skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Quora is great for geeks, but I've always found it off-putting that you have to sign in with facebook to see all the content. I understand why they do it, but I just don't much like it. One more point of friction maybe? I'm not sure.

Also, a lot of the best discussion on Quora is too "inside baseball" in the tech world. It has amazing discussions on frameworks, scaling, interesting company history on Facebook, Google, etc. but I just can't see people outside of tech using Quora. Why would my non-techie wife use Quora? Why would people who already latched on to Stack Exchange sites, Yahoo Answers, and so on use Quora?
Valid, but see:

"... I said something to a partner at a well known VC firm that gave him the (mistaken) impression I was considering starting another startup. He responded so eagerly that for about half a second I found myself considering doing it."

Those startups get founded, not yours, not mine. We do not have that kind of access. I never talked to a VC partner in my life and I couldn't if I wanted. They are just these mythical creatures you always hear about but never get to see. Maybe accelerators are a way of doing it right, but they do not mean a whole lot, those startups are special cases.
Apple stopped the Kindle app from linking to the amazon bookstore. That's as close to war as you can get.
Lnkedin's fancy HTML5 mobile website sits and fails at the spinner on the splash page when I view on Android. That is one of the main reasons I gave up on LinkedIn. Hat and its devolvement into a sourcer spam haven
I am a web dev and I joined the WHATWG mailing list because I want to be a part of these discussions.
I see a lot of jobs requiring 3-5 years of experience in an odd combination of technologies that I seriously doubt many, even experienced coders have. I imagine a lot of companies could attract more applicants or find talent easier by allowing a developer time to ramp up with a new technology or language.
Look at the graph in the article. Opus is as good as or slightly better than all the existing codecs at their strong points, and much better than them at their weak points.
Remember how Microsoft makes >75% of the money and "wins" in the web server market with IIS? Or the majority of profits in the server OS market with Windows Server? Didn't think so, because there's no blog roll pushing that on the blogosphere and then given traction on HN.

Asymco does pretty partisan analysis which has previously been debunked earlier. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471026

Wasn't he and Gruber making a lot of predictions and analysis that Android would never overtake the iPhone in sales? When that did happen,iPhone on Verizon was surely going to kill Android's ascendancy. When that failed to stop Android, they moved to the next metric that favors Apple, profit share.

It's like, before he writes some articles, he thinks.. okay here are some new numbers, how do I make Apple look good and Android/others look bad with these numbers? The only problem is that some people on HN give the Apple fan blogs too much traction on HN. Hell, Paul Thurrott's http://winsupersite.com is even hellbanned on HN from being submitted for the crime of being a Microsoft watcher site for which the punishment here is flagging to death.
I am getting interested in Go, and this is a very silly complaint, but I think the name of the language is very bad for easier google searches. I don't know about most others, but google can sometimes be my first point of contact to lookup a function or class in a launguage.

For example: try searching for "ruby map" vs "go map". Google just doesn't parse the keyword 'go' too well. "go lang map" works far better but who wants to refer to a language as "go lang"

This DOES have an effect on adoption and the feeling the documentation is bad as the author comments on.

/rant
Bloc(http://www.bloc.io/) does exactly that. "This is perfect for someone who wants to enroll in something like Dev Bootcamp but can't because they don't live in San Francisco."

I'm part of their fall cohort that's about to start and so far it's been great.
No snark intended. I mean only to recognize BSD in the discussion as having made another choice. And yes, Linux custom-built software goes into /usr/local without a hitch.

But really, the question comes down to layers of abstraction. Is /bin the base system? Is /usr/bin? Is /usr/local/bin? Probably not on the last one, but Linux distros have chosen /usr/bin as where all packages install. And BSD treats packages as user programs and goes to /usr/local/bin.

I'm not saying one is right. At best, I'm advocating use of "#!/usr/bin/env foo" instead of some of the assumptions made by some shell scripters.
It appears like he is going after the message that YC is for pretentious founders, and 500 is for practical founders.
I thought it was a merchant account with NAB? (According to the application forms I have received.)

AFAIK only NAB has multi-currency acquiring solution at the moment.

It seems that Braintree's pricing isn't attractive at all, so I'll probably still go for eWay.
Show HN: Mapping the .onion network for fun
Intelligence agencies are adept at transmitting information in plain sight. I already mentioned numbers stations [1] in another comment, but they're a perfect example of how intelligence data is broadcast through a easily intercept-able channel but totally unusable to anyone except the recipient due to the use of a one-time pad. The only way you can stop them is to jam them, which is easier said than done.

Intelligence agencies use the simplest systems of transmitting data because they're proven to work. Dead drops are another great example of what on the surface seems horrifically insecure (you want me to leave my intelligence in a public place for anyone to find?) but that in practice work extremely well.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
That is silly. No one leaves their phone number to go find a laptop to read Facebook.
Could not agree more. For young coders, offering time to learn a particular technology or a telecommuting opportunity would sell me.

My impression is most small companies are hiring because they are disappointed with the output by their technical teams thus far. Therefore they think they need a "rock star" replacement.
The (deleted) comment that I was responding to referenced the new England patriots as an investment strategy.

Do you actually think the patriots and nfl draft picks have more to offer a discussion of venture strategies than the concepts of equity investing and portfolio management which are common to many institutional investors?

As another commenter pointed out, 1000x variations in returns actually happen in venture investments, they don't happen in sports.
What if 500 Startups has the "misfortune" of landing a black swan? With the firm's then increased valuation, how do they grow that with base hits?

I read PGs essay to mean that black swans are like an addiction: once you have one, you need another to get any kind of growth.
Or better yet, a VOIP provider that pays you for incoming calls.
Ask HN: You're in an empty room. How do you generate a random number?
The only thing you're wearing is 1 undergarment. The room has no windows, doors or any objects inside it.

How do you generate the "most random" number you can using only what you can in your means.
Pay, Equity and Startups
golang is the standard way to find things, Google understands how to search for programming related stuff too.
My main problem is being unable to access Amazon's content outside of North America and I'm not prepared to jump through hoops just to get them. In this regard Apple is way ahead of the curve here.
How Apple really invented the iPhone
Wow as soon as I saw this the Lube Mobile ad and phone number (13 13 32) popped into my head immediately (I'm in Australia). Who said TV advertising is dead?!
I want to believe this isn't a clever marketing scheme for a movie, or shiny gadget, or game.
What skeuomorphism is (and isn't)
New Breed of Robotics Aims to Help People Walk Again
Except they have those same posts on the desktop version in addition to farmville and normal ads. That's even ignoring the fact that mobile ads are worth way less than desktop ones since people aren't really as engaged on mobile, and aren't likely to type in their credit card while they are on a bus.
Productivity, Uncertainty and Apathy
Whether or not it was his intention, Dave McClure successfully framed 500 in the discussion of the premier accelerator program - YC. And he also sent a battle cry to his portfolio, pitting them as the underdogs. I'd say this post was pretty well done regardless of whether you agree with his points.
Surprisingly, the rejections seem to have demotivated a lot of these from bothering to port them to Android or even put them in Cydia. The world of Cydia is still mysterious to a lot of developers and people we talk to are confused about how to even package applications properly for Cydia.
The difference is with Amazon you're the customer, and the device and content are the products. With android, _you_ are the product and the advertisers are the customers. This distinction means that Apple/Amazon's interests are more aligned with consumers than Google's.
Interestingly enough, Quora's beginning userbase may doom it to forever niche status. The people, while intelligent, seem a little edgy and too sure of their opinions. From what I've observed, this attitude is very off-putting to non-techie, normal people who just want to have a conversation and learn something.

I have a new vision for a website, targeting those dissatisfied with Quora. You can see it here. http://pozium.com/vision.html
Amazon is coming to Australia to hire
Actually ISPs won't be scanning for this. Even if they wanted to (which they don't), they don't have the databases of content to match traffic against. They wait for content owners to complain about a specific IP address, and the ISP delivers the complaint to the person behind that address. The identity of the user is pretty much never revealed to the content owner unless they get a court order.
> Linux is light years away from having anything resembling Active Directory in quality.

I'm assuming you've setup OpenLDAP and one of open Kerberos implementations (e.g. MIT) and have found them lacking in some way compared with AD. If so, could you expand on where they were lacking in quality? I have used both and find open alternatives much easier to extend, and not any harder to setup.

Here's an interesting read that argues the opposite of your point: ftp://ftp.uni-duisburg.de/LDAP/Adam-Eval1-0.pdf
Ha, I had the same thought - which makes me think that this is almost definitely a big prank that someone set up. Evidence:

- It was first posted on /b/

- Words like "TROOP" and "AGENT" are encoded in ASCII, and accessible by (nearly) any "passcode" that the user types in

and the dead giveaway in my mind:

- The "please stay on the line for the next available circuit" message played by the number was found to have been originally recorded by Time Warner Cable... No serious entity with any use for a numbers station would bother to steal a recorded message from a cable company.

So it's not real (duh :(). Part of me hopes it's an ARG, but in my heart of hearts, I know someone is just trolling /b/, albeit extremely masterfully.
I think pg's whole point (and Taleb's) of a black swan is that they are not identifiable. Over the long term and after many investments, pg is pointing out that its the presence of these black swans that made YC successful (dropbox, airbnb), and extending that to other VCs, its random luck that will make or break them. You can't avoid investing in black swans, because you don't know which ones they are/will be.
Startups that get funded are startups that have a high potential to make money, period. Be building the next Facebook, and nobody cares how old you are, or where you're from.

Connections are nice, but at the end of the day VCs don't invest money to lose it. This visa isn't for early stage entrepreneurs who are shooting in the dark. VC funding usually happens at a stage where risk is much more marginalized.
I think a part of the reason is that those people want those posts to be associated with their meatspace identity.
what is the name of the language golang or go? erlang or er? Seems like a minor confusion but can be frustrating for the uninitiated.
I somewhat misspoke. I lost interest after when I read enough to deem the article too artificial an example and lost interest. I wanted to give honest feedback and see if other people perhaps thought the example was I contrived as I did - not berate the article or the author. If I was writing myself, I would want the same sort of feedback. Do you think I'm being unfair by giving that sort of criticism?

To me not finishing something is a measure of persistent captivation. It's not the first time I fell below my minimum. After I wrote the the comment, I figured people would harass me about not finishing and that perhaps I was being unfair to the author if I missed something redeeming at the end. I finished it, wished to change the comment appropriately, but it had already been downvoted. I should have known that it's very easy to look antagonistic when you're not saying something positive but I did say explicitly what I objected to. I really was just hoping to help by nature of sharing my opinion and was totally open - hopeful even - that someone would change my mind rather than just being looked upon as some asshole who just wanted to be holistically critical.
In the US, it's hovered right around 50% for a while, though it's climbed up between 55-60% for the past couple elections. More people don't vote than vote for any candidate. I would agree less than 30% isn't default, but 45% isn't less than 30.

And non presidential election turnout is abysmal.
> The next blog post I'm planning is related to cache management.

I think you mean cache invalidation. ;)
How to Recover Deleted, Formatted Videos from Camcorder
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Pivoted - Social news only about new web projects
"I've been at it for what, seven now? eight?"

Do you have a "business guy" helping you? Have you ever? If not, why not? (Never met one, didn't know you needed one, etc?)
Firstly, you don't need Facebook to login. I signed up with an email account and I've always been using that to login.

I was also attracted to Quora due to the more "techy" questions and answers that they have[1] but I've noticed for the past year or so, there are quite a lot of interesting non-techy questions and answers that people like your non-techy wife will enjoy.

In example:

1. What are some news stories that the American mainstream media completely misconstrued and/or presented out of context that ended up helping change American laws or culture?
http://www.quora.com/digest/track_click?source=1&tid&...

2. Why is there this belief that the USA is a conservative country?
http://www.quora.com/digest/track_click?source=1&tid&...

3. What are some things that airline pilots won't tell you?
http://www.quora.com/digest/track_click?source=3&tid&...

4. What is the most beautiful number, and why?
http://www.quora.com/digest/track_click?source=3&tid&...

I can give you more but they do have a lot of interesting questions (and answers) about politics, life, science, etc.

[1]disclaimer: I've been a Quora user for nearly 3 years.
This is all very interesting, but I do think the concentration on HTML5 is something of a foil. Strategically, I was under the impression that Facebook was positioning itself to be a third independant force, alongside Apple and Google. Considering the state of play when facebook started up in 2006, when users flooded into the browser venue, and where the iPhone hadn't yet been released, and where the idea of socially contextualless search and data could be leveraged and superseded by the Facebook social graph, I consider the decisions made with facebooks mobile strategy to be explicable.

There was, after all, a lot of rumour that Facebook would release their own phone. This made sense if your objective is to provide an alternative to mobile OS's, and even more, to overtake your competitors. The belief including the possibility of evolutionary superiority.

Things change. Google supplies Chrome through the app store despite the restrictions imposed by Apple, and this has not weakened the power of Google at the expense of Apple. There are many examples of stepwise cooperation. It has not diminished their independance. And Facebook likewise should probably not have been so concerned that acquiescing to the other majors on mobile would pidgeon hole them as a very very big Instagram style dependant.

Facebook has lost time by being over guarded in my view. On the other hand, this admission by facebook demonstrates a recognition of a kind of failure. I suspect the notion that Facebook will grow to be an organisation that is an evolutionary step beyond Google is now viewed as the real strategic error by them.

As to HTML5 being a mistake, I could be wrong, but I don't really think that that's what he actually means. He's trying to explain himself without admitting some things.
Livestand by yahoo! on iPad, but y! killed it. i hope they bring it back. it was really awesome app.
Why I won't become a Dropbox customer
Linkedin's android app is 85% native and only 15% HTML5 :(
I don't think the sports analogy serves their argument (and I'm not sure I really see what they do all that differently than YC). I don't know Michelle Kwan's story, but of the other three they mention: Ichiro got a nice 17M/year contract. Nash has a couple of MVPs and was the 15th overall pick in the draft. Iverson was a number one draft pick and led the NBA in scoring several times. Ichiro came from Japan instead of the traditional draft/Latin America -> minor leagues route, but considering the Mariners paid $13M just for the rights to negotiate with him, he wasn't exactly an ugly duckling by the time he came over.

Really, all those guys are more like a phenomenally successful startup than not. There are countless prospects in sports—this is most obvious in baseball with the huge minor league pro leagues, in basketball the NCAA serves a similar role—and only a very, very few of those players turn out to be stars. And frequently scouting for them in advance (like at the HS level) is a crapshoot. If you were an up-and-coming agent and happened to land a Nash, Ichiro, or Iverson, he'd likely be worth more to you than all your other clients combined.
If you need an OTP to decode it, it's encrypted.
Here is the "official video."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXK29c20Ns
Airbnb, who Dave uses as an example of a billionaire startup club member, is the definition of an underdog making the big time through pure hustle -- I seem to recall a story about selling cereal boxes to make ends meet before funding started to pour in post incubation
Actually the move to mobile is hurting Google. People tend not to click on ads while searching from mobile devices as much as they do on desktops. And since people are moving to mobile, Google's ad revenue growth is getting affected.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/mobile-paradox/

http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/12/mobile-facebook-and-google-...
Awesomefolio: A simple dropbox based photography portfolio
we, http://continuum.io/, are working on this.
place finger nail marks down the wall at your own random intervals, step back from the wall and spit a massive bunch of saliva onto the wall. Spin around in a circle until you are dizzy and bang your head against the wall. While dazzed count the number of nail marks the the saliva has dribbled down past and dont recount if you think you might have it wrong. That is your random number.
Dumping everything into /usr/local doesn't even work well when you're the only user on the system: most packages don't define an "uninstall" make target, and installing multiple versions of things is often not well-defined.

See e.g. checkinstall, GNU stow, encap, and probably several more that I'm missing for examples of people trying to fix the crappiness of ad-hoc (non-distribution-based) package management.
Completely understand where you are coming from, knowledge is power after all!

I just don't understand how your going to get that knowledge if you avoid large areas of importance in every language you come across. Avoiding prototypes and closures in JavaScript means that there is a HUGE area of functional object orientated programming that you have no idea about, which means there is a number of languages you are never truly going to get your head around, including JavaScript, not a good position for a widely skilled hacker to be in, and creeping errors like this can really mess with your future prospects.

In my case this huge area of functional object orientated programming ended up becoming my career, after many years of being a jack of all trades master of none php and python developer.

I don't agree with a lot of the mainstream opinions around OOP myself, and I feel that functional programming has lots of merit in its own right, so maybe you should consider looking more into functional programming if you don't like the typical OOP MVC approach. If nothing else it will open up your mind to the many different ways that OOP can be implemented and might remove some of the fear or hate around OOP. :-)

I guess what I am saying is that, in many ways programming IS OOP, if only because of the sheer number of modern languages out there that have OOP design concepts within, by actively avoiding OOP you are actively avoiding learning some really important stuff that will help you learn many other key languages and programming concepts in the future.

Don't make the mistakes of letting your opinions around any given language, influence your opinions on any other language.

Next time you come across something OOP related please consider what I have said and don't fall into the same trap that so many other programmers fall into. You will be doing you and your future self a great favour!
This post would have made a lot more sense if I had the slightest idea who any of the sports players or teams were.
`man bash` , search for "<<" see the "Here Strings" section.

You can also search
https://www.google.com/search?q=bash
and follow links to "Documentation"

xargs echo <<EOL
> line 1
> line 2
> EOL
line 1 line 2

$ cat <<EOL
> line 1
> line 2
> EOL
line 1
line 2

line-terminators get eaten by xargs
also there is very little information given and that information isn't in a format that would be useful to its intended recipient. great, "AGENT" is at (x,y) and "AGENT" is at (a,b) and "AGENT" is at (c,d). but I want to talk to "AGENT SANDRA". !?!?!?! argh.
This would be really cool if it was rechargeable by use rather than merely plugging it in.
It's way too early to be suing with merely YouTube, no network effects. Google can easily switch away.
Good luck with this, idiots. I've cracked two WPA2 networks in my area and two WEP networks. Cancel their service; see if I care.
The Real Heroes Are Dead: On Lt. Rescorla, Whose Perspicacity Saved Thousands
You shouldn't declare yourself to be the underdog, it shows a lack of confidence. Other people will do that for you. Everyone loves a David vs Goliath story, but this seems like an unnecessary concession.

And you can't say "screw black swans", it doesn't work that way. The whole point of "black swan" is a completely unpredictable event. Even if 500 Startups accepted only d-list players, they wouldn't decrease their odds of unforeseeable success.
Did somebody say B = (X'X)^(-1)X'Y?

Here is one of my favorite OLS-related abuses of linear algebra:
y = XB + e ---> e = y - XB ---> e = y - X(X'X)^(-1)X'Y ---> e = [I - X(X'X)^(-1)X'Y]y = My

Now use the two idempotent matrices to compute the SSR:
e'e = (My)'(My) ---> e'e = y'M'My ---> e'e = y'MMy ---> e'e = y'My
If you think it's hard to touch base with 500 Startups you are hopeless.
If the designer does something to no positive effect, it does not automatically mean that the effect is negative.