skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey! I just checked out your profile... I ran across your 30x500 site a while back. Looks really cool. Keep up the good work.

After selling my last company, I'm back looking to create another business in the same vein as what you guys teach people to create.
Yah. Obviously I was mistaken. But your points exactly
How does/did Myspace compare?
Anatomy of a Startup Video
"So what? Where's the value?"

What's the value in art?

Sure, from the above it sounds like you think it's silly to call this art, you certainly don't like it. But it's a small piece written by someone for a single purpose, to illicit an emotional response. Whether you consider it good or not it certainly doesn't mean it's not art.

And in the end I'm sure plenty of people identified with it and responded in the way the author intended. No, it doesn't provide any major insight but it probably provided some value to some people. And just because it didn't for you doesn't justify knocking it down as worthless, at least that's how I've come to view any art I don't necessarily enjoy.

So what? I enjoyed reading it, that's what.
Because the thing being talked about in there never went before anyone in Congress. If you read the article, it reports on what three people said Sen. Leahy was discussing. The official word from the Senator is that he would not support such measures.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552687-38/leahy-scuttles...
$750,000 a day and he can't keep his blog up.
I have always wondered why javascript date pickers were always over complicated for the job.

https://github.com/listenrightmeow/daterange

Under 5k/100 lines uncompressed. You can easily modify above to work in a prototype fashion without a library. Unfortunately I was lazy when I wrote it and used ender/jquery for selector support.
I've experienced my own version of this once before, where I lost a girlfriend (and distanced myself from friends and family) but ultimately it didn't work out.

My advice is to remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint. Unless you nurture and protect the important relationships around you you will burn out and the recovery from failure if it comes will be that much longer. If you are 22 or 23 a girlfriend may be less important, but remember to invest time in seeing your friends (non-company!) and family. Prioritize time as a concrete thing that will keep you refreshed and energized over the long haul.
While it isn't me now -- I learned this lesson while I was still working in other people's startups, before actually building my own -- this kind of heads-down, work is life, look up at the end and realize "wow, what was I thinking" is very familiar. I suspect a lot of people here have gone through the period of compulsive overwork that comes after learning skills but before gaining perspective.
For me personal debt came simply because I wanted the startup to succeed. Doing whatever it takes was simply taken for granted (by me). Oh, money is needed? Sure, I'll just take out a loan I'm betting my life on this startup, what could possibly go wrong if I bet a tiny bit more?

The personal relatinoship part ... what personal relationship part? I had a serious girlfriend that I got to see one hour a week or less. And even then I was so distracted by the mountain of worry and stress from the startup that I barely even noticed she was there.

It took a year or two to properly bounce back from all that. But I think all in all I'm a better bloke for it. Much more able to make sure things happen in such a way they don't cause too much stress.

Actually, the biggest lesson was that working too much produces more extra work than it solves. These days I take plenty of breaks. I also make sure I stop working the moment I don't feel at 100% anymore ... people aren't paying me to work when I'm tired.
A little off topic, but forms are a big PITA using Flask and extensions, too. Forms are definitely not a solved problem in the python world.
I believe I made a huge mistake in my calendar rendering code. Hoping it's fixed now. Sorry for freezing!
The only Lotus product I remember with affection is Agenda - which is still the best PIM I've ever used. I never understood why they stopped development on it, and I've never understood why someone hasn't developed a functional equivalent.
Why am I not able to pick today's date? (November 20, 2012)
The folks at Sybase appreciate your complements.
Really? I'm sorry, but this just struck a nerve.

You feel safe hiding behind the theoretical/practical integrity of a cryptographic library? I'm almost tempted to link the requisite XKCD cartoon.

I think ensuring private communication for all people, regardless of technical means of ensuring secret communication serves us all, including those, like you, who feel safe with their already existing measures.

If a precedent is set that allows a government the power and right to spy indiscriminately everyone's privacy is dimished including those who are avid PGP users.

Besides, once that step is taken the next logical conclusion is to simply demand you provide pass phrases and private keys for any encrypted communication as is the case in other countries [1].

Besides, information leaks by other means, which might be used to circumvent encryption. Man-in-the-middle attacks or simply targeting a weak end point in a communication stream. Colleagues might not be as adamant about security and their end of the communication might come under scrutiny. Besides, unless all electronic devices are electromagnetically shielded TEMPEST and other similar attacks are still possible. Once the door is open to monitoring or surveillance all bets are off as to how they accomplish this, and it might be through means that render current cryptographic libraries useless.

Even assuming a perfect means of ensuring a message is sent unseen, the patterns of communications themselves can yield a significant amount of information. Even if governments can't tell what the contents of a message the fact a communication existed (a carefully protected communication at that) might be used against people, never mind if they're to trace the communication or establish contact frequency.

It also reminds me of the mechanisms used look for errant behavior patterns. Targeting people that use only cash, don't have credit cards or those who simply fall outside of the established behavior patterns. Monitoring of everyone else's communications establishes sufficient data to single further target people and erode their privacy.

Target was able to determine when clients were pregnant by simply analyzing shopping patterns [2].

It also reminds me of how Germany dealt with the Baader Meinhof group, by screening for "seemingly mundane items as utility bills" to establish probable cause for detention or investigation. Once we're all under surveillance the government won't even need to read everything we write to further erode our privacy.

By fighting for better privacy protection for all I think we make our own private communications safer.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...

edit: grammar and expanding out a few ideas.
https://github.com/listenrightmeow/appointment
I havent read the bill.

However, the commentary, and the bill (perhaps) assumes that email resides on a providers server - that the end user does not control it.

How does the bill address warrantless access (or access of any kind) to email hosted on the users own mail server ?
You can't pay your employees with page views. Profits (or revenue, to be a bit more precise), on the other hand, are directly exchangeable for rent, food, payroll, keeping the lights on, and other such necessities.

The dollars a farmer uses to make payroll are fungible. It doesn't matter if they came from a stupid government subsidy or a sale at a farmer's market.
There's already a mechanism to push out every piece of content that you create to your fans: it's called email. (Also, RSS feeds on your website, blogs, etc.)

For better or for worse, Facebook is a place that a billion people go to, and they've decided to charge for access to that pipeline. The fact that they would do this has been widely known for years, since Facebook Beacon. People are on Facebook to see content from companies, friends, family, coworkers, classmates, etc... in that jumble, your band isn't going to get first-class placement for free.

If you don't want to get "monetized" by Facebook, don't tell your fans to "Like" you on Facebook, tell them to sign up for your mailing list. If you want the convenience and access that Facebook gives you, get ready to pay for it.
Note that one artist complaint, vocalized by David Lowery, is that Facebook has also made it extremely difficult for artists to maintain fan relationships outside of Facebook. The gravitational pull of Facebook and Youtube is so strong that independent artist websites are outcompeted by default by any fan activity on those sites. Facebook fan pages also tend to rank extremely well on Google SERPs.

So the artists are doubly screwed, first by not being able to maintain a direct fan relationship (which is what they need in order to exist outside of the label system) and secondly by being forced to play by Facebook Edgerank rules just to keep on their fan radar inside of Facebook.
That's true. But this shouldn't take away from these two facts:

1) iOS does ship with a collection of the latest versions of partner carrier profiles as of the ship-date of that iOS version, as you point out. So you can't try to do an end-run around the AT&T profile restrictions by, say, doing a complete restore of iOS on your phone, followed by activation of the phone using a SIM that isn't from a carrier partner in order to cause it to use the generic carrier profile (for example, T-Mobile U.S.), followed by SIM-swapping back to your AT&T SIM. The AT&T profile is lurking in there, ready to be consulted when you switch SIMs, on every iPhone.

2) This is still a proprietary Apple scheme for pushing APNs for carriers (carrier profiles are plists), and not some universal standard for doing carrier programming updates "over the air." Carriers can build and submit their carrier profiles to Apple, but Apple then centrally distributes the profile updates from their own servers. And AFAIK, if you're a carrier, Apple is not going to host a carrier profile for you unless you have some formal relationship with Apple (become a "supported" carrier).
>Is it the prevailing opinion in the startup community these days that building up personal debt and letting your relationships fail are worthwhile parts of starting a company, or is this, as I suspect, just a sad story about misaligned priorities?

Ultimately, whether or not it was "worth it" will always be decided based on the final outcome of the company coupled with a large dose of hindsight bias. A startup founder who sacrificed relationships to build a successful company will be recognized as having made the correct decision amidst the company of those who couldn't understand his/her vision.

A startup founder who fails having sacrificed relationships and friendships will be recognized as foolish and overly ambitious.

If you want a story that aspiring founders responded positively to: "How credit card arbitrage funded my first company."[1] fared pretty well on Reddit/HN when it was first written. From the comfort of success it's easy to judge one's decisions as the correct decisions. It's just as easy to condemn the same decisions made by a failed founder.

[1]http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-try-this-at-home-how-credit-c...
A free and open world depends on a free and open web
The game they built is the property of Digital Chocolate, so whether they're from that company or not, they're copying another company's game. The ethics of that are of course debatable.
The police require a warrant to search your computers already, and there's no 180-day rule to that.
I think people keep confusing "like" with "follow".

Just because I "like" Sierra Nevada beer doesn't mean I want updates from them, maybe I just wanted to like it because AirTime will then use those likes to link me up with someone else who likes Sierra Nevada beer. On the other hand if I follow Sierra Nevada on Twitter its because I want to see their every 140 character thought that they feel like sharing.

That being said I think he makes a good point about differentiating between brands, artists, non-profits and individuals. Perhaps they should just expand on "Subscribe", their version of "follow", so users have the choice.
> This isn't the best system, obviously, but it does work

There is no question the system works - it's the biggest most powerful such in the world, possibly in all of known history.

The question is for whom [1] it works - the answer may depress you.

[1] hint: someone in the know once said: "corporations are people, my friend"
I'm not sure whether it's helpful for your situation but the way I've seen this succeed in the past is to bring more people in while you're already there.

Big consulting firms do it, and do it badly, and get a bad reputation for it (but then keep getting hired back anyway), but if you do it well, it can work out fine.

My suggestions:

1) When you're on site somewhere keep an eye open for areas where one of your hired-guns could help solve a problem the client has.

2) Don't bring someone on just because it helps your company, only do it if you really believe it is in the client's interests.

3) Only bring in people you really trust, getting this wrong is deadly.

4) Be willing to make little or no money on it at first - this is primarily about marketing, not immediate income. But make it clear to the client that it's a special price and it may go up next time. Generally I find that the best angle is either to say "I think they can really provide value here, give them a trial and I can bring them in at 25% off their normal charge rate" or "Because you've been a great client, I can do a special deal this time, so you can see what else we have to offer".

5) Make sure you represent them as one of your people, not a freelancer. If they're good you want the client to come back to you and ask for them again, and not to think they can go direct.
We have a kegerator and frequently go out to local breweries for lunch.

No one gets "drunk" but it's a nice way to wind down the day.
Ask HN: Advice on a good workflow for web developer/designer
As a young student trying to make it in the world of web design/dev I feel I am missing a trick somewhere (as my blog post yesterday kind of touch on http://joshhornby.co.uk/blog/wireframing/) In my eyes wireframing isn't needed but after some feedback I have been told other wise. What is YOUR workflow? what apps can't you live with out? Do you design in photoshop then move over to code? Do you mock out each page with pen and paper then code? I seem to lack inspiration even though I seem to live on dribbble. I think this is due to my workflow, so please help a poor young web designer!
How is this better than the Bootstrap datepicker?
Crappy infrastructure != crappy code and web application design.

- No API for app reviews? Business decision.
- No API for app rankings? Business decision.
- No API for... you get my point.

If apple saw a reason to have these things, they'd have them. Blaming the WebObjects stack just _doesn't_ make sense.

bugreporter.apple.com? I'm with you, it needs to go the way of its 10 year old capsule buttons.
Thanks for responding! And I'll update my response to the backwards compatibility to say that I see the value in having a closed set of clients that you need to test for backwards compatibility.

That said, these are some of the things that I've done to help with backwards compatibility through only the serverside API:

* Track production requests and use them as test cases

* Build a large suite of test cases against the API

* Build the API in a statically typed language (yeah, I know, contentious, I love Rails but there's something about an externally facing API that makes me want to use a statically typed language).

* And then the ultimate -- build the API as an app that talks back to the business logic... essentially, it's your 'client library' but deployed on the server between the actual code and the client. Then, never change the part of it that faces the client, only the mappings on the the real business logic.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d...
That's somewhat dependent on the scope of the 'relationship' and the 'success'. Lose a good marriage with kids for a 5 million exit and plenty of people will say you made the wrong choice. Lose a girlfriend in the same situation and you may be the only one to regret it.
Tales from the Net, June 5th 1997 (This American Life)
chatroulette - nudity == ocean - water, no? Wasn't that more or less the entire point?
Certainly, but that doesn't have terribly much to do with what you can say about the population at large.
cool gem!
This isn't about anyone's mistakes, it's about the emotional scenery surrounding some generic failure. What is there to learn? That completely devoting one's self to a single project requires sacrifice? That betting your emotional life on that project means, uh, risking your emotional life? If the point of this is to remind me that catastrophic failure is catastrophic then it can easily be edited to a single sentence.

Your latter argument just doesn't make any sense. The fact that I haven't happened to read and respond similarly to a banal description of how it feels to succeed isn't evidence of anything.
The Genius in the Classroom
It's quite easy to wind up putting personal finances into a company. The feeling is of being "right on the verge" and just needing enough cash to make it until that big deal goes through. It could even be as simple as founders not taking a salary and burning through their own savings on living expenses.

As far as abandoning all of your other relationships, though, I think that is entirely avoidable.
I see no reason to use this instead of defunkt's excellent gist gem[1]. Yours requires you to pass a file (or files) in, but sometimes you just want to paste whats on your clipboard or the output of a command. gist handles that.

[1] https://github.com/defunkt/gist
Very true. Or even just: "A combination of chemicals".

What I also find remarkable is how much actual research in biotech is done with public money.
And how much big pharma spends on marketing, as opposed to actual research.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/pharmaceutical-comp...

I think India's take on pharma products is enlightening. The pharma industry has managed to effect some self-serving changes in India's patent laws. However, as we speak the Supreme Court of India is hearing a case of particular interest.

http://theconversation.edu.au/david-and-goliath-novartis-cha...
If you are going to offer something you claim to be better, it should be better. I did a "git clone" and opened the example:

* The example looks unappealing. Not styled, not bound to a text field.

* It's not clear to my why clicking twice in a row produces a range — should this not be accomplished through mouse dragging or similar?

* If I select an end date that precedes the start date, it shows an alert box, which apparently is hardwired into the library. Not only does this make it impossible to translate the widget into multiple languages, but it's really not the task of the library to handle the error like this (an "onInvalidRange" or similar should be provided for the app to plug in).

* Month name is hardwired, no translation possible.

* No week numbers.

* No highlighting of today, holidays, or indeed of the selected range.

* No way to plug in custom dates that should be highlighted (for example, "booked" dates).

In other words, this is incomplete. I can't speak for most people, but it's useless to me. Sure, I could take your code and extend it to fit my app, but I could just as easily write it from scratch -- which defeats the point of reusability.

Sorry if this comes across a bit harsh, but you did open yourself to criticism:

> I have always wondered why javascript date pickers were always over complicated for the job.

Frankly, I suspect you have underestimated the job. :-)
My favorite Lotus program was the revolutionary Improv <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv>. I'm sad that its user interface didn't catch on, although some parts of it are available in things like pivot tables (albeit clunkier to use in my opinion).
Sorry, server got overloaded but they are working on it!
It's still happening. Now (unlike before) it does show the widgets, but Chrome goes up to 100% CPU and nothing happens when I click the widgets.
For the people start a startup then it has to be worth it, because you're putting everything on the line. To him the relationship obviously wasn't as important as the startup's success. And if it got in the way? It had to go. With startups, there are only binary outcomes: wild success or abysmal failure. If you're betting everything on wild success, then sometimes you have to make those choices.

(I'm using startup in the sense of "high-growth new business")
Haha, I'm not making $700,000 per day. Which is apparently very evident because I can't even keep my blog up.
There is no doubt it would add value. Just that it is expensive.

Something like Librato Metrics also adds value for me. One costs $2/month the other $150/month. Both roughly equivalent technically.
Skipping School
We're talking about two totally different kinds of problems.

You're talking about wire formats and structures that feel natural to use for particular kinds of calculations. I'm talking about recognizing properties that we might need a particular system to have (ease of use being only one of them), and ensuring them.

The line I quoted tells us exactly which problems (in the sense that I'm talking about) REST is suited for: the ones where those benefits are needed (and where the tradeoffs aren't to costly).
How To: Browse Your Entire Dropbox In Byword
7500,000 before Apples cut, and what about expenses? especially user acquisition.
The choice is literally "put food on the table" or submit to incredibly intrusive security.

No it's not. You can quit and get a new job. If you can't immediately find a new job, you will be on unemployment and food stamps. You will literally still have food on the table.

Edit: by quit I meant don't get on the plane, resulting in being fired
Why would you not like exchange? Do you like to wait a few before you get your emails or something?
Yeah that was what I thought when you mentioned iTunes, thanks.
The IRA were not religious radicals. You had a Protestant population whose loyalties lay with the government of the UK and a catholic one whose loyalties lay with the Irish Republic, but this was nothing more than a side effect of Britain adopting a different state religion several centureis ago. Nobody ever solicited or repeated IRA opinions on religious dogma, because they didn't have any. For that matter the IRA wasn't in the habit of bombing Protestant churches in Northern Ireland, but generally attacked military bases and police stations. One Catholic priest was directly involved with the IRA bombing campaign, but this was exceptional, out of hundreds of churches in the region.

The Taliban have a clear military objective too: remove the infidels and their supporters from the country that was formerly theirs.

They were stoning and beheading people and generally running Afghanistan as a medieval hellhole when they were in charge of the place without any miitary opposition, back in the 1990s.
Making Games with No Previous Experience - Part 1: Code
I was going to rant about django, but I think my issue is applicable to all wsgi applications. I develop APIs that often involve long polling as well as streaming, and while I can do this with most frameworks, the choice of the server in front can make or break my implementation.

This I've settled on tornado as my framework and server.
nice! it's a bit simpler than defunkt's gist gem, which I like. When I only want a snippet of code, I use the sublime gist package.