skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not convinced this is a problem specific to startups. People don't know how to do presentations. I saw it while in school. I had to take a technical writing class that required a presentation at the end. Most engineers suck at presenting.

But I'm also not convinced it's limited to engineers. I've sat in countless presentations that have sucked and a few that have been amazing.

Part of the problem is, presenters rarely ask "What would I want to hear if I was in the audience?" If you answer that question you'll be better than 80-90% of presenters, regardless of if your speech doesn't flow perfectly etc.

For example, when I was 8 or 9 my sister made us chocolate pudding. When it had set, we started eating it. She said "I don't think this tastes right" and washed it out. I was happy to have pudding and ate my whole bowl. Next morning I woke up with 103 degree fever, couldn't stand up straight, etc.

My mom takes me to the doctor who runs some tests. He comes back in the room, looks at me laying on the table and says "Looks like you've got food poisoning. I'll be back in a minute." He leaves and in my mind I picture bottles of bleach, skulls and cross bones, TV dramas where someone had been poisoned etc. My mom can easily detect this. She chases the doctor down and says "I think you need to go back there and explain what food poisoning is."

Doctor comes back explains in simple terms that I'm not going to die, the milk had spoiled etc. I got some medicine and bed-rest for the next 2 days and was fine.

Twenty-six years later and that account is still vivid in my mind, in part because my doctor didn't think "What would an 8 year-old need to hear about food poisoning?"

It's not just about start-up pitches, it's about communication. And we, as an industry, suck at it.
I can access it from South Africa.
That's the new reality these days. Put a good looking girl on the cover - they will accuse you of making women look like sex symbols. Put an all male picture and you are suddenly not very welcome to women in tech.
How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple's Secret Employee Training Manual
Do Botanists Dream of Electric Sheep?
I guess I'm confused. What is an "unauthorized fork"? Anyone can fork GPL software at any time, for any reason. That's the whole point, isn't it?
A lot of the people still using Firefox instead of Chrome are sticking with FF exactly because they use extensions that can't be implemented on Chrome.
“There are more mobile phones in Uganda than light bulbs”
Thanks! super valid points!
I just wanted to make the connection to suffix trees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffix_tree

Because those can be better than btrees when it comes to text.
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Why didn't your employer get it done for you? If it was a big firm then they'd have someone who knows their way around the system to get things like this done efficiently.
I don't find their actions particularly praiseworthy, but if this can be done by a bunch of scriptkiddies, I'm not sure they did anything but slightly move up the inevitable, since organized criminal groups are also running similar scripts.
@evandena
> which propagate to the other providers

Source? I haven't heard of DMCA takedowns propagating to other separate companies. Resellers sure (same company). Many users have specifically avoided Highwinds resellers due to the large number of takedowns they receive, implying that whoever else they find isn't getting (or observing) the notices.
I agree, what the actual fuck is supposed to be sexistic here? Can't we all live in peace? And _why_ would you post that on HN anyways? It has nothing to do with technology/startup-things. I dont really care about stuff like this, and if I did, I'm sure I wouldnt visit HN to inform myself about it. Seriously, please stop posting unrelated messages. I don't ask about programming languages in a feministic newsgroup either. This submission is just noise, nothing more.

Maybe I should build a script to filter HN... this is getting overboard.
Always a good link to throw in in a discussion about "XXX vs. C" performance: http://marc.info/?l=git&m=124111702609723&w=2

Basically it's a quick case study (in the form of a mailing list reply) of implementing git in Java, tuning heavily for performance, and comparing to the equally tuned C implementation. Java does well, but fundamental issues like lack of value types (i.e. all objects must go into independently managed heap cells) and memory typesafety (converting a SHA-1 between int[5] and byte[20] is a bounds-checked copy in Java, where it's zero-cost in C) put a firm cap on how fast it can be made to go.
iOS Icon Designs
It worked for me with my existing Amazon account, but then I have a Kindle.

I thought I'd test with a new account, so in an incognito window:

* Went to https://read.amazon.com/
* Created a new account
* Got redirected to Kindle store, found free book, hit "Buy now with 1-Click"
* Filled in a billing address
* Got a page thanking me for my order, hit "Read now in Kindle Cloud Reader"
* Book loaded

You're welcome to use this account--login: "M8R-2neeuu@mailinator.com", password "test123".

Hope this helps.
It took a few tries on OSX/Chrome (no relevant errors from the console to report) but it seemed to be more reliable when running inside a "fresh" tab as opposed to one I had already reloaded several times.

Having played it, I must report back to say: this is stunning. It's wicked fast. Wow. Just wow.
I don't really take this as a valid response to the original post. Yes, you'll run into stupid money, but that doesn't mean that all money is stupid.

As I'll respond to the original post, how are the people pitching being qualified, and I'd suggest you do the same with the investors you speak to. I've met with investors who ask these sorts of questions, as well as many who actually try to add value in the meeting rather than just seeing what I know.
That is what a 'bubble' looks like. People with more money than sense giving it to people because those people are offering up what ever is the bubble today. In this case "startup". The dumb money will be lost, the "startup founders" will slink away (for the most part) into nondescript corporate jobs, and saying you are doing a "startup" will become a bad thing. Well at least that was what happened here in the Bay Area during the 90's.
1. I think you are shooting yourself in the foot with your pricing, why don't you create a middle plan and limit usage by number of events per week?

2. The conquerer/empire thing I just don't get, its confusing why not try something like Promoter / Enterprise? Selling subscriptions is hard enough, I always try to be as simple as possible on my pricing page.
The Detailed Explanation given by Lucas concludes:

So, on some machines, using a "less than" comparison
might save one machine instruction. This was relevant in
the era of sub-megahertz processor speed and 1:1
cpu-to-memory speed ratios, but is almost totally
irrelevant today.
The Andreessen Horowitz Effect
Does the car in your example prevent you from changing the tire to one that isn't flat? Does it actually come with a flat tire from the dealership?
PG should look at a city sometime.

People with junk cars can't afford to ditch them, not can afford to have more cars than rick people.
apt-get source [package-name]

This downloads the source of the package to the current directory. To compile, first install the compilation dependencies:

apt-get build-dep [package-name]

Then inside the source directory, the easiest way is to install debuild and then just run:

debuild

That compiles and creates a .deb ready to install.

The New Maintainers guide[1] has a lot of information, though most is only relevant if you want to become an official Debian maintainer; for tweaking existing packages, it's not important.

[1]: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/index.en.html
Ah, I wasn't aware that takedowns propagate. That does change things.
My company still uses VMS specifically for the versioned filesystem.
"why don't they" -> Remembers me of a recent HN discussion ;)

But... Actually you are not far from something. This is actually an approach from Audi: http://green.autoblog.com/2010/03/01/geneva-preview-audi-a1-...
From what I read though this approach was not approved in the mother company, VW. Let's see who wins at the end.
Congrats, Paras!

As for a comparison, Optimizely uses Akamai which has 100,000 nodes in 75 countries. VWO uses Cloudfront and does two round-trips. Cloudfront has 32 points of presence in 12 countries.

Optimizely response time: Slowest: 289ms, Average: 65ms, Slowest: 19ms
VWO response time: Slowest 1983ms, Average: 276ms, 171ms

Source: http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/100-Shopping-for-a-...

Unique features to Optimizely that VWO does not have:

- Mobile web support & editor

- Dynamic text insertion

- Staging server support

- Human-readable results

- Documented API

- Advanced developer tools

- Cross-browser testing for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, iOS, and Android

- One-click integrations with Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, KISSmetrics, MixPanel

- Implementation is 1-line of code vs 21 lines of code

- Pricing starts at $19/mon vs $49/mon

- Optimizely comes with a 100% money back satisfaction guarantee with 99.999% service level agreement

- Optimizely support offers web, phone, email, and a dedicated account manager, as well as the CEO's direct cell for Platinum customers

In terms of adoption by the top 10,000 websites on the internet Optimizely is 6x bigger than VWO.

Sources:
http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely
http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Visual-Website-Optimiz...

Note: I co-founded Optimizely and used Google Website Optimizer, Omniture Test&Target, and VWO but by no means an expert in their products.
I disagree. If you're hesitating on $49/month for a product like this, you're probably better served by using Excel or an ad-hoc solution.

Having 5x the customers at $9.95/month is not an advantage
As college student who grew up watching Zuck "get rich easy", I was easily taken in by the Hipster startup culture. Very unfortunately for me, I only found out about this fantastic site (Hacker News) about 5 months ago. By this time, the hipster ethos was rampant and I was swept up by it. My ego deeply resonated with their fancy promises and extravagant buzz words.

However, there is a thread of hope. An undercurrent of truth which I have recently started to uncover within the layers of crud. I just read Paul Graham's essay Beating the Averages last night and realized that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

Lately there has been a growing thread of dissatisfaction with Hacker News. It feels as though the original community has become diluted by an influx of folks like myself, eager to make their mark but too naïve to really do anything constructive (and too naïve to realize we’re naïve). But we are learning.

So, Hacker News, thanks for putting up with us noobs! I realize now that I won’t be the next Zuck, but if I keep listening and learning from HN, I just might make a dent in the universe.
However, you can tell download.com to stop injecting offers into the installer which we did and there are no issues.

How are your users supposed to know that?

Also, you are know asking your users to trust both you and CNET.
JVM + Invokedynamic versus CLR + DLR
I (OP) was talking about a trend, not a current problem.
You are their ideal customer, and I wouldn't doubt that that network of requirements was mapped out in advance. "If all goes well, these X companies will get signups from HBO Go customers."
If you just want to search wikipedia, why use Watson?
Because the IOC holds the games hostage. We can't just vote with our wallets for some other worldwiden sportfest.
... and puns.
Heads up - I'm from the Apptopia team- but yes they're asking $1 M & the app has made over $1.4 M total already(whereas apps like Instagram & SocialCam got acquired for much more with no revenue at all).. In terms of a buyer there's no guarantee, you're right about that, but big companies like Energizer would benefit so much from acquiring the app as a branding play that the $1M wouldn't mean much.
Ill bet he just opens every link in a new tab and uses tabs as readme-later list and navigation history. Both usecases are better served differently.

In general there is lots of overlap between tabs/tabgroups/bookmarks/history/readmelater/systemtaskbar/sessionrecovery.

Most people need all use cases but pick one or two features and emulate the rest themselves. Most tab related firefox plugins essentially duplicate functionality already present on top of the tab system.

For example: hierarchical tabs on the left with tab recovery is identical to having a bookmark list on the left.

It is my opinion that these concepts should all merge, preferbly at the desktop shell level. Ubuntu is movng is this direction, but they add this functionality on top of all the existing functionality. We can only hope that they will in the future consolidate all the overlap.
- You're up, but are mentally incapable of doing anything other than staring at the wall or browsing reddit

On my ideal schedule, which I don't hit all the time but have sustained for a while, I get up at 5:20 to exercise. When I first wake, I'm usually not capable of much mentally but I don't need to be to do something much more useful than staring at the wall or browsing reddit.
Yes. The exchange (middle three for US numbers) also has patterns. More on the allowed codes is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Numbering_Plan

although, in practice, many of the allowed codes are not occupied. For instance, no exchange around LA would be 213, and no exchange near SF would be 415.
1939 'Map of Physics'
It's the ISPs. Every time I move the tech resets my password to my home phone number.

I'm sure it cuts down their support, but it usually means brute forcing only need worry about the last four digits.
When someone tells us a vulnerability is unexploitable
I once had the opportunity to ask a fighter pilot what flying such an advanced jet in a tactical situation was like. He said, "Like doing calculus while lifting weights."

No wonder getting that sort of job is hard!
I worry about the future of web development when I see things that used to be shared openly (logging technology, databases, languages, search indexing tools, etc) one-by-one become startups with a price tag.

This has been the way of the computer industry for as long as there has been a computer industry. People attempt to commercialize and sell products. You don't really think that 2012 is the beginning of when people tried to sell a database server as a software product, do you?
Provide an S3 link if you are worried about bandwidth, where the name of your company is in the URL (ie, bucket name).
The Siege of Academe: Silicon Valley's fight to disrupt higher education
Cool stuff, my head hurts less than expected from the description, I can't speak for the accuracy of the explanation, but the clarity was just about where I needed it.

It might help that I've recently been re-reading "The Mathematics of Ciphers" by S.C. Coutinho[1] which has the best easy-on-ramp introduction to the number theory behind RSA that I've encountered.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Mathematics-Ciphers-Number-Cryptog...
How is this 3-day-old 3-point post on the (bottom of the) front page today?
How The Federal Reserve Accelerates The Robopocalypse And Unemployment
Generating nodejs server from Swagger specification
>"people will feel more comfortable telling you the truth if you start by criticizing yourself, showing them that it’s OK."

I disagree with this assertion. Some people criticize themselves in hopes that their listeners will contradict them. For these self-criticizers, affirming their critical statements greatly upset them. I have not found much correlation in my personal life between people who criticize themselves and their ability to listen to criticism. There are other attributes which I have found correlations, such as being easygoing and thoughtful. I still often try to gauge a person's willingness to listen to criticism by starting with very small criticisms and working my way up.
Congrats. Mailgun is a great product, hope the service continues!
No. I actually went through the process of installing it on a netbook about two weeks ago. First time seeing it that way. Jumped onto archwiki and gave it a quick read. I can't remember how long it took me, but couldn't have been that long.

And it certainly was not any "harder", just different than the way I'm used to. That being said, arch has some of the best documentation and user support out there.

EDIT1: a fresh install of arch usually takes me less than an hour, but it usually takes me a couple days (few hours a day) to get the system just how I like it. This is because I always change things up when I do a fresh install.

EDIT2: I think one of the things that scares people away isn't so much the text based installation, it's the fact that after the installation you pretty much have a bare system. Getting the configuration to your liking can be exhausting (especially if you've just been using a DE for your entire linux experience). When I made the switch to WMs instead of DEs it was pretty difficult to figure everything out. There are so many ways to do everything and you can mix and match everything. I hard to imagine setting up a system from nothing for a less experienced linux user, but it is definitely worth it. Just RTFM before asking questions in the forums.
I've seen a lot of this as well. And the term "dumb money" is right-- there are two causes of startup death in my experience. The first being fights between the founders paralyzing progress. The second being VCs forcing the company to ignore profitalble lines of business or customer traction and chase the VC's favorite fad of the day.

But, this is also a perversion of the meaning of the word "startup". A lot of the BS aquihires-in-waiting in the Bay Area are not startps either.

Somehow getting dumb money and being faux "scalable" has become what "a startup" is, with everything else (That is real busiensses, often scalable themselves) termed a "lifestyle business."

A one man SaaS business is scalable if the target market is large enough, and even if it is a nich, PG has advised people to conquer a niche and then move to adjacent markets.

So, if patio11 keeps his business at the size that he can run it by himself, that's fine, that's a choice, but I disagree with the idea that there's some magical "scalability" that those who live in the Bay Area and get funded by VCs have, compared to living in Japan and not taking investment.

When you have no engineering background and your primary skill is BS, then its really easy to morph your "business" into whatever investors want and get that dumb money.

But if you really want to build a business- then follow Running Lean, Steve Blank, and build that business.

Chasing investor money seems to be a waste of time-- Investors would rather fund these hipsters than Viaweb.
I've heard rumors that lots of stolen bikes are exported on container ships leaving the US. The argument is that the shipping is basically free, since most ships are carrying large deliveries to the US and are empty on the return trip.

Does anyone know if this is fact or fiction?
I'm still not sure how illegally copying content that you do not own is "changing the world".

Anyone with money can do what he is doing. I'm really not impressed.

Create your own content? Now you are changing the world.
Maybe as an engineer he should have just cut himself a rectangular piece of cardboard (size 7" / 10" - optional with rounded corners to not harm himself), draw a screen on it and take it into his hand(s).

He might have then realized that the size of the bevel, where to put buttons etc are define by nature (except if you have 4 hands or two thumbs on each) - that's what I would call a light bulb moment.

His explanations have the smell of someone who profits from the system and tries to justify it at-any-cost even if common sense or "engineering pride" clearly are telling differently.
80 stores serving 700,000+ people, in an area with poor mass transit, is not that much.

There's ~800k people in Macomb County, and there's > 170 grocery stores.
Congratulations to the mailgun team!
We just retired our old vax a couple of years ago :>
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American Houses Are Still Much, Much Bigger Than They Used To Be
The "risk" as described here seems to account for only single incidences of bicycle theft. Seems like the more professional the bike thief, the larger the inventory of stolen bikes, thus the greater the penalty for being caught. Given that the value of stolen bikes on the market is relatively low, this might explain why there is no bike thief kingpin: at a certain point the risk exceeds the reward.

As an aside: I am surprised that the risk to kidnappers is considered higher than the risk to bank robbers. Can anyone explain this?
How Much Did Famous Logos Cost to Design?
A Brief Tour of Factual’s Machine Learning Pipeline
Stable means "doesn't change", not "works fine". If you have a system running smoothly, Stable guarantees you won't get new surprises.
Technique for interface-driven development for APIs could save a lot of hassle--generate your API description, view it in swagger-ui, generate your client, and finally server stubs. The plumbing is done, the business logic is up to you.
Personally I'd say it would depend on the type of software a particular company is making. I think advancements in health tech have a ton of potential here with some of the research going on at the academic centers in the area (Wayne State, Karmanos, Henry Ford Health System, DMC, and outlying areas like UofM and MSU). Enterprise software while not as sexy would also probably be a good fit here as well. If an entrepreneur can make solid connections with the autos and outlying manufacturers and suppliers it can really give you some nice profit and list of clientele that is impressive. Other sorts of software startups may have a tougher time here due to the lack of coverage we get compared to other cities and Valley/SF. While we have DVP, Bizdom, and Compuware ventures it is also tougher to find funding then some areas. There are downsides to the city, but I've grown up in the area since I was born so my connection to it is fairly deep and I really want to see the city flourish as it once did.
But using all these tricks just throws away reason you've moved to Java. Following this further, you can write faster code in C when using only ASM insets.

The next thing - almost every example of C vs. Java speed comparisons was created by weak C programmers. The code was poor and not optimized.
While true, I think looking at the quote from the jurors paints a different picture for their criteria:

"Once you determine that Samsung violated the patents, it's easy to just go down those different [Samsung] products, because it was all the same. Like the trade dress -- once you determine Samsung violated the trade dress, the flat screen with the bezel...then you go down the products to see if it had a bezel."
This was fixed for extension-free firefox. Today this is fixed, for extensions as well.

What was happening was that extensions had references to dom-nodes of a page, that prevented the page from being unloaded when you close the tab. Unless of course, the extendion author bothered to fix this from their side. Now, an extension has essentially "weak references" to dom nodes. (think: symlink)