skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Second Life Coming to Steam with Improved Graphics in Bid to be Gamer Platform
Yes. I think eventually, I'll have it generate a photo first, and not use webGL as a default. I did it mostly as a shortcut, because it would have been more work to figure out how to make the server generate and cache a picture of the 3D model.

In addition, someone else mentioned that I can probably just send the diffs, rather than the whole model.
How about this?

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=s12...
There are several cards that give 2% flat on all purchases. You can also do much better if you use specific categories across multiple cards, for example there are cards that give 5% for restaurants.
> They spent months contacting these stores about removing pirated copies of their games, but to no avail.

Yeah, probably because those stores are run by the same people who rebranded those apps.
Full Show 8/15/12: Congress Approval Rating Hits All-Time Low
For those of us who grew up reading heavily editorialised printed press, having (voted up) news about hackers in a site called hacker news shouldn't be too painful.
Ha, looks like a popular request (given the current sample size anyway :) )
Happy birthday Debian
You're right. If you know the first and last name of either the bride or the groom, and the store at which they registered, you can access their registry. This is by design--stores want it to be easy to find what the B&G want, because they want it to be easy for you to buy something for them.
Interesting to know, I was not aware of that.

Jewelers are different, they can negotiate price, nobody pays retail at a jewelry store, that gives them flex around these cc agreements you speak of. The other reason jewelers often take cash is they let you off the hook for sales tax, which can be risky for them, yes. The jewelry business is fascinating, and full of "old guard" industry type practices, I didn't get fascinated with it until I started looking into buying a high end watch. But I digress.....
Nothing here specifically disallowing a class action.
The law isn't unreasonable. If you have a cash-flow sustainable business but you've taken on too many obligations you can restructure in bankruptcy. Of course that'll wipe out your equity holders but they are supposed to be behind creditors.

As for laughing at lawsuits, I think you will find that most companies don't. I hate to tell you but being a hip new economy company doesn't impress judges.
FACEBOOK CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for 23 million shares, or about $300 million.

at $42 FB Stock Price, the deal was worth $1Billion :$1,000,000,000 = Instagram Value

at $21 FB Stock Price, deal is worth $500 million

at $10.5 FB Stock Price, deal is worth $250 million

$10.5 is at 60 PE which is still too high!

Why would instragram sell? Instagram did get screwed!

http://loccal.com/2012/08/16/facebook-bought-instagram-for-2...
So stoked on these guys. I met them about 6 months ago and was excited then as I am now :)
Hadoop, Mongo and Node.js: Web Apps at Scale
Except Google Fiber doesn't offer that. The $300 fee covers "at least 7 years", a much more honest proposition.

Also, this is not the 1Gb/1Gb service you get for $70/month, it's only 5Mb/1Mb. So, it's not so costly for them to provide it, and there's plenty of room for people to talk themselves into upgrading to the faster service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_(typeface)
DataGraph (http://www.visualdatatools.com/DataGraph/) is my personal favorite.

The examples on the website don't necessarily do the tool justice, but it produces really beautiful output if you take the time to learn to use it, produces good output even if you don't, scales well to huge data sets, and the guy who writes it is incredibly sensitive to user feedback; when I've requested features, they've usually been available in a new beta inside of two days.
There are cards that do that - e.g. some of the merchants have store cards that give you immediate discount - e.g. I have one that makes 5% off anything I buy in a particular big store chain.
I guess for airlines it is worth it even more since airline tickets cost hundreds of dollars, so if they can avoid paying couple of percents of each transaction to intermediaries by having their own card brand that adds up to serious money, and since they control points program they can give out points so that it's still profitable to them.
Packages are sent to a "central" BufferBox address and BB staff fills the locker
Great point. And for early stage investors, I'd say that exit is def a trailing indicator in terms of where to invest. That said, they still care about valuations, multiples, etc on exits as that helps them value their existing portfolio.

But there is of course a spectrum of investors so for some investors, exit activity can be a signal. This will be moreso for growth equity or mid-market PE variety of investors. I should have been clearer about that so apologies for any confusion. Thx.
Chinese farmer builds his own prosthetic limb
The challenge isn't Xcode or Objective-C but rather the Cocoa Touch API. At the end of the day you still need to contend with the API, no matter which framework you use.
The real 'Instagram for video' may be Picle: a still + 10 seconds of audio.
The number is a reflection of 3 things:

- Multiple of revenues
- Tech acquired vs time to build and opportunity cost.
- Braintree's perception of how much they can aggressively grow the offering when they offer it to their much larger customer base

So it is what it is.
Congrats!

Any particularly interesting lessons learned?
How to turn profit from that 'stupid idea'
Caption8 is an addicting new game using photos and captions
Bafruz trojan vs Microsoft : Malicious Software Removal Tool Updated
Square has value beyond their rate. They also have an interesting/evolving point-of-sale iPad app, and a groundbreaking wallet app. These could help grow business beyond the shavings of a percent that you'd save playing the processor numbers.

And there's value in a simple rate, too. Yes maybe you could run the numbers and find some scenarios where you'd save elsewhere, but it's a very confusing and somewhat deceptive landscape, and if you get it wrong you might actually end up paying more. There's value in knowing that you're going to get a pretty fair and understandable rate up to at least $250K/yr of revenue.
I'm fascinated to know the author's opinion about Joel Spolsky's "Evidence-Based Scheduling" approach. The author mentions that breaking the schedule into the smallest possible pieces can lead to "overfitting," but Evidence-Based Scheduling uses previous programmer estimates vs. actual time to give a probabilistic schedule that changes with new events. Instead of a rigid ship date, Joel's method can give you a probability of shipping on a given date with the current information. Is Evidence-Based Scheduling still harmful, or is it basically the equivalent of the relative points-based estimation the author brought up at the end of the article?
Here’s an example of one enterprise product with room for improvement (SAP). Know of others?

Microsoft CRM 4, a very, very bad joke of a user interface.
Not "less than 21k." There is no upper bound on the value. You always save money, provided you process upwards of $10k/mo.

A merchant processing 50k/month on square paying 2.75% would save money by switching to the new plan. At least, if I'm reading this correctly.
That'd be most powerful as a learning tool (and a sweet "oh wow!" demo).

However, just a GitHub-style +/- diff view on the OpenSCAD files next to the STL diff view would be awesome (basically like the GitHub commit-range/pull-request "files" view, but with STL support).
These are ugly things, and I'm sure that it wont be long before they are used for nefarious purposes.

So instead of going to the UPS offices to pick up the package for free, I instead go to one of these for a fee. I don't see the advantage, there are UPS locations everywhere and are easy enough to get to.

This just seems like an ugly solution to a not real problem, and with a WebVan like costly infrastructure before it's even remotely useful. There has to be enough of these ugly green boxes to be more convenient than the just going to the shipping depot, the cost to get to that point seems prohibitively high, after any significant number of boxes they will become targets for theft and vandalism too, another operations cost to deal with. Webvan revisited.
This reminds me I bought a lifetime license for Visual Studio in the 90's. Less than a year later they revoked it ans esent q cheque for $50 and a copy of Visual Java
Awesome! I'll have the accounts up soon, so you can get started on pushing to your own repo.
I sent my family some photos from Picplum recently. I was very satisfied with the quality of the photos, but the experience wasn't as nice as this article, and it cost about five times more than their competition. At a 5x price premium for 4x6 (and 5x5 Instagram prints are double the 4x6 price), I'm not sure there could possibly be enough ease of use to turn me into a regular customer.

And I didn't see all this fantastic ease of use - the uploader got stuck and did not display the result a few times, and the browse has no good clear-to-me way to view large images before selecting and uploading them, so if you have 2 shots of the same thing you have to tab out to an external photo viewer to pick the better one. I ended up doing all my picture selection in picasa then hunting for filenames in picplum.

I liked the quality but I just wasn't impressed enough to justify using it regularly. Apparently they have some good ideas like you can set it up where you e-mail pictures in and they batch them up and mail them out to your family, but that just seems to me like a way to rack up another cell phone sized bill each month.
A good read, and more-or-less in line with my observations from working at a couple big software companies. I think there is generally less value in estimating versus doing, especially for tasks/projects that are inevitable.
Facebook shares plunge as insiders start to sell
Since you seem to understand already the changes in the file, perhaps it would be possible to download (and merge) only the changes?
Boom Apple Invents Next-Gen App to Take on Photoshop & Illustrator
They could have done it in Flash but then they would not have been featured on HN's frontpage.
I actually like seeing the launch announcements, but I would prefer if they didn't come via TechCrunch.

(My main opposition is that the TechCrunch website is like playing Russian Roulette with my v1 iPad. It crashes frequently.)
All I really care about is them being very consistent with how they indicate YC in the title (so it can be searched for); always YC S11 not YC11 or YCS11 or YC Summer 2011 or S11 or whatever.

At some point, having actual tags per-submission could be cool too. Sort of a stopgap on the way toward Reddit-style subreddits. Tag posts with admin, security, python, vc, ...
Fundraising Hack: Determining an Investor's "Taste"
Regardless, this type of linking violates responsible FTC disclosure.

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotic...
>I don't see the advantage, there are UPS locations everywhere and are easy enough to get to.

You must not live in Canada, or any place that isn't super urban. Also, not everyone has a car. I can imagine myself using this if I lived in a dorm, especially far away from home (speaking out of experience).

On theft an vandalism, from what I see in their current installations, they're installed in busy areas inside train stations and school buildings. That's a lot better than hiding things under your door mat or tossing things over backyard fence.
Spirit Mars Rover - xkcd
Commercial asteroid mining will be reality within this century, and is already attracting investment. Look up Planetary Resources & friends.

There are individual asteroids that have more easily extractable precious metals than the entire present earth supply, should we have a good method of returning them to earth. The mere existence of these ought to start playing a number on the metals markets once planetary resources starts doing something newsworthy.
Zing!

Yes, JS sucks. It's also getting less sucky, because it won't go away. Kind of obvious at this point.
Linking to tcfast.com (in HN style!) would be kind of mean to techcrunch, though :)
Nice argument. I hadn't thought of it like that before but I think it makes a lot of sense.
You seem to have a very myopic viewpoint, unable to see that just because you may not have a use for this, it couldn't possibly solve an actual problem. If you live in the city and don't have a car, getting packages can be a huge pain. I live in San Francisco, and would love a service like this. Packages can't be delivered to my apartment (the door opens onto a city street), and since I don't drive to work having packages delivered there can by annoying as well. If one of these were installed within a few blocks of me I would very happily use it.
If the product was seriously making money and growing then they should've raised money. The problem with bootstrapping and growing a team like this is if you have a bad month you can run out of money near-instantly. You have little runway. I'm not sure if this was a killer product but they did stay in the app store top 10 constantly with a paid product.

I know they may have bigger fish to fry but the founding team would've been good to find a company to take on this team, I know a few and there's some very talented folks in there. I know almost all of them will get hired quickly but as they let them go instantly with no warning it seems unfair.

Also I'm not sure how this company can function with only "core employees" if none of them are designers or engineers. As they're bootstrapped I'm guessing they're going to just live on whatever revenue they have and work on something else or just leave it, as they probably have enough to pay for themselves but not a whole team.
and still people are dying of hunger. Oh right, lets feed them some plutonium
Still being downvoted, no reasons given. How about a link from the feminist section of Slate?

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_s...

Insane? Radical? You decide!
I'll say it's for future ipads for palm rejection and ipad mini's thumb rejection.
I think estimation can mostly be forgotten. The planning part which the author identifies is always helpful. Sure, get the team together to plan features and get a feel for the goals. Even get biz analysts together with folks to determine req's.

But do we really have to tell you how long it will take? When a lot of managers just take the estimate and multiply by three can these estimates really be trusted? What's the end game? Is it any different than just building it out? If you have a hard set of features then it will get done when it gets done. Just predict what half of what year. If you're an agile enterprise, then timebox the release and build out from there. Why must we all do this absurd dance of time estimating?
> The question is why nobody did something like this before BufferBox in the US?

Because there is a post office in almost every US town with postal mailboxes available? You can use that to have all USPS packages and mail delivered.

There are also UPS Stores, Fedex Kinkos, 7-Elevens, etc. which offer the same service, plus allow from delivery from private carriers.

On top of that, for 99% of Americans, having your package dropped off at your door is just fine. Nobody is going to take it. And if you're that paranoid, just have it delivered to your neighbor or to your office.

I really don't understand what void this product is trying to fill.
It was kind of obvious, really.

Oh, and I hate $tarbucks.
Having had stuff stolen from my front porch before (because I wasn't around to collect the package)...this sounds like a pretty clever idea.
Just put a link next to Submit:

ask | jobs | YC S12
Looks like someone figured out how to bring a stop to it. Not easy, but it's doable.
Why should the LP's have a say in whether to sell or not? If they'd prefer to hold public Facebook stock, they could take their cut of the return and put it back in fb stock.
I recommend refraining from using the W word when getting an initial quote if you can.
I'm not saying they won't be able to do it or something like that. I'm just saying they just need to raise the standard of basic human living first and then start glorious missions like this. The problem with India is that it's a hollow vessel. They pretend to be glorious to the rest of the world but actually they can't even solve the most basic human needs. So much poverty, Homelessness, Electricity, Roads, Communication, Health Care, Education, Human Rights. Almost everything is fucked up in this country except "Bollywood".. (well the movies are actually more fucked up than anything else but at least bollywood is a financial success ;)

FWIW, I'm from India.. sort of.
But THE ECONOMY.
typo -- second instance of "XML" should be ".txt"
Hey, then you could also check out 'GFYS'..you might like doing it..who knows (:
Good point. It would be nice if Y Combinator (ycombinator.com) has some kind of semi-standard way of making these announcements then. Couldn't the companies just self-post here on HN using a common format? The next level would be a special type of posting like the help wanted posts.
Ask HN: How do you create exclusivity?
An interesting marketing tactic is making your product exclusive in the beginning; that is, restricting access to your product to only a select few "high quality" users. This creates a natural buzz around the startup.

While I understand not every startup should employ this tactic, what are some best practices to create exclusivity?

Also I'm curious from a higher-level standpoint, is exclusivity a mechanism to narrow down on (from the broad pool of signups) the users who derive the most value from your service? Are there distinct advantages/disadvantages of doing that vs. simply spending the time to laser target a specific subset of your customer segment?
Have you ever gone to UPS to pick up a package? I've tried before - I ended up just deciding to wait for redelivery. If you've ever lived in an apartment complex that's gated/closed, you miss a ton of packages.

There is also the receipt of packages while away on vacation, etc. Certainly not a huge market, but I don't think its fair to say this isn't a "real" problem.
I know we're not supposed to do this here.... this is not reddit etc but... actual lol.
Doesn't the bitcoin network self-regulate to increase the difficulty of mining coins as the speed of coin generation increases?
Try gist:
https://gist.github.com/3374114
Parrondo's Paradox - How two ugly parents can make a beautiful child
Yes. Because graceful degradation isn't a thing.

Obviously they didn't apply it here fully, but it would have been possible for them to reuse their text divs on text-only browsers, drop their svgs for some prerendered raster graphics on SVG-less browsers, use their SVGs but have them render flat on 3d-transform-less browsers, have static 3d copies of each page if JS isn't available but 3d was, etc., etc.

It's even possible for established sites to collect statistics on combinations of available browser features, estimate ROI vs. development effort and decide which combinations beyond the least-common-denominator are worth coding for and slowly roll them out one at a time.
Seems the risks are such my approch works just as well,

"pt-online-schema-change modifies data and structures. You should be careful with it, and test it before using it in production. You should also ensure that you have recoverable backups before using this tool."

With that being the case what im doing is fine I guess.
Charges dropped because federal servers can't store 2 Terabytes of evidence
I think you are spot on. It's the same reason why making a successful online dating website is very hard.
That's a 5 year old article. A lot of can be improved upon
You are right, no "top secret" documents were published.

Still there were some claims that some names were exposed in the documents. I can imagine that somebody from all the exposed names got killed in one way or another. Would that be enough then? If something like that existed, Manning is then the first to be sentenced to death.
Apple's latest big mistake. Trying to gut retail operation.
Great to see another Vancouver company kicking ass.
WebRTC.io
What should a JS class system look like - any ideas?
Any i
"Is There Hope for the Paid App? Sure there is. Just do what Starbucks does: Build an app experience that’s unique and doesn’t feel easily replicated."

I'm not sure Starbucks does this :-) Overall a pretty good acticle.
>On top of that, for 99% of Americans, having your package dropped off at your door is just fine.

You really can't pull numbers out of a hat like that. How many people live in an apartment with no front doorman, or requires a buzz code to get in? Probably more than 1% of Americans.

Or what if you ordered a shiny new laptop from Amazon? Would you leave it at your front door, even if you live in a safe area? I personally wouldn't.

Plus, These guys started in Canada, it's unfair to judge from purely American point of view.
The goal is be able to effectively load-balance and prioritize. If something won't take long, for example, it can be deferred (if needed) if it depends on something else that will.

Additionally, depending on the market and how important schedule is, it lets you know if the project will be hopelessly late and as a result whether it should be canned.
The browser does to decide if it's safe to use them. JS should be able to just use feature detection.
CompareRC Micropreneurial Diary #1: The Beginning
New Apple retail chief makes “mistake” in firing staff, hires them back
Haha yeah, but they make it a convenient experience by having one (or even two) on every corner.
Nicely done.

The 'with cd' in Fabric struck me as cool when I first saw it - subshells in Capistrano threw me at first.
LOL! Ask Phelps what's his "excuse" for not being able to write C++ worth a damn! When you have figured that out, then we can talk.
There's another half of this argument though, and that is the people who complain that an app cost's $0.99, saying instead that it should be free. No one is standing outside of Starbucks protesting that the coffee should be free. Most times that I hear the app/cup of coffee analogy is in response to this complaining.
It sounds great.

But will USPS deliver to one of these? Are they even legally allowed to? Or are you limited to private shippers like UPS, FedEx, etc.?
$4 Starbucks coffee is a gamble imho
We use grasshopper for our business too, and love it.

Great tip on using the phone. So many people are afraid to call customers, but once you get over the first few it becomes easy. And in this case, since they don't answer anyway, it's perfect.

I can't remember, is the phone number field mandatory in your signup process?
Every reasonable person stops before "free ponies". But not all reasonable people stop before free health care.
How to discover good movies with bash, awk, grep and imdb in 30 LOC.
Yeah, I've been trying several different types for the past 6 months or so.
Any project whose only value comes from being there first is a loser and should be canned before the estimating.
"Hey Sergei, Larry says Alta Vista is on track to beat us to market, so lets scrap this search thing and invest in new DRM schemes"
Follow these instructions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4393135
NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Team Reveals Mission Details On Reddit
I have not found ack[0] to be a drop-in replacement for grep, even when dealing with code. However, you may find it worth investigating.

[0] http://betterthangrep.com/