would probably eat it up.

Parents should let their kids discover what they like, not force their own preferences on them.
I don't feel it had a superior tone, but I think the original thread warranted a rather cold yet concise feedback.
Secularization in America: fewer Protestants, more Nones
Just know that Ctrl-c is different from Escape. It skips InsertLeave autocmds and cancels the count (i.e., 3aX<C-c> appends 1 'X', but 3aX<Esc> appends 3).
Reminds me of the broadband vs carrier pigeon story a few years back - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11325452
It's a window manager. That is, all it does is draw and position windows for your programs. It serves the same role as KWin in KDE or Metacity in Gnome.

There are some important differences between XMonad and normal window managers. In XMonad, you cannot drag windows around and they cannot overlap. Instead, the windows are positioned automatically and can be controlled with some simple keyboard commands. Additionally, XMonad lets you configure its behavior--how it lays its windows out--with Haskell, a very nice functional programming language.

You can use XMonad with an existing environment like Gnome; you would then have tiling windows that do not overlap with all of the normal Gnome features you're used to. However, XMonad can also run alone for a more minimal environment where you do not have extra panels and menus and use the keyboard much more often than the mouse.

Everybody I know that has used XMonad really likes it. It really makes you more productive by managing windows for you--you don't have to drag them yourself. If you have some spare time, you should try it out and learn the basics. It's also a good excuse to learn Haskell, which is an insanely awesome language and great fun.
No OpenGL ES support. DirectX only.
Its all about "getting more money" anyway. Capitalism issue. Things always get corrupted into that. Not that any other system we have had so far was better.
> But we're not in a system that's unfettered from regulations, transparency and oversight. At least not in the sense that we don't have a "government" that purports to provide those things. But the current system obviously doesn't work, so I'm not sure how more government, bureaucracy, rules, regulations, etc. are going to fix anything, when it's clear that certain groups that break the law with (near) impunity.

They break the law with impunity because prosecutors know that, due to out of date and/or weakly stated rules and legislation, they would never get a conviction - an indictment and trial would waste everyone's time, money, and reputation. Because the laws are still not worded well enough to overlap perfectly with the crimes being committed. Hence more legislation and rules.
Google, Bing and HN Search all think that "Hacker Noise" is a neologism.
Which economists are now starting to realize has permanent lifetime effects on individuals (at least in aggregate):
http://www.nber.org/digest/nov06/w12159.html
Shameless plug for Spreedlycore.com where you can vault your cards separately and work with all the gateways listed here. This is an extreme example (gone into limbo in this case) but one of the motivations for our offering. You could have migrated to Stripe/Braintree etc via a config change.
"We don't make money when you send a friend $10, so we've buried that commonly-used action in the navigation."
Getting a future promise from a startup CEO is as trustworthy as a politician's promise during election season.

The only sane approach is open data. Leave everything available for export so some other feature company can pick up where you left off.

You could venture into an insane realm where startups enter into a Startup Insurance™ league. When a company gets acquihired, instead of shutting down the product, a separate foundation runs the product (or figures out a way to open all the data for export).
Zero risk return is way below 6% right now. I'm not sure where you're going to find anything like that.

Berkshire Hathaway is willing to guarantee you a $205,000 annual income from that sum in an annuity, which is not a bad deal at all, but it's not 'never worry about money again', it's just a really nice salary, and would be substantially depleted in the case of any inflation at all.
I don't get... Where did I tell you this is a plagiarism? Or maybe am I missing some other comment?
writing a fully custom PDF (and EPS, SVG, PNG, ...) rendering engine

You mean like this? http://cairographics.org/ (Which, BTW, has Python bindings…)

because the CPU time is cheap and programmer time is expensive (and better used elsewhere)

Yes, but programmer time to implement rendering using a fast library such as Cairo is O(1), while the CPU time is O(n) where n is the amount of business you do.

(Disclaimer: I have written a schematic renderer before using Cairo. It took me maybe a couple days.)
That assumes that the product is worthless and that they have alternative ways of acquiring equally valuable talent. The author of this article asserts that neither of those is true. The opportunity cost of developing the product in house is often comparable to or greater than the cost of the acquisition, and the talent acquired is not only really skilled but also already familiar with GooBook's way of doing things since they worked there to begin with.
Okay, this whole Trans thing has gotten a little out of hand. Nobody is being oppressed because someone used the word "gender" instead of "sex." If you feel offended by that word choice, you're probably a little over-sensitive.
No, because how would they enforce that? If your company is acquired, all that goes out the window anyway.
Ahhhhh there it is. Whew. I thought there was a risk that this was going to be a boring civil conversation.
Great analysis! I've been working on a startup merchandising site (StartupThreads) so I think about this a good deal. A few tips from working with companies:

1) Make it interesting - Tie your design into the ethos of what your customers care about. This can compelling beyond just your logo/brand (An Example by CloudMine: http://on.fb.me/MD9E0W and AngelHack http://on.fb.me/Mmn8CM)

2) Fit & Quality Matters - Spend the extra few dollars to get a decent American Apparel shirt, as it will fit better and stand out amongst the bargain bin shirts that most startups hand out (order womens sizes, guys). Increases the likelihood that they will wear it more than average shirt.

3) Make It Exclusive - There are varying strategies on this, but it is my observation that giving it out to those who really care about your company is the best way to go. You don't want the receiver to feel like you are bribing them to try their service/product. It works better if you are thanking them for their loyalty, as you help to solidify that relationship.

4) Reduce Your Colors - Most t-shirts that you are going to put out are screen printed and the cost varies based on the amount of colors used in the design. You can get great results with a one color shirt (see stripe: http://on.fb.me/MHG7Hp or foursquare: http://foursquarestore.com/shop/product/SH_MayorCrown). Even if you have a multicolor logo, there are likely ways to represent it with less colors and still communicate the same things.

5) Ask If The Printers Save Screens - If you are screen printing, have your printer save the screens they use, as it is a fixed cost that can save you money on subsequent runs

6) Vector Artwork (!!!) - Make sure your designer creates vector versions of your logo for print (bonus points if they do different versions for varying amounts of colors). You do not want your logo to look jagged when printed, so the best bet is to play it safe with a vector version of all artwork. (I spend most of my time dealing with this, actually)

Working on a full post on this, will get it out soon!
It's a shame you got downvoted for this because it is true. No one is dismissing Woz's great achievements in the past but what he is, right now, is a celebrity.

And it is a shame because his tacky, D-list behaviour demeans what was one of the more remarkable eras in world history i.e rise of computing and the famous Apple-Microsoft rivalry.
The linchpin to the whole thing is the easy VC money. It's what makes both the few startups turning into GooBooks and the many startups turning into ZombiePlatypus possible.

As soon as the smart money that's currently focused on VC finds decent returns in other, less risky investment vehicles, the VC money train will stop. It's just a matter of time.
I was changing the oil and my 3yr old came over to hug me under the car. She put her arms around my torso and pulled - really hard. She wanted to help me up, probably thought I had fallen. My wife arrives to see her hugging me on the floor yelling "Mommy, I'm helping Daddy!".
Completely Useless Online Surveys
Capitalism does not inherently entail accepting fraud like this, but every time these asshats get away with this kind of behavior, it reinforces all the negative images that people have about capitalism.

Isn't this more a case of state capitalism, or corporate capitalism, or just plain corporatism?

I keep seeing the word "capitalism" used but rarely with any assigned definition, as if there were but one universal and agreed-upon meaning.

Me, I see these kinds of shenanigans more as an indictment of mixed economies and statism.
"self sustain" is a complicated concept

It can mean "ramen profitable" or something slightly better (like it can pay the rent and the founders a small salary)

Either way, not good. You don't need a home run, but you need something that can "fly for itself""

Getting there is tough, most startups are like making a rock fly
Theodore Ts'o finally had a chance to experience GNOME 3.4
Thanks! Please do pass it around :)

We actually have a custom simulator engine running client-side in Javascript.
Because no one can have it all:

<blockquote>
You can have anything you want: No dream is too big to achieve.

But you can't have everything you want: We live in a finite world for a finite period of time, but with infinite imagination.
</blockquote>

- - Peter McWilliams, Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts
> Apparently I don't get management theory though...

The problem is that training requires long-term thinking. The entire problem is our economy has devolved into short-term thinking. Not much training and long-term in a quarter.
Would be interested in hearing about your process if you'd care to tell us.
Etsy has been one of the best companies I've reported holes to
It's a post of an article from the Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
Ford Keyfree Login
Very interesting. Makes me imagine being able to spin up a space instance via something like AWS and utilize standardized hardware devices, etc.
Why We Use Node.js and Grunt to Build JavaScript
You have calculated Cost per Acquisition. ROI would be (Income / Investment - 1).

To get to ROI from CPA, just divide it into your Customer Lifetime Value. I.e. if you think a conversion is worth, on average, $40 over the life of their relationship with your company, then your return would be 40 / 19.05 -1 = 110% or roughly 2-to-1.
3,000+ people have Tweeted that they can't Tweet
It's like hypoglycemia, but for upvotes.

Anti-success or "insiders manipulating the system" rants tend to bring the love. It's all Method. I'm just another SV washout.
Shut up and take my money!!
Perhaps, but still, it seems like a lot of people are confusing the introvert <-> extrovert axis with the self-centered <-> socially-conscious axis. They are in fact highly orthogonal in my experience. At least insofar as it's possible to judge someone's psychology from a blog post, she would score far into the "self-centered" region of the latter axis, while being somewhere on the introverted side of center on the former... even if she doesn't recognize it.

I don't expect a leopard to change its spots, but at the same time I believe it's possible to consciously nudge yourself in one direction or the other on both axes.
<grin>, I do think we agree on the big picture, perhaps.

I completely agree with starting them where they are.

And yes, they do not yet know what a for loop is, or what a compiler is, or what it truly means to install something. But they do know sequencing of commands and cause and effect.

If a 2-year-old wants to pluck strings on a guitar, as ours has, then great! Maybe they will sing with their random music sometimes, and as a parent, that's beautiful. It is probably not teaching them actual skill in the technique of playing a guitar, but it's teaching them: 1) that "I can do this", 2) this thing make music, and 3) this is fun and merits more exploration.

I think I did meet them where they were at, and part of doing that was going ahead and installing a GUI for them now. There is no reason to believe that my excitement over a CLI when I was 5 was something unique to me. I think that many more children could do and enjoy it than are given the chance.
How does a service who's sole purpose is to allow users to create and retrieve 140 character messages go down on such a frequent basis?
Go to college, or eat unlimited meat?
Right, Twitter's main feature isn't the messaging, it's the namespace.
Ruby has Biology gems and continuous integration testing
That certainly would cause the bubble to start losing air so-to-speak, but I'm not sure it would pop. If you think about it, Google and Facebook happen to be specific examples of companies that could have become billion dollar companies without VC investment. Other companies like Amazon and Tesla Motors are not.
Disorganised but effective: how technology lowers transaction costs
Lets Give Karen -The bus monitor- H Klein A Vacation
Have a Punk Rock Attitude as a Business
Pedantic footnote: the Fukushima Daichi plant failure wasn't just a power failure: they had multiple backup diesel generators and batteries, and the diesels kicked in after the earthquake hit and the reactors tripped and they lost the grid connection. The problem was that all the diesel generators and fuel were at ground level and the sea wall wasn't high enough to keep the tsunami from flooding them a few minutes later.

If they'd had a couple of gennies on the rooftops, they ... well, they wouldn't have been fine but they'd have had a fighting chance to keep the scrammed reactors from melting down. Or if they'd had a higher sea wall (like Onagawa) they'd have been fine.

So: not one, not two, but four power systems failed in order to result in the meltdowns -- and one of them would have worked if they had been located slightly differently.

(Otherwise, your point about people being poor risk assessors is spot-on. And worse: even if some people are acutely conscious of risk, once decision-making responsibility devolves to a committee, the risk-aware folks may be overruled by those who Just Don't See The Problem.)
Was it a joke? I seem to remember hearing a similar thing about Lisp Machines actually having foot pedals for parens.
I was booting and operating my father's Apple IIe at 4 by myself and I don't consider myself exceptional, but rather having experienced exceptional circumstances.

The year was 1985. Against his hierarchy decision, my father bought one for work under cover of some big carbon paper order (that was used a lot at the time, so it really did go unnoticed) and hid it at home.

Bundled with the computer were two floppies with games, one with a rabbit in a maze and the other I can't remember. He booted them for me a few times. Then one day as he was gone at the office, I booted the thing on the DOS floppy, inserted the rabbit game floppy and started the game. I was caught red-handed when he came back. Boy was he angry (what if I screwed up and destroyed weeks of work?). It's actually the first time I can remember being scolded. Later when he cooled down and realized I could actually get it, he briefly showed me more things like LOGO and BASIC, which I enjoyed a lot. He did not know much on the programming front (he was more of a MultiPlan and WordPerfect user) so I was on my own on that front. I remember creating chains of GOTO to generate infinite loops on purpose, and genuinely trying to understand and build very crude purposeless but exploratory programs. Yet at that age and completely by yourself you really can't do much.

Then, less than a year later the computer gained its due recognition and went at the office, at about the same time we moved far away. I was not to touch a computer again for eight long years.
Yes that's right, because the person I was replying to used "to be on the offensive" I didn't go back and check, but yes the OP used "offensive" which is quite different. My bad.
Byword for Mac is 50% Off
No need to go zero risk when the investment starts in your 20s. But of course, yes, inflation. But of course, you can draw from principal as well—that's how retirement funds usually work.

I'll put it another way: Maybe it's not 'never worry about money again'—people are prone to worrying, after all—but $6MM is more than the lifetime earnings of the vast majority of Americans.

If you can't make it on more than what nearly everyone else will ever see in their entire lives, that's your problem.
Thanks for weighing in, Stella. I've just heard from Sheel via email with an apology, and now I've just gotten off the phone with Sean. He apologized for the support requests that have been dropped during the transition to GroupOn. At his request, I've removed the "Reflection" part of my piece, which admittedly engaged in unfounded speculation. I apologize.

I'd also like to apologize to Sean and the team for not trying harder to contact them personally. For example, there is an email address and other contact info listed for Sean on the FeeFighter's About page (I had been looking at the Samurai About page):

http://feefighters.com/about

I believe that Sean and his team are making a good-faith effort to integrate FeeFighters with GroupOn. I've suggested to him that bringing back the three advertised support channels could be a good next step to maintain trust (the toll-free number, the Campfire chatroom, and the ZenDesk).

I freely admit that I've tried to "make lemonade" from what otherwise was a bad situation for Gittip, by publishing this piece and submitting it to Hacker News. I appreciate Sean for calling me and working through the issue together at a personal level. I have no hard feelings towards him and his team, and I wish them all the best as they try to tame the complexity of a significant acquisition, for which, in the end, they are to be congratulated.
Quite a major facelift. I love seeing the Android design patterns used on the web, would be cool to see Google integrate that style into more web sites.
In general, yes. I was more involved in computational biochem and high performance computing which isn't as much.

I agree with you that its about confidence. If you were probably never discouraged by anyone about computing and tech because of some facet of who you are, or always had to confidence to let that stuff go even if you were, power to you. I don't think many of us are quite as strong as that. That's the idea behind presenting positive role models that people can relate to: even when other things are working against you, there is someone you can look up to and go "See, he/she was just like me, and look what they've done now". Its about boosting their confidence (not the only way, mind you).

Its not even about that idea of a stereotypical "role model". If someone asked me in high school or college who my female role-models were, I wouldn't have been able to say. Its more that repeatedly seeing examples of people like you who have "succeeded" hammers in the idea that you could do it too.

And just personally, I find the comment about being more "social" and "communicating far more than men" entertaining. It may be true in the general case, but I'm definitely the quiet one, out of my team, otherwise composed entirely of males :)
Is it me or was this guy writing to support his investments? He said only three incubators are worth joining: two that he has a vested interest in, and, and, and that other famous one.
God is something outside (and can be inside at the same moment) the Universe, meaning that it is something we cannot grasp, and who wants me to vote Republican.

There, fixed it.
I used to bump into Mihai on a semi-regular basis while at MIT. I have great respect for his work and him as a person. My deepest condolences to his family and friends, this is a huge loss.
This reminds me of an experience I had with my girlfriend's eight year old son who was raised on xboxes and other high-tech toys. One day we got him a baseball, glove and a net that allowed him to throw the ball into the net and catch it on the rebound. He reluctantly started playing with this stuff in the yard and a half hour later he was still at it, and really enjoying it.

Afterwards he told me, "I don't understand why this is so fun." At first I didn't understand what he meant by that, but then I realized that he was confused about how something so low tech could actually be really entertaining.
Show HN: remifi gives your iPhone/Android control of an OSX-connected TV
Guns, pitchforks, lynch mobs, Wild West type shit, no? (I don't want that.)
Right, because being the chief scientist at FusionIO is not interesting at all. FusionIO is easily one of the most interesting tech startups around, and are a company with serious engineering innovation rather than just a clever business plan.
Exactly what is the difference between depriving the owner of the bag of M&Ms of the opportunity to make more money than they paid to obtain the M&Ms, and depriving the owner of a song copyright from the opportunity to make more money (really, any money) from their investment in that song?

Your answer seems to be that the latter opportunity is "artificial", but here "artificial" seems to be a synonym for "pertaining to copyright". If that's the best you can do, I stand pat on my M&M analogy.
This always amazed me too. There will always be greener grass somewhere. I was surprised to find that my mid-west mindset could be so stark in comparison to some of the valleys. For me, two years ago my dream was to do exactly what I'm doing now: writing code at a reputable tech company and learning more every day. That, and I make enough money to do everything else I want if I don't blow it on an overpriced car or <insert status symbol>.

Building a company and walking away with 6 million is life changing. Too many people seem to think selling your company means you should never need to work again. What it means, is that you're freer to continue to pursue the projects you want. Seems like a huge inflection point to me.
Google becoming a billion dollar company without VC investment is possible, but it wouldn't have happened nearly as quickly, and it's quite possible that it would have been acquired by Yahoo or Microsoft.

I disagree completely on Facebook becoming a billion dollar company without VC. VC funding is what allowed Facebook to monetize much later and gain huge cash reserves by selling tiny portions of equity at extremely high valuations.
This one is just amazing: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Trajans-C...

(you have to click on different parts)
Yeah, IETF publishes things like this for April Fools day - there's a big list on Wikipedia.
Designing Smartphone-Optimized Websites: Challenges Web Developers
Web developers are increasingly being asked to build sites that cater to smartphone Internet users, or to recast existing sites into user-friendlier formats for mobile devices. By 2015, statistical research by eMarketer predicts that more than half of the persons who access the Web will do so through a smartphone or other small-screen device.
Awesome complementary wisdom to a great post. Thanks Frank.