skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
After reading the article and the comments, I'm having a bit of a "a-ha!" moment with the billing question (by week, why didn't I think of that).

I have been an independent technology consultant for 12 years now, with a variety clients (big and small) and I'd say "successful" over all. I generally follow all of the good advice principals mentioned in these comments (mostly think long term with a client, don't charge for the small stuff, make the client feel important, etc).

The one item that keeps coming up over and over is that I'm "independent". It's just me. I get hit by a bus and my clients are out of luck. Now I agree that generally speaking they don't want anyone else working on their projects, but at the same time they would really like some backup. This seems like a nearly impossible problem. I'm not interested in hiring anyone for the reasons mentioned here. Plus, acting alone doesn't appear to give me the ability to get the really big projects ($1M+). Clients aren't going to give "just me" a project of this scale, it wouldn't be good business sense.

So, I've been stuck with letting "IT consultancy firms" find me work on several occasions. They get to mark up my rate, often mix me with other techies, and basically get to sit back and collect money for something that I'm delivering. I'm the one at the client, building the relationship, looking for more work, etc. It's always bothered me that because I'm not a "firm", I don't appear to bill higher rates or win bigger projects. Honestly, it's just me delivering the work anyway. Hopefully this makes sense.

The only way I've come up with to reverse this course is to create a firm where I partner with follow IT consultants and we own the firm. Ownership, I think, is the key. If I work for an existing IT firm, I make a nice hourly rate but I have nothing to show for it at the end. Meanwhile, the firm's ownership, who often are not techies and do not have technology skills, gain everything at the end of the day. If the technology staff owns the firm, then that builds in all sorts of interesting incentives. Now the owners actually have a reason to refer other technology people to the firm, builds firm value. Clients see the combined value of the firm, thus hopefully opening the doors to bigger projects and better value. Plus, the "backup" problem is solved since clients understand that there is a team.

I haven't quite figured out how to get this off the ground (really just started thinking about it over the last couple of months), but it's interesting to me that other independent IT consultants haven't done this already. Or, maybe they have and there's some obvious reason why it doesn't work.
I've been curious about inDinero as well, but they don't seem to have a free trial option. I once signed up, but forgot about it, and now it won't even let me poke around the UI without enabling billing:

http://i.imgur.com/71poC.png

Any startup that wants to tackle this space should: 1) allow import of Quickbooks files, and 2) have a free option which allows you to import / type in numbers and run a simple report. Then, if you want more automation or detailed reports (e.g., for taxes) then you need to pay up.

Basically, I'm not going to pay up for something I can't test drive (for like a year), since both my accountant and I are already used to QuickBooks. To overcome my inertia, you have to blow my mind with your features and/or your pricing model.
I didn't saying anything of the sort. But you dismantled that straw man rather deftly! Well Done!

I was referring in particular to "Human Rights". There are a number of different ways to approach building a productive society. Human Rights are one approach, there are others. Both are rational.
http://widget00.mibbit.com/?settings=ba98b0e263309da29de2045...

That's the invite channel. Read up on your lore, first.
Please see Novus' official statement on nvd3 with an explanation, apology, and commitment to its permanent status as an open-source project. We know this was a shock and a major inconveniece, but we want to regain the community's trust and involvement. Please see the full statement at:

http://nvd3.org/statement.html
NVD3 is back
Please see Novus' official statement on nvd3 with an explanation, apology, and commitment to its permanent status as an open-source project. We know this was a shock and a major inconveniece, but we want to regain the community's trust and involvement. Please see the full statement at:

http://nvd3.org/statement.html
That's good to hear.

It definitely looks like you guys have modeled yourself after them. I have a couple more questions:

- Are your curriculums the same?

- Do you also give a percentage back if the student is hired?

- And do you have long-term plans to increase the class sizes?

Thanks. :)
There seem to be plenty of awful CEOs here, particularly among the generation who first sold companies during the .com boom.

For all the talk about how it's important to have a strong, engineering-centric founding team, there is a lot of money going into dubious startups here run by non-technical founders who seem to be just doing the CEO / "startup" thing more for the image, delegating as much as possible so they can leave early to cart their kids around and go to concerts with their buddies.

Obviously Nguyen sounds like a particularly atrocious example, but it doesn't surprise me at all that someone like him thrives in this environment.
I'm not really convinced of that. If your registrar folds or turns on you, it will be painful regardless of whether you also use their other services.

You're suggesting that it's somehow more likely that they will cause trouble on the registrar side of the business if you try to move away from those other services. Which may be true but should be more than compensated for by the fact that providers with a large offer of various services are also large enough not to care about you in particular.

Will OVH even notice that I stopped using 10 or 20 of their servers, have someone connect the dots, and put some sort of hold on my domain? I find it much less likely than a small (relatively to OVH) registrar operation simply folding.

What I would advocate instead is to use a really solid registrar for a high-value domain. For example, in Poland our national registry (NASK) for .pl also acts as a registrar. And while their prices are somewhat higher than the competition (~4x), it's as solid as you can get and I know people who keep their short, or otherwise cool, domains registered sometimes well in the nineties there for safety.
That's wrong; "Anon" didn't liked at all when a company tried to trademark elements related to the Anonymous branding.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/31/anonymous_french_fir...

I don't know what has happened after these threats.
That ship has sailed a long time ago. Pull-to-refresh, that-slide-out-navigation-from-the-left, fan-out-navigation, parallax scrolling, all are now common iOS UI tropes that originated nowhere near Apple.

Personally I hate that back button - it's huge, but that's a pretty minor gripe in the grand scheme of things. This UI is clean, functional, and its functionality is intuitive. Pretty decent win, all things considered.

Not to mention at the very core it doesn't stray very far from Apple's guidelines - it's very clearly built around the standard navigation stack, uses segmented buttons for radio choices, puts large oversized buttons towards the bottom of a flow for completion, defaults finishing actions to the right side of the screen, uses a minimally styled version of UIActionSheet...

I'm struggling to find anything here that hasn't been seen in a hojillion other iOS apps, or even functionally different than the "standard" iOS flow. But all I see is a fairly minimal, tasteful skin over the default elements.
Not Long before the ancient greeks though... Perhaps they were related? (i.e Alexander the Great)
My brother had just sent me this link while I was finishing up reading PG's essay: http://www.theuselessweb.com/. Coincidence?
I like this solution.
I think there are two failures here: (1) business failure, and (2) moral failure. Sometimes (1) is just out of our control, but (2) is fully within our control.

To me, moral failure is a bigger red flag in giving me signals about the individual.
Windows 8 Tablets for All Emirates Airlines Cabin Attendants
I really want someone to do [16] and report back.
I suspect there is no hyper loop. I wouldn't put it past Elon to use his reputation to spur people to think big about these kinds of problems.

It's worked, too. The ideas people have had, just trying to "figure out" what the hyperloop might be, are very interesting and diverse.
Entirely possible, although Moot.it has far more to lose than moot himself. I get the impression that Moot.it is playing with fire in order to stir up some free publicity. I personally don't think it's worth the risk.
On the more practical side, write down any idea you have no matter how crazy they sound or where you are (use your smartphone's Notes app). It will quickly become an habit and you'll soon find yourself with dozens of ideas. Eventually, the hard part will begin: choosing the right one.

Another good trick is to write down those ideas on your blog at a fixed interval. This has two side effects: it forces you to either execute on an idea or let it go and it gets you feedback from your visitors. Here's my most recent idea dump: http://syskall.com/some-crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-and-p...
Downloaded the app earlier today. The 'Sign up or sign in' with Facebook button does nothing. Does this happen for anybody else? If this is a reoccurring bug you should work to fix this ASAP.

iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.1
Admitting my own lack of personal experience, I apparently mixed up labor certification with the labor condition application (LCA). Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Labor_Condition_Appli...

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is responsible for ensuring that foreign workers do not displace or adversely affect wages or working conditions of US workers. For every H-1B petition filed with the USCIS, there must be included a Labor Condition Application (LCA) (not to be confused with the labor certification), certified by the U.S. Department of Labor. The LCA is designed to ensure that the wage offered to the non-immigrant worker meets or exceeds the "prevailing wage" in the area of employment. ("Immigration law has a number of highly technical terms that may not mean the same thing to the average reader." [32] last updated 2011 March 31, visited 2012 November 5) The LCA also contains an attestation section designed to prevent the program from being used to import foreign workers to break a strike or replace US citizen workers.

While an employer is not required to advertise the position before hiring an H-1B non-immigrant pursuant to the H-1B visa approval, the employer must notify the employee representative about the Labor Condition Application (LCA)—or if there is no such representation, the employer must publish the LCA at the workplace and the employer's office.[33][34] Under the regulations, LCAs are a matter of public record. Corporations hiring H-1B workers are required to make these records available to any member of the public who requests to look at them. Copies of the relevant records are also available from various web sites, including the Department of Labor.
Stem cell skin spray gun, Wolverine skin healing power in a bottle [video]
Most companies that own debt and those who collect for them will take a deep discount on a lot of the debt they purchase/collect. Individuals should be able to routinely settle debt for as low as 20 cents for every dollar they owe. This would be too expensive for Strike Debt to fund.
I was going to ask about new markets but he seems to cover it: live in the future?

Anyone else have other methods?
I'm not an MG hater. In fact I often agree with his general assessments. But good lord his writing style is horrid. I lost count of how many times he (overused) the parenthesis.

But, it's a blog post. If I want solid content I must force myself to expect a lower bar, particularly on TC.
IANAL, but...

The goal of DRM is to give you media without the rights granted by copyright law. So it really depends on the contract you have with your content provider. Wikipedia has a list of DMCA exemptions, circumstances under which you are allowed to break the DRM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac...

But other than that, you have no rights.

In the case of non-DRM'd content, your rights seem to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Courts have protected the right to time-shift live TV, but if you lose a CD it's probably illegal for your friend to make a copy of his and give it to you. Some courts have also decided that because your OS's VM layer pages a binary from disk to main memory, creating a copy, to execute software, you aren't allowed to use software without accepting its EULA (which grants you the right to copy the software into memory to execute). Other courts, however, have held the opposite.

Again, Wikipedia has a list of relevant cases that you can read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EULA#Enforceability_of_EULAs_in...

(Especially notable is the line, "Recently, publishers have begun to encrypt their software packages to make it impossible for a user to install the software without either agreeing to the license agreement or violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.")

The reality is that nobody really knows. The safest route seems to be treating the loss of copyrighted content like any other customer service issue. Call the company that sold you the content and ask for a refund.
Choose something many people like a little vs Choose something few people like a lot.

Sounds like start with a niche. Which is great advice.

I like how in this essay pg managed to balance the idea of building something you really want (but may have a market size of 1) vs a problem that everyone has but is only a small itch-to-scratch problem

I ran and failed a number of startups for a number of reasons, and I think this essay resonated the most with me as the idea fountain never stops. Choosing the ideas were in fact the difficult parts, and I know a few months down the track, I'd be reading it again.
Paul's good people, likewise Doug. I heard Lisa Atkins on a panel say that L and O reinterpretations to be more startup-friendly were coming, but I haven't seen anything concrete or public—and that was at the July conference at the Institute for Peace in DC. When was the GAN conference?

Can you point me to anything?
Aside from the fact that all DRM is dirty and should be fought wherever it is found, I never suggested that the author should not attempt a diplomatic solution first.
Twitter was built so people would be able to blog via SMS. That was the idea; that was the problem they were setting out to solve. That's not what made them big.

They inadvertently solved the need of microblogging. No need to maintain blogs; no need to write long posts. Just a simple, short way to keep people informed with what you are doing. But that's not what made them big either.

What made them big is celebrities took to it and used it as their main form of communication with their fans. That's why I made an account a few years back and I'd venture to say over half of the active users did the exact same. Twitter has since evolved past that, at least for me, but it was definitely the initial reason for the boom. Would they have been successful without that? Probably not.

So is Twitter a good idea? I don't know. I really don't know.
Would this possibly be using a railgun to initiate takeoff speed (reducing fuel a lot) and then some for a plane that then obtains very high speed in very high orbits to then be able to land and use existing airports.

This is only logical given the prospect to use a railgun type launcher to eliminate booster rockets or reduce fuel for space flight. So would marry in with other avenues of research and as such be less of a risk and Musk don't like risk.

This at least would fit the criteria, maybe with the initial speed a form of electric powered plane, maybe Musk and Dyson could get together and invent a good electric jet engine (yes probably be ion based but still).
Google wants to take on Apple with an open AirPlay alternative
Ah I see - I misunderstood your post then.

FWIW, I still disagree with pictograms replacing labels. I'm a fan of the idea conceptually, but in every instance I've seen it done it simply hasn't been intuitive enough for me to consider it a working solution.

Maybe someday someone will get it right - but I'm not holding my breath. Purely pictographic iconography is like the cold fusion of UI design.

Take Win8 for example, which I've been using for the past two weeks - the UI is very deliberately minimalist, and drops almost all labels from icons. This has proven to be very frustrating.

Some buttons are very self-evident and work - the back button in Metro apps, the WiFi icon, etc, have fairly self-evident functions.

Others (and there are many) are just terribly confusing, especially for novice users. In the Email app the "send" icon is completely non-obvious, and it's confusing in a situation that disallows trial and error (you just spent 10 minutes typing an email, do you really want to play a game of "wonder what this does"?)

So there are a tiny subset of functions where there exists a universal enough, and popular enough icon that the functionality would be recognizable. Apps, however, go well beyond the dead obvious and implement complex functionality that cannot be easily summarized in a pictograph - especially in a cross-cultural and cross-language way.

I just don't see this working, though I'm personally interested in seeing this pan out.
The requirements of the 1099-c, Forgiveness of Debt is for any amount forgiven over $600. The argument for not filing a 1099-c for amounts over 600.00 is that one is not likely to know how much principle was forgiven. This is an important part of the code for the 1099-c. Believe it or not. Most Credit Issuers do not know the answer to that question. Lastly, how would the IRS know that a debt was forgiven? These transactions of buying debt are not reported to the IRS. I have been buying debt for 11 years and wrote a book on the subject.
Anecdotal, but: I can be noisy as a consequence of having a train of thought. Sometimes, for certain types of problem, I think best while talking out loud, waving my arms, and diagramming on a whiteboard. Not a quiet process but definitely underpinned by a train of thought.
Randall - @stevebaron here - our paths have crossed about a millon times & 2 of our stations use your product, but you are most certainly welcome to give them a discount. :)
Or monads in Haskell.
The Ugly Numbers Behind The Viggle-GetGlue Merger
I know you're making a joke, but can we please avoid demeaning references to animals like this? I understand everyone isn't bothered by the fact they there aren't "people like them" as positive role models in the community, but it sure is something that makes me uncomfortable.

And to see my distress about it casually written off makes me feel like shit.
Most ad companies restrict their users to having either banner ads (only an image) or text ads (only ascii).

How can either an image or text cause malware by itself?
Over 1 Million Apps Have Been Submitted to iOS App Store
> But for the initial trip, whereby he proves his company and technology? Surely not.

So far, he hasn't even proven an ability to do that in earth orbit without taxpayer money: SpaceX is almost entirely funded by government contracts. Wouldn't you want to see them prove financial independence there first, before speculating on whether they can get to Mars without taxpayer money? It might be possible, but so far the evidence for SpaceX being a viable concern purely on private-sector funding is weak imo.
I think you're right, and I think it's all about culture.

In the west, there's the aspiration of the self-made man. Western culture values individual freedom, personal satisfaction and people who get rich in no time.

In Japan, they value hard work and communal values come before the individual's. So it's more desirable to join a large organization or work on the public sector, and work until you retire.
Sometimes your family & friends are already spread all over the globe, and you can't live near more than one or two of them at best.

Sometimes the city you're living in is a haunted place for you already -- after a severe personal loss, attack, stalker, etc..

Sometimes you suddenly find yourself with few close connections where you currently live (prime example: finishing grad school), and you have the opportunity to stretch your boundaries by not simply moving back to your hometown (or even home country).

Or you may just have "itchy feet" syndrome, and you start getting pretty unpleasant to be around if you're stuck in one town for more than a few years, seeing the same people around.

I'm married and we have two kids; each of us was born in a different country. I didn't leave the US initially for lack of people who liked my wife & I; to the contrary, the support of our friends was quite necessary because it was not always easy, initially. But it gets easier; and making human connections in a few disparate environments is enlightening, to say the least.
When people mention that they don't find generics necessary, they should mention the type of work they do. For someone building an application, I can believe that one can do without generics, and still get a good application out. However, for someone writing a library, I think that their absence will be much more noticeable.
> The problem here is that "his" name is also a common verb in the English language that means "to raise something for discussion"

Common? Please can you point to any online usage of the word in that way?

I know lots of people use it to mean "no longer relevant".

> 2. N. Amer. (orig. Law). Of a case, issue, etc.: having no practical significance or relevance; abstract, academic. Now the usual sense in North America.
They have "respectfully suggested" because there is no infringing use to sue over yet, and they likely prefer that the startup change it's name to a drawn out legal battle - it's better for both parties.

There is quite a strong case I think. Moot is the online brand of a person who runs one of the most popular forums on the internet. Starting a forum service with his name is quite clearly in a grey area if not outright infringement.
And yet somehow you couldn't resist playing along...
I remember Evan Koslow talked about this idea back in 2010. It was a pretty interesting lecture[1].

[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
Yes, this is a known bug for a certain set of users (iOS 6+ with logged in Facebook credentials in Settings app) - we have shipped a fix today already. For now the only workaround is to use the "sign in/up with email" flow.
Platform clouds generating more noise than cash
Another thing that can be annoying about HSAs is that they also have account closure fees. If you're going to shut down your HSA, make sure you drain it to $0 before you call to close it out. I lost $15 that way.
> So far, he hasn't even proven an ability to do that in earth orbit without taxpayer money

So far, no human has been put in orbit without taxpayer money, anywhere. That's the past, though. It would be silly to suggest that because that's the way things used to be, that things will always be that way. Or else, everyone could make that argument about every endeavour by every company, and you'd be stuck in an argument that ONLY governments will ever be able to put humans into orbit. And of course that's nonsense.

> SpaceX is almost entirely dependent on government contracts.

False. Wouldn't you want to see their launch manifest first, before speculating on where their money comes from?

http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php