skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If I had to take a stab in the dark, I'm picturing your target audience being someone who owns and manages their condo (not the individual tenants) or a number of condos.

If I had to further guess, these probably aren't the kinds of people who are very technologically savvy, and thus are very unlikely to find your service (even through google awords), let alone realize the potential and why they'd need it.

You say you had a startup before where you physically got in touch with potential customers... this may be the case for another approach like that.

You might consider setting up a demo where you show them an example of a "Condo" already running in your system, the benefits, etc etc, then show them how to get set up on their own. In other words, show them why they'd want to sign up, then show them how easy to get going it is.

But you might still be a step before that process, if you feel you need to improve the app a bit (which is something you'll always need to focus on, anyways). Maybe try reaching out to some people who own / manage condos in your area, explain the service, and offer them a free trial. Draw up some promotional material to give to their tenants, explaining how this will help them get things done, meet neighbors, etc etc, to help those people get going with the system, and then keep a constant and frequent feedback loop with all of them.

Best of luck!
I used to work for Sony in TV Product Planning and the Business Development for TV platforms in Europe.

> Why is nobody attacking this space with any gusto? Boxee, Roku, Apple TV, Google TV, YouView, Windows MCE and various no-hope proprietary platforms (Samsung - you'll never build a platform anyone wants to build on. Please give up).

It is hard. Smart isn't what people really want from TVs. They want content (games may be a exception but games consoles have that mostly covered for now). The interaction is too indirect (opposite of touchscreen) and the TV screen is shared with everyone in the room making even less suitable for interaction.

To be an interesting content platform you need real scale so Samsung should be interesting as they probably sell 20-30% (haven't been following recently) of TVs globally. If you have compelling content it makes massive sense if you have a working revenue model. If you don't have strong content I wouldn't both.

> Will someone sort this out? We need a decent open Smart TV ecosystem.

No we need (fairly) dumb TVs able to play various sorts of local and internet content streams with standardised interfaces allowing content selection on tablet devices. DLNA/UPNP has the local network side quite well covered but the TV companies fed up of their zero margin business are trying to get some revenue on the content side and it a complex massive job getting good local content available globally.
Our banks all work the same. The settled transactions list you're talking about does not update "within a few moments" as the comment I was replying to said, if a charge was even made.

The fastest your bank could possibly show a charge I make to it right now is tomorrow. Most will take longer than that. If it's near a weekend, it could take 3 or more calendar days. The authorization can show up immediately, the charge cannot.

Authorizations happen in real-time over the card networks. Settlements, where the charges get recorded and the funds actually move, happen in daily batches (or even less often).

In the meantime, customers assume they have paid for something, because they see it in the pending charges or holds list, whether funds were captured or not. Again, refer to previous comments on why that makes authorizing cards for the full amount of preorders problematic.
In financial context, million is often abbreviated MM. It comes from the French word for thousand, mille.

A million is a thousand thousand, or MM.
On one hand I agree. Frivolous lawsuits mostly have a large positive impact on the litigators and only rarely benefit the plaintif. On the other hand there's something to be said about protecting the privacy and preventing harassment via sms. There are few things and mediums as sacred as those these days.
"This isn't wisdom. It's mere cynicism that's trying to pass itself off as wisdom."

Not to mention a blatant strawman argument.

The author never even bothers to defend his argument against the obvious counterargument that perhaps the same kind of politicians, and the same kind of political thinking, that has failed to solve (or outright caused) so many major national problems is perhaps not worth trusting to solve them in the future, and that maybe a more pragmatic approach is needed.

From reading through some of his other pieces, I'm fairly certain that he doesn't know his subject well here. Does he seriously think that engineers think in binary and idolize Mr. Spock?
Yes, agreed. Or also just a lot more pepperoni to spice up those garbarge pizzas.
It's not a subtle error, and it's not peripheral to the argument either.

The entire middle third of the comment is the standard engineer's fallacy that because the laws of physics are absolute and not relative, people's values should be also, and all conflict could be avoided if people were just rational. The main evidence offered is this aside about "science" "proving" the non-existence of god, so its fallaciousness is highly relevant. (There's also the fun of pointing out a fallacious and therefore irrational arugment in support of being rational, I'll admit it.)

Every college student in a technical major who has to take a humanities class for general ed goes through this phase, it's understandable. But it's just as important to grow up and leave it. Values are not rational, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore them.
This is just flame war. Obviously using the right job for the right problem makes sense. There is no silver bullet.
M => a thousand, as in Roman numerals.

MM => a thousand thousands, i.e. a million.

Commonly used in accounting and finance.
Starting at the end and working your way towards the beginning, you can save a lot of time:

> Bottom line: For folks like the Joneses who live in high-tax, high-cost areas, who save for retirement and college, pay for child care to enable two incomes, and pay higher prices for housing in top school districts, $250,000 does not a rich family make.

> Some of the expenses incurred by couples like the Joneses may seem lavish -- such as $5,000 on a housecleaner, a $1,200 annual dry cleaning tab and $4,000 on kids’ activities. But when both parents are working, it becomes nearly impossible to maintain the home, care for the kids and dress for their professional jobs without a big outlay.

Andddd, I stopped reading.
Just bought this on Amazon, looks great but I still prefer dead trees for tech books. Awesome that they've released it for free online though, very cool!

Amazon Link (no affiliate): http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0073523402/ref=mp_s_a_2?pi=SL7...
One of my pet peeves is how data stream rates are always represented in bits per seconds. It's extremely deceptive to people who don't know the difference between a bit and a byte. We shouldn't measure storage in bytes, but internet speeds in bits.
Their dirty laundry? It's a story we found on CNN. We're trying to let people know - both consumers and businesses - they are right ways of doing text marketing, and gave some bets practices on how to avoid the getting into trouble.

Maybe Papa John's won't change but a quarter billion sounds like a strong motivator to them and others.
I'd love to hear from someone who's been programming for 40 years too.

Until then, here's a jpg (http://i53.tinypic.com/2janfrd.jpg)

> "This is the computer industry as it used to be: people sharing ideas and solutions without the greed and grit with associated with today's corporate driven, litigation-laced, industry"

(Second column, near the bottom)

That was written over 20 years ago.
It seems as though the key differentiator is 'pure python'. For python environments, this is a huge bonus, as it makes it easy to install and support with existing tools.
Comcast Business Class pulled this little stunt around the same time as well.

But unlike Time Warner, they already had a vague statement in the contract saying they could change the fee charged for the cable modem at any time.

They seemed to not understand that regardless of whether it was in the contract, silently taking my continued paying of the bill (which most customers are on auto payment) as agreement to their new fees is a completely unethical way of doing business.

Real notification means calling me personally and letting me know; not just adding the fee to my bill and taking my automatic payment of it as acceptance.

If they would have given me a new modem, I could see the fee being justified. But I had already had their service for almost two years before they decided to start charging for it.

In fact, when I originally signed up, I was told that the reason the modem was free (and there was no monthly fee) is because I signed up for a contract.

Totally bollocks.
"useful functionality needed by most condos"

Try to make your tagline more specific by talking about this useful functionality. I understand that there could be many functionalities but the tagline should get me the visitor on your page interested if I own/rent/live in a condo. So what could do say to get my interest ?
Gilbert Strang's lectures are indeed very good. I've got a textbook on Linear Algebra written by him as well which is very good too.

As I said, reviewing material will probably lead to insights you haven't had before. If you've got spare time it's always a good idea to read a book on a topic like algorithms or a math book in order to get a deeper understanding, even if the book is just repeating things you already learned.
Nokia Maps is Here
That is correct. It appears that this comparison is a bit inconsistent. Also, there are client libs for javascript as well.
Email forthcoming :)
I have seen that before and I don't consider it particularly useful. #5 is self-referential and useless. Only one or two (#9 and maybe #7) of those help distinguish OOP style from anything else, and #9 is not very compelling.

When I see OO code, I mostly think about the bundling of code with the data it operates on, but that is basically a module. So maybe it should be called module-oriented programming?
> Unless you are doing programming language research, yes you can.

Yes, I do, but no, its still a problem. With my colleagues, they are even more strict about OOP experience. I'm sort of unusual in that I appreciate FP experience, or I actually demand it, as part of finding well rounded candidates (very difficult in China, to be sure).

You don't "transform" the egg chemically from an unbeaten to a beaten state. Instead, you beat it, and that well-known transformation happens as a side effect. Also, after you've beaten the egg, you don't have an unbeaten egg to reuse elsewhere in another operation. Finally, someone has to beat the egg, either yourself or your assistant, or a machine designed specifically for beating eggs. In this way, FP does not map to the way normal people think.
Not the test set in Rosetta Code.

The part of the test set that people have actually provided Mathematica solutions for. There is every reason to believe that people are more likely to provide Mathematica solutions for problems that Mathematica is likely to be good at.
I do live in a condo, we cannot launch in my country before we get the LLC fully operational. (Still waiting a permit)
Am I the only one that doesn't think this is a big deal?

I get cable through TWC, and it is far and away the worst ISP experience I've ever had.

However, equipment lease'ing seems like a completely legitimate practice; the 'backdoor' charges have always been clearly itemized on my bill (and explained up front), and were removed when I purchased my own cable modem without any hassle. Furthermore, if TWC bills ahead (its their practice here), that itemized bill should come with enough time to purchase your own and avoid the charges altogether.

If the charges arren't itemized, or if they force you to use their equipment, I can see a point. Is that the case?
$250MM - profits from pizza deals sold to mobile users
I haven't looked at the Rosetta code examples but I didn't expect the difference between Common Lisp and Clojure to be so pronounced.

I'm mainly a Common Lisp user, does anyone who has used both care to share an opinion?
NYT cybersecurity writer promotes taping up your webcam - don't do it.
Quora for iPhone 2.0
It's funny that you're linking to the HuffPo version of the AP story you found on CNN ;)

And there you go again. You must really dislike Papa John's or their CEO. Is it a political reason or a civil one?
> hideaway for a fleeing civilization

Larry Niven's Known Space books deal with this. They put a civilization of herbivorous creatures called Puppeteers on a group of sunless planets accelerating away from a catastrophe in the galactic center. One enjoyable aspect comes from the creatures' herd-like, risk-averse nature, a hold over from their distant past as prey animals. They dream of fleeing forever, enjoying a nomadic existence in the voids between galaxies.
All that I can tell you concretely is that when I read the headline, this is more or less what went through my head:

>"!?! ...something seems off, I better check the comments for quick clarification"

I then went to the comments, found (as the top comment) a clear clarification, and upvoted it.

Now, that initial "!?!", roughly described as a combination of apprehension and alarm, was not the product of hyper-literalism. Rather it was the product of the headline text and several fuzzy associations I have formed over the years, conscious and otherwise. A quick sampling of some of the prominent conscious associations, translated to english, could be "HN loves when Linus says crazy things", "Linus doesn't write code, he manages and merges.", and "News means something has changed".

Had I been less interested in the topic of "Linus says things", I would have left it at that and moved onto another article.

I think I would describe the notion "It cannot be deceptive because it is a quote and true" as the real hyper-literalism. Truth and deception are not mutually exclusive by any means.
"without reaching to them individually?"

Thank about this. How many people are really searching for "social networking for condo". Why is that so important for someone to google etc? People usually search for fun items or pain points. Social network for condo does not seem to be either one of them (to me at least).

I think you are undermining the importance of reaching out to prospective customers directly/individually. Web app or not, if you can talk to sample customers (may be start with your own condo community), you will get a decent idea.

Adwords might get you a few sign-ups if you are lucky especially in the beginning of your startup but honestly, just talk directly to your potential customers if you can.
When I signed up for my Comcast internet I looked at the cost of modem rental, and then looked at the price of a modem. If I use the modem for 1 month more than a year, I have paid less.

Easy proposition at that point.
>What if it got lost in the mail and never delivered? Is the reciever responsible for that?

What happens if a bill gets lost in the mail and never delivered?
While i'm fond of it, there is nothing like a proof that empiricism is right and everything else (even metaphysics) is wrong. That said, i also don't believe running a government is much different than organizing any other kind of hierarchy, be it of animals or machines, it's a sort of engineering. In that sense, the practice of turning everything to popularity/likability contests is at least baffling; yet there is nothing better than democracy, and people still believe in invisible hands, political or otherwise.
> Corporate programmers in OOP-land often never get the architectural experience of writing systems (starting with small ones) from scratch. Instead, they spend their 40 hours maintaining and tweaking large monoliths other people wrote, and this is a big part of why they never improve.

You just described my 'career', sir.
Mathematica is certainly a domain-specific language. Its domain is symbolic mathematics.

You may be unfamiliar with the term "DSL." It refers to a language designed for solving a specific computational task.

This was, in fact, the stated goal of Mathematica. DSL does not mean the language cannot solve other tasks, only that it was meant for solving a specific one.
super interesting. thanks.
"If you're not aiming for something a billion dollars or larger, why waste your time?" This sounds a lot like a show about sell-outs and brogrammers.
With elasticsearch, you are not able to change shard count after initial index creation. You are able to change replicas at any time.
Looks interesting.

Doing anything beyond a "give feedback" email link means a bunch of integration headaches for app developers.
No, I've been listening. It's just that nobody has been making any actual points besides 'stfu'. So thank you for bringing the discussion back to technicals.

Your point re: Intel peripherals is true today, but wasn't really true ten years ago. It's also a bit hard to talk about the Linux kernel today, as there is obviously a lot of money and other support such that every little piece is fully tended to by someone.

So my real question is why do the old drivers have to leave the tree or at least become perma deprecated? Is there that many breaking interface changes for which drivers cannot be mostly mechanically updated? I know this is a problem that the kernel devs managed just fine over the years (sure there's been individual broken drivers accompanying major changes, but there's a big difference between saying 'the latest kernel breaks your network card' and indefinitely unsupporting your entire computer.

Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong level of CM publishes (just the releases) and hence I'm out of touch on the actual status of "unsupported" workings on various devices.

And sheesh, the alleged entitlement is the same as with any open source project - I put my faith in the project and would like to continue doing so. I'm not asking for them to conjure up someone to magically do extra work to support my device, I'm asking why they don't change their process such that this extra work is unnecessary in the first place.
Looks like it was detected in the infrared. The article is a bit light on detail, but on the face of it it's an absolutely astonishing achievement to detect a planet-sized body with an earth-based optical telescope.
Why not reach them individually. You need feedback from them anyway. You probably shouldn't write a line of code without 5-10 users. Interview them offer them $25 gift cards whatever it takes to get inside there mind. What's there biggest pain? what software do they use now? what's wrong with it? what do they wish was automated? how do they spend most of their day?
They most prominent ones are depicted as social butterflies trying to use their connections to succeed. Who you know does matter, but it’s definitely not the focus in the disruptive environment of startups.

Maybe its just me, but I felt this show accurately depicts a large segment of SV startups, i.e., startups funded on the basis of founder connections rather than the merit of the underlying idea or execution (i.e., Color). It also accurately depicts the outright silliness of so many startup ideas (see...whatever the idea is behind the siblings' startup, plus the ones described in the second episode at the blonde's conference.)

Overall this show is an utter travesty and a complete misrepresentation of what the startup world is really like. It is to the startup world what porn is to real sex. It’s Hollywood’s misunderstanding of what the nerdy neighbors in Silicon Valley are doing.

The show is very representative of the experience of these particular individuals. They are all working in the startup world. Just because their experiences aren't his experiences doesn't make them any less real. Indeed, I've seen all of those "contrived" disagreements and drama take place in startups that weren't on TV. I've met people just like the siblings, just like that one girl who actually does some work, just like the gay programmer guy, and just like that Carsabi guy.

The sacrifices, risks, low profile, and 70+ hours workweeks of most actual startup founders are mocked and trivialized by a show that portrays a carefree world where you can easily make it if you’re connected enough and can pull the right strings. Where partying and looks come first, and where they are virtually never shown, you know, actually doing any hard work.

This pretty accurately describes my experiences with both SV and Silicon Beach (in Santa Monica).

The goal of this show is not to be educational. It is to be entertainment. It's not going to focus on, or even show the boring stuff.
I don't eat pizza (paleo diet) but I miss it. We have no problem with Papa John's as a whole but this practice is bad for the growing text marketing business we're a member of and working hard to keep clean and useful for everyone.

No politics, just business.
How  The Obama Campaign Was Run Like A Lean Startup
RIM’s Chief Is Confident of BlackBerry 10 Success
Ouya is just stock android plus APIs for the controllers and UI. It will probably support Android games with little or no modification.

As I understand it, the only departure from standard Android UIs is that there's a sort of in-game menu, and games may need to be modified to support that.
Dog Bed Banter
Ah, they just didn't design their UI libraries right? I hate this argument, because its easily proven true (someone just has to design a "right" library) and impossible to prove false (the "right" library could exist, it just hasn't been built yet).

The problem with Haskell, which isn't a problem in an impure FP like Clojure, is that you can't define objects at all (in the sense that objects completely encapsulate state). Yes, you can do a lot of nice combinator tricks, but these only work well for well understood problems, and so FP practitioners spend most of their time trying to understand problems very well so that they are amenable to their elegant abstractions. Whereas if I just use an OOP language (or a pragmatic FP language), I just solve the problem in a hacky way without needing to completely understand its essence (which, for me at least, only comes after I've solved the problem N times in N different ways!).

Closed classes suck, but not all OOP languages restrict you to closed classes. Scala does very well here, and traits are wonderfully expressive.
Looks like fun. I've heard game development (for an employer) is quite the sweatshop though. What are the employment prospects and expected salary for someone proficient in this software?

Also, wondering if there any competitive open source game engines to aide in learning.
Isn't the iPhone 5 leading most if not all of the popular benchmarks? Hell it's even got LTE which apparently isn't a big thing any more.

Apart from screen size that list of android phones are inferior to the iPhone and aren't we all told that its not how big it is but what you do with it?
Also, maybe you need to target your adwords keywords. remove the password. Offer something just to get their email.
But you don't get hard edges between pixels like you would with a digital projector. The image just gets gradually fuzzier.
Or this:

http://www.dolekemp96.org/agenda/issues/civil.htm

And today far too many people are salivating at the idea of gutting the Voting Rights Act.

On the other hand, one of the longest pages is on the drug war (in support of extending and intensifying it). It's hard to imagine a Republican making that a central plank in their platform, either.