skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The experiment comes from the "Predictably Irrational" book. A very good read in its entirety.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
The Hustler
You should be on the lookout for apps that have versions across different platforms or at least have a Web access.
American expat in Canada here. Agreed that the compensation is not as competitive as in the US, and the prospect of living in bustling NY or sunny Cali is probably quite alluring for Canadian programmers to boot. (Having moved from Texas, I'm not sure I could thrive in Toronto and am quite relieved that Victoria has lovely weather.)

That said, the Canadian system seems to be far less dysfunctional than its American counterpart. Perhaps the brain drain will diminish if political or economic turmoil continues to make the US less appealing for the liberal crowd?
Ask HN: Funding/investment for a hardware startup in Canada?
Me and couple of friends are currently working on a hardware project with a goal to release it as a product. We applied for funding with the CMF but were rejected because they prefer software more. Therefore, we are now looking for other resources. Can anyone recommend a good place to apply for funding/investment?

Thanks
Yeah but where did you come in?
Why you?
Why were you working on a product that you had nothing to do with?

I just don't get it at all.
Why did you give free labour and free time to a for profit company you had no stake in?
See why we are confused?
95 addicts is not what you will get back. There is a difference between dependence and addiction. Dependency is something people are all generally equally susceptible to. Addiction is not equal. Brain chemistry does have much to do with addiction. Specifically, those with smaller prefrontal cortexes are less able to make good decisions and rely more in their natural reward system to make decision for them. In these people our primitive brain has more power and drives them to seek pleasure despite the consequences. Continuing to take addictive substances exacerbates the situation in two main ways. First, the brain readjusts so it becomes less sensitive to being bombarded with huge amounts of dopamine (tolerance) and, if taken at the right time (or wrong time depending on how you look at it), it actually stunts the growth of the brains decision making regions (mostly the prefrontal cortex and the worst time for this is from 12 - 24). What do you even mean by environment? Are you implying that if you make drugs available everyone takes them? That's wrong. Are you implying that addiction affects some social classes more than others? That's also wrong. Studies show that addiction hits everyone equally. We only associate it with certain social classes because it's more visible, treatment isn't as easily available, and it's more talked about. In addition you'll find that different kinds of drugs are used between social classes but the rate of addiction is the same. Upper class tends to use more marijuana and prescription meds while the lower class use the more common "hard" drugs. Even with opiates you'll find that for some reason people think differently about a vicodin addition than a heroin addiction despite them being the same thing.

It sounds to me like your comment was based more on personal belief than any hard facts.
I never understood "If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold." It's clearly not true in the free software world.
If it's the end of the message, one can assume the thought was completed there.
WHATWG and W3C split on HTML5
I think that would encourage spam. Currently people don't email "important" people because they think it would get lost in the mass of other emails. But if you pay a few cents to get an important person's attention, it looks a lot more attractive.
note that these are for famous/important legit people with integrity -- they're not looking to earn some quick cash by making their assistant to click through each msg. Their priority is more to control the inbound flow as opposed to make a quick buck.
So Google bought Sparrow so that they would never release this?
Well, the standard in computer science is to optimize algorithms and discuss their performance for the worst case, so if we assume he's talking from a CS perspective, I find it natural to assume he's talking about that. There are a few exceptions, like QuickSort, but if some tells me to optimize some algorithm, I'll assume he's asking for optimization of the worst case unless he says otherwise or it's clear that the worse case is much rarer than some other case (I'd ask if I think that).
It is about the laws. Fair use is a very restrictive use for copyrighted images - you can only use the if you transform them significantly in some way, reduce the image quality so that you don't reduce the value for the original owner, or use the in a not for profit medium as fair use tends to be more friendly to this sort of thing.

None of these things are really viable for Wikipedia. Fair use is a necessary evil, but when they can replaced with a free image then that is what is done!
Open source helps if your app has a functioning eco-system.

Oracle couldn't kill Open Office for example.
So, if you want to get covered in Techcrunch, start a consumer internet company. If you want to get rich, don't start a consumer internet company.
Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads
No. The worse case is when the topmost floor is the most likely to break the egg. And it's not reasonable to to assume anything about the distribution, so there's not a "most reasonable" case. Except maybe assuming that the higher the floor, the higher the chance of breaking the egg, simply because we are talking about things breaking and height plays a factor in that.

EDIT: actually, the worse case depends on the algorithm you are using; if you are using linear search, the worst case is when the egg won't break for any height. So yeah, in that case the distribution is uniform. But it seems like grasping at straws.
I agree and Gruber wrote a good post about that [1]. However, if Apple releases a smaller 7.85" iPad, it will still have a 40% larger screen area than 7" tablets do [2].

[1] http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/this_ipad_mini_thing

[2] http://a.yfrog.com/img615/4234/6j2n.png
Dude, I could barely read the whole post through. It feels like he just HAD to respond to the rage against his tweet. I suppose he felt his manhood was at stake. He couldn't sound more of a douchebag with this phrasing really. Go on, phrase titles and respond to yourself then.

This is not the quality of posts I usually find on the front page of Hacker News.
I run Kubuntu on a W500 and set mouse sensitivity way up:

xset m 5 1

so that I can move the cursor with a fairly light touch.
I think there is a Canadian tendency avoid risk. With the tech sector this means that if government funding is not immediately available, nothing is worth risking your own money.
I'm reminded of one my history professors who used to say that the American dream was to start your own company and become wealthy. In contrast, the Canadian dream is to become a civil servant.
There are exceptions of course but most of these people go to the US. It isn't just in the tech sector either. Look at the number of Canadian actors or singers that go the the US.
Is there any advantage to MELPA? Why publish to MELPA instead of marmalade or elpa proper?
Sure, I appreciate that it seems like a lot of foregone future productivity/awesomeness (though we really don’t know what they’ll go on to do as part of Google). But some people are actually claiming a right.
Sparrow's acquisition highlights the dangers of closed source
Many Vancouver software companies do not post jobs on SO. Most of them do it via recruiters (let's leave the discussion about the positive and negative dealing with recruiters for some other time).

It's a tight-knit industry in Vancouver.
Free tips from Google's SEO guideline
According to Einstein, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

A cooperation is not the natural "business" model for software. It's a club. One won't get different results if one uses the same business model.
Toasters don't get upgrades, the electrical plug and bread sizes don't change, and I have insurance for fires.
(+) Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Edit: to clarify, the intro paragraph is extremely misleading. This analysis looks back in time several years; he might as well tell you to start a social network or a search engine. It would be honest to say that it's simply an analysis of what has done well, but of course it would not be as sensationalistic.
The reason we are angry is that the Sparrow founders (and investors and board) failed to give enough of a damn about their customers, placing shareholders before customers.

They have damaged their personal reputations forever with this decision.

They placed money over karma, dollars over doing awesomeness, cash over changing the world.

I feel they just missed an opportunity to grow Sparrow to dominate email across all platforms - an opportunity worth a lot more in both karma and dollars, and an amazing journey as well.

In short a poor decision made for the wrong reasons.

They may help Googke change the world of email. But they have messed up a beautiful opportunity to do so themselves and will now disappear into the anonymous Borg.
That seems pointless, because then patches could not be distributed. Seldom are patches economically viable for exactly one person to create, one at a time, for themselves. That's the same burden of being a proprietary software company without any potential upside.

Maybe for an organization, and in those cases a source-code escrow is not unheard of. But really it's just a lifeboat so you can move on gracefully.
A friend of mine built this:

https://vipbox.heroku.com/r38y
Zsh - Changes between version 4.2 and 5.0
By 'free email client' do you mean the one funded by paying for your OS (Outlook Express), your hardware (Mail.app), or maybe Google (Thunderbird)?
Seizing your .com domain is the US's primary method of enforcement against non-US entities that violate US intellectual property laws.

http://mashable.com/2010/11/27/homeland-security-website-sei...
Rivet - Efficient task-based build tool using Node.js
Repeat the same exercise on Monster (for example), where recruiters, Canada or US, do post jobs, and you will find that the disparity is even more pronounced.
Hence:

> There are a couple of broad claims which could, if upheld, cripple many systems which work like this (log in to installed software over the web, essentially).
Silicon Valley job growth roars back
Show HN: A search engine and a discussion base for scientists
Does this mean 'exercise' to strengthen prefrontal cortex helps against addiction?
Well seeing as how there are only two decent Android tablets on the market (Transformer and Galaxy), I personally don't mind this one bit. Google gave the manufacturers a chance to create competitive tablets, and it just hasn't been happening (same could be said for the Android phones). The Android ecosystem is polluted with bad hardware combined with modified versions of Android that make Google look bad. Now Google has taken control and is releasing it's own hardware. Microsoft is doing the same. It seems like this is the only way to stay competitive with Apple.
Try this one? http://www.somacon.com/p142.php/
Reads like a TechCrunch advert.

Good thing this isn't Reddit else I'd have phrased that less politely.
'Sparrow for Windows' was never an official Sparrow client, not weeks away
"piracy" is accepting something that is being shared with you.
It appears there is less work for the publisher if they are using github.
el-get is really for picking up the loose ends that don't make it into packages. Most Emacs users should start out with package and only move to el-get if they really need it.
> then estimate a safe floor I feel the egg won't break at

This isn't a solution to the problem. Your approach carries the risk that you never find the answer (given the preconditions). I don't think this qualifies as "good" critical thinking, since you don't actually have a solution.
Maricopa County Air Conditioning
Maricopa County Air Conditioning: Afr-Dynamics Air Conditioning Contractors Provide Professional AC Repair & Installation Service in Fountain Hills, Gilbert Park, Queen Creek, Scottsdale, Chandler, Paradise Valley, Peoria, Tempe, Cave Creek and Glendale Arizona.
Postbox was my next solution. Is it better than Thunderbird?

I've been somewhat happy with Thunderbird actually, in terms of performance and stability. It's just that the whole codebase seems unwieldy (try developing extensions for it) and may not be around a lot longer.
Using your vast and deep pockets to terminate a threat vs. competing against it simply doesn't sit right for many HN readers. There are some parallels here to the outcry against patents-as-business-strategy.
One possible scenario: sometimes a lot of good technology is locked up in a bad company (e.g. through acquisitions, mergers, and/or changes in management), and some engineers may consider it worth the risk of boarding a slowly sinking ship just to be able to play with cool toys that aren't available elsewhere.

Relatedly, it's easy to say, "That's not a place you want to work anyway," but there are other factors that influence one's decision whether to work at a particular place.
It sounds like there's supposed to be a table at the end, but it's not showing up for me.

The first question I have, without seeing the numbers, is: do the higher percentages of IPOs/acquisitions for more capital-intensive fields just mean that it's harder to start and fund a company in those area without a much more fleshed out idea?
SuitBet - The Classiest Bet You'll Ever Make
As a software engineer in Silicon Valley, I rarely get the opportunity to wear a suit. Well now I'm betting you I can wear one longer than you can =P. I can't wait for the funny looks at the office.
You could ask me the same question in reverse, but why are you so sure that everyone bears scars from childhood? Is it that it's been the case with everyone you've met? It certainly has been the case with many people I've met.
Some friends and I actually pitched this idea to YC and got an interview a few years ago. We didn't get in.

Part of the issue is as soon as you describe this idea one of the thoughts people will have 'so you want to pay me for receiving spam.'

Twitter is an example of an 'alternative inbox' but the hard nut to crack is to get enough people using a system like it in lieu of email. If that is not achieved, all you end up with is two inboxes with a bunch of junk in them, or at a minimum the same amount of email you always got.
I see your point there but I think the situation is a little bit different when compare to Monster.

I was reluctant to go to recruiters at first but once I got to know one or two recruiters with better networks, I definitely see more opportunities that may not advertised front-and-center out there.

Vancouver is in the middle of hiring spike this year and I can assure you that there are quite a few interesting jobs on the market right now.
Easily remedied: http://www.geardiary.com/2012/07/20/how-to-get-amazon-prime-.... Just installed it today on my N7 and Amazon Prime video works surprisingly well.
Hate to be that guy, but:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/21/3174803/sparrow-for-window...
> My problem with Jack Welch's "vitality curve" is that it assumes a certain distribution of performance is immutable. It assumes a static world in which 20% deserve to be promoted and rewarded, 10% deserve to be fired, 70% are good where they are.

Once your organization is large enough, a pretty reasonable case can be made that this distribution remains constant (although in fairness, the argument isn't that 10% deserved to be fired, it's that 10% are underperforming, and you need to quickly determine if that is going to change). It's undoubtedly NOT precise or immutable, but it is probably closer to "correct" than what happens without such practices in place.

> But once you've gotten rid of your deadweight, now you're firing half-decent people who just haven't "clicked" yet.

You are assuming no hiring, acquisitions, and changes in your business that change the value of employee work. That is the typical image of a large, lumbering conglomerate, and part of the point of codifying the practice is to force the organization to step out of the myth.
Alive and twetting: https://twitter.com/TotherAlistair/
Murdoch Resigns From British Newspaper Boards
I'm interested in this market, but what exactly is social about bodiluv.com?
Well I found at least one good use for them.

I'm writing a book and I use nothing but the CSS color names in all of the examples. I think it makes the code snippets easier to parse and visualize as a human when you're reading through the text. For example:

// Create a vertical gradient going from the top of the canvas to the bottom
var gradient = ctx.createLinearGradient(0, 0, 0, can.height);
gradient.addColorStop(0, 'Black');
gradient.addColorStop(0.15, 'Black');
gradient.addColorStop(0.2, 'DarkSeaGreen');
gradient.addColorStop(0.4, 'DarkSeaGreen');
gradient.addColorStop(0.7, 'Goldenrod');
gradient.addColorStop(0.8, 'DarkOrange');
gradient.addColorStop(1, 'GhostWhite');

Then, as I spend a paragraph talking about color stops, I can refer to real color names and not #00000, #8FBC8F, etc. I think the humans reading the text will appreciate it, but we'll see!
Why Firefox Mobile OS Is An Actual Game Changer
Corollary: I absolutely hate it when media outlets use the term "a source". Yes, I do understand that sometimes 'source' is used because the other party requested or requires anonymity for the continuity of their current endeavors or whatever other reason.

But with the current state of news delivery operating at Warp 10 with the added bonus of somehow being able to run a hyperdrive engine at the same time and less research actively being done before a story is thoroughly debunked, it irks me.
>> "E(# of drops) = E(# of drops for 1st) + E(# of drops for 2nd)"

> "In the general case, I don't think this is true. I think you're relying on the idea that all intervals are equally large."

Pretty much.

More explicitly, the grandparent is relying on the assumption that E(egg2) is independent of what happens to egg1, which is only true if the interval sizes are the same. In the article's solution, E(egg2) is dependent upon which interval egg2 is dropped in -- if egg1 breaks on the first drop, E(egg2)=7 (the center of the 1-13 interval) but if egg1 breaks on floor 100, E(egg2)=0 since we already know floor 99 is safe.

To calculate E(egg1 + egg2) we need to compute something resembling a weighted average. A quick-and-dirty excel chart gives me an expectation of 9.97, whereas intervals of size 10 give an expectation of 10.5 (first egg gets 1-10 drops for an expectation of 5.5; second gets 1-9 drops for an expectation of 5.0 as the tenth drop would be a repeat.)
This is especially true when you're using a CSS preprocessor like LESS or SASS. It's easier to remember a name like "skyBlue" or "tomato" than a hex value, sure, but being able to declare your own variable names is just as good (if not better).
All I can think of after reading this thread is "don't go into the business of selling software to consumers for $5-10".
You've seen a project you'd call a success?

I'm kidding, sort of. I haven't seen the inside of a Fortune 500 company in years; I'm in startup-land now. But from what reports I hear, I imagine it's the same. Lots of "commodity" programmers driving the costs up an order of magnitude beyond what more talented programmers consider reasonable for the functionality. Then they pay a few brilliant people, often consultants, to drag them across arbitrarily designated finish line.

Meanwhile, startups, small companies, and the few large companies who take engineering seriously are bidding up the rest of the talented programmers. With cash, with freedom, with the ability to actually make something they aren't depressed by.
A small organization may not be able to follow up in the anticipated time frame despite every intention to do so. The ground can shift day to day and a lean staff may have to radically shift priorities, e.g. suppose a term sheet needs review.
Historically, Canada has never really swung wildly in any sector. Housing, tech, business, natural resources, etc. the only "dominant" is natural resources and it provides a nice base. But, the economic swings have been minor compared to here in the US.

Sure they have had RIM and Nortel which have both, basically, gone bust. Beyond that, I can't really think of any big Canadian tech company. A number of companies have/have had satellite offices in Canada -- Microsoft (Richmond/Surrey) and Nokia (Kanata) come to mind. But, the country, it's resources, and culture are pretty diverse -- BC differs from Ontario which differs from Quebec. In some ways, I feel the US is much more homogenous than Canada.

That said, I've known a few startups in Canada (mainly Vancouver) over the years. However, there hasn't been a critical mass. From my observation, Vancouver has more ties with LA (business-wise) than Silicon Valley -- more media heavy than tech.

I'm not sure complacence has anything to do with it, there just hasn't been a critical mass in any one area.
You're basing 75% of your entire response on something I've never stated.

But to respond:

There are plenty of people with excellent decision making processes who ended up as addicts.

It was nothing more than a process for them.

Doctors, lawyers, firemen, teachers, bankers, the list goes on and on.

You want to blame the pre-frontal cortex for the start, I blame using once, waking up feeling great, a few weeks later taking some more, feeling great, then 3 months later taking 3 times/week, then a year later 3 times/day.
Google disagrees. The author should really check out the work done by their office in Zurich, which also works on GMail.
I think it's especially silly in the case of a "source" from a really small startup.

This isn't like a "source" at Proctor and Gamble, it's what, like one of five people?
Hmm I'm not following. What do you do with the first egg if it doesn't break?
Dell launching Sputnik, the Ubuntu developer laptop, this year
I have no idea, but I like the idea of empowering people, of at least giving them the chance to control their fate. And Kickstarter shows that consumers can aggregate some serious dough if they want to.
I'm curious. What's Navicat do that cheaper clients/don't?
I came close to rejecting an interview with a company after a recruiter pushed back my resume, and I'll tell you why:

What I saw was either a noticeable discrepancy in adequately communicating to the recruiter (who for full disclosure, has the title: "Technical Recruiter" in their email signature) what they wanted out of a candidate for the role, the hiring manager not having any actual understanding of what the role entails, the recruiter greatly misunderstanding the intentions and requirements from the hiring manager -OR- a devastating combination of all three.

I say this, because the recruiter rejected my resume twice for a role that I am highly interested in based on the notion that I did not adequately explain my experience with text files and Microsoft Excel. Now, if you're a technical recruiter, hiring for a data analyst position and you make a point of looking at a resume that lists database administration experience, modeling, forecasting and technical analysis of clearing house data and fail to forward a resume for a job that would entail all three because I didn't say in clear terms "I used Notepad.exe and excel.exe" something is very, critically and fundamentally wrong with your recruiting process.

That would be like asking a nuclear trained submarine electrician with 14 years experiance, 6 in the service field, with things like programming multigenerator plc control systems, can you show me more experience on wiring?