skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Was the article crude, and maybe more harsh then is needed? of course. Still, the general point is correct. The thing that is great about start-ups is the ability to solve real problems using innovative approaches. Large companies have processes in place to stay steady, to minimize risk. Start-ups thrive on risk.

The problem though, is the glamour of the concept has made people more excited about the status of the start-up... and not the problem the start-up is solving.

In fact the "problem" has almost been ignored. Look at PG's essay from a few weeks ago. The concept of using a start-up to solve A REAL PROBLEM was revolutionary to some, and debatable to others. Think about that for a moment. Looking for real problems to build a start-up around was revolutionary, and debatable. To me that says a lot.

So my question... can anyone name one great entrepreneur who did it for their love of doing a start-up, and not for the passion of "The problem"?
Valve officially launches TV-friendly Steam Big Picture mode
City Protocol to Set Standards for Smart Cities
Family Health Insurance Options
"Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf on the Fight for a Free and Open Internet
> one, imo Apple trackpads best shine when used for reading (web pages or PDFs), where it's not necessary to use the keyboard at all

I don't think this is particularly true, especially for web browsing. For example, in responding to your comment, I just had to copy and paste your text to quote it. Because of the TrackPoint, I was able to easily copy and paste the text while keeping my hands in essentially one place.

If I were using a trackpad, I would have had to (a) move my hand onto the trackpad, (b) select the text, (c) move my hands back to the keyboard to hit Ctrl+c, (d) move my hands back to the trackpad to move the cursor to the input box and click in it, (e) move my hands back to the keyboard to hit Ctrl+v. That's back and forth twice. Just to copy and paste some text.

As a side note, text selection is something else I've found to be frustrating with trackpads, especially the new "clickpads" which don't have separate mouse buttons. It's hard to press down and move your finger at the same time. This isn't an issue at all with the TrackPoint, though.

> the trackpad on my MBP is just a rotation of my right wrist away

Perhaps it's because I'm not experienced with trackpads, but I have found that I really have to lift my hand up and move it down, using my arm muscles, to access any trackpad.

> For scrolling, Apple trackpads offer almost direct manipulation, which affords a sheer ease and precision that a mouse certainly cannot compete with; I'm skeptical that a TrackPoint can.

I just got a ThinkPad X1 Carbon a few days back, an ultrabook which reviews have said has a trackpad comparable to that on the MacBooks. Out of curiosity, I thought I'd try using it, but I found it to be no less precise than a TrackPoint and much more tedious to use.

I think part of the issue is that the TrackPoint has a learning curve that the trackpads do not. Most people give up on the TrackPoint before they ever learn how to use it properly. For whatever reason, when I got my first ThinkPad, I started using the TrackPoint extensively, and after a few weeks, I had the hang of it. Since you're also a Vim user, perhaps you can understand it as similar to the difference between using a plain-old text editor and Vim, in terms of the learning curve and eventual advantages.

> And there are other gestures: zooming, for instance, is certainly possible with other input methods, but doing it with direct manipulation on a trackpad again allows unmatched precision and doesn't require clicking any buttons. Or use three fingers to quickly flick between Spaces, if you're the kind of person that uses those; a keyboard shortcut would work, but the trackpad is very convenient.

I don't have much experience with zooming - it really hasn't ever been necessary on a computer for me to use it on a regular basis, so I can't comment on that.

As for window management, I've traditionally used XMonad, so keyboard shortcuts are how I get things done with respect to window management. However, I have XFCE installed instead on my new laptop, so I'll see how that goes. Of course, OS X and Windows are much less customizable than Linux, so custom shortcuts may not be an option there.
@bdcravens You don't spell it! You use it! ;) I'd love to hear your thoughts on the service though.
You're right, when private property included people, nobody questioned the right of the owner to take 90+ percent of what his serfs produced.

I'm being sarcastic of course, I know what you meant. But after you've crossed over the 50% threshold, it feels more like your arrangement with the government is to be milked for tax rather than consensual mutual agreement to protect my rights. I'm working for the government instead of it working for me.
Reddit is still not profitable.

It's an amazing edifice of the Internet, but it is not profitable.
> Bonus: you can add the phase values, 2 sin(x + phase), to get the beats just right.

Fortunately, you don't need to do so; if the complex number z = A + iB has magnitude r and argument theta, then Acos(t) + Bsin(t) is the same as r*cos(t - theta). That is, combining cosines and sines of the same frequency already accounts for the phase shift.
If revenues are not rising, then they need to raise prices and/or alter their business models to fit usage.

I kinda expect unlimited data plans to be a very short lived phenomena with the possible exception that it may end up free where the traffic can be offloaded to a wifi.
Few people complain about Sony laptops because few people buy them.
The idea is not exactly new or popular (without proper moderation it inevitably turns into spammy, ads-filled swamp), and a request to log in to see more then 14 suggestions doesn't look all that inviting.

Also: Great, now we are moving from '-er without -e-' to '-v- instead of -u-'! I really hope it won't catch up. I mean, Romans were cool guys, but my brain constantly trips over unexpected V; it feels like noise, and not like a not-so-svbtle attempt at bringing in some Latin style. Sorry for the grvmbling.
The Free and Open Web #freeandopen
The funniest part is who would have even known someone was using another logo with an apple, in Germany. If not for Apple itself making a bid deal about it.
I can appreciate the fact that "mobile social" is sucking the oxygen out of the room for more standard start-ups, but I, too, found his hate too overwhelming.

There are real people behind all those "crappy" companies.
I thought this sounded familiar:

http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2007/04/twitter_and_jo...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/03/twitter...
best and scariest quote of the post

Twitter has a PIN code feature that requires every message to be prepended with a four-digit alphanumeric code. This feature mitigates the issue, but is not available to users inside the United States.

So they fixed the problem... but are withholding the fix from tons of users?
I think the OP should apply for a patent on this test.
How do you report on business for a decade and yet hold such a visceral and character flaw type thesis about behavior that's nothing more than the intended, text-book result of specific monetary policy decisions?
Apple patents wireless charging
Let's be frank, the only real cost for consumer internet is the last mile. Since Internet access for residential bandwidth was reclassified thanks to the memo from George W. Bush around 2004 we haven't had real competition because common carriage doesn't extend to your front door.

Contrast this with Datacenter bandwidth where paying $.10 a megabit isn't unheard of. The cost structures are not related to the core infrastructure, but rather the edge.

I think this problem is a lot more complex than you're making it out to be, but that's just my opinion. In a lot of cases the rates for ISPs aren't set randomly, they're anchored to standards set by regulatory bodies (particularly in the case of DSL).

In short, pricing bandwidth is hard. The real cost is the last mile.
This piece is unbelievably lazy. It is the easiest thing in the world to have written --- Lyons is, what, the 93rd person to hop on board this trend story? --- and yet the analysis in it crumbles to dust and floats away the moment you try to pick it up to look at it more closely. Go to medical school? Make real tech products? Don't build apps in a weekend? Avoid bus rides with Scoble?

Not one person in the universe is going to make a better business decision for having read this article. All it's does is confirm a trend story, snarkily. Congratulations, Dan Lyons, you made the train before it left the station. Can we get on with our lives now?
Why is there a lack of interest in linguistic revival? Asserting independence from the UK has been a big theme in Ireland for a long time. Wouldn't re-embracing the Irish language be one prominent way of doing that?
Bad is such a subjective word... Nothing bad about using typical HTTP get/post to run your app. Things don't have to conform to REST. Using PUT/DELETE won't make it any more secure.
Please add currency. Doesn't walmart have more?
That's an interesting idea, but I don't think that's always the case. Sure, I recognize names like tptacek on occasion, but I frequently read (and upvote) a good comment, and only later realize who wrote it. I've even up-voted several interesting things in the same thread because they present information well, with connections or information that I might not have drawn, and then realized they were all by the same person.

I suspect the styling on the site, which presents non-comment bits in a lighter grey color, helps to de-emphasize the authors' identities in favor of the comments themselves.
Asperger's dropped from revised Diagnosis Manual
Wintel: Le Divorce Part II
this is super helpful - so glad to have this as a resource + to see this being talked about.
I think FB and Google are bad examples, because they were borne out of much more fundamental services than the kinds of start ups that the OP mocks. Sure, whatever their mission statements were sounded crazy and vague ("organize the world's information") but they had the technology to back up their lofty goals. The OP seems to be mocking startups that have neither the broad lofty goals nor the technical substance.
CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 says:

> You are free:

> to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work

I would not want to make the word "pirate" synonymous with "copy".
Calm down: nobody is taking over the internet
Yea, see why michaelochurch suggest Google adopt open allocation?
You were born rich my personal experience
Dynamic scope for Ruby
One hack that has really, really helped me is putting what I'm doing next into my git commit logs.

For example:
git commit -a -m "Finished writing tests for Car model. Now implementing car.drive, car.park, and car.accelerate."
It would be cool to be able to try this out for open source projects (with public archives and all of that), though I'd imagine that's not their primary use case :)
Sales down, Microsoft raises prices radically
I'm so glad this issue is finally getting some attention.

I returned my rMBP after experiencing the issue. It looks that getting a Samsung screen is a game of chance.
"The second mouse gets the cheese." - Since my iBook died multiple deaths via its BPGA socket, I've learned to buy rev. 2 or rev. 3 products for all my Apple purchases, when possible. It's consistent with my experience in avoiding x.0 software releases. It's really cool when a company treads new ground, but if you need reliability, it's best to let others test the first round.
How is the counterfactual, "we the governments", any more sensible than the "we the corporations", or the sillier ones?

For the obvious reason that governments, at least in democratic countries, are supposed to be about the people governing themselves. Governments are a means to solve cooperation problems.

Sure, this theory does not perfectly translate into practice. But it is the normative ideal of democracy. Hence your comment just comes off as snarky without really adding much to the discussion other than the point that yes, government power also must be restricted when it comes to information, just like it must be restricted in other areas of life. This is a useful point, but one that you might have made using much fewer words.
Yes it is dumb, but another way to look at your analogy would be if there were only one road to the airport and that road was controlled by AT&T or Comcast.

Imagine that for a second and consider what impact that might have on your ability to hail a taxi :D.

All kidding aside, you make a fair point, but I don't think the playing field is quite as level as you're making it out to be. You can't just start an ISP that can peer at the same level of AT&T, you know?
the only way for isps to grow is not to block the progress but to embrace it, they should try to find a way to improve the technology behind their networks imho, could 4g networks bring something to consider here?
Goood, gooood.

Let the hate flow through you!

(I'm an business/enterprise kinda guy, and it's been an ugly decade.)
Which would actually double-charge sites like Netflix, since those sites already have to pay for bandwidth/peering on their end.
Sure, Silicon Valley might produce only 10 great companies a year, but where I'm from (Ottawa, Canada), we'd produce only 1 great company every 10 years.

(I'm referring to tech companies)
*pronounce
That witter t-shirt sounds like a great idea, I bet I can quickly create a startup for that.
I have no relation to Jolla at all—neither competitor or likely customer. At the moment, I'm not doing any direct mobile development (we will be offering something for mobile in the future, but this is not affected by the existence or absence of Jolla). My entire relationship with Jolla is reading this nonsensical article and writing my comment with a bit of simple (short) research.

1. Yes, the journalist (or his editor) is lazy here. However, they probably wouldn't cast the article in such a stark light without prompting from Jolla.

2a. Happy to admit that I was wrong here; the article contained no information about these relationships, and Jolla’s website is essentially content free.

2b. I addressed this (mostly) in a reply to a sibling comment. My point here was that (again) the journalist was lazy-to-irresponsible for pretending that China is different because of the lack of subsidy.

3. Unless Jolla exerts some control over the handset manufacturer and/or the carriers that offer Sailfish phones, which Jolla has explicitly said that they aren't going to do, users will not (necessarily) have the freedom to reflash their phone. This is the problem with Android: there have been both manufacturer locks and carrier locks that prevent timely receipt of updates (including security updates) or OS management of your own phone. You have to root and/or jailbreak your phone to make this happen, and some phones actively fight that (e.g., one of the Motorola phones that I remember a big stink about).

4. Having a nice set of defensive patents gifted by Nokia (hopefully it's done properly so they can use them for defence, rather than merely having a licence to them) is useful, but is not the same as the claim in the article that the are immune to any existing patents. Some of the claims made by Samsung regarding radios clearly indicate that this is not the case.

5. I looked for the CEO change info on Jolla's remarkably content-free website. I couldn't find it. Hurmola's relationship to Jolla (as noted on LinkedIn) is limited to being on the board, as the transition notes that I did find was related to looking after the Sailfish ecosystem. What I found interesting is that it's not clear to me how long Hurmola was CEO—and again, there's remarkably little information. Regardless of why the change was done, I'd be a little skeptical as a partner about the changes at the top with as little transparency as they exhibit.

I'm neither positive nor negative toward Jolla itself: I think it will fail, but I don't want them to fail. I'm deeply negative to this horrendously awful uncritical article. It's roughly the equivalent of a news report from Fox News, CNBC, or cnet, or an analysis by Rob Enderle.
Then why are the foxes leading the henhouse-building effort?
Ask HN: Why IMDb sucks?
IMDb really sucks in loading movies/shows trailers. Loading 1.5 minute trailer almost takes more than 10 minutes and this is huge. On the other hand YouTube is very good. Can't they optimize it at the level of what YouTube is offering?
I think he's talking about conformal coating, not solder mask. Conformal coating can help but it's mostly there to prevent shorting across component leads from condensation. If you smash the Al casing against the board there's a good chance you can chip the coating and short things out.
> When using a trackpad, you have to move your hand off of the keyboard and down several inches.

~2 is not "several" in modern english usage.

More to the point: personally, I use my thumb on the trackpad, so by your standards of evidence the track point is less efficient than the trackpad; my fingers never leave their home row positions, whereas yours do to use the track point. In reality, yes, it's personal preference.
They may be crappy, but likely they would have been customers of several quality startups as well.
Sharp, Qualcomm to jointly develop LCD panels: Nikkei
Minefold (YC W12) launches mods with more games coming soon
It might be more of a supply and demand thing. Google thinks it has an endless supply of small bit-players willing to supply content so it doesn't value any of them. They might be right.

It really hasn't cost them anything so they haven't spent anything trying to fix it.
Auto-Threading Compilers Don't Need To Be For Functional Languages
I've always wondered when we'd get a browser based RTS that doesn't require some silly plugin. (maybe one exists?) This is a nice start, but will probably get shot down as soon as it becomes noticed by the powers that be at EA (or whoever owns the copyright)
ANyone got a screenshot? For those of us without [connected] github accounts?
i have no idea if anything resembling the last crash is going on (it doesn't look like it to me, last time it was really obvious) but if you're looking for leading indicators i would suggest commercial occupancy rates and not employment. that is what dropped sharply first in sf a decade or so ago.
Their official API handles REST correctly (i.e. utilizing PUT and POST and DELETE where necessary) however, deleting images is not part of the official API, it is only available for the iPhone / Android apps. So I guess they just never came round to changing this since it is only part of an internal protocol anyway.
Emerging languages spotlight: Elm
Sirea: Reactive Demand Programming in Haskell
One of the big features I would like with the thread-based chat is "unread message" support. Since the chat may (should) be updated live as messages are sent, they could be all over the place. An example of a site that does this well is sbnation.com.
"Syria Deeply" Outsmarts The News, Redefines Conflict Coverage
Interestingly, I played around with mitmproxy and Instagram early last week, and couldn't get it to work either. Maybe they're somehow blocking mitm proxy as it is the most well known one, and the researcher in the linked article uses his own setup?
Predicting with my model: Is it safe?
The problem here is Shannon's law. Ever go to a big event like SXSW and try to make a call? That's what massive deployments of 4G utilization look like; similar to downtown SF post-iPhone.

Wireless has a long way to go but fixed-wave might help here. There are also solutions from Ruckus and Meraki/Cisco which could help, but it's a big problem with no clear solution.
Hacker Group Exploits Massive Security Hole In Tumblr
So what is the point of paying the Apple premium if they are just the same as everybody else ?

I think the fact that it is possible, it should not be the norm. As you can see in the article, the problem is not that he got a defective Monitor, is the fact that Apple is trying to avoid replacing it.

If I buy the best, I expect the best. When I buy an Apple product, just like the author, I expect to get the best. If it is defective, I expect Apple to exchange it.

We, humans, are not perfect. I think we all get that. But we do expect to get problems fixed and right away. Apple is the top dog right now in hardware, if not even them respond to problems in a timely fashion and in the right way, then yes, Apple is the same as the rest.

I don't think that Apple is just like the rest. In fact I expect a lo more from them.
Good thing this was posted in the evening CET, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten anything done today at work. :)
Was this done with emscripten or ported by hand?
They have some great marketing and business guest posts by Mark Suster, James Alutcher, Nir Eyal, and several others. A little entertainment with the occasional insightful post isn't the worst thing. Just ignore the many posts on funding and you won't have AS much distortion.
Summit To Buy Powder Mountain To Create Entrepreneur Community
The taxi/airport analogy is almost there but needs one extra tweak for correctness. In that analogy the ISPs would be the state / local government that built the roads. They would be trying to extract additional money out of the increased traffic, because one the roads are built it's harder to set up toll booths because of stringent regulation.

The issue is, and this going to be a huge tug of war for a long time to come, is the role of ISPs; either as 'content providers' or as merely a utility provider. One provides huge profits, one is a low margin business.

In the real world, tolls on highways are run typically by the local governments, or in the case of around where I live (nyc) 'public benefit corporations'.

Publicly traded corporations, obviously, don't want to be turned into government run utilities, even though this would probably be in everyone's best interest eventually.
I would say reaching the parliament, and hence being represented, is kind of a win.
"A piece of software to build eCommerce websites that takes a portion of revenue." doesn't sound like a long-term sustainable business?

The Viaweb crew took an exit - a good exit, in my opinion - but their business model was sound, profitable, and strong.
LinkedIn Users Can Now Call Each Other for Free
There is a screenshot at the end of this blog post: http://mattstockton.com/2012/11/30/navigating-your-network-g...

Also, you do not need to link your account to try out Nodal, you can just search for a user on the login page.
There is absolutely no reason there shouldnt be. All the technologies needed to successfully create a fully featured multiplayer RTS are there.
NationBuilder (http://nationbuilder.com) in Los Angeles, California

We're looking for talented Rails and Javascript developers, project managers and designers.

Fun office in downtown LA packed with great developers building new kind of product - a "Community Organising System" (COS) with the goal of empowering leaders and creators around the world.

We're backed by Andreessen-Horowitz and Sean Parker, among others.

http://dev.nationbuilder.com/jobs

Email jobs@nationbuilder.com.