skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're coming across as a spoiled customer. An "if Steve Jobs were" statement, really? Sometimes I fail to understand why Apple consumers feel so entitled. I think it's more acceptable for less technically-inclined consumers to feel like Apple should be kissing their feet, but I expect that tech people (who read and submit to HN, at least) know better than to put quotation marks around Apple's Genius employees.

I mean, I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but you could've inflicted less pain on yourself by doing your own last-minute backup on the first indication that it was difficult to get a hold of Apple Support. I'm sure you have your reasons why you chose not to, but dude you waited two weeks. In that window, you could have backed up your drive so that you'd be free of worries when Apple finally comes around to replacing your hard drive!
Yea, finding a co-founder can be really hard! The team itself is a very important part of the startup (if not the most important). For instance, there are questions in the YC application form about that and they give it a lot of attention.

So I think it's crucial that your co-founder be someone you know fairly well or at least someone that you may become friends with. Try asking your friends if they have friends who are programmers!
Amazon sells content at relatively high margin. Google has a new content store they want to push. The profit from selling the hardware is only part of a consumer's financial relationship with these companies. I'd be far more worried for Samsung/Asus, which are entirely hardware based.
Interesting data. It looks like not much restoration work has been going on in Queens: 86449 offline to begin, and still 73599 offline. And they tell me my power is going to be out until the 9th...

Does the "coned" gem use some public API that ConEd has, or does it just scrape their web site?

Note: "burough" should be "borough".
I want to know how they were able to hide the camera that took the picture. I don't see any part of the arm with the camera, any difference in shadow, but I do see a warping effect on one of the wheels.
My problem with "e-voting" has never been the security aspect, but how easy it would be to manipulate. Given how even some elections can be, just getting that last 1% of votes (I know the American system is somewhat different, as you need mandates, not votes, but I'm talking generally) could tip it in your direction. With traditional voting, a person usually has to meet, in person, to vote. With "e-voting" you could easily forge tons of votes, even with actual people, just by social engineering and forging of documents.
OS rendered practically unusable?

No. Only Google services are rendered practically unusable. Actually, they are rendered completely unusable.

The OS on the other hand, remains perfectly and completely usable.
Isn't that already a concern with voting by mail?
Postpaid plans are the problem here. They're something of a tax upon people who can't do math if you have a subsidized phone; they're terrible if you bring your own phone.

If you bring your own phone, you want to be looking at the prepaid arrangements. AT&T has considerably cheaper prepaid plans than their postpaid plans (I think it was like $40 cheaper when I looked?). T-Mobile's prepaid plans are even cheaper; I pay $30/month for 100 voice minutes ($0.10/minute overage, which I've hit a couple times), unlimited data (speed-throttled at 5GB), and unlimited texts.

I paid $350 for my Galaxy Nexus and ditched my $90/month AT&T postpaid plan for the $30/month T-Mobile prepaid plan, and the delta in plan costs paid off the cost of the phone (over a carrier subsidy) in about four months.
Founder stock is owned by the founder subject to repurchase right.

A repurchase right is a legally different concept from vesting. Repurchase rights only apply to vested stock.

Stock actually owned by a shareholder is vested stock. Stock only owned upon the occurrence of certain conditions which have not yet occurred is "unvested" stock. Unvested stock is not yet owned by the shareholder, and the shareholder has no legal, voting, or other rights arising from such stock. Hence, the company does not need to purchase it from the shareholder if the shareholder leaves before the unvested stock has vested. Thus, the article is incorrect as to what vested stock is.

It is possible to have stock vesting, acceleration, and repurchase rights associated with a single grant of stock. Each of these is a separate legal concept and each has different consequences.
Very funny teacher joke
I found this really funny joke and I am sure you will like it. Read it and have fun.
So your saying that basically were in something like the cold war. And that our only hope is the realization of MAD?
You start with a line
Help on customer development survey.
Hello guys!

I'm validating an idea for a new web/mobile app. Can you help me by answering this survey?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEZXUkNCN2h4dUdlN3h0T2M3RFNKLWc6MQ#gid=0

Thanks!
"relates in any manner to non-consensual sex acts" Better not make a bad joke involving dropping the soap.

"is defamatory" Better not insult anyone.

"exposes trade secrets" Why?

"promotes illegal drugs" Better tell the white house petition site it's too offensive for rackspace.

This is a pretty overboard CYA script.
there's some speculation that LG is insependently planning to sell for much higher http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/11/03/spanish-phone-retail...

That sounds like Google is not just selling it at cost but subsidizing it as well.
Azure's Flat network storage and scalability targets
Not everyone can make luxury hardware.
Want to see who has viewed your Facebook profile? Take care..
It's interesting indeed. As of right now it looks like only Manhattan has seen drastic improvements. I hope you get your power back sooner than the 9th!

The coned gem (now https://github.com/ckundo/sandy) is craping data from the official Coned storm central site.

(Thanks, I fixed the typo. As a native Swedish speaker borough is one of those words that make no sense.)
I don't follow the logic here at all.
I disagree.

I did work for a startup that specifically showed un-biased news on a variety of pertinent topics from a variety of great sources.

Yet the videos that made the most money for them (advertising revenue) were the stupid shit you'd expect. Gossip, memes, sexual related content...

At the end of the day the most mainstream news stories/clips were far more lucrative than the topics a typical HNers/New Yorker reader might enjoy.
Does the "coned" gem use some public API that ConEd has, or does it just scrape their web site?

https://github.com/ckundo/coned/blob/master/lib/coned.rb#L12
http://apps.coned.com/stormcenter_external/stormcenter_externaldata/data/interval_generation_data/metadata.xml

Take a directory from here and use it here:

http://apps.coned.com//stormcenter_external/stormcenter_externaldata/data/interval_generation_data/2012_11_03_20_45_00/report.js

from: https://github.com/ckundo/sandy/blob/master/lib/sandy/provid...
Smartphones and religion now that's something new
thanks for your advices, really appreciate
Do you feel they are confusingly similar when used in context?

"I have my cellular service with ifone"
"I love my new iPhone"
"ifones service sucks"
"The iPhone sucks"

Even in the last two comparisons, conversationally, I don't see anyone being confused. Apples product is large enough it is a household name now. That helps disrupt that confusion. Conversely, were Apples product not well known, this would just go under the radar and no one would be confused either.

I understand legally you must protect you trademark, though in this case I'm seeing it as falling into the clause of "if those marks offer identical or similar offerings".

IANAL but doesn't one being a product and one being a service pretty much nullify the need to protect or defend the trademark on either side? That's how I'm seeing this one.

Now, were Apple to purchase a telco, that would change everything for me, even if they kept their new shiny telcos name as it previously existed.

I did read Apple started a new wireless research division. Perhaps one day we won't all be tethered to mandatory text messaging fees and bandwidth rates that are truly extortion in my opinion.
Doing User Authentication Right
AT&T doesn't give me a discount for bringing my own phone and Sprint/Verizon went with CDMA instead of GSM, thus the phone is carrier locked in to T-Mobile. I don't know what to make of this. May be magic should've been real - we would get a truly unlocked phone that can be used for free at highest speeds on any network in any part of the world :)
The camera is on the end of the arm at the bottom left in [1]. By comparing that to this picture you can see where part of the arm is in the self-portrait, above and to the left of the front-most wheel. The third-person perspective in the self-portrait comes about because the robot arm will always move out of the way of any photo that the camera is taking.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA15279_3rovers-stand_D20...
buzzme.in
Because they have a clear Republican tilt.
This wasn't a Sun E450 was it? We had one (of a "matched" pair) that was "haunted" as well. Drives died, Sun replaced drives. Drives died again. Sun replaced SCSI controller and drives. Drives died again. Sun replaced motherboard, SCSI controller, memory, and drives. Drives died again, and we make the (at the time) scary move to Pentium III app servers, which were inexpensive enough to triple up compared to SPARC, but even better, drives didn't die.

We swapped out the E450s for 440s for Oracle when we moved to InterNAP, and all seemed to be well.

Hearing your story, I wouldn't be surprised if we had just enough/wrong vibration in the case to make it go Tacoma Narrows on us.
Another good thing about learning UNIX (or using Linux) is the ability to write code snippets that could automate daily chores (you can do in Windows too, but I am not going to speak about it here).

Some of the code I enjoyed writing and using is, code to remember directory paths I visited (I visit lot of them, and it is a pain to type lengthy ones). A wrapper for "ssh" to remember hosts and list them (again I had to visit bunch of them daily, and pain to type fully qualified host names), just like PuTTy-saved sessions.

These tools really boost the productivity and joy to use.
Why Facebook is Starting to Suck
Thats just the thing we need to keep the roads safe. Police looking through cell phone video of people going 15mph over the speed limit in modern vehicles that can easily safely go much faster. Ohhhh hackernews.
A friend of mine once wrote a little script that benchmarked a free Heroku app and to our surprise it handled a shitload amount of requests per second (at 1000 requests it was still going but the server thought it was a DDoS attack and cut us off).
Don't forget Engadget to that list, as today's editorial (posted earlier) shows.
>And this idea that governments couldn't control Bitcoin is just laughable. They could get into the mining business and distort the currency beyond repair. They could setup Bitcoin->USD/JP/etc exchanges to track people. They could simply unite together and declare it illegal internationally. Plenty of things.

Getting into the mining business would only help bitcoin, by further securing the network. It certainly won't allow them to distort the currency, since the rate of coin generation is built into the protocol.

Setting up exchanges really wouldn't undermine anything, people just won't use them if they know they're being tracked by them.

Uniting together and declaring it illegal is their only option, but they will have trouble justifying why it should be illegal. And they will also have trouble enforcing it, short of shutting down the entire internet.

It really is a fascinating technology, and if you truly want an alternative way of securely sending money, I'd suggest doing more research on it.
See elsewhere in the thread [1] where I discussed this.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4738558
Across most of Argentina, gas stations have free wi-fi.

Such a great idea.
really? that's amazing! I'd love to see a formal proof of this.

edit: I suppose this counts as proof http://www.had2know.com/academics/cubic-through-4-points.htm..., but atm I don't remember why matrixes are connected with equations.
Show HN: An app that replaces the sign-in sheet at meetings
That's pretty much how it works in all of the EU zone, too.
The lack of chargeback risk is no doubt great for the merchant, but I wouldn't consider buying from such a place unless it had built up an extremely good reputation, not only for honesty in terms of shipping what I paid for, but also in resolving problems.

Credit cards give me a lot of protection and I wouldn't want to shop online without that.
how is that not a security aspect?
It's funny you say that: people like to say that about imaginary numbers, too...except for the "we need it psychologically" part.

The funny thing is, imaginary numbers are just as real as integers, and for those who take the time to study them, they are a powerful abstraction. And they are beautiful, too!

Now, I'm not going to say that private property is as beautiful as complex numbers, but I am going to say that we shouldn't just dismiss it as an "illegitimate" abstraction. Humans are social beings, and as such, we have dozens of useful abstractions: families, laws, religions, corporations, clubs, political parties, circles of friends, and so forth. All of these abstractions are as real as the integers, and they are legitimate for the same reasons: they allow us to organize ourselves to do things that would be difficult to individually.

Now that I think of it, it's psychological need that gives these various organizations legitimacy...and it is because of this psychological need, that private property becomes legitimate. After all, would any of us do what we do, if we can't count on society to protect the fruits of our labor--our paychecks, our homes, our clothing and food, and even our recreational things?

Having said that, this doesn't apply to so-called intellectual property: ideas flourish best when they can roam unfettered, and patents and copyrights interfere with that flow.

Also, how I wish someone would just dump a large sum of money in my lap, so I can just develop ideas freely! I don't have any desire to run a business, so I'd be happy if I could just develop things, and let others grab my "intellectual property" and run with it. (I could care less about what others do with my ideas, so long as I don't get locked out of my own work by some dubious patent or copyright issue.)
Yes. It is difficult to compete with companies who can sell devices at cost.

But as a consumer, I don't see why I should be unhappy about it.
Optimization of Business Ideas to Attract Investors
Anyone have any sugeestions on how to optimize a business idea to attract investors? Other than an opportunity to make money (which we all can understand), what do they look for? How do they decide what they are interested in, and what they are not?
Ask HN: What languages or tech should a freelancer learn for maximum ROI?
I started out about eight years ago programming in PHP/MySQL and I've been freelancing for the past six. Over the last couple years, I've moved first to iOS and lately added Rails to my arsenal. I feel really good about my current situation, and I'm charging about $150 / hr.

However, I doubt this will last and I'm thinking about a few years down the road and what I should be investing in learning right now. I'd like to maintain or continue to grow my hourly rate, and while I know there are Wordpress developers who can charge $250 / hr, they're the 1% of the 1%. There must be niches where $250 / hr is normal. What are they?

What technologies, platforms, languages, etc. do you see where the supply / demand curve is the furthest out of whack AND the demand side has $$ to spend?
He cites speeding as one of his examples, and I agree with you; but he presents other examples that are very valid, and I think his point stands.

Last night, I was driving with my girlfriend in SF, and we made a left turn onto the leftmost lane of a 3 lane street (19th Ave). Someone from the other side made a right turn onto the same street, but moved from the rightmost lane they were supposed to go in to the leftmost lane. (picture=1000 words: http://i.imgur.com/1cyok.jpg . We were the red arrow, they were the blue/gray arrow)

We came within centimeters of a collision for something really dumb because this guy wasn't paying attention/was a poor driver/etc.
It's currently tailored for large university club meetings, but can also be used in professional organizations and ad hoc meetings of any kind.

We want to eventually automate as many pesky "meeting processes" as possible, but we started with replacing the sign-in sheet and taking meeting votes. We built out a mass-name-badge-printing function too, but it's under construction.

We're not 100% sure how to market it yet--it's in "private beta" (we feel comfortable sharing it on HN for constructive criticism). Natebleker (the engineer) thinks he's going to cold-call universities and sell them app subscriptions, since they currently pay people to do this (student organization archive jobs).

Thanks for checking it out!
It's unclear whether you are failing to read the example, or whether you are using your own definition of fraud that you haven't shared.

Fraud requires intentional deception. My example is unequivocally NOT fraud, since the seller believes they are telling the truth.
There is plenty of fact checking being done by journalists, but it has shifted to "fact check" stories that are published separately.

This is in part because it takes longer to fact check things, but there is tremendous competitive pressure to be first with news. So the on-scene reporters report what was said in near-real-time, and then the fact check reporters look through and report on how true it was.
Not sure how it will apply, but in the US, by Federal law, the process for voting in any state cannot be changed any closer than 30 days before the election. The voter ID law in PA was in limbo a month before the election, and had to be deferred because the challenges couldn't be resolved by the early October deadline.

Regardless of how this is couched, I can see the potential for challenges.
Rihanna is nice enough to take a photo of herself smoking an illegal substance, post it on her own Twitter feed, and no action is taken by the police.

Double standard?
A Capitalist’s Dilemma, Whoever Wins the Election
Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites
I haven't paid for long distance calling since the 1990s. I think it's just people being lazy and choosing poor defaults.
First thing that came to mind for me was ... what about email spoofing or just a lot of unverified emails?
I use a playGo usb (playgo.us). It fills a similar niche as the Audioengine product mentioned in the OP's link. Not a ton of features on top of 24/96 streaming, but to it's credit, it just works when you plug it in.
It looks pretty reasonable to me... They don't want child porn and rape videos on their servers.

I honestly don't see the problem here.
That is a distinct improvement over the original article, yup.

Why not just use perlbrew to make a 5.14 available? http://perlbrew.pl/
Congrats to Dillon and the rest of the awesome members of the Dragonfly team, looking forward to testing the Postgres improvements. This is the most exciting BSD distribution at the moment for me!
Is this wants wrong with the startup culture? They create a great product, have 50 paying monthly customers, and because it is not a million dollar idea they shut it down.

Why not keep it running and collect the cash as a side project, I can't imagine this needed much maintenance, its just printing money, maybe not millions, but still real money, and I bet it would grow organically slowly over the years.
Or that, by agreeing to license their films for distribution to Netflix, every film company involved has agreed that they no longer retain ownership of those very files anymore?
Alternative vision : pessimists are good at sacrificing the future for perceived potential threats in the present.
David Brooks, David Frum, Bill Kristol. Not talk-show guys, 'cause I don't watch much TV.
Have you been to San Francisco? Nobody's getting arrested for that here. No double standard, some laws are enforced more than others. This is about property/violent crimes, not snitching on victimless crimes.
somebody tell the governor to read this:

"Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting". Aviel Rubin.

http://amzn.com/0767922107
Ohio Secretary of State installed suspicious software on voting machines
Looks fine to me. I would hope they would issue takedown requests rather than e.g just pullin the plug.
I'm open to any additional questions you guys might have; well for another hour or two at least.
The last 3 presidents have publicly admitted to that particular crime. So obviously...
But that good news, and goods news don't sell newspaper so it won't be broadcasted.

People want drama and suffering. Talk about a war instead and you'll get more listeners, and thus more money
It's not the fact that it's trivial that makes it not worth $10/month, it's that it's not that much better than having to tromp downstairs to let someone in. I wouldn't pay $120/year for that, I'd make the landlord provide something that worked (if I lived high off the ground) or just walk downstairs (if I was just on the 2nd floor or so).
Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

I think you make good points re: their strategies--but those strategies have some risks for those pursuing them, and the consumer tends to benefit either way.

If google can hurt apple's margins, the consumer wins. Meanwhile, if they can't, they just end up giving away a bunch of phones. And to my knowledge, no company has been able to maintain the kinds of gross margins Apple has without becoming a monopoly. The apple brand is a kind of monopoly, and patents add monopolistic properties to innovation. But no brand lasts forever, and the big players all have patents they can use against each other, somewhat damping their appeal with MAD

Meanwhile, on the privacy front, I suspect we'll see more push back on this in coming years. Better privacy laws are probably good for the consumer, but could be catastrophic to many companies that currently place huge theoretical value on their big data. If strong restrictions come into place on how you can and can't use that data, suddenly it's not quite as valuable as first thought.

So I'm generally optimistic that this is still the kind of competition that helps consumers.
Hey, would you be willing to be interviewed about this experience? Anonymously, if you like? I'm thinking about doing a book, and this would fit well into the sample chapter I'm writing right now.

If so, you can find contact details at http://williampietri.com/
Ask HN: Are there any Aussie expats living in the Bay Area that read HN?
I'm considering a move to San Francisco to pursue my dreams of working in the tech industry, and ultimately running a technology company. I was hoping to chat to a few Aussie expats who have done a similar move and would be able to shed some light on their experiences.

Are there any of you on Hacker News?

Edit: Sorry, I'm not sure if this is the correct way to do an Ask HN post.
Lightning connector to micro-USB adapter now available in the US
The USA has these things, don't they? They're just not popular options. BoostMobile, AT&T's "GoPhones", Verizon PrePaid, etc. You can either get a cheap phone, or bring your own phone, without a contract. Is it that different?
Anytime someone starts carrying a gun around and acting like a cop while being trained and uniformed as a cop, there's going to be problems, if you film them.