skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It would be interesting if, say, when you upvoted something then your perception of upvotes and downvotes from people who similarly upvoted that thing were subtly changed and so forth. In essence, by upvoting something you would be changing your perception of the universe.

Which, I guess, is kind of how Google works in the long run, and also would tend to self-select people into like-minded groups. Overall, I think that our options are somewhat limited -- we either end up in a self-selected community or in a self-selected sub-community. E.g. I was "repelled" by digg because any politically "liberal" comment I made would be downvoted to oblivion within minutes. While similar things would happen on reddit if, say, one said things critical of libertarianism, I didn't find this quite so frustrating, and simply learned to curb my views accordingly.

Here on Hackernews (which I find to be the most reasonable community since the glory days of slashdot) I have learned to accept that, say, being critical of Android or having anything nice to say about PHP is likely to lead to a lot of welts.
Oh that's not bad at all; my mistake.
You don't have to be a fan boy to see this is indeed trying to belittle the iPad without giving the complete story.
Wikileaks Expenses: 2011 and 2012 (pdf)
Check your extensions. It works here on 22.0.1229.94 m Windows 7 64-bit.
I love the iPad and already preordered my iPad Mini. But it's nice to see a little competition. Sure, the amazon ad is stretching things a bit, but it's advertising, that's what they do. I can't wait for the "tablet wars" to really start, instead of Apple just dominating. Competition is good for us all, even for Apple themselves in the long run.
AWESOME, my heart beat was going up along Neil´s, ( I am pilot I can "almost" relate at how the feeling can be that final feet! given the huge distance of course.)
Whether you are an Apple fan or not, it is difficult to contest the fact that this Amazon ad is taking direct aim at an Apple product.

What would you call this, if not an "attack"?
His model reminded me more of the pub trivia scene rather than an alternative to brick and mortar cinemas. If his percentages were low enough then he could make this a decent business by having educated locals spend a few days a month promoting and running this in dozens of cities.

That all assumes his fixed costs are low enough that he could let the business run like this while he continues he day job. This might not be the case though.
Two problems I see. The first is:

> I still had a job, which made everything near impossible, that I couldn’t afford to quit. I worked during the day as a report writer, snuck in emails and business calls for Altsie over my lunch, and worked late into the night to take care of hundreds of necessary details to keep the project going.

combined with

> Despite my downward physical spiral, I managed to marry the love of my life

I appreciate that people have lives too but you just can't do two jobs and have a personal life. Sorry. Something has to give. I've read many tales of where having just the startup has put a strain on personal relationships.

I wonder what the situation was with the cofounders. How many were there? Were they full-time? If so, that could be a problem (in that they might end up feeling that they've gone "all in" when you haven't).

> Two years building and eight months running Altsie took its toll.

Two years to launch? i wonder how much quicker it would've been to launch if it had full-time resources. For something that isn't hugely technically sophisticated (correct me if I'm wrong but this doesn't sound like that kind of startup) that is (IMHO) too long. People talk about MVPs for a reason. You need to prove your idea and get feedback ASAP.

Whatever the case, eight months doesn't seem long enough to prove anything one way or the other.

I don't mean to be harsh so I apologize if it comes across that way. Lucas, good luck to you. I would suggest that when you wish to try your next venture (assuming you do), you do so when you can dedicate it to yourself full-time.
I can only give this comment one upvote, I wish I could give it more. When you've got no outside funding and you're keeping your idea alive though sheer will power then eventually it grinds you down. Most startups fail, my guess is that this guy finally came to the conclusion that there were a number of problems which he no longer had the energy or cash to solve, I'm sure he gained a lot of insight from the process even if he can't quite bring that to bear just yet.

I wish him luck and wholeheartedly thank him for making that post.
And they did a couple very good ones. I loved Applesoft BASIC.
It's easy to disentangle them, they are not inheritenly related. What's hard is convincing some people that social problems don't have technical solutions. The attractiveness of the technical solution is that it is so much easier than the social solution that it just has to exist.
How prevalent are bootkit (MBR) malicious exploits though? Surely the right place for this is for windows to prevent boot modification without authentication though UAC or something similar?
article link
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nnano....

also more informative stories
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57541381-76/ibm-brings-car...

http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/newsid=27115.php
There is a Latin term for arguments based on the reduction of software to numbers: reductio ad absurdum.
Amazon's Tasteless Homepage Today
What truly matter is intent. If you are trying to convey the illegal number, you are trying to break the law. If you accidentally transmit the bits that form the number while transmitting something else, you are not culpable.

Obligatory IANAL.
Goggles, statements like "Macs and IOS have very dumbed down interfaces. That works well for many people who want to check their email and surf the web without having to learn anything at all." stop me from reading the rest of your post. I don't want to learn how to use my tools, I want to learn the things my tools help me with.
Nearly crashed my system by eating up all of the memory (Firefox), runs nice in Chrome though.
One perk of competing with Wikipedia is that you can use Wikipedia articles as a base.
You are recognizing just one aspect of the inanity that is having "illegal" numbers.
This is the biggest difference (quote from semver.org):

"Major version X (X.y.z | X > 0) MUST be incremented if any backwards incompatible changes are introduced to the public API. It MAY include minor and patch level changes. Patch and minor version MUST be reset to 0 when major version is incremented."

Meanwhile the PVP lets you get away with just updating the minor version there.
Are we sure that this Wikipedia article, kindly submitted for our discussion, lays out the issues thoroughly? The Wikipedia article's talk page includes the tags

"This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the project's quality scale.

"This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale."

What are Wikipedians doing about that? The article history

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Illegal_number&...

makes it look like this is a rather sporadically edited article, which needs a lot of work. Are Hacker News participants willing to roll up their sleeves and jump in on editing the article? Or is that part of the problem on Wikipedia, that an article can be known to be lacking, but still not get fixed?

Where else would one go to find good sources on this issue? I've got no special knowledge of this specialized issue, so I can't personally help. My experience as a Wikipedian, fixing articles I know how to fix, is that most Wikipedia articles on most subjects need a lot more reliable sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_...
This topic is explored more in GEB[0], with the point made that in general the information exists neither only on storage device, nor in the reading device alone; in fact the information is encoded on both of them together.

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
My motto is "people pay you to solve the hard problems". Our nature during product development is to simplify, cut away and focus. Unfortunately you could start out pointing at the hard problems, but end up solving the easy ones because it makes more sense. Of course no one then cares for the result.
I'm nearly to the point with LinkedIn where I want to take them to court. What they're doing is a clear violation of CAN-SPAM. I generally feel that kind of thing is a waste of the courts time, but I simultaneously feel that marking the messages as spam in gmail isn't doing enough to curb their annoying and illegal behavior.
I think the double eyelid thing is pretty minor (with respect to looking Western). I know a lot of Asian people who naturally have this. You definitely don't just start looking white just by having double-eyelids. If it were Western looks influencing double eyelids, are guys also going blonde/brunette or doing anything else? http://media.carbonated.tv/51637_story__cruisehaircut3.jpg <- I'd say the double-eyelids of Tom Cruise aren't even that noticeable. What's more noticeable are his prominent eyebrows.

In fact I honestly think (with enough grooming and styling) you can get more fit Asian guys looking like those two examples you gave than you could get white guys to look like them. So just because of that, it's probably benefitting Asian guys more that they're being flaunted as sexy.

As for Japan, they didn't have a well-developed live-action film industry (not sure of the reason why), which according to what I read on Wikipedia, is why they developed a big Anime industry. I'd imagine cartoons would have a harder time to catch on in the West with adults, but it did catch on with kids (Digimon, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh).
Error in the article:

Too bad, because he had already fallen in love with the software, going so far as to opine that the Surface RT "doesn’t just compete with the iPad – it bypasses the iPad in many ways that are significant and valuable for me."

Nitpick: He fell in love with the hardware, the software is the part he didn't like. That was his complaint.

And: No matter if an update was available on the first day. For a major release like that it shouldn't have come to this in the first place.

Note: Is HN being mentioned and linked on ZDNet such a big thing that it should be the title of the entry rather than what it's about? -> (referring to old title - title has been changed)
Well, one fact to keep in mind - developing capabilities to launch satellites [payload to orbit] is inseparable from capability to launch ICBMs. That's why first sputnik was both, so inspiring and so scary.

As to 'never allowing this to happen'. There are no such guaranties. I'd guess, the opposite is true. Technology [and as a result advanced weaponry] is only getting more and more accessible.
I believe the problem with unlocking is that both copying and modifying require circumventing technological protection measures, and that modifying a program has legal ramifications similar to copying it - they're both fair use if you own the copy of the software and not fair use if you're just licensing it. Since the purpose of exemptions is to allow fair use, but it's unclear whether we own or license the baseband software on phones we own, the Copyright Office decided to approve but limit this exemption.

I'll show my work, since I'm not a copyright scholar either, just trying to interpret the official statement:

According to the summary on page 1, the questions are: (1) Are you circumventing a protection measure? (2) Is the measure protecting a copyrighted work? (3) Is your use of the copyrighted work non-infringing? [And according to pages 4-5, there's another question, although not directly relevant to your comment: (4) Is circumvention the only practical way to achieve the result of this use?]

The discussion of the unlocking exemption ("permits the circumvention of computer programs on mobile phones to enable such mobile phones to connect to alternative networks") starts on page 16. Page 17 includes an interesting bit about copyright:

"Proponents advanced several theories as to why “unlocking” is a noninfringing use, including that it does not implicate any copyright interests or, if it does, the conduct is permitted under Section 117 of the Copyright Act. In particular, proponents asserted that the owners of mobile phones are also the owners of the copies of the computer programs on those phones and that, as owners, they are entitled to exercise their rights under Section 117, which gives the owner of a copy of a computer program the privilege to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program under certain circumstances, such as to permit the program to be used on a particular machine."

But then page 19 presents a concern: according to some legal precedents, the owner of the phone may not be the owner of the software, so he or she wouldn't have the right to modify it. It says "the Register was forced to conclude that the state of the law – and its applicability to mobile phone software – remains indeterminate." After some more discussion of licensing and ownership, it goes on to say "The Register therefore determined that some subset of wireless customers – i.e., anyone considered to own the software on their phones under applicable precedent – would be entitled to exercise the Section 117 privilege."

I believe all of this shows that the Copyright Office considered whether it had jurisdiction and decided that it did. I don't know enough about Huang's NeTV work to be able to guess about how the DMCA applies to it.
Looks great. Is it releasable at the moment? It looks like the indiegogo campaign may not succeed - sorry :(.

http://www.indiegogo.com/happyedit (3 days left, $805 / $10,000 raised).

Have you considered alternate ways of funding your development? Like subscriptions? (it's a web app right?). Maybe figure out a price... let's say $10 a month or $100 a year and get people to pay for a yearly subscription up front.

It may not allow you to focus on it full time at first, but could give you the incentive to continue improving the product and eventually work on it full time.
Is Dropbox better at managing memory than Google Drive?
He has my full respect, not just for what he tried to do but also for writing this post. One can only wonder how many unwritten stories like this there are out there - most people who give up don't blog about it. People would probably be better served by getting a full picture of the startup scene, including stories of some of the failures besides the successes, but there's a natural survivorship bias which happens instead.
Yea, I would not have used one anyway and am happier having a cheaper Kindle. I think I have only charged it once, great battery life on that thing.
I think the larger problem that is touched on a little here is getting your team to buy into your vision. When the team becomes disinterested or uninspired in the long-term product, all the little problems start becoming big problems. Words like "can't", "useless", "pointless", "too hard", etc start becoming more common place. It tends to also be the point where people start clocking in and out for their paycheck instead of their passion.
The value of refactoring IDEs is that they give you a cheap way to reorganize your designs as the code evolves.

I see no data based evidence of your coding being faster than IDE coding. In my experience of comparing me with myself, I am an order of magnitude faster in accommodating reviewer comments and changing the code design when using a good refactoring IDE, as opposed to menially updating 10s of code reference points manually.

I'm also significantly faster in identifying problems in unknown code using an IDE, especially if the IDE has tracing support. Tracing being exactly what printf debugging gives you, except that it's faster to setup and easier to cleanup when the debug fest is done.
Amazon's table is pretty shoddy, but being misleading in the other direction doesn't right the situation. There is more incorrect information in your comment than in their table.

Some key points:

1. Amazon has only ever used LCD screens on the Kindle Fire product line. They have always used notably excellent displays: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5128/amazon-kindle-fire-review

2. You're right, calling 1024x768 "standard definition" is a lie.

3. Amazon's is larger in both dimensions and is not 720p. (1280x800 vs 1024x768).

4. MIMO WiFi is a real thing. It might not be a huge deal (primarily increases max throughput, which is rarely a constraining factor), but the table is correct.

None of this is to say that the Kindle Fire HD is better than the iPad mini, I'm almost certain it is worse. It's just that facts are facts.
Already 43. Also a primary pain point for me. Perhaps someone could write a browser add-on to tag headlines and filter-out headlines by tag?
Eh, I think the consensus is that fonts are generally better on Mac. And this isn't one of those "Windows sucks because..." things, it's just that in general more fonts look better more often on Mac than Windows. You can definitely point to some fonts that render like crap on a Mac and you can definitely find people who think fonts look better on Windows but really, the truth is, nine times out of ten Mac wins when it comes to how good fonts look. I'm sure I'll be hated here for saying that especially since you linked to that HN post about it but HN is representative of a very very small and narrow but of the world of computer users. Go out into the world and ask around and you'll see. I never noticed it until I started using a Mac. Then it became abundantly clear when I had to start using Windows a lot again. I've seen hundreds of fonts on tens of displays on both platforms and Mac has got fonts in the bag most times.

I know there's an element of subjectivity to this but at the same time I don't think it's subjective at all. It's almost like saying the jury is still out on evolution or global warming. That's kinda true but, nah, not really.

Edit: After thinking about it for a moment, I still stand behind what I said but I want to narrow down "fonts" to web fonts only because that's where you see the biggest difference no matter the browser.
this doesn't look thought out. you need way more than "1-2 months" to develop a good IDE. there's no mention of supported languages and popular features like code indexing and live compilation will never happen on a web platform.
The level of honesty in the post is touching. Figuring out the right time to quit is as important as starting up. However, lack of outside funding especially after he looked for it might also be a sign that either the idea or the was he handled the business so far is not viable. 1000 tickets over that much time does not seem impressive. Again, inspiring post.
XKCD Graphs in Go, iPad mini compatible, failed due to MongoDB Haskell driver
Yes, the log version is a little misleading, but the linear version shows that growth is slowing down too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EnwikipediaGom.PNG
was on here before:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4700774

Don't know why your link has "?1" at the end.
Not sure where you're going with this, but given the amount of effort and ambition around the Surface, I would say that Microsoft is absolutely serious.

Effort and ambition, together with $4, will get you a double latte at Starbucks.

To beat Apple, you are going to have to take the next step: competence.

When the board fires Ballmer, that will be the signal that Microsoft is ready to get serious. Until then, it's all just talk.
A4 paper is 210 by 297 millimetres and that aspect is very, very far from 16:9 ratio. iPad ratio: 1.33, A4 ratio: 1.41, wheras 16:9 is 1.77.
> Anything belongs to the front page by virtue of getting to it

I'm not sure I buy that argument. A simple counter-example is duplicate submissions. Yes that story may be front-page news, but that doesn't mean that each submission about it should be. There are probably some other trivial examples too, and personally I think that low-quality news is low-quality regardless of how many people vote for it.
They aren't really judgements on his life, and we aren't really interested in the story because of him. Lots of people here are interested in how startups succeed and they wonder what lessons they can take from it. I think you're right that people are looking at it in a bit of a simplistic way though.
It sounds to me like he's saying that the author of the "Illegal number" article has no grasp of the legal (or philosophical) issues involved, not that the author of the "What color are your bits?" article has no grasp of it.
Well, one potential problem with the mini is that while the for factor is excellent for reading, the low res screen is really going to work against that.
Not every post is for everyone. This just isn't Reddit. HN is HN for exactly the things you'd like to change about it. There's a lot of stuff that I find totally uninteresting showing up often too (anything about Haskell, someone is "doing it wrong", big site X is down but apparently it's not big enough for us to know about it on our own so someone has to post it here and we have to debate how everyone is "doing the cloud wrong" again) but I wouldn't change it for the world because that would fundamentally change the site itself.

There are certainly some kinds of posts that objectively just don't belong here, I'll grant that. But if you want filters then just go to Reddit.
The original poster is a mathematician, not a programmer.
Actually, no. Obviously I don't know where you're from, but I'd assume it's not the UK.

Most employee rights come into effect immediately. After one month, you earn the right to one weeks notice, and pay if you are suspended from work for medical reasons, or if you're laid off.

After that, the only extra benefits you get are after 1 year, you can claim unfair dismissal. After 2 years, you can claim redundancy pay.

If you are from the UK, here's some help from the Citizens Advice Bureau.

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/work_e/work_rights_at_...
Could Dropbox really have better engineers than the Google Drive team?

Or could this be one of those examples of specialization - i.e. because the entire company at Dropbox is focused on just this one problem - so they are better at it, whereas the Google Drive team is just a small team within Google.

As a result Dropbox has more resources at their disposal to make a better product?

If that is the case, this could be the quintessential case study on why startups shouldn't fear large incumbents. Not only are large companies bureacratic, but more often than not they will have institutionalized inertia that prevents them from dedicating the resources to take you on - until it's too late.
Going back to Dropbox from Google Drive
Inexpensive Medical Health Plans Online
Unless you are paying market rates you are asking a developer to be an investor in your startup and you should treat them as such with a full pitch including the likely returns, risks and proper business plan.

Also a CFO wouldn't be in the top 5 priority roles for most start ups what are you going to bring in the early stages? Sales, marketing, contacts, domain knowledge, significant cash? There may be other things you can bring but you should have an answer.