skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Faster than walking, biking, or driving.

Is it really faster than biking? How?
I imagine braking on this thing is not as good as on bike--harder to control stability, also smaller surface contact area. If you cannot stop fast, you cannot afford to go fast...

On a bike I can usually blend into city traffic, draft large vehicles, weave through traffic jams, or hop on to sidewalk. Doing the same with longboard would require serious skill (and be probably less safe), I think.
>Americans remain inexplicably certain that cycling is not for them.

You seem to take this product as a personal attack on cyclists. The more unconventional vehicles on the road, the better for everyone.

Longboarders have been commuting at high speed in traffic for decades, this is no different.
It depends on exactly how much you end up having to optimize for each platform, and how much reuse you get between platforms.

If your app is a simple broacherware+notifications app, then HTML5 is probably the way to go.

If you can afford expert developers for every platform and mobile is critical to your success then 100% native makes sense.

There just isn't a simple answer here. To quote nostrademons:

I'm still not sure which technology is, on the whole, better for mobile apps. But one of the signs that you actually understand a problem domain is that you can give advice more specific than just "Competing technology X is better than competing technology Y"
Linux & pycharm work perfectly for me.

Pycharm support for python/django is just the best.

For stuff like git I still prefer the command line and vim for editing isolated files either locally or via ssh.

For the microsoft word stuff I use google drive, if I really need something on the windows side (seriously it happens to me once every 3 months for updating my tomtom) I start a virtualbox with a minimal windows XP in it. The virtualbox desktop integration mode is excellent.
Wrong. 30% grade != 30 deg incline.
NOn sense idea. Only lazy people would use this service. Yelp is superset of all these bogus projects. Think differently.
I haven't heard of any deaths or seen cops hassle anyone

It's a matter of probabilities. The probability may be pretty high for lethal accidents, but the number of people currently riding them is pretty low. Additionally, those that do ride them are probably pretty skilled, since there isn't (currently) a mass market way to get one of these boards. And since the people riding them generally aren't a problem, cops have no incentive to really enforce existing law.

Now fast forward a bit when this board comes out. Now we have the potential for many times more people on electric boards, which are likely very over-powered. The already higher probability of accidents, multiplied by an increased user base means that there is more potential for a lethal event. And as soon as this thing gets popular, existing laws will be enforced.

I'm all for options in urban commuting, but I see lots of problems for this one. Who knows, maybe they figured out a way to make it controllable enough to make it safe. If that's the case, then they might have a shot at getting it approved under a new law. But that will take time to determine.
There are now 500 million Android devices activated by Google
The Real Cost of Google Fiber
What I find most interesting here is how so much in depth analysis is coming out of one, simple statement with a very obvious meaning. You know how people used to try to analyze the life out of Beatles songs looking for all kinds of hidden meaning, until one day Paul McCartney straight up said, "There is no meaning other than what's on the surface level."? I'm getting that same vibe here.

Mark said they bet too heavily on HTML 5. Did that mean the people who wrote the HTML 5 standards failed them? Or that Google and Apple failed them for writing code that couldn't sufficiently run HTML 5 apps? Or that they overestimated their engineers' abilities to write good HTML 5 apps? Or that they thought HTML 5 was going to be something that it isn't?

Honestly, I don't think he meant any of those things. There is no hidden meaning here: They used HTML 5. It didn't work they way they'd hoped. Now they're using something else. That's it. End of story.

Props to the guy for finding something that wasn't good and fixing it. That's what a CEO is for.
It's a bit ironic that the last comic ends up with the electric longboard in an accident.
> No matter how many times I'm downvoted, it's still not unencumbered.

Who said you were wrong? Quite the opposite, I strongly agreed with you - anything can be encumbered, and anything includes this.

But the point is that Opus is as safe as you can possibly be from being patent encumbered. Everything is potentially encumbered, but there are things with higher or lower likelihoods. And there isn't any lower than Opus. If this is still too worrying for you to use, then you can't use any software at all.
yea. it is similar. one immediately visible difference is that we don't provide vans to mechanics. also, we have a full pricing engine online (unlike lube mobile) which allows us to ensure that people are getting fair prices. Its totally transparent. You can see mechanics reviews, fair labor time, parts info etc - all without calling us!
Standards people today are, almost across the board, completely detached from product people.

From the developer perspective, who wants to sit on mailing lists or participate in forums and argue about wording and syntax verbiage?

From the 'standard people' perspective, writing the code is 'the easy part', and getting all these competing interests (ie: other standards people) to agree on something is the 'hard part'.

They're both right...
One more counterpoint to the "no brakes" argument:

Power and braking, even on hills

We can electronically limit the top speed without sacrificing the
power you need to tackle hills. Steep San Francisco hills become
easy to climb. And on top of that, we've added regenerative
braking, accomplished using the motors. That means it's easy to
learn, easy to maneuver, and easy to control your speed, all while
recharging the battery.
...
How it works

You start with a handheld remote with throttle and braking control
and a battery gauge readout
we have run into a couple of those situations. There is not a whole lot we can do at this point. :(
Thanks for being an awesome customer! :)
It actually includes code from Celt and merged with code from Silk (the Skype codec).

Silk is very good at speech and Celt is very good at music. It is like having gears in your car. You need low gears for one mode of operation and high gears for another. So they combined the two into one and made a single codec.

I imagine behind the scenes it has a transition mode from one codec to another depending on the configuration parameters.
I'm actually working on this right now.

Having been down this path before, I predict you will find that the "last 10%" of those small, annoying things that don't quite work like native mobile apps in HTML5 will take the same amount of time to fix as developing the rest of the app.

If you don't think this is the case then either you aren't far enough along to hit the problems or your app doesn't make heavy use of hardware (which - given that it is also a desktop app - it sounds like it probably doesn't). In the second case then using HTML5 makes good sense.
What's a Code-at-Night?
Triggit - San Francisco

Jr. Developer working on RTB

What you’ll get to do all day:
Work with the engineering team to make sure that the Ruby on Rails application, the Ad server, and all internal systems are running appropriately
Work with internal users and external users to develop new features
Ensure proper monitoring and metrics are being built into the applications
Fix issues and bugs
Perform biz development research
Work on partner documentation
Respond to and handle after hour issues and be on call

Requirements:
Strong communication skills and an ability to work with various user groups
Able to quickly understand business logic and be able to translate into expected technical behavior
0-3 years of experience preferably including Rails experience, Hive experience, preferably dealing with data at scale
An understanding of RDBMS, SQL, and database normalization
Desire to work in a BDD environment
Unix fundamentals and thorough understanding of HTTP and all its intricacies
A detail-oriented approach to development and an interest in developing new skills

Apply at: http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?bj=oAuKWfwu&s=Linkedin
"If a company was founded elsewhere and was that far along, why would the team move it to Canada? "

Good question. But I'd also ask why, as an American, would you love to found a startup in Canada? What advantage over starting it in the US?
E-books are already getting cheaper, thanks to Department of Justice
From an Australian perspective the E3 visa is probably still more attractive for getting a track record first.

They're not directly comparable, but still.
Ok, I have a 5.6 mile commute each way, with 300 feet ascent worst case (just under 100 ft descent). Charging at work is no problem. Is this going to be a good fit?
A collection of iPhone apps screwed over by Apple's App Store review process
He's out of the loop—also a member of the "job noise" he speaks of. This is a case of being on the inside looking in.

From the outside looking in, I don't want to go anywhere near it.

Most of the jobs I've had (and all the recent ones) have been through friends and connections, completely bypassing the system and the job noise. If I need a job, I talk to people—any people, and lots of them. My last job I found while at a party with random friends-of-friends I mostly didn't even know, and before that was through a coworker at a consulting gig. Prior to that I started a company after having a great discussion at a bar.

I haven't updated my resume in 8 years—it's pointless, I've never found a good job using it anyway. In my opinion, if they're looking at your resume, you've already lost. You have already become a number in a pile. If they're looking at you personally and evaluating your fit for the company, then you start way ahead of the game.

This is how job searching today has to go; if you're going to recruiters or job boards, you're already in a death spiral. Escape it by networking and reaching out to your true human connections. Treat your resume as obsolete, and let your true work and your recommendations stand in its place. It will be much more effective, I promise.
BGP? So it was a bad route injected? They should have had someone there looking for that, that certainly wouldn't take them down for 5 hours.
Those battery housings are pretty small. That, and the 2KW motor, make me worry about range. (They say 6mi, but it's trivially easy to lie about range) The kickstarter page doesn't mention capacity, so let's do some wild ass guessing.

It’s boards are just 12-15 pounds, only twice as heavy as the
lightweight, top-of-the-line 7 pound Loaded boards they build their
electric motors into.

12-7=5lbs of equipment. Assume the motors, drivetrain, and casings take up 3lbs, that's 2lbs for batteries. Assume 200Wh/kg Li-on batteries, which work out to 90.6Wh/lbs, for a total system capacity of 181.2 watt-hours.

The watt-hour is a simple unit. A 1 watt-hour battery can run 1 watt of load for 1 hour, or a 6 watt load for 10 minutes, or a .5 watt load for 2 hours.

A 181.2 watt-hour battery will be discharged after running:

A 2000 watt load for 5.436 minutes.
A 1000 watt load for 10.872 minutes.
A 500 watt load for 21.744 minutes.
A 250 watt load for 43.488 minutes.
A 100 watt load for 108.72 minutes.

The worst case scenario is even worse than you'd think, since electrochemical batteries don't have a flat discharge curve: the harder you discharge them, the less capacity you have.

Boosted advertises their 2000 watt motors in bold print, but if you actually ran them that hard for any length of time, you'd discharge the battery.
It looks like the board uses some kind of modified orangatang wheels, and possibly other custom parts. Long board parts need to be replaced occasionally due to natural wear-and-tear. Will the replacement parts be sold through Boosted? How much do you expect these parts to cost?
Just checked his twitter feed, looks like he's attempting to claim source from an old open source project as part of the claimed hack...credibility gone.
As a Canadian now living in Silicon Valley I think this is a perilous idea.

The main problem is that Canada doesn't have near enough active VC investors.

Hardly anywhere does, even Silicon Valley.

Having them be the sole gatekeepers will fall far short of what's possible.
I think - this is an excellent start. Continue working and get to a stage something can be tested end -end. I created a profile and was not able edit my profile. Listing jobs? not sure I understand the context. Your idea sounded great but the site did not reflect the idea. That is my feedback. Keep going. You seem to have decent aesthetic sense.
I wish standards people spent all of their time on mailing lists, things would happen faster. These are the people who write code for browsers, for the most part. We also need people who are working on websites to be in there and it seems like web devs are underrepresented.
He'd only have to write a web framework to ruin his reputation!
I'm not allergic to job opportunities. In fact, I'm always interested in knowing abou them. But, don't expect me to wait by my inbox. I just pushed out 3 MVPs last month, and I'm on my way to push 3 more this month. I have code to ship. If you want me to ship your code then be aware of some things. First, I understand where you are coming from. I do. But don't expect me to give into your proposal just because you have some investor interested in your "app." Two, if you offer me equity, then you are out right telling me that my time is worth more than your whole business. That is not a good deal for either side. You wouldnt be giving away equity if you had money in the bank. Three, don't lowball be. It's a waste of time for us both, because I will decline, and you will waste a lot of time finding someone who ships.
This comment is proof that no matter how awesome the product in an article posted to HN, somebody will always find a way to declare that it will certainly fail.

Your comment contains so many factual inaccuracies that it's not even worth debating. I hope that comments like this will start to be deleted in the future because they are the reason many people, including myself, refrain from participating here more.
I'm mostly dismissing you because of the annoying title and subtitle of your blog.
Amazon's Play
Last I looked a few months ago, the minimum investment was $750K CAD. Now it is $800K, with a $1.6MM CAD net worth. Citzenship and Immigration Canada "will return your C$800,000 investment, without interest, about five years and two months after payment." [1] I think it is important to note that their foreign-invested business programs have become backlogged in processing, and have been holding onto the life savings of many Chinese citizens since 2007. [2]

The article hints that small teams will be accepted, but also says "Canada seeks ... immigrants who will contribute to Canada’s job growth", so the number of Canadian employees will be the deciding factor along with the amount generated for the economy.

From my experience with US friends who have Canadian work visas, Canada is strict and will not allow foreigners to remain long without an employee sponsor. It's also difficult to acquire citizenship without several years of residence. I would guess that hiring foreigners will be accepted as long as the investment amount is high, but the likelihood that they will become permanent residents is very low.

[1] http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/investors/in...

[2] http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/12/chinese-citizens-dem...
Interesting that there is a link back to the HN thread from the post - I've seen it happen a lot on personal blogs, but this is the first time I've seen it done by a company.
I assume you build your own refrigerator, just in case GE did include some wiretapping device in theirs?

A programmer has much more possibilities to include malicious code than a refrigerator engineer, simply because a program can have an almost arbitrary complexity while a fridge can not. Furthermore we see in programs today a spectra of shady behavior which ranges from user did not notice the obvious ( Facebook assumes private data is public) to outright fraud ( banking trojans). So the due diligence for users can not be too completely reverse engineer any program they use, but that programmers have a responsibility too create reasonably surprise free software.
There are some very down-to-earth companies doing real good work out there, things you can believe in with people that won't suck your soul away. Don't give up hope.

Best of luck to you.
It means to the best of authors' knowledge.
Barack Obama Still Uses a BlackBerry
It is unencumbered, unless someone proves that it is encumbered.
Thanks for the feedback I made where you can edit your profile and choose a profile pic on the 2nd row, first 2 columns. But thanks will keep continue on it
>Is Java clean and beautiful? Sure, it's easy to read and just about anyone who has read any other language can figure out what's going on.

Easy to read? What? Let me do a simple comparison. Let's say there's a site, ycombinator.com, that wants to ban anyone who posts "First post!" on a story. Here is what the python code would look like:

if "first post!" in comment.text.lower():
comment.user.ban()

Here's what the Java code would look like:

public static void class PostPunisher extends PostHandler raises Exception {
public void PostPostHook(Comment comment) {
if (comment.text.to_string().to_lowercase().contains_substring("first post!")) {
comment.User.Banner.execute();
}
}
}

Well, I left off a few factory factories there, but you get the picture.
Mashups using CORS and responseType='document'
Agreed. I wholeheartedly agree with their fundamental idea, but going the VC route doesn't seem like a good way to do it. By the time you've built up all the connections and steam you need to develop a budding company that a VC would be interested in investing in, your roots are going to be too strong wherever you currently are to be able to move to Canada. I'll be surprised if they get anything more than a handful of companies to relocate.

Also, any time you involve money people, you set the stage for things to get crooked and shady. I can already hear the narrator from some "Inside Job" type documentary on corruption in Canada.

"However, the Canadians didn't account for one major loophole. In 2012, they passed a law allowing startups with venture capital to emigrate into the country, but what they didn't consider was: ___________"
API Engine - A new take on making API design a part of your work flow
That's the whole point. They have no proof to show, because really those codecs are not violating any patents. But they want to create fear to ban competition.
If it's easier to apply to YC than to Harvard, acceptance rates don't necessarily mean much.

(I suspect it's true that YC is harder to get into than Harvard, but I don't know how to measure that difficulty. Perhaps start by asking what % of people who get into YC would get into Harvard, and vice versa?)
Ask HN: Where to get cyber law advice in Australia
I need a lawyer! Specifically, a cyberspace lawyer that can tell me if I am breaching any copyright, or any other law with my website. Can anyone recommend a firm for an Australian?
Finding trends for example
Woohoo! I am an investor in this one - I love the idea.
CyanogenMod moving to monthly builds
U.S. spies press for renewal of broad electronic surveillance law
Whoops: self-hosted tool for logging application events
Define "best". The best tools aren't necessarily the ones that give you maximum control or best performance. If that we're true we wouldn't have so many Ruby on Rails or Django web apps.
Really? You actually register for a Canadian account?
Perhaps it also has a weight switch - no weight detected on the board for a second or two and it powers down?
This could be a used as a bargaining chip in order to get cheaper content. So Verizon, for example, might say if you don't let us broadcast this new show in our FIOS network then we'll refuse to adhere to the 6-strike rule.
kdb+ maybe.
http://kx.com/kdb+.php
As a recent Waterloo grad, 95% of my friends have moved to US (California, Seattle, NY); the problem isn't trying to attract more talent, rather building infrastructure to retain it. Honestly, I love living in Canada, but there are fewer high paying jobs and its much more difficult to get funding for startups.
A collection of iPhone apps screwed over by Apple
Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World
For this crowd it may be an odd way of going about identifying entrepreneurs to give visas to. However, this is the (Canadian) government, and like most governments they typically wouldn't have the in-house expertise to identify this talent themselves. So they need to rely on high-status signals; the next best thing they can see are early-stage VC firms who are active in the space.

(1) Given the abysmal failure of the previous 'entrepreneur' visa category, I believe that they would probably go with at least a 12mo runway, although the VC firms and startup team would probably have to justify (via paper projection - ha!) a reasonable 2yr runway.

(2) The example in the article provided was the case of Summify, which was acquired by Twitter[1]. That seems to be the spark (among others) to bring more attention to the issue of a lack of strong Canadian anchor companies[2]. Again, using the previous 'entrepreneur' visa category which supposedly was being used as a loophole, the government is trying to respond by focusing on previous examples and a growing chorus of media and startup community attention around keeping and growing Canadian startup talent.

(3) Assuming that an "entire" startup team might consist of 2-5 people (I wish I had a statistic to back this up somehow other than anecdotal reading), that's not a far stretch. If the founder(s) want to hire foreign workers, then that may be more difficult because Canada would sure want to encourage them to try attracting and keeping Canadian technical talent first.

[1]http://startupvisa.ca/summify-inspiration-by-startup-visa-ca...

[2]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ca...
You forgot "... and a front yard." I was surprised when I moved from Los Angeles where working on a car in front of the house was not unusual, to Sunnyvale where there was as specific rule that said you could not work on your car on your front yard. Your driveway was ok, but not on the street (except for temporary repairs) but not on your lawn.

The claim was that it prevented toxic chemicals from entering the water table. Most folks seemed to thing it was to avoid the 'blight' of people leaving cars up on blocks in front of their house. Oh, and in case you're wondering there is also a rule that your lawn can't be more than 50% concrete :-)
Fresu.me - The free resume portal
> I expect Firefox and Chrome to adopt this within months,

Firefox already adopted it (it's in nightly builds). Chrome seems to have WontFixed it,

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=104241
Creating a functional and performant HTML5 app shouldn't have been hard at their scale either. So either it's actually impossible to do better than what they put out (which I find hard to believe -- is it really that much more complex than the HTML5-based LinkedIn app?) or there's some other reason.
The government is grasping for straws. It seems they were pretty desperate to close the previous e-visa loophole that was being clearly exploited and come up with a new idea.

Given it's only 2750 visas/yr, I like to think this is the Canadian government's version of an MVP that VCs and Canadian startup communities have lobbied hard for.

Maybe they'll find ways to expand or relax the qualifying restrictions in the future.