skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's a VERY attractive site, and exactly the kind of design that I love. Taglines are clear and concise, call to action buttons are distinct and easy to find. All in all I love it.

The one question I have (and it isn't a critique, mind you) is that each of your plans seems to coincide fairly identically to AppointmentReminder.org (Patrick's offering) but is more expensive. Is this a white label offering of his? If not, what additional value to do you feel you're offering for the extra coin, or do you just believe that he's leaving money on the table?
You'll find plenty of them when you come to HN to talk about your product.
The rub is that "a premium price" means something a little bit different to each customer.

Unless you price it so highly that only one person in the world will pay for it, you're leaving consumer surplus on the table. Clearly that's not a good solution though, since you miss out on all the slightly more price sensitive customers.
As a technical nitpick, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, et al were from an era when there was very little taxation at all. Taxation in the United States as we experience it today is a 20th century invention.

Also, while there was a 90% marginal tax rate at one point, the structure of taxes was quite different such that the effective tax rate of the rich was closer to 20%.
Another, indirect, effect that I hope to see from this is cheaper MacBook Airs in the future. Competition! (I need a bit more than the terminal/SSH/text-editor to do my development.)
Mozilla tries to woo Chrome diehards with incentives for reviewing add-ons
I imagine you don't trust any major review company then. The BBB must be a bunch of scumbags too, if your metric is what a google search looks like when attaching the word extortion to their name: https://www.google.com/search?q=bbb+extortion

And Obama is a liar: https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+liar

And Romney too: https://www.google.com/search?q=romney+liar

Search engines give you what you search for.
Not necessarily, since it seems Google's new strategy is to create its own walled garden and keep you inside of it as much as possible.
If you did that some people would regard the dagger as the perfect place to attach their mobile phone on long journeys.
Isn't it possible that's just a handy self-justification, though?

Looking specifically at the folks in my circle, I doubt for for two reasons: 1) they've seen me make a living at it for 9 years and they are all as smart, if not smarter than me and generally better connected than me, 2) a couple of folks in particular are supporting family members with medical needs.
have cities provide a public health insurance option that a person or business could buy into.

That only works if all cities have plans, otherwise you can find yourself trapped staying in a city that same way that one might find himself trapper working for an employer.
Do you have any customers yet? If so, where did you find them?
I'm curious, how did wikipedia get copyright over the designs of national flags? What right to they have to attribution?
Twilio Introduces SIPOut Beta
Wow. I hadn't thought about this, but Skype is one of the defining apps of the internet for me. Now it feels just weird looking at the Chromebook (same as the PlayBook with its front-facing camera, yet no Skype).
I think the Netherlands tried something similar. Not sure if it really worked.
It's a rather bland and encompassing name (are other encryption standards not advanced?), so saying "so-called" points out that it's a name and not a description.
"the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota"

Many many years ago, presumably during a discussion about travel, a great aunt of mine told her brother-in-law that he had been in two states she never had: intoxication and insanity. Either seems a sufficient defense here, and will the state of Minnesota make you blow in the bag and issue you a ticket for sober learning?
I love these! I own a web app development company, and we're buying one for everyone and using google apps for the workflow (as well as one of our own apps!). I recommend!
To be fair, it is damn expensive.

The BLS lists benefits as roughly 30% of total compensation[1]. Much of that goes to healthcare.

So for a developer earning $100k in total compensation (say $70k salary, $30k benefits), healthcare costs for that one employee might be $25k+. Providing a good policy for employees (and their families) is expensive. Worth it to care for the team, but still expensive.

To the people skipping coverage in the US: it's stupid and not worth the risk. You may be healthy, but you cannot control everything that impacts your health. Infectous disease happens. Car crashes happen. Skipping coverage is playing Russian roulette.

That said, I'm young and am fortunate to still be covered under the policy of my parents. Perhaps the college years and shortly after are best for trying a startup--while family coverage is still in effect. Then, or after you're married to someone and are under his or her policy.

1. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/eci.pdf
Paste.ee - nice alternative to pastebin with API and IPv6
Build the Robot of your Dreams
Sure, there's people who want to be entrepreneurs and people who don't, but to me it seems like the situation is perfectly analogous to supply and demand and consumer surplus. Most people, if they want something, they'll buy it at any price they consider to be reasonable. Why? Because they really want it – just like people really want to be entrepreneurs, or don't. But lo and behold, when the price of a consumer good goes up, demand almost invariably goes down, because for some people, the cost/benefit equation did change just enough to make it (not) worth it.

I know many, many people in Europe that have dreams of starting a company or startup, but without ready access to venture capital, making that dream a reality suddenly becomes much, much harder. So you compromise, and you focus on other dreams that are more attainable.

Yes, human psychology might be an important factor in deciding whether someone wants to be an entrepreneur or not, but people's attitudes are generally not as black and white as you make them out to be.
Then you wouldn't get to use the store. There is no conflict.
If that were true, eliminating all risk would lead to an explosion of risk taking. But it doesn't. Plenty of trust fund babies face no risks and accomplish nothing.

Of course, another way to look at things is to realize that taking no risks is the biggest risk of all. If one wishes to sit and wait for life to do whatever to you, you can always do that.

Don't go to school, don't strive. Don't ever invest in anything that isn't 100% guaranteed.

No, there is already incentive to take risk.

If anything, the government "help" we've gotten so far makes it harder to take risks. Just ask the people with student loans or those in an upside down mortgage if that helps them take risks.

Those programs are designed to help the person that goes down a specific track, not help the person who thinks different.

And those programs don't even actually help once they are converted into corporate welfare.
It isn't so much that hearing a story that's negative to my side makes me think "bias". It's that I hear predominately stories that are negative to my side and positive to the other. Also, pretty much every conservative you meet will tell you the same thing, so it's not just me.
I don't do deadlines
It is really hard to recommend a project to someone just because everyone have such diverse interest and passion. My only suggestion is to roam around the community until something tickles you inside. If you are not sure what you will find interesting may just because you haven't found a project you are passionate about. Frankly if that "dead project somewhere in the corner" is something that motivates you, you should choose that over the larger projects.

Personally, my personality and preference are for smaller projects with a more intimate community. In the end of the day, (for me) it is much more about learning and doing something I love rather than doing something to go on a resume (or my lack of a resume. :P).
So think about these questions:
1. What is your goal in doing this? (i.e. combinations of to learn, to have fun, to add to the resume, etc.)
2. What motivates sufficiently at 4AM in the morning?
Not the same thing at all. You're losing the relative scale, and the benefit in this case is minor. If you're trying to emphasize near-term changes in a range with a very high base (e.g. stock fluctuations) this might be justified if you make the broken scale clear, but it's probably better in such a case to make the graph into log change from baseline (which is how, for example, yahoo charts stock prices).

In this case, for a very minor space saving and extra work the -- borderline useless -- graph is made misleading.
This thing looks amazing. I didn't want to fire up Mathematica to render these charts but I love D3. Thanks!
> Author here; I love the Mac App Store and want to eventually use MonoMac to port some of my Windows stuff over to it :)

I personally don't recommend this. I've been a big, big Mono booster over the years, but I have a hard time trusting the developers behind it. (For an illustrative example as to why, take a look at MonoTouch's problems with iOS 6. That bit my employer in the ass. It hasn't happened with MonoMac, but to me there's a "yet" involved.)

As un-sexy as it is, C or C++ seem to be the way to go. It's what I'm doing now, with a platform-appropriate hat on top that uses as little Objective-C (on OS X) as possible.
They're probably just simulating everything in HERO system, where an "average person" will survive a collision with a car (the car probably won't) and can easily survive two gunshots to the head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_System
I don't know what you are talking about. The Daily Show is not comedy. Its where everybody under the age of 30 gets the news from. Fox News - now that's comedy. Seriously, they crack me up. And if you want tragedy, there's always MSNBC. CNN - I don't know what that is - maybe comedians trying their hand at tragedy. You see their chief mascot Anderson Cooper standing knee deep in flood water, or being blown around by stormy winds, or sweating it out in tropical weather, and seriously wonder about his health and well being.
As an entrepreneur I agree that it's very hard and not everybody is cut for it. But I also believe a lot of people who are cut for it might never find out, because they are not given an opportunity to try.

Improving healthcare coverage for aspiring entrepreneurs would level the playing field and expand the pool of potential entrepreneurs. And that would in turn create more wealth for all of us to enjoy.
It's changing, at least in the Waterloo area. When I started university, the smartest kids were crossing the border to work for Google and Microsoft. By the time I graduated, most of the smartest kids were going to startups or doing their own.
Integrated optical vortices on a chip (w/ Video)
iPhone Uber-Hacker Comex Is Out At Apple
Truthfully I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't really disagree with you, and I truly believe "how it's made" (much in the same style) is the best show on TV.

I just come from an "on-topic" background, I guess.
Does IE not respect the "accept-charset" attribute on form elements?
1) The subject matter.

2) High-quality comments.

3) I actually like sites with a simple UI. I still haven't figured out the Reddit user interface. I gave up on Facebook years ago, after their third or fourth site redesign.
FTC throws down robocall gauntlet: $50,000 for best way to stop annoying calls
Do you have numbers to back this up? Because I thought that front-page placement on the App Store is much more desirable than to be in any of the charts. (Of course, being #1 in top-grossing is good - but not only because it increases visibility :)). Even in iTunes, where the charts are visible on the landing page, only #1 even shows an icon, compared to about 50 curated apps.

I think the big difference is that people buy a game on Steam to be immersed for a few days, yet people buy smartphone apps to bridge the gap between two Twitter mentions or subway stops.
Youtube channel of random devices that I've hacked/modded
It is always amusing that colors are merely electromagnetic properties. Yet the visualization of this relatively simple physical property has gone through such evolution through history.

In the end of the day, they are just waves.
Strangely long article for what amounts to: server runs eval on user input, security problems follow.
I think that this would result in hundreds of thousands of bad ideas hitting the marketplace and then the government having to bail out all of the crap that didn't succeed. Risk is there for a reason, it's to stop you from doing something stupid, to make you think twice about the decision you're about to make. I don't believe that we need government to bail out risk takers... not with the amount of national debt that we already have.

You know what happend the last time there was no risk? Banks lended out sub-prime mortgages to just about anyone with a job that walked in the door. You know why they were able to do this? Because those sub-prime loans where bundled up and then sold off to investment banks which then packaged them as mortgage-backed securities. We all know how that one turned out... Risk is a necessary part of life, we need to accept it.
>When one purchases something, they ought to evaluate the value of a product solely on the utility that they gain from that product and how that compares to the utility and price of similar products.

I wouldn't say is that simple. I think it depends on WHO is buying WHAT. For example, if I'm buying a pillow...yes, I'll buy the cheapest one available. If I were buying a watch, no. I'd be more than happy to pay over $10,000 for a watch (insane ah? if I could just convince the wife...) Why? because a different set of criteria come into play and the utilitarian aspect (telling time) loses importance (heck a $5 Casio can be more accurate sometimes). Things like the engineering behind the construction of the watch, the history of the brand, the materials used, etc, become purchasing decisions factors. The point is that for some it's worth $20 or more because it's either beautiful, stable, etc, or they might just like Tapbot as a company.

>Tweetbot is working against the precedent set by other apps in this regard. It yields near-negligible utility over free alternatives and competes in an ecosystem dominated by free apps. (If anything, it yields less utility over others, because once the token threshold is met, it will in all likelihood become abandon-ware.) Thus the value of Tweetbot— and of software in general— goes down.
>The work put in by the developers has no weight in determining the price. The market's tolerance, perception of value, and willingness to pay is the only factor. Even if I spend 10,000 hours making a great latte, it's unreasonable that I charge $1m for it because my competitors are selling a similar product at $4 and the increase in utility of my latte versus theirs is likely not enough to warrant the increase in cost to the consumer. Their logic is flawed and is totally incongruous with the most fundamental concepts of economics. Commerce is a quid pro quo, not a charitable donation.

And yet...I'm confident and I really hope they sell enough copies to make a good profit out of a great product.

>You really can't fault them for price-gouging: Everyone loves money.

I truly disagree with this statement. It's not about greed. Come on, they even took the time to explain to their users why they had charge more than they had initially planned.

>As for me, I won't be buying TweetBot. It's more money than I can reasonably afford. Even if it weren't, it's price simply outpaces it's value to such an extent as to be unjustifiable.

Look, you wrote it more clearly than me: it's about "perception of value". Some users think it's fairly priced, others that it's too high, and some that they could even charge more.

By the way, I won't buy it either...too expensive...for me ;)
Jeff Garzik is not R, S or A but he is still certainly qualified to comment on a paper about Bitcoin.
For the same reason no one hand-codes the HTML on each individual Hacker News thread?
> Individual developers really only care about making money.

I think it is worse than this, (some) individual developers care about getting rich with one lucky, undeserved hit app. If they cared about a good average income, they would get a proper job as an iOS developer instead.

The bad news for Windows 8 is that this behavior will be at its peak right after opening the store. On the rather mature market of iOS, I haven't heard of overnight fart-app millionaires in a while.
Actually, this is untrue. The r/jailbait drama blew up when someone solicited underage pornography there, but at the end of the day it was banned for "threatening the structural integrity of reddit," ie the fallout from the Anderson Cooper story. Legality had little to do with it, just like you see with the ban on dox; it was banned for making the site look bad.
Yes, very sexy design. Clearly inspired from 37Signals, but I don't see a problem about it.
I would say they are more like a funnel. And they are trying to make their funnel even bigger. They make their money by sending you to other websites and services, which is why most people don't consider them a walled garden.
Kim Jong Il's Grandson Gives an Interview
You could do it on a state-by-state basis, where each may provide a differing level of coverage but all of them would provide at least a base-line care for citizens that are residents of that state.

This could lead to a form of "competition" where some states might provide perks to help encourage people to migrate there from other parts of the country or make it more attractive for prospective employers.

This is the way it's done in Canada. Each province has differing rules as to what's covered, but emergency treatment and preventative care is never impaired by cost or a lack of insurance.
I noticed the domain name doesn't match the name of the website. That could confuse people.
Having to enter my email on a site is a major roadblock. Enough sites keep sending me unwanted mail that I seriously hesitate before signing up; I don't give out my email unless I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to get, and I want it badly.

I often use a mailinator address when I'm not serious about signing up. It's very convenient.
>most people don't want to run their own business no matter how safe you make it. I've spent the last few years encouraging people around me to start or run or improve their businesses, but so many of them ... don't want to deal with all of the other aspects of running a business.

True dat. But you point this out as if it is some moral failing on their part. People generally don't want to do uninteresting stuff. "all of the other aspects of running a business" is seriously uninteresting.

Its why I don't have a dog - am not interested in picking up dog poop :)

If its about the money...I have made 5-6 figures from simple butterflies & straddles - took me less than half hour to devise, and then I just wait for the right mkt opportunity to come along.

If its about independence, not working for anybody etc...my boss used to say that while I only have 1 boss (ie. him ), he has infinite bosses ( ie. all the customers of the company ). So I don't see what the big advantage is in being accountable to the masses of the planet because of some bug in some stupid software.

There's trons of things infinitely more interesting than being an entrepreneur - Family. Mathematics. Physics. CS.
Pitchfork uses scrolling to produce an interesting article layout
Chrome is a good browser, used it at work until recently. I use Firefox at home because I'm very familiar with it now. More importantly to me, whether it really makes a difference, I like at least one part of my online experience not to be totally dependent on Google.
Could higher pixel density aid in better color replication?
Better social nets probably would create much higher wages as employees think "screw this I'm gonna at least try it on my own", so companies have to up the ante.

But I don't see more entrepreneurs turning into economic growth. That takes a specific, rare entrepreneur that focuses on building growth, rather than replacing a paycheck.

On the flip side, I don't see less taxes becoming economic growth either. Taxes have to be pretty damn high to change your operations. The amounts usually talked about are not going to cause a company to say "hey let's build a new product".

The question should be "what's preventing companies from growing" instead of this class warfare framework. In the US, I see big companies being limited from growth by their own C-level executives' eye on their stock take - which makes no sense until you realize the amount of money they can gain from short term manipulation. But I see more of a problem due to bad skill sets - too many people have the wrong set of skills. A retail store clerk is not going to help anyone grow these days.
Easier to open too!
Why is the pricing of this an App Store issue?

I prefer Yorufukurou over over the other clients I have tried, and its free on the App Store or the developer's site.
I'm happy. This means Mint 14 is coming soon :).
Without some kind of medical safety net, quitting your job to start a business becomes the luxury exclusive to the really healthy, the single, the really rich or the really lucky.

If you have any kind of condition that requires continuous oversight, you're screwed unless you have a ton of money saved up to afford a very expensive insurance plan.

If you're initially healthy, but suddenly get seriously ill, you might be set back by 7-10 grand before your cheapo $100/mo insurance plan kicks in. Even then you might still have to fight against the insurance company to have the necessary care approved and covered. You might hit the limits of your coverage.

If you have a family, you better hope that your spouse's job provides you with a comprehensive family-wide coverage, otherwise you'll have to deal with the exorbitant costs of insurance.

It's clearly sub-optimal, but the conservative side will often argue in favor of this system. I've (anecdotally) been told that if we provide everybody with universal health care then the masses will all start shooting up heroin all day and we, the hard working citizens, will have to foot the bill.
At a glance it seems the wrapper complicates things if you need performance and when using Redis performance is often the point.
At least one (and almost certainly more) company pursuing this. The service WebAssign is used in almost every science class at my high school. 90% of homework is done (and graded) via the site. However, the lack of any "show-your-work" functionality sometimes limits teachers' ability to assist students.
it would take some next level negligence to write a server you could exploit like this.
Honestly, how is this downvoted? wtf?
> Or, you can pick a relevant ISO/UN/EU/... list, and say you're using that for country names and flags. That may or may not be biased, but it removes you from the decision. If somebody is so mad they refuse to use your program because they don't like an ISO/UN/EU list, I don't know how they got past the Time Zone Setup screen on their computer.

The UN/ISO list has Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China". Go look for that string in any operating system, app or on any website that is internationally popular - you won't find it. The ISO is not neutral, and the Time Zone Setup guys know this.
Uber starts in Sydney
Australia and NZ wineries use screw tops almost exclusively even for high-end wines. In the US market buyers still believe that cork is better though so the wineries must accommodate that.