skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This may sound like a mini-rant, if so my apologies in advance:

I work at a software company in central Japan.

On a day to day basis Japan is a lot like England, with rather less white people and much more expensive cheese. The language is a language, the people are people, the business challenges are business challenges, and it is all rather less exotic than people make it out to be. But I get the "of all places" vibe a lot whereas I don't think I'd get it if I worked for a big ol' publicly traded firm in London.

Its not exactly rocket science getting a job here. We have big freaking companies which do lots of business with international customers. This is sort of a necessary prerequisite for being an economy of Japan's size.

Many of these companies have significant need for IT. The percentage of local engineers who can speak English is truly abysmal -- not quite as bad as the number of American engineers who can speak Japanese, but its still far below the requirements of industry. So when you need an English-speaking engineering services, how do you get it? The same way Japan gets every other resource they can't make locally: buy it from abroad.

Step one to getting a job as a professional here: achieve proficiency in the Japanese language, where proficiency means "I can read a design document written in Japanese and extract the business requirements from it, then defend my implementation choices in oral Japanese to my colleagues" and not "I watched anime and learned some phrases すごいよね".

Sidenote from my personal version of hell: Imagine the worst tech interview you have ever participated in. Now imagine that the interviewee has less working vocabulary than a second grader. Now imagine he is damned proud of it.

Its difficult but a lot less impossible than routinely made out to be. I recommend studying at university, if you have the opportunity.

Step 2: Network. This primarily consists of figuring out a way to get your business card into the hands of someone who will be asked the question "Do you know of any engineers who speak English?" The ROI on a set of $20 bilingual business cards is truly stupendous. There are hundreds of Japanese companies with business in America, hundreds of American companies with business in Japan, and tens of thousands of people routinely flying between the two countries on business. These might be good folks to chat up. You have a built-in edge because people who are bilingual in English and Japanese are rare and people who are bilingual AND can perform as developers are as rare as hen's teeth.

Technical skill is also a requirement, obviously, for engineers -- exactly what technical skill depends on the particular industry and company's requirements are. I'm hired to write CRUD apps for universities, not to work for some amorphous Japan, Inc. The most popular developer job in my town, on the other hand, is writing embedded software for cars. Their technical requirements are not my technical requirements.
so axod - which sites were you rocking since 99? :-)
that's quite the read, thank you for that link.

The scary thing when I read all that is that I find yourself agreeing with much of the Unabombers premises, even if I can't agree with his conclusion.
damn I was loving boxee and if people request out, then you will loose the all in one media experience
i bought 3 shirts... you got me.
Knife wielding robot controlled through twitter.
Boxee blog - Hulu removed from Boxee
Ok I'll give you that. I've been trying to transition to icombinator.net when browsing HN on my iPhone.
But you can't tell how many PIRATED musicians are being scrobbled, can you? There's no way to detect what listens are audio and what listens aren't.

I'm not one to defend the decrepit record industry but that's just avoiding the real issue. Is compensating artists considered passe now too?

That's regarding the idea of buying records - the money from most of which goes directly to the record industry. Different models work in different ways.
I
LOVE
MY MOM
WITH ALL OF
MY HEART AND I
KNOW THAT SHE LOVES
ME WITH ALL OF HER HEART
AND I LOVE MY SISTER WITH ALL
OF MY HEART AND I KNOW SHE LOVES ME
WITH ALL OF HER HEART AND SHHE WOULD NEVER
LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO ME AND IF ANYTHING EVER DOES HAPPEN
TO ME I KNOW THAT SHE WOULD KILL THE PERSON THAT MESES WIT ME
The burn rate for a lot of the startups are amazingly high. Is it really necessary to have such a high burn rate? What's considered a healthy burn rate?
Talk about technology risk.
This is a clear barrier for adoption of enterprise apps, one day they are here the next they they are gone.
In a way, this is actually a good sign. It shows the content providers are scared. You are not doing things right if you are not shaking things up and scaring people. That is what disruptive technology is about.

Many startups face similar challenges and this reminds me of the struggles ones such as GlassesDirect.co.uk had to go through before becoming successful (they could have been crushed many times by Goliaths but fought through) - it had to close several times when major competitors and retailers tried to sabotage its business by forcing manufacturers/suppliers to drop GlassesDirect (else they would withdraw their vastly larger orders) and running smear campaigns in the press with false allegations about why using the service was illegal and substandard.

In this case, yes, content providers have a right to choose where/how their content is shown, but this is probably more to do with not getting licensing fees from Boxee than anything else. However, if they do not adopt/embrace legal methods such as Boxee (and insert extra adverts etc. to make the revenue they want), then they only encourage illegal methods.

---

Concerted efforts to sabotage the new venture have proved fruitless. In September, his main supplier mysteriously dropped him. “They suddenly said they couldn’t do business with me. I reckon they had pressure put on them by a high-street chain. It took me a week to find a new supplier and re-do the website.” The trade press confirmed his paranoia when letters and articles appeared questioning the firm’s credentials and the General Optical Council launched an investigation. “Groundless attacks. I have fully qualified opticians working in labs, making the glasses. [http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/archive/4775601/feature-glasse...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Murray_Wells
How is what Boxee was doing any different from the EMBED tag that Hulu gives out?
Your text stretched out the screen. :-( (EDIT: Thanks!)

I disagree with you, but I'm sure you don't want this to turn into a debate. I care more that you've created a great service, which you have. However: if you weren't allowed to marry the person you were in love with, I think you'd feel differently. You're married right now, no? Wouldn't it suck if you'd been banned from marrying her?
A Couple of Hungry Polar Bears
yes! I thought the same when reading, and had to share.

Incidentally, Kelly has been posting on "The Technium" for a while now. I added him to my blog roll because I respect his experience and have really enjoyed many of the things his written in the past.

He's allegedly using The Technium to help develop his thoughts for his next book. Many of his early posts were a little too cerebral for my tastes, but he must be getting a lot closer to pulling his book together -- his more recent posts have been more grounded.

That, or I'm just in one of those moods. (shrug) Either way, he's not leaving my blogroll.
Boulder, since Mibbit is using Adsense to serve ads, he should always have some ads showing up for whatever keyword the chat room is talking about, simply because Adsense ads are generally keyword targeted. An advertiser would have to specifically exclude Mibbit.com from showing their ads in their Adwords account, and they would only do that if they are wasting their money on Mibbit.com

But the fact is, Mibbit has been around for a while, and it is STILL serving text ads from Google - no exclusion.

I think axod should work on selling display advertising directly.
>But you can't tell how many PIRATED musicians are being scrobbled, can you? There's no way to detect what listens are audio and what listens aren't.

Well in the proposed flat-rate scenario there would be no need for distinction.

>That's regarding the idea of buying records - the money from most of which goes directly to the record industry. Different models work in different ways.

The post was talking about the flat-rate scenario not buying records, in any case it's obvious the record industry model is dead as it currently exists. That doesn't mean we shouldn't think about viable ways of compensating artists.
Chad Fowler: Develop a Good Habit in 20 Days
How anonymous are you talking? Libelous remarks from someone calling themselves DeathFscker are bad, but can probably be isgnored. But what about the same libelous remarks coming from Wyatt Rupert Byrd, a name I just randomly generated? Those might be taken more seriously if found in the context of a Google search.
1. Open Internet Browser
2. Hit Triangle and Search for [hulu]
3. Go to Hulu.com (should be the first hit)
4. Click on the video you want.
5. When the page loads, hit Triangle then click on View. Then select the "maxiumum size" option.
6. Then Click on Full Screen view in the options on the Hulu page.

This should work, but I get letterboxing on the left and right sides of my HDTV. I assume this is my TV, but who knows.

[Edit: it appears that Step 5 is unnecessary.]
Microsoft: Windows CE nearing end of life and we could start over
Why should I care about CSS/HTML/JS validity, when I'm going to be checking if it works in all browsers, anyway?

I never understood the whole "Does it validate!!??!" mantra with HTML. So, what, I can't add my own custom attributes to HTML elements (which makes lots of JS magic possible) because the HTML spec will go berserk over it?

IMO, cross browser testing trumps all this validation nonsense (which all browsers have some bug somewhere with, anyway). Enough.
Good job guys. I love the concept.
Okay, the "correct" example for the clicking area mistake has an icon on the left of the link, and it makes sense to expand the clickable area because it stays rectangular, adding clickable space for the comments link on HN would feel rather counter-intuitive.

Edit: Is the ridiculously extended apple link an example of excessively big clickable areas? :P
How Many Linux Users Are There (Really)?
Ask HN: What do you use for tracking misc data?
So, we all know exercise is important for us hackers who sit around all day. In fact, I've been told by two doctors now that I need to get in better shape or I'll have serious back problems in 10 years.

In addition to buying a bike and taking taekwondo, I've started doing pushups and situps every evening. In order to provide a sort of incentive, I'm tracking how many I do every day in a calendar in iCal.

This got my data nerdity all fired up. Now that I have a month or so of data, I want graphs and stats and stuff. Before I spend an afternoon indulging in attacking the ics feed with some regular expressions, I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem.

Let's say you have 2 or 3 variables to track on a daily/weekly basis. What's the best tool for the job? Should I stop using iCal for this? (The nice thing about the ics format is that it's easy to also record the time the event occurred, so I can in theory get hour and day-of-week data.)
I don't think it's the permanence that changes things, it's the visibility. Gossip about you from high school isn't that likely to turn up when you move out of your hometown to the big city, for instance.

I don't really think that most of what they said is anything special, no--you're right, it's bullshit. But I think you're underestimating how many people take this kind of bullshit seriously, and I think that's a problem in and of itself.
For me, the answer is obvious: because it's much easier.
I like that service - I've used Mahalo several times - and generally the idea of aggregation is one that I think can serve a better purpose. However, I've noticed that Mahalo has been shifting farther and farther away from its original beautiful aesthetic. Now your pages look crammed rather than pleasing.
Hulu.com does have fewer ads than broadcast TV (altho a DVR can circumvent ads on the latter). If NBC makes less per view on Hulu than it does on TV, this request makes some sense.
New load of 150,000 TV episodes into Freebase
I'm not convinced there was anything illegal about the threatening / abusive postings. I think we need to be careful about protecting our freedom of speech.

However, I'm very happy that those individuals who were identified have faced social repercussions for their behavior. I would not want anything to do with any of those posters. If I were hiring, I wouldn't hire any of them. I would probably boycott any businesses that work with them. If they're free to be jerks, I'm free take my business elsewhere.

Therein lies the more interesting issue. Anonymity. It's hard to exert social pressure on bad behavior if you can't identify the people involved. Do we have a right to be anonymous online? Do the pros outweigh the cons?

I really don't know...
"As your bank or hedge fund slides toward insolvency, just carry on barking at your secretary, snubbing waitresses, and blanking old friends who nod at you in the elevator. Everyone will assume you are still loaded -- and will hold off pulling the plug on you for a few more days at least."

I was starting to critically pull apart the article too, but when I read the quoted paragraph I started to laugh and realised my leg was being pulled.
I don't know that the flat-rate scenario is, so perhaps you can explain for me: what's the idea? Do musicians all get paid the exact same? What exactly is the "flat" rate being discussed here?
Part of me thinks this site is like showing people a slaughterhouse video and then saying "Hey, still want to eat meat?"

Admittedly, I'm a vegetarian.
What happens when I set my own price?

http://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?i=patio11-001&c=sing...
It's basically a flat tax, meaning it doesn't matter how much you download or consume, the proceeds of which would be somehow distributed back to the artists.

The tricky part is obviously in how to fairly distribute the money, and this is where tracking what gets listened or downloaded comes into play.
I believed it. A guy who changes his name to Sunshine Megatron might do anything.
This was a Guy Kawasaki/Garage.com funded company if I remember right. I've got mixed feelings about some of the companies he's funded/promoted/started, though his books are interesting.
#10: Add dubious content to your articles that use examples specifically designed to provoke and linkbait users of Hackernews, 37Signals, Posterous, and Tumblr.
Top Google exec funds online news startup
It's kind of a long story but basically we moved here for family reasons. I'm building essentially an enterprise SaaS company, but building my first customer base here in Japan.
Indeed, the full qwerty hardware keyboard was really a dealmaker for me with the G1. I like tactile feedback on pressing a key, and having all the screen while using the keyboard is nice. I was a little worried about the G1's "chin" at first, but it turns out to be easy to two-thumb type with it anyway. I'm almost certainly not going to trade in my G1 for a device that has only a software keyboard.
In summary: Content providers are Luddite control freaks, but without their material Hulu is nothing, so we have to be the ones to convince them otherwise.

I wish that they had posted some contact info for the content providers who made this decision.
Did UCLA Profs Just Find Osama? Only if He’s an Idiot
Thanks for adding this. Presentations are another thing that I'm spending a lot of time on to get right and it _really_ takes a lot of time and practice.

I just bought the book "slide:ology" of Duarte Design (above) and I highly recommended it.
Thanks for the advice. Makes a lot of sense. I started out with consulting but am transitioning to a SaaS company, so this sounds like good advice. From an operations perspective, I am making use of as many tools / process automation as possible.

I mentioned it in another thread, but the book "The New Solution Selling" does a great job of outlining the benefits of a strong sales process.
I'm in the process of launching a new blog to specifically document this, which will be linked from my profile and firewatchingmedia.com site. Thanks for asking!
Do peahens not prefer peacocks with more elaborate trains?
That might not necessarily be a good thing.
Hey, that's just plain insulting! FYI I've been all over China - I spent 2 weeks there with a sports team in 2005 playing all over the country - literally east from Beijing to as far wast as Urumchi, which nearly hits the Russian border - in fact, Russians came down to watch the team play.

Have you ever been to China? I have. I know what it's like.

The kid obviously has internet access - isn't that something? There are so many possibilities inherent in that alone for him there, heck, even for something as simple as a solid friendship to keep him grounded. What gives you the authority to declare his fate?
Who knows what's true here, but I know a lot of businesses that hate Yelp because the business can't control the tone of the publicity. I also know a couple people that game Yelp, by emailing users and bribing to change reviews.

Yelp's the web 2 service that's actually made a difference in my life, but these things always have shady underbellies (e.g. Google, SEO, click fraud).
I don't think the downvotes were for the mistake that was made (forgetting about nofollow), but rather the perceived intent behind the post in the first place.
I only skimmed the article (sorry), but I'm not so sure about Paul's thesis that a barrier to entry is the problem.

As I see it, the problem starts with things that are unprovable and therefore hard to debate--and unwillingness to accept that you might be wrong, since these unprovables are often at the core of the person's belief in the world.
The excerpted book

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti...

is wonderful. I have my doubts about whether the professor who posted that long excerpt on a public website really understands what "fair use" is about in United States copyright law. But if readers read the excerpt after following the link here and then buy the book, that would be a good outcome.
Most of these things I can live with, but the Get Satisfaction one drives me nuts: there's hardly any indication that you need to log in for certain features until you're mid-process, and then bang! "Create an account, please".

Yes, making accounts is a pain that drives users away. But you get round by being clever with sign-ups; not by pretending you don't have a registration page until the user is deeper into the process. We'll just leave all the same.
You can fullscreen Hulu onto your TV with a laptop. It's like a $5 cable.
New York Plans to Retrain Laid-Off Wall St. Workers by Helping Startups
How about using a spreadsheet? You could use Numbers...
Have your employers considered how many ads the Bittorrent users are paying for?

Boxee is taking off. Its users are voluntarily watching your ads. And, instead of trying to work with that and ride the wave, your tired media company is emasculating it. Sounds like the kind of brilliant logic that led the music publishers to destroy Napster, only stupider.
So why do startups adopt AWS (S3/EC2/SQS) in droves while still only kicking tires on App Engine? Is it a fear of lock-in?
No it doesn't, because whether you watch Hulu using Firefox or Boxee the same ads should be shown.
A lot of this seems to be gibberish:

The stronger that technology makes society, the less freedoms. Why?

Technology destroys nature, which strengthens technology further. Some technology can preserve nature. And even if that weren't the case, why would destroying nature make technology "stronger"? What does that even mean?

This ratchet of technological self-amplification is stronger than politics. Um, what? Stronger in what respect? What do the two have to do with each other, and how is either "strong"? It's like saying that insurance is stronger than yellow.

Any attempt to use technology or politics to tame the system only strengthens it. What system?

Therefore technological civilization must be destroyed, rather than reformed. Ah, I knew the (openly) crazy bit was coming...

Since it cannot be destroyed by tech or politics, humans must push industrial society towards its inevitable end of self-collapse. If it's inevitable, why do we need to push for it? Not that that's not the only thing wrong with this statement...

Then pounce on it when it is down and kill it before it rises again. Again, nonsense.

I know, Unabomber, of couse he's crazy. But the article (and some of the other comments here) seem to be in agreement with his general ideas. Technology doesn't have an agenda. It's not an organism. The idea is utter nonsense.
Yes it was. Kawasaki has had a long long list of misses since the first bubble..

Coghead raised a lot of money, in the order of $12M+. in the end, they didn't have a whole lot to show considering how crowded this space is and that they had raised more money than anybody else.

Could have funded 20-30 companies with those funds and probably found 2-3 winners.

They did spend a lot on PR/marketing - I know because their people were hitting me up all the time.
Google Goes HTML5: Demoes Experimental Version of Gmail
Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document.
That's easy to do with a fixed width in units of ems

Almost, but not quite. That adjusts the width to match the font-size. I want the other way around: adjust the font-size to match the width. (If I make my browser window wider, the text should scale up.)

Currently, this would take Javascript -- either adaptively scaling the font until the desired words-per-line is reached, or calculating what font-size would mean the existing width, whatever it is, is ~35em.
In my experience you have to use the game controller (rather than the remote) to hit the full screen button. Overall, I find that PlayOn gives a much better experience than the PS3 Web browser.
" the only way to make the comment link targets bigger ... would be to add whitespace around them"

ORLY?

a.big-click-zone {
position: relative;
left: -1em;
padding: 1em;
margin-right: -2em;
}
The sense of loyalty to/ownership of software you use is commendable in at least one respect. However, clearly it isn't without flaws, right? Work of human hands & etc. And clearly you're more interested in hearing about its flaws than the flaws of a site you've never seen or, worse, a strawman site created for the purpose of the article.

I mean, sure, they could have said "Imagine a social news site where the key value was in the comments and the comments were only accessible if you hit a target which was 62 pixels wide and 10 pixels tall".

People would say "Eh, like anyone would do that. That would be a clear error."

I bet I just sent a bunch of people to the homepage with a ruler, right? Good.

Now would you have rather heard about that issue, or not heard about that issue? Personally, I'm in favor of being a cautiously humble absolute dictator when doing web design. Absolute dictator because ultimately I have the only say that matters, cautiously humble because if the data says that my cart is costing me $30,000 I will follow the data. (I wish Smashing Magazine would give me free usability advice.)
Actually, you just had to delete the "cookie expired" portion in the url.
Unless the cost of fixing the problem is higher than what any one person is willing to pay, so it never gets done (collective action problem).
Coding Horror: Are You An Expert?