skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why do you think they are sitting on these piles of money rather than investing it? It's because of the incessant sabre-rattling from the left over the past six years about raising taxes and ramping up even more regulation. It has a chilling effect.
The enterprise market wil be a tougher nut to crack for startups for simple reasons :

1- Inelasticity of demand : Just look at windows, Word,...etc
many companies "waste" hundred of millions of $ in software that's loathed by their employees, yet they still force feed it in the name of standardization. The users don't get to vote on the products they use unlike their consumer mkt counterparts (with their wallets or attention.) so change is very very slow.

2- procurement process lack of transparency : Yup, it's still an old boys club out there & the company that gets a signature on the dotted line is not always the one with the best products. Relationships & brand name matter enormously, esp if you're a clueless CIO who's climbed to the top mostly on your corporate politicking talents.

I stil think that the best way to approach the enterprise market is to have an acqhire exit in mind. grow big enough to attract the attention of IBM, Oracle & Microsoft. (Yammer stands as a recent example, but IBM made dozens of acquisitions in the 100~500 Mil $ range.)
You have this picture of chinese medicine as doing voodoo activities such as the belief of taking certain herbs will cure diseases.

While that may be part of chinese medicine it is not all of it.

For example, when you break your arm, there are traditional chinese medicine techniques that work on the same principles of putting a cast on your arm.

Of course, now that we're in the 21st century, 2000 year old techniques for healing a broken arm may not be as effective, but it is wrong to simply declare all of chinese medicine to be "something that works with no underlying understanding".
Dreamworks Releases Software Used In 'Guardians'
"Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims."
Interesting.

1) does that give a path towards users providing their own *.deb bundles and thus being able to use their own choice in compiler versions?

2) part 1 is a bit important, I may be doing a lot of dev work against ghc head (or patched versions thereof) in the coming months (though not for another 2-4 months realistically), and unless i can a la carte plug in the ghc version I want, i may a well roll my own thing on top of jenkins and the like :)
Simply because there are some propositions that are unprovable in a consistent system with finite axioms. Having an algorithm that solves any proposition would be equivalent to having an algorithm that solves the halting problem.
I've used Vista until now, but I'm planning on buying a new stationary computer soon, and I'll probably buy Windows 8, mainly for the improved security features (but also the improved speed/boot time, file copy dialog, Reset & Refresh and File History). From what I hear, it's possibly to largely ignore the Metro interface, which is what I plan to do.

Would anyone who's used Windows 8 recommend me to buy Windows 7 instead?
Sixth option: Inman mobilizes his zombie hordes and obliterates all evidence that oatmeal studios ever existed...
It's very difficult to be "sitting on piles of money" in the way you imply unless you've literally perched yourself atop a chair constructed from stacks of US dollar bills.

When a millionaire earns an extra million dollars, he or she puts it somewhere - into stocks, or bonds, or other investments, and sometimes, rarely, keeps it in a bank account for years on end where it sits and earns no interest. With the exception of the bank account, all of these are capital re-investments that stimulate the economy in some way.
Pinterest, Instagram, Groupon, Zynga, and "in some cases billions of revenue"? Unless I'm looking in the wrong places, that is a factual error.

While getting hundreds of millions of users is great, it's not quite the same as getting to profitability. If you're using Zynga and Groupon as success stories, your business model might very well consist of, "looking for the next big fad and hoping to find a way to monetize before it fizzles".
They learnt it the hard way. Have a look at the first Siracusa's review of OS X
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2001/04/macos-x/

But I had to admit that compared to Apple, MS might not be introspective enough to improve Windows.
Hmm, if only such a thing already existed...

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

Although when anyone in my lowly tax bracket has to worry about it, it's pretty sad.
It goes back to really old case law as to "allowed" access to a computer system.

Basically if you see a url with /foo.html?user=1234 and you go, hmm lets switch the number to 1235 and see what happens. Basically that is outside of reasonable expectations to access a system. Or something like that, i'm not a lawyer but that is how I understand the case law works for now.
Sure, but each step was probably reached with the aid of intuition -- in other words, the mathematician suspected that it had to be true before they found the particular formal proof employed.

So long as the original intuition is actually correct, then any bug will probably be patchable. (Obviously there's no guarantee!)
Where did you get the idea that "the many billions raised for 'education' went entirely to shore up the teacher's bloated pensions and benefits fund?" (emphasis added)

As far as I'm aware, the majority of the money went to prevent spending cuts in education budgets, and the rest went into the general budget (http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/30/analysis.htm).

Hyperbole is not necessary to make your point.
Yes, but the OP's complaint was that they were still putting something on iOS App Store even though it's closed like Win 8.
Like many koans, I'm afraid it probably only makes sense to someone who already knows; I suspect it's completely meaningless to someone who hasn't already had a chunk of direct experience.
>For every dollar put to use, many more dollars are wasted due to incompetence or fraud. California's Proposition 30 was a wake-up call for me...

You needed a wake-up call after the shenanigans we've seen in Sacramento over the last decade? They won't even spend the extra money. They'll use it as leverage to issue bonds. Tax increases in California have become mere guarantees taxes will be raised yet further at some future date.
What you propose is feasible when labor flows as freely as capital across borders. It takes less paperwork and time to set up a bank account in a foreign bank and deposit funds into it than it does to start working in the same domicile as the foreign bank (unless one is talking about special cases like intra-EU or intra-NAFTA, and even intra-NAFTA is no picnic). If you have $0.5-1M or more to set up shop, it takes less paperwork and time to start a new business in a foreign domicile than it does to move your labor to the same domicile without the same level of capital (and in many locales, that level of capital garners you a PR card at the same time). At the moment there is asymmetric discrimination against labor mobility, and these calls for increased immigration-with-strings quotas from capital represent an even greater imbalance, hence where I suspect the "cheating the system" sentiment comes from. Cut all the strings, and your fair market value would tend to emerge.
>Government is the least efficient allocator of resources.

This is baseless dogma. Government may not always be the most efficient allocator, but it's not always the least efficient either. In cases of positive and negative externalities, the market does not allocate ideally.

We need to move past this dogma of "All government is bad government" so that we can separate the good from the bad. Good rules are helpful. Bad rules are harmful. When we have low expectations of our government, we will unsurprisingly have low outcomes.
Key quote from the article:

> Republicans are "trying to pretend they're pro-immigrant by this bill, knowing that it goes nowhere," said U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, the top Democrat on the House immigration subcommittee.

I run a visa-related site so I try to follow these things closely. There actually were 3 different candidates for such a STEM visa bill. Basically the republicans are trying to pass one that the senate is unlikely to accept at this point, hoping that efforts to muster up another bill following this will be exhausted. Failing that, they'll have passed a bill that satisfies their lobbyists.

Previously, Lamar smith tried to pass a different STEM visa bill that was failed under suspension, but was backed by Apple, HP, Intel, IBM, Oracle, etc.

We'll see how this goes.

I plan to do a writeup on this soon.
Perhaps I am mistaken however no one is calling anything dead, they are simply switching strategies. In my opinion B2B wins hands down when the product could be used equally by businesses and consumers at a minimum.

When I started VisiDraft a year and a half ago, my strategy was B2B because my clientele would be using the product for work. I could as easily have structured my plan to have a consumer facing application but based on what I encountered it was a no brainer.

Microsoft, Apple, HP, IBM all of these name makers started as B2B companies. Why? Several reasons. You only have to sell to a few people, making your traction and revenues immediately positive. In addition, it allows a much more intimate feedback loop for iterations when you actually work hand in hand with another business designing solutions for them. you are basically getting another partner with domain expertise - you don't get that with B2C. It allows you to grow without losing a huge chunk of your business - in my experience most companies don't want anything to do with owning a chunk of a start up.

I am quite confident that no one is saying that B2C is over, and in fact a good number of software developments don't fit into a B2B model. Where there is equal ability to face consumers or other businesses, I will always opt to the business.

The last thing I will say is: Businesses around the world are sitting on +2T in cash right now. VC's aren't anywhere close to that and they rely on consumers to go buy things, which is looking pretty flat currently at least in the US. Go where the money is.
Immigration policy in the US is ridiculous.

Why is this particular bill aimed at people with advanced degrees only? The majority of software engineers only have undergrad degrees and don't really need anything more than that. This is my case and I'm up for a wait of probably 3-4 years for an employer sponsored green card.

The green card lottery is an odd beast and frankly I think is my best bet of getting a green card (coming from a relatively low lottery program participant country of Australia).

In these issues someone always raises the "what about domestic workers?" argument, which takes one of two forms:

1. Immigrant workers are taking jobs that domestic workers could do or could be trained to do; and

2. The increase in supply is dampening the earning potential of those in the field.

(2) might well be true but this isn't a bad thing. Doctors in some countries are scarce because the de facto doctor's "union" seeks to constrain supply, raising the cost of health care. For example, by restricting the number of university places in medicine.

Or, in Australia, runaway capital projects have raised the cost of construction to absurdly high levels, particularly in Western Australia, such that you really can't build a house for less than $300,000 anymore. Higher construction costs raise the cost of everything. This (IMHO) could ultimately paralyze the economy.

As for (1), speaking just about software engineers, there is a worldwide shortage of competent software engineers. There are (IMHO) at least 10 times as many masquerading as software engineers. I am shocked when I see candidates with 10 years of experience who can't write a for loop in the language of their choice on a whiteboard.

Given a worldwide shortage, it's better to have as many of them as possible.

As for entrepreneurs, frankly I think states should have the right to collect a special tax (in addition to other taxes) for anyone who wants to come to the US and start their business. That tax is to cover infrastructure and government services that person uses. Let them stay on that as long as they're willing to pay and until such time as they can shift to an immigration category based on the size of their business (these categories already exist).

Also, let the spouses of H1B holders have a job. I'm an Australian and on an E3 visa (specifically for Australian professionals). One advantage of this is the E3D (spouse visa for an E3 holder) allows that spouse to work. Just FYI.
Entrepreneurs only work for human beings with money. Who works for those without?

It doesn't matter how inefficient government is. Government is the only entity that works for the disadvantaged.

Government is also the only entity capable of addressing collective problems.
Over 100 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami videos geolocated with more needing help
> I support President Obama’s proposal to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers. However, I prefer a cutoff point somewhat above $250,000 — maybe $500,000 or so.

Personally, I don't care if the wealthy pay higher taxes. In the recent election, 8/10 of the wealthiest counties in the US voted for President Obama, and his stance on tax rates was clear. If those voters are willing to pay higher taxes, I'm fine with that.

But what I really hate is the class warfare and populist messages driving fiscal policy. With the threshold at $250k, the tax hikes would still only bring in enough added revenue to cover 8 days of federal spending. And "fair share"? The top 5% pay 40% of the federal income taxes collected. In order to generate the kind of revenues that would make a significant impact on the deficit, taxes would have to go up across the board, which in turn would lead to an economic slow down.
“Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist.

The problem is not that the wealthy won't invest if they are taxed at higher rates. Its that they will have LESS to reinvest with after gains are taxed. Its strictly a matter of who you believe distributes resources more efficiently: the government or the people.
This is kind of true, but not quite right. If there's a flaw serious enough to be too hard to patch, it's likely that some problem would have come up later. That is, some serious contradiction would be reached, or something really weird would happen that yells "either this is really unexpected, or you have a problem earlier."

To stretch analogies:

It seems like you're analogy is saying:
My card pyramid is built, but now if I remove a card, it all falls down.

The more apt analogy is:
When you're building a structure, you might be off a little the first time you build it, but if the overarching design is sound it will still work out and you can fix it and try to be perfect again. If the overarching design is not sound, you won't be able to build it at all.

What I'm trying to say is, problems in the more bottom layers are very unlikely.
Yep. This happened to me. And having 15 years of 100% relevant industrial experience including being a company director made no difference to visa pool I was placed in...
> Government is the only entity that works for the interest of the disadvantaged.

oh rly? http://www.nps.gov/partnerships/fundraising_individuals_stat...
This response has become the standard (non sequitur) response to proposals for progressive taxation, but it doesn't engage at all with the argument being made.

The degree to which taxes are progressive doesn't determine the total tax collected, or the amount the government expends, it determines how that burden is applied to people. What we should really be comparing is: does an individual allocate their first $100,000 of income with any different efficiency than their second, third, or fifteenth $100k of income? If you give $1000 to a person who makes $50,000 a year, and $1000 to someone who makes $1,000,000 a year, who will allocate that money better? I think most of us would feel intuitively that the person making $50,000 would use it "better", but there's fair arguments to the contrary as well (including figuring out what "better" means). But only when you ask that question are you asking about progressive taxation, not just tax burden as a whole.
He also got his company sold to eBay at the age of 17 for $5 million.

Our Dani Fong here has a similar story -- dropped out of Princeton at the age of 17... where she was doing her doctorate.

I think the parents of these two need to come out and explain to us what exactly their parenting methods are.
you know what's chilly? the blade of the guillotine.

you can either share some of your money or lose all of it.
>Entrepreneurs are some of the most efficient allocators, because they are decision makers with a vested interest in the outcome.

Not if they're burning through someone else's money. Then it's as big a shitshow as government.
See: CentOS
I don't follow you.
It does not. I even specifically mentioned this in my OP. Yelp filters are busted because most of the hours posted on many establishments on Yelp are off basis in my experience. Some lack hours altogether.
oh Please. What a silly excuse. How about they've cut back on investing because they've been bitten twice in the span of one decade by two bubbles (one in housing, one in tech) & they figured out it's better to be more discriminating about capital allocation. simply stated when given a choice between wealth destruction & capital preservation, the latter is more desirable. Has it occurred to you that maybe, just maybe there aren't enough good enterprises to invest into. You're APPLE sitting on 125 Billion $ in cash, would buy Autonomy ?
That kind.
Nothing. As it says on the website you could even slap your own logo on it and resell the software under your own brand.
Oh right, investing in infrastructure == stimulus for the economy.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/201...
Mystery sighting spooks Indian Soldiers
> Anyone with a half rational brain should be alarmed by this statement.

> It is not that lifestyle changes are bad; they are good - they help a patient adapt to their new situation. But Traditional Chinese Medicine and Homeopathic Oncology are not treatments; they operate under fraudulent principles - they are, at best, Lifestyle interventions that claim to operate by exerting theraputic effects.

The placebo effect is huge, my friend, and AMA-approved medicine is not exempt from it. You do realize that the last four gruelling years of your life, and those years ahead, will make you believe that you can cure people right? And that belief is also held by most patients. So, even if you screw up or in fact have no idea what you are really doing, you get the benefit of the placebo effect in almost every patient that believes that you will cure them.

You are as much a witch doctor as the holistic practitioners. It is likely that in 100 years, doctors will say that the medicine that you are practicing now was incredibly misinformed- no, not because you didn't believe in "some kooks", but because of everything that is continuously just wrong because we don't have all of the answers.

BTW- are you really a med school student? You misspelled therapeutic.
If you think private charity works for the disadvantaged, you are confusing the customer with the product.
My dad died of it, and I'm not sure the treatment was worth it. He lived for a year instead of a few months, but surgery on your brain can change who you are. It changes your personality. He was unrecognizable for much of that year.
Nothing and the author is pretty clear about that. However the games seem to be free so getting the source would mean the author gets paid something. It also isn't clear if the game assets (art, sound etc) are covered by GPL/BSD or a different license.
Which, let's be honest, all worked out very well for the early investors.
I disagree with the idea of loyalty as a trait which makes people good leaders. It's what makes people good people.

You could easily change the examples provided and change 'leader' to 'employee' or 'team member', and the outcome would be the same.
Google Search For “Foolproof Suffocation” Found On Casey Anthony’s Computer
"some" in this case was Groupon & Zynga, not Pinterest or Instagram. while perhaps not the best cases of getting to sustainable profitability, nevertheless both Groupon & Zynga did phenomenally well in customer acquisition and revenue... what they have failed at is long-term retention.

regardless, the argument Fred seemed to be making was that distribution and customer acquisition is getting "harder"... this is not the case.
At taxable income nearing $40 MM in recent years, I'd say he's a decent candidate for speaking on income tax.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/warren-buffetts-inc...
"Entrepreneurs are some of the most efficient allocators, because they are decision makers with a vested interest in the outcome. This concept is so rare as to practically not exist in the public sector."

What a shitty, smug attitude to have towards the many very bright and motivated people who work in the public sector. They're not all perfect, but neither are all entrepreneurs. Not by a long shot.
When there is no free alternative to what you are doing, they'll still buy (in my case that was hosting).

Otherwise, your best bet for getting developers to buy things is to try and sell them stuff that would be boring for them to build. Most developers I know would find it very interesting to build something with machine learning or to re-architect a system several times over for scale. Not many of them would like to spend time building something better than textmate.

The problem with being a developer building for developers is that if you are interested in working on a problem your customer probably is too. People would prefer to pay you to take out the garbage.
(351 unread) - bfancefance - Yahoo Mail
Or you could pursue a balanced approach. Raise taxes on the wealthy, a little bit & cut intelligently across all programs.
The defense budget is bloated, SS could be means tested, Medicare must be both means-tested & some of the benefits curtailed.
It would be against the US constitution anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax
CSV Live Splitter - For splitting CSVs on filesize, line numbers, or file count
SCNA Recap: An Inspiring Talk by Sarah Gray
Probably pressure from investors/YC/friends/etc and own desire.
TBH, if you're starting a tech company and have the opportunity to move to the SF Bay Area (ie no family imperatives etc.), you'd be silly not to take it.
Sort of off topic but that app you linked, typing.io is really cool, thanks for sharing.
Nexus 4 is like Rapsberry PI in this situation, except Google can manage the backlog better.
I was hinting ignorance might be the cause of your confident dismissal of Ruby :)

@btilly: it seems as though that would be a correct assertion.

@jacques_chester: I did not know that, does he have a piece on programming languages he found disconcerting? Did he prefer Church over Turing?

I don't think programming languages can really go beyond being strictly mathematical though..
while there are recent examples of large-scale adoption of enterprise solutions (Yammer, Box), most enterprise sw requires well-trained expensive people to do direct sales. this is certainly doable with the right people, but they are not in limitless supply. scaling enterprise sales is usually people-bound, and hard. this is often the limiting factor in scaling enterprise business, and requires experienced and well-financed teams.