skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Offer HN: get the perfect elevator pitch, free of charge
I recently started a site that creates elevator pitches for startups. I've already gotten a few customers and everything is going well. Here's the link:

http://www.pitchremix.com/

One point of feedback I've gotten is the lack of social proof / testimonials. So, in an effort to improve my site, I'm offering free elevator pitch consulting (to the first 5 people to contact me.) The site explains how it works.

All that I ask in return: when you're satisfied with your pitch, you write a 2-3 sentence testimonial, and let me feature it on the site. This is extra marketing for your site too.

If you're interested, email me at Contact@PitchRemix.com with answers to the 4 questions below. Thanks!

--------

- Describe your company, or post a link to your website.

- How big is your market? If you have competitors, why are you better than them?

- What are some impressive metrics about your company? (If you have any). For example, how many users you have, or your total revenue so far.

- Why are you (or your team) perfect for this startup?
> Communism as Marx envisioned it? No.

Marx explicitly advocated a dictatorship. Dictatorship is what they got in the real world, too.
Even with configurable animation speed, I think the default should be either no animation or very fast, since this is supposed to be an alternative to screencasts.

My hunch is no animation is better, but since I haven’t actually seen that I don’t know if some animation is necessary to provide a cue for where the next step is.
Google closes down, without apparent (and often without real) reason, many adsense and adwords. This is probably because of the sheer size of users of these services. I know 100s of people personally who have lost 10.000s to 100.000s of $ in revenue because of it while they still have no idea what they did wrong. In this case it's a bit more clear; whether I agree or not, I can see why they won't want you to offer that service.

I don't think any petition will get them to return on their stance here, but Google+ with a lot of influential people (from Google if possible) would be your best chance IMHO.
I did not say that tools are never noteworthy. They are important but they are also a means to an end. The LHC is hardly an average run of the mill tool; it is rather exceptionary. So I'm not sure why you think it applies "in the general case."
At least in the US the old press is protected by the First Amendment. Far too many here in the US seem to think it applies nearly everywhere else too. Yet one disturbing side effect is that the "press" is more than willing to see the government of the US put restrictions if not ban political speech made by other groups and individuals provided they are not part of the traditional press. Blogs, political action groups, radio commentators, and even television, are all fair game according to the tradition press for restrictions they themselves would scream if placed on them.

So yeah, they don't want competition.
Clickable: http://www.pitchremix.com/
A few months when it was just a little side project and then 6 weeks fulltime. We only burnt 6 weeks of salaries.
I brought my Galaxy Nexus and Kindle Fire to Asia last month after my Galaxy Tab 10.1 died on me the day of the trip. Within 2 days into the trip in Hong Kong, the Nexus stopped charging itself, leaving me with only the Kindle Fire for the remainder of the trip. Although it was a mediocre email machine due to typical android lag in typing, it survived the trip, and let me read web pages reliably.

Ironically, the Galaxy Nexus magically resurrected itself once plugged into a US outlet. Go figure...

I noticed that the Samsung Note with its 5.3" screen is really popular in Hong Kong and Vietnam. This makes me think the 7" pad is going to be a real market segment - It's big enough to play games and type email/text yet small enough to stuff in a coat pocket, which is exactly what I saw going on with the Samsung Note. And wherever I took out the Kindle Fire, people were very curious about it.
Here: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/06/how-to-break-into-securit...
The Pauls' New Crusade: "Internet Freedom"
"In terms of data analysis, Windows could be used in principle. We could also use some type of device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a simple table of rules. [...]"

The age old dilemma: Windows or Turing machihe?
> At the root of the problem is the criminal justice system itself. Statistically, once officially accused of a crime in Russia, there is little chance of proving your innocence.

Not to mention that it should be the other way around. People are innocent by default, so it should be innocent until proven guilty.
There _is_ usefulness to it if people would stop using it as a marketing/advertising tool and try to drive real value (which people need to be doing in general with mobile). We need to find uses within the enterprise or industrial space in combination with OpenCV.
Technically it's also a toy because it tries to do async without the right primitives built into the language. Hence the async spaghetti (the 2010's GOTO), and other limitations.

It might prevail in a "worse is better" way, because of popularity, but technologically it should be replaced by a better language/framework combo.
You mean besides doing a few contributions to the core Go libraries?

Do you want to have the ticket numbers and Mercurial branches information?
Or isn't it? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/3801177.stm
I can easily imagine the Chinese or North Koreans sending a team of runners that fit this exact description.
Say what you want, but look at the photograph. That's one readable presentation.

Comic Sans gets crapped all over. And there is a lot of silly use. But it also has its place.

I don't have a reference for this, but I heard/read some months ago that some professionals use it with younger children specifically because the strokes mirror handwriting strokes as taught.

P.S. If you want humor, then I might comment that Comic Sans was the one thing that the induced black hole refused to absorb. So, it ended up in the presentation by default.
Three characteristics of responsible corporate citizens
When Hadoop isn’t fast enough: The Argument for Storm
Solving Email
To be fair, he really had little choice.
How much longer would it have taken if they'd had to use BSD?

No longer, because software was not the bottleneck.

The hard part about finding a Higgs boson is designing the gigantic particle accelerator and the detectors, then getting the funding to build them, then building them, then running them for N hours and analyzing the data. These things took decades. They started in the 1980s, years before Linux.
Exactly. Same goes with banned substances. Caffeine, for instance, is not banned despite giving a very minor advantage (or so the nutritionist told us when I used to speed skate competitively). A group of people educated on the subject decide where to draw the line.
Zombie.js Insanely fast, headless full-stack testing using Node.js
I doubt CERN has a formal run of the mill support contract with RH like other large organizations. Scientific Linux is developed (in-house) in partnership with Fermilab.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Linux
A longer/complicated list comprehension looks pretty similar to a (simple) SQL statement. And in both cases, there's really no reason why you couldn't put it on multiple lines, and they usually offer pretty good places to insert line breaks (e.g. "if" and "and" in your example).
It can also be very benefital for police aswell. It's a great defence against claims of police brutality and abuse. "That cop pushed me!" "We looked at the video, he didn't."

It's win win and helps make everyone honest.
> I think America may be a bit of an exception actually since you guys elect your judges. That sounds ridiculous to me. It is like electing your doctor or your engineers. Some things simply are best left to technocrats.

Except for federal courts. All federal court judges are appointed by the president for life after confirmation from the senate. Only state courts have an election process, in some cases.

> That final hearing was held in public, as all hearings are, it was televised, again as all hearings are, you can read the judicial decision, as with all judicial decision. No one was corrupted. You can't corrupt them, because there is complete transparency.

Not all court hearings are televised, as you stated. The court hearing for repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was not televised. Most federal trials aren't televised.

Also, just because you can read the judicial decision, doesn't mean that it wasn't a result of corruption during the trial. And once you get the decision, its not like you can fix it if something wasn't right in the decision. Complete transparency would only occur if all court cases were televised and unedited, giving the people access to all evidence.
I would also like to see Apple drop these suits and focus on making great products. But regarding that quote, I wouldn't say they favor competition in the courtroom over the marketplace, they're just doing both.

It's not as if the legal professionals working on these suits would otherwise be writing code for iOS features. And it's not as if Apple is just waiting for the outcomes of these suits, letting their products stand still in the meantime.
「 and 」 are quotation marks.
Even if the product is great FAQ would be need to clarify the context through which one need to look at for better usage.
This article has a similar pattern like the other "we're trying a new language" articles.

Sometimes I do wonder why people decided to use a new language for a critical/important piece of their product while learning on the go as well.
Architects Need a Pragmatic Software Development Process
Running a 400m is much more about anaerobic endurance than it is about raw speed, even at the olympic level.

40-100m are speed, 400-800m are anaerobic, then the mile and up are aerobic endurance. There's some gray in there but go run a 400 if you don't believe me that the race is dominated by endurance.
I'm missing or not seeing on pitchremix who you are and why you are qualified to do this consulting. Obviously that should be on the site.
IIRC, scientific linux is maintained by CERN itself.
Android Apps To Stay Social
What a sweet story leg less dude gets to compete w legged dudes, but his legs were made for robocop....

Im not going to dispute his athleticism, but in a place like the Olympics where it always comes down to hundredth of a second to beat some decade old record... Where all these ppl trained since they were born... It just doesn't seem right... If at least the prosthetics were engineered to behave like human legs it wouldn't be as bad, but they are obviously designed for a specific goal. I don't think he uses the same legs to go grocery shopping or catch a movie...

Ps: this is an undeducated comment, I'm not planning to read dozens of articles to study the scientific aspects of Joe's toes...
I probably misinterpreted you, but haven't you written skeptically of automated security testing in the past? Or is it just people who actually work in security shops that should stay away from them?
Sadly when I did my trainship there in the ATLAS group (2003-2004), many researchers were moving to Windows as their desktop environment.

I still remember the discussions between still writing papers in LaTEX or move to FrameMaker on Windows.
Virtual machines can be insecure if they contain bugs. When it comes to providing a secure execution environment, I trust Virtualbox more than I trust any JVM, most of which I trust more than I trust any console emulator.
One should be able to develop rigid boots that couple to composite springs for non amputees to run in a similar fashion. This would involve an effective lengthening of the limbs. Maybe this is not an idea but a memory...

Search on YouTube for "Spring Shoes": They're called "Skyrunners."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_rqRknJ7N0

I wonder if short people equipped with these would be competitive with bicycle messengers? Apparently they confer a significant efficiency advantage. I also wonder if robots could use these to move. I think that would be okay, so long as the robots could also stand still and dynamically balance without bouncing, otherwise they'd be annoying.
How to make a mobile-friendly portfolio site
The have discovered a boson, but it's unknown what it is. There's just three things we know about the new particle. Its mass, its charge (0) and that it has integer spin (0 or 2).
Well, because you claimed pretty strongly this:

"Tools are tools. Whether its a hammer or a Scientific Linux Cluster the significant factor is the user, the carpenter or the physicist"

I agree with you that tools are a means to an end and that obviously the LHC is a lot more important that the choice of OS. I just think you were a bit too dismissive of tools in your post, though perhaps that wasn't your intent. If someone is going to rah-rah a tool, in this case Linux, they should be pointing out what role it played and what about its use was essential, not just that it was used.
> If 5 words in a line is optimal for giving context to the center word, it's decidedly suboptimal for the other words in the line, which necessarily have less surrounding context.

Because the lines are so short, when you're reading the word at the end of the line your eyes have already picked up the context from the beginning of the next line down.

I've read hundreds of novels on small screen devices over the last 12 years. So maybe it requires a little bit of adaptation. But with this adaptation I much prefer the size of softcover books and phones over hardcover books and 6" e-readers, let alone 10" iPads.
MPAA: Kim Dotcom is wrong about VP Biden ordering Megaupload takedown
Sadly, that flowchart has some truth to it.

I asked this in another (semi-dead) thread and it didn't get a response, so I'll ask again as I couldn't find any information on it. Was any legal action taken against facebook in the recent e-mail hijacking fiasco? I think there should be, since e-mail has pretty much replaced snail mail in terms of business communications, which directly affects the livelihood of many people. Companies like facebook with so much power at their fingertips should not be able to get away with doing things like altering millions of people's address books for their own selfish reasons.
When you say "we use ruby for automation" do you mean using something like buby with Burp, or something custom?

I find myself writing a lot of custom fuzzers in python, and am looking to improve my toolkit.
If you were trying to build the world's next major operating system, would you go with Clojure as one of the core languages, specifically the one that developer-created apps are written in? And could Clojure be fast enough to power the actual OS itself too?

With all the new excitement around Clojure, I'm just trying to understand the theoretical and practical limits of the language.
Computational physics platforms are not "mainstream" products in the context of western society. That being said within the scientific community Linux is certainly "mainstream."
The trouble with parodying the startup world
What the fuck Facebook
If Microsoft could actually release a desktop operating system that is properly designed visually and in terms of user experience, people could actually admire their PC's like they do in all of their stupid commercials. Their market share is so massive that a success in the desktop space could then drive growth in mobile as they actually have build a good UX there.
I agree -- Sneaky, but probably not as malicious as most headlines are making it.

http://www.securityweek.com/sneaky-ios-malware-surfaces-app-...
>Obj-C assumes that it can offload the boring tasks to the programmer because such was the fashion in the 70s and 80s.

You seem to forget that it was created in the 80s.

You also seem to forget that it was picked in part because of it's performance characteristics, including the ability to drop down to pure C, for stuff like OpenGL etc.

In general, your complain is an repeat of "it's not high level enough as the languages I normally use".
I think it would be much harder to determine whether a prosthetic was "fair" though. With the swimsuits, you could test two different swimsuits on the same swimmer and see if one offered a direct advantage. Not to mention, when people that have not broken world records before start breaking world records, all of them using the same suit, it becomes pretty obvious.

With prosthetics, however, how do you compare how they run with prosthetics to how they might have ran if they had legs? If they don't break world records, but they place 2nd when they might have placed 5th with legs, how will we be able to know that?
This is a good article, with links to good resources for those interested in security. One good place to learn is IRC. I must say though that a better title would have been, "So, you want to get into Computer Security..."
In my case at the previous company it was rather simple. The language known to the team didn't fit the bill. So after a trial period we decided on one.
The a large percentage, perhaps even a majority, of trials end in the striking of some sort of deal before the case ever goes in front of a jury. You'd better believe that the successful local lawyer who's the DA's golfing buddy gets better deals than some zit-faced public defender who just passed the bar exam. I know that sounds quaint, but it happens all the time in America, especially in small towns where the good ole boys club is still very much a going concern.
Well, if the product is perfectly clear, wouldn't the user have full understanding of how the site works and not need an FAQ?
Analyzing DNS Logs Using Splunk
I got a PlayBook from one of the giveaways. I was really looking forward to the form factor for two things: Skyping and giving it to the gf for reading Facebook. But if your Facebook app is slower than the HTML5-based, universally hated Facebook App on an iPad 1 on iOS5, then you deservedly lose. The only video calling app is limited to PlayBook-to-PlayBook, or maybe RIM-to-RIM. A bad ecosystem is one thing, but builtin apps must be useful.
I can also confirm that neither StackExchange nor Jeff Atwood paid for this post.

I met Jeff Atwood while I was in San Francisco last month and thought he had a good story that hadn't gotten much mainstream press (for example, StackExchange was covered by the New York Times, [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/technology/07question.html...] but that story didn't go into the origins of the company or Atwood's "secret agenda" of tricking developers into being better communicators). The story wasn't assigned, I pitched it to Wired because I had the opportunity to interview Atwood.

I think of Atwood were to pay for press (which I very much doubt he would do) I assume he'd do so when he actually had something to announce.
But does it really improve readability? Personally, I don't think it does - in neither case; unless it's really pathological, but then it shouldn't all be forced into a single list comprehension.
I think with the arrival of Project Glass and many such products (all it takes is for the market to pick-up), we'll eventually get the police to wear them. My only concern though is that the recording should in no way be owned by the police. It should be streamed directly to another agency.
I've been told by a lot of people in my most recent round of fundraising that a successful start is comprised of:
50% Market, 45% Team, 5% Concept

So, you need to find a Market and Concept. There are a lot of people with great ideas that need teams for execution. I have a series of ongoing projects that I could plug-and-play a good team into.

Questions include:
1. How do you find the people with the great ideas?
2. How do you structure the deal? You have taken funding already and are beholden to your existing stakeholders?

My answers:
1. Finding Ideas: Hacker News is a good start. Also, you can act as a contractor-service company and see which projects may be good long-term fits for you. Try finding these online (odesk/elance) or offline (Berlin has a burgeoning tech scene looking for CTOs).
2. Corporate Structure: You need to be very communicative with your existing stakeholders. Being proactive is essential in your pivot. Then, be realistic when it comes to the deal: Start with milestones are are achievable, and move your stake up through performance.

Time is of the essence! You want to keep your momentum moving forward.
Thanks for the heads up. I recently edited out a lot of the text on the site, and must have forgotten to put that back in. (Site's still in construction-mode).

I personally run another business and pitch it to clients all the time. (Nomvilla.com). I've also pitched clients in person and investors at university events, startup events, etc.

In general though, think of this more as an editing service. You'll know more about your business and the people you're pitching to than we can; our job is to help you communicate your message clearly and effectively.

(That's also why I'm offering free services - to get some more experience and social proof)
How convenient for Oscar then that his both calf muscles are made out of carbon and don't fatigue. On top of that his low leg is significantly lighter than non-amputees, though whether this is a curse or a blessing is arguable.

Oscars main 'advantage' over fellow amputees that he grew up wearing prosthetics and had the funds to get ones that are good enough to train on. I can't imagine a Jamaican bilateral amputee being in the same situation.

The problem is that at the moment he's a one of a kind, which makes comparisons pretty much useless. Regardless of it all, his achievements are impressive and he's an example for a lot amputees.

Edit: Here's a link to a literature review I wrote about him 4 years ago. Note that it may be a draft version!
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1W3cjBV_DpNajQyUWVJdEtwYkk
FairPlay DRM May Be To Blame For Widespread iOS & Mac App Crashes
Why Internet scams seem so obvious
There's no way to guarantee you won't behave like that (I don't specifically mean you, but anyone in a similar position). People have the best intentions, but things change as time goes on.

In fact, charging money might make it all the more insulting if/when a company later does something to piss off its developer community.

Platform integration is a risk, but I think it's better to take that risk than not pursue an idea because some day the platform will cut you off from the API.
I'm surprised that everywhere I read, people are more interested in wondering how much of an advantage his condition gives him, than considering that perhaps it is a great disadvantage.

People are claiming things like, "oh, his heart has to pump less blood a shorter distance." What about the fact that he has way less muscle, no toes, feet, or ankles (which are all critical for balance and for sensing distances and terrain), and that his body is being stressed in ways not intended. These are huge, obvious disadvantages, and I don't see why they're seemingly ignored.

Sure, the prosthetics can vary in mechanical advantage, but you could just regulate those like any other sports equipment. But to say that not having legs could even possibly be unfair for running is ridiculous and a bit offensive.
There's no value to an intelligence agency slipping in some bits of information for CNN or Fox News to parrot and throw an advisory off track?
FYI: Facebook's legal team really frowns upon any domain name that uses xxxxbook.xxx - you should expect to hear from them soon.
Read itentirely and it's as vague.

Does not explain that it only works because the tellco is a public company (otherwise your money with them would be invested in risk) and the usabilities issues that allow a.lot of theft via social engineering.
Interesting idea, i'd love to hear from anyone who's tried this and see if they've gathered any data on it's effectiveness (a/b tests, heat maps etc...)