skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I like your enthusiasm and I'm similarly interested in build small niche sites and tools. A warning, though: the effort isn't in the product development or coding, or even the idea. The real work is promotion. Suppose you build "Flash Card Maker". Who is going to pay you $25 for it? How will they find you? Will you be able to market to them?

Bingo Card Creator: a ton of SEO work. Patrick himself has admitted that BCC isn't much more than a random number generator, so how is it making him $40K/yr? Long tail SEO, paid content writers to whip up semi-templated pages and non-stop optimizing. If I he handed you the source code and all his product/audience knowledge, you would still be so far behind. It's been years in the making.

Amy Hoy: Her product empire is all about appealing to the right audience. In her case: freelancers. She was a freelance web developer. Her SaaS app is a time tracking tool...for freelancers. Her online course is for people who have the desire to escape their current situation and build profitable products. Who has that burning desire? Freelancers tired of chasing their next client. Freckle isn't making six-figured a year because it was a damn good idea that was the result of brainstorming. She knows her audience, can speak to them and understands good copy writing. Freckle has also been around for quite a few years. Let me ask you this: how do you even know Amy Hoy exists? Hint: it's not because she invented time-tracking tools.

I've been in your shoes. I've thought, for a long time, all I needed is a simple product and a Bootstrap'd landing page and I'd be making a cool $80K/yr. If it was that easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it?

My advice is to build something (anything!) and try to market it. Try to sell something. Try Google Adwords and A/B testing. See how far you get. If, after six months, you haven't sold anything try to understand why and what you could do better.

Final remark about marketing: Amy Hoy is selling a course for potential bootstrappers/single-founders. Patrick McKenzie sells $XX,000/week consulting for small/med-sized SaaS shops. They often post and have their content submitted here. Can you spot the intersection between the HN audience and what they are selling?
An in-depth Nexus 10 review
I thought you might be alluding to the UN, but then you said the organization was "important".
So am I, care to explain?
Reading stories like this literally makes my blood boil. I know it's been discussed at length, but still. This is pure economic leakage -- it's an unintended consequence of well-intentioned legislation and it's absolute BS that companies have to put up with the trolls.

Good on the guys for putting up a fight, as expensive as it is.

I feel particularly frustrated about this whole mess because I don't see an end in sight. I'm not convinced the new patent reform legislation is going to help (Or is it?) and it feels like an uphill battle for small businesses.

What to do?
Have you tried using the new(ish) Google Drive feature that lets you upload an attachment to Drive, then get a public link for the file that you can email to someone?
Nope. Apple Maps isn't particularly worse for me. The directions have been fine, and I like turn-by-turn. I miss transit directions quite a bit. I thought about what I was missing and I thought about how dominant Google is in search, and I decided the tradeoff was worth it for me.

I wouldn't make fun of someone for making the other choice either.
Ask HN: What should I buy a "mentor" for a gift?
I want to buy a gift for a programmer who advised me as I learned rails and built www.lumeo.com over the past six months. It's kind of crazy, looking back now and the way things are going, and I want to show my appreciation. What would be a good gift?
Apple got egg on their face from all the bad press.

Do you think it'll hurt them? After all the released an iPhone that didn't work if you held it wrong. Did that hurt them?
Next generation charting Author of Cricket Graph
Ah, thank you. I'll fix that link right away.
The shorter the period of time you use to measure popularity, the more volatile the order will be.

I think it's clear that this is a transient issue, that the apps popularity will kick in shortly so I'm not sure it's a big deal regardless.

UK App Store at least it's up to fourth now so it's moving.
Wpengine for nagios

Nagios and pretty much all other system monitoring tools are very ugly, hard to use and hard to install. Put a pretty bootstrappy face in front of nagios and make it easy to install and make it simpler with only the stuff I should care, and collect your $100/month from half of the HN crowd.
> a source of revenue for anyone else but Google

My theory is that internet advertising is a zero-sum game (out of the left-hand pocket into the right-hand pocket sort of thing), but there hasn't been any serious, credible research to prove or disprove my intuitions.

And no, "serious" and "credible" do not apply to companies that sell internet advertising and point to their own (air quotes) reasearch as proof that internet advertising works.

AdBlock Plus and Ghostery for the win, by the way.
Unless it was posted by norvig, or one of the other Google employes here.
The exact same thing that your comment brings. It's not saying those are interesting things, it's saying "why do all these 'new sources' think those are interesting ideas"
1) Try and fix him. I know this is generally thought of as a bad idea, but I think it will be important for you to know that you did everything within your power for him in the event that something bad happens. When (adult) children lose a parent, the ones that mourn the loudest are typically the ones that were not taking care of the parent in their decline. The ones that support them in their declining years get to meet the sad day knowing they did everything they could for their loved one. I think this brings comfort by removing any guilt that someone might have.

2) If recovery is not an option, accept it. If you have run through all the reasonable things to be done to help your father from the outside, there is nothing left for you to do to fix him. Accept him for all his good characteristics and bad, and simply show him love.

3) Wait. Even if you were unable to fix him, he still might come around on his own, which is most likely what needs to happen anyways.
AirBnB's business model is built on violating zoning regulations. Cities zone hotels specially because a place with a constant stream of transient tenants has a very different risk profile than a place with long-term tenants. When people buy a condo or apartment or house in a residential area, they rely on that zoning. All else being equal, a home in a completely residential area is going to cost more than one next to say a hotel. When you effectively run a hotel in a residential area by being an "avid AirBNB user", you expose your neighbors to more risk than they bargained for, without compensating them.

This kind of thing is just a great way to make money. Take a little bit away from a very large number of people in a way that makes it hard for any single affected person to challenge the system as a whole.
No, not exactly. The author points that out in the piece. The zip-line is a later addition that takes you some distance away from the launch pad. The "rubber room" and blast room are, literally, directly underneath the rocket.
Well, more to the point: The data analysis game changes entirely once you've introduced an intelligent actor (in this case the driver).
Announcing Crashlytics Logs
I suspect mtgx is referring to the fact that the Facebook app doesn't follow Google's Holo design guidelines. They have instead opted to make the iOS and Android apps mirror each other as closely as possible.
The claim that ideology is separate from fact is an ideological position, so I don't think you are saying much. Do you care to make a claim about why you feel its acceptable to confuse sex and gender?
Is that true? Doesn't Google's Android agreement to get the apps outside the core OS demand certain things?

I'm certainly struggling to think of an Android phone I've seen that doesn't ship with a Google browser.

(Edit: I take that back. Obviously the Kindle's don't and nor do most of the Android phones sold in China - an estimated two thirds not running Google apps suggested recently).
Does he have a lot of little knick-knacks in his workspace? If so, you could get some sort of geeky toy, like a usb rocket launcher. If not, get something edible so he doesn't have another thing sitting around.
I just reinstalled the app and see no difference at all. Have they actually rolled out the new version?
There's a fine line you can cross with minimalist design where it suddenly feels cold, generic, and frail. And I believe Github has crossed this line with this new homepage. I also echo some other's lamentations that Octocat is gone. It's just not.. fun.
> “It’s experienced by itself. It’s not experienced in a connected way. So we think we can provide a lot more things than what we are doing today with an open ecosystem with our partners.”

You could start by inter-operating with the rest of the Android community. I can't get a photo transferred from the S3 to GNexus over Android Beam. Drop this "S Beam" island nonsense. Communities Dominate Brands. Get on board.
Well if you don't want satellite, you've got to string wires somehow. And this country is HUGE. So anything other than a government-scale effort is going to be overly ambitious by default.
Lesson to all: If the word Plutonium appears anywhere in a statement of work that is usually sign you need to adhere to more stringent coding standards.
I've used printstagr.am, and liked it. The prints are fun just like the instagram photos. It would be cool if this were built in to Instagram, and I could mail the prints as a gift.
>After coding his recursive solution, the Lisp hacker is more likely to ask the irrelevant question: how can I reduce these two functions down to one function?

Why would the Lisp hacker ask that? That makes no sense. There is no reason to combine those two functions.
Javascript V8 Engine exposed to .NET CLI
I've seen it in a lot of successful people - it is pretty common. I've actually had a successful person who have no background in my field tell me why I was wrong about something they clearly knew nothing about. It was nothing short of amazing.
Predicting Holiday Travel Delays with BigML
Yes, and a "tradeoff" and a "design flaw" are just two sides of the same coin!
My guess:

The room was supported by springs according the article. It also said the blasts rivaled small nuclear explosions. If something that big goes boom right over you, those springs are going to be tested. I assume the rubber helps prevent the room from bottoming out should the springs be insufficient. If anything, I think they didn't know what to expect, so they planned for the worst.

Also, that small, 24-hr safe room was lacking in 24 hours worth of amenities, like a bathroom and water supply. But I guess being thirsty or having to urinate is better than exploding.
That sounds horrible. But why does she do that? Is it just some trait/habit or does she somehow resent the kid?
Access 1Password 4 iOS Now Via the App Store
Rich guys says we should destroy the environment, people should be enslaved in sweatshops to make widgets to make him richer and talks some complete idiocy about AirBNB.

News at 11.
I have some small experience with this...

My impression is that you end up with bad code in critical systems due to the exact same forces as anywhere else.

Difference is, rather than ramping up the quality of the development / testing with the seriousness of the application, people tend to ramp up the requirement hair-splitting, ass-covering and accountability obfuscating.

Fighting this requires a rare, uncompromising attitude that often isn't conducive to remaining employed.
This is not a good idea. It requires you to "look" at the screen. A good nav app has great voice prompts alongside accuracy.
> Designed 30 years ago, traditional email transmission is clunky and slow. To make delivery as fast as possible, Mailbox checks your email from the cloud, then delivers it to your phone securely

No thanks. I don't want a third party server snapping up my data. Besides, how can it possibly be faster to go through yet another hoop than to connect directly to the source of the inbox, speed is the last problem i have with email

Too bad, looks good otherwise.
I like how they used twitter to complain about a social media application having ads.
How many private repos do you need ? I just have one private incubator repo that contains all the throw-aways and ideas that I have. If something grows well enough I export the subtree into a public repo and voila.

Also limiting the number of private repos makes sense for Github since they also want to build a community.
No doubt they will push back, and their fans too, but... there are existing laws being flaunted. Enforcement is imminent. As the initial link indicated, current hosts already have a legal liability, which is really ignored (hidden) by AirBNB.

Not putting flowers on their grave, but sincerely doubting their prospects in the (US) hospitality-space, especially in metro areas. Like I mentioned above, he may be referring to possible pivots based on fan-base, data collected etc., e.g. actually running their own unique hotels, a matching solution for people who are looking for buyers (stay before you buy), roommate finders (rentals over 30 days, which are mostly legal), lead generation (rentals and sales) etc. etc. etc.

For the record: I think he's a smart guy, and I agree with most of his other points (1,4,5,6,8), question others (2,3 & 7).

Also agree with another poster that he was a lucky guy (I've actually used Spyglass and Netscape 1.0, get off my lawn, haha)
Kim Jong Un is Time's Person of the Year 2012
I think endeavoring to no longer be surprised when Bad things happen is a good response. I mean not just ignoring it in order to move past, but accepting the world for what it is and anticipating suffering.

Probably a stoic at heart I guess, but I'm not sure I see any other way.
Or left-click select, then hit the delete key. :)
I use it as a backup, and catalog. I still have my photos on my hard drive, but I know if it dies they'll be on flickr still. This was more important to me before I had dropbox.

Flickr also serves as a great cataloging tool. It's quicker for me to find a photo by tag on flickr than to find it locally.
I'm referring to typical home/business service where you pay for X downstream/Y downstream, not aggregate usage. Almost everyone will use the full bandwidth at some point (just watch just one video) but some people use it more frequently.

Granted, Andreesen was talking about mobile where pricing is N gigs/month, but even that structure might not capture true cost. It also depends when the user uses that bandwidth. During peak hours, capacity is short and end-user Quality of Service might get degraded to accommodate. Rather than complicating end-user pricing with these issues (like charging $Y for X bits at ZZ:ZZ PM), it might make sense to charge the content providers.

Netflix, for instance, during peak hours, accounts for 32.7% of all internet traffic: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/netflix-uses-32-....

Who knows what the best solution is. Maybe it's charging content providers, maybe end-users. The point is that it's not a good idea to have the government set a one-size-fits-all solution.
Good. I think ~100% of Microsoft's problems stem from Steve Ballmer's culture of hatred towards all competition.

If you're a CEO/Executive and you use your competitor's products, you'll be in good shape to know their strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, if you're like Steve Ballmer, you'll refer to your competition as "Cancer" and ban the use of all competitor's products. Then you'll never ever know that your products are 10 years behind, since you've intentionally prevented yourself from knowing that.

I think that "admits" in an odd word in the headline. I would be very, very worried if he didn't use Apple products.

Citations of Ballmer insanity:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_c...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6055250-7.html
>> we don't need more atomic weapons

Speak for yourself, the Pentagon, UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, possibly others still replacing and/or building tons of those.
Your suggested headline doesn't focus on Quartz.
Sure you can. And maybe out of the thousand ideas you come up with, one might have a ghost of a chance.

The reason people make money from these niche sites isn't that they're niche. It's that they gasp SELL PEOPLE SOMETHING THEY NEED.

So rather than take random stabs at stuff that might be useful, it's a quicker path to success to ask people (preferably ones with money) what problems they have in day to day work. Here are a couple ones that I've found random business people on the net say they need.

- Simple inventory for very small businesses

- Site to enter customer details, create an invoice, a packing list and a shipping label. Bonus points for USPS, UPS, FedEx etc integration

- Job estimation: a way to enter time, hourly rate, materials, job details, customer info. and create an estimate for a job to bid on.

Note that similar sites already exist. The problem is often that they are laden with features, and are confusing and overpriced for someone who really only needs the barebones functionality.

So maybe that's what you can brainstorm: pick a bunch of profitable sites, tear them apart into their elements and figure out which 3 features are the most important and then create your own site that implements only those three.
Oh yeah, the millionaire (possibly billionaire) is just being SO BRAVE espousing these generic conservative talking points.
U.S. Rejects Telecommunications Treaty
Ruby Newbie here.

Is this pretty common in programming languages? It seems like there's been a lot of Ruby-specific drama in the last couple months (refinements come to mind) - does this happen in Python, JS, etc. as well? It seems like most BDFLs create the canonical version of the language without much debate, but maybe I'm just coming into it fairly late.
Google releases maps and their evil behavior is quietly swept under the rug... brilliant timing!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4915206
I'm betting you'll see it first in NYC. New Yorkers already hate driving, most don't own cars, and many don't even have drivers licenses. Banning manned vehicles and replacing everything with robotic cabs is much more likely to happen on Manhattan first.
The comment section is a place for people to work out their anger management issues. If you're not suffering from anger management issues, there's nothing there for you.
I've never met him and never skyped with him so I'm not sure, but that's a good, useful suggestion, the usb rocket launcher.
Why do you need a compensation check if no damages have occurred? There might be legitimate insurance questions here, for example, but that's a separate matter.
Feds look set to run most state health insurance exchanges
I think you're missing some of the major pros for Google...
With this new app, they control all of the branding, all of the upstream data gathering, and paid ads.
I'm confused about what you mean. A programmer should not attempt to deal with the complexity inherent in his/her company?

Is that not what you are paid to do to some degree? To use software to model business process etc?
I think it's okay to change the hash in the URL when you scroll past divs, but changing the article/page you're on--like they do here--is bizarre and difficult to understand.
U.S. and U.K. Refuse to Sign UN Agreement on Telecommunications
University develops efficient vector-based video, says pixels are old hat
They are doing it "for the lulz".
jspaur: thanks for the feedback--will put a picture of the real deal on there :). As for the rendering--are you talking about the blue outline around the text?
Yup that's what I was thinking. Build in the functionality to order prints straight from the app. They could expand to postcards which I think would be awesome.
Google-ITA powered MileWise brings real-time reward flight search to iPhone
It's a little shortsighted to view the benefits of the development of the car merely by the number of personal cars. The transportation industry is indispensable in removing the barriers to competition, which enabled the creation of millions of manufacturing jobs in developing countries.
That Robot Economy And The Rentier Class
This sort of thing shouldn't have been held up by waiting for a government body to vote on it. To build an use an app should simply require drivers willing to use it, and paying passengers. That tells you just how extensive the regulation of that industry is, when the city keeps it locked down to such a degree.
Kind of a condescending article. Really, Instagram pulled an enormous bait-and-switch. Create a great application, give it away for free until you've built up a huge base of users, then sell the application and its user base to another company and let them figure out how to actually make money off it.

Understandably users are going to be upset because they're being asked to either pay for or see ads with something that they used to get for free and ad-free. People will always be upset when you take something away, even if you gave it to them for free.
$100/month seems a lot when New Relic does the same for $24/server/month or even for free.
frisco: “This is not a local, social, mobile photosharing app. It’s really frustrating to see someone get a PhD in chemistry and decide what the world really needs is a better way to share photos in real time to music.”

Clearly a lot of investors thought the same.
Andreessen is gone. The transformation is complete. He has lost all legitimacy beyond being a fat cat that manipulates markets by sheer power of money and influence in the inefficient way that monopolists do.
Workflows for Secure Passwords with 1Password
I was mainly thinking about the disc image not being mountable by older kernels. File systems usually aim to change as little as possible.
Fountain pens don't leave indentations on the paper, but there are often differences in ink density in parts of the letters or punctuation. This is much less noticeable w/ a fountain pen than it is with a calligraphic or dip pen, but still can be noticeable. [1]

Since these differences in ink density are caused by variations in nib speed and pressure while writing, I think that's what they were referring to by "pressure marks". For me, it seems to depend both on the pen and the paper I'm using. It's possible that what you use doesn't show much of this effect at all. (I also use too much pressure with a fountain pen, which likely deposits more ink and hides effects like this.)

[1] http://inkophile.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/fountain-pen-nibs-... includes an image which shows this effect: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/7041371387_aff1e418d3_b.j...
All maps are imperfect. But some map services are better than others. Why isn't iPhone, which is a great phone, is not shipping with one of them?
The importance of staying current and valuable in a knowledge-based field
The Dangers of Writing Off Millennials
We've never had an Octocat on the home page, actually.
it makes sense, if i tell them how important is their role, and how we will succeed if they do it, they will be passionate about it
Show HN: Hatchvid - video pre-production and creative collaboration
Many useful libs still aren't ported and some likely never will be (like Twisted). But more importantly, there is a vast amount of application code out there not ported. If you're working on a py2 project it's even hard to start new projects with py3, since you get no interoperation.

Breaking compatibility should have never been done without being able to run both py2 and py3 code in the same process.