skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> If they were not book making and sports betting would not work.

Why not? Taking parimutuel wagers [1] is guaranteed [2] to make money.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting

[2] In most US jurisdictions, the organizer taking a percentage of the pot is either illegal, or requires the organizer to pay millions for a gaming license. Of course, you also have costs and taxes, like any other business. Mathematically the pool is guaranteed to make money as long as there's at least one paying customer; whether the business makes money is another question. (Another path would be to operate without approval -- illegal gambling is one of the most common forms of organized crime. It obviously has its own set of challenges, including the possibility of jail time and physical danger from competitors and customers. On the whole, it's not a market you should consider entering if you value your freedom and your life.)
Don't be evil!

I only see cynicism in the way the companies are working: be friendly and open source until you gain a good market position, then do chess moves.

I also remember paying 0.05 in adwords... and getting new customers.
I am wondering how you really apply MECE in a complex environment like this. Any suggestions on how to adjust the list so it becomes MECE?
Jokes about 2010: Odissey Two in three, two ... screw it! I'll be first!

ALL THESE WORLDS

ARE YOURS EXCEPT

EUROPA

ATTEMPT NO

LANDING THERE
Lots more data here - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlD_6iEb8Ed9dGs...
Are you happy with your work? (salary wars in the valley)
I Am a Gun Owner. Let’s Talk Gun Control.
Smart input field position indicator
Mens gucci messenger bags
2013 mens gucci messenger bags avant-garde design, well-made, gu is very suitable for people now
Your second link: I have no idea what it says. I read the citation and the first four paragraphs. It sounds like it came out of a postmodernism generator.
It's not strictly using any form of IMAP, its a web view with push notifications from Googles servers.
I recently came up with a solution for this problem on my site. When you scroll down a few pages, the footer appears in a fixed position.

See:
http://fandalism.com
I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to "hellban" them. When they visit the site, they see the books - but for all other users they'd effectively be invisible. It might not be worth the programming effort, though. I wonder how many books this guy sells.
> Those who dismiss sports as being "for jocks" are not better than those who consider computers "for nerds".

Sports are irrelevant to living in the modern world; we can leave them to the jocks. Computers are not; knowing how to use a cell phone or the Internet helps enormously with many inevitable tasks of daily life.

The fact that cheap computers became possible a few decades ago means our lifestyles are quite different from before that time.

The fact that the Red team beat the Blue team in the Capture the Flag Series Bowl Cup a few decades ago is largely irrelevant to most people -- even to most sports fans.
I've never had a problem with TeamViewer on Linux and I'm grateful that they made a Linux version.
That's roughly correct, but IIRC Ray sold that company 30 years ago; it later went on to buy Nuance, and subsequently quite a few more speech-related companies before hooking up with Apple for Siri. So while your comment is correct, I'd be surprised if any of that initial technology was actually being used for Siri.
It's not like there is a shortage of file management programs out there. They're basically creating one more, and layering on a bunch of hype about how they're doing something revolutionary
Do these revenue models need to be sustainable? I noticed 'Donations' is missing. An example could be Wikipedia, which afaik has donations as only revenue.

Some other opensource projects also fund parts of their development through donations, either from businesses or consumers.

It won't make you rich, but it might bootstrap you into some better revenue model.

Also awesome list, definitely saved for later :)
I think it is unfair to call "contributors" charity workers when all they do is cause headaches for the oss project leaders.

The project leader won't be a jerk to you if you make a nice well-tested, style-adhering commit that only addresses a single issue without breaking other code.

Don't think for a second 'occasional contributors' combined efforts even come close to the contribution of even a single project leader.
It is an indication that we just want to get a python for the web really bad.

If someone makes a good looking website for his project it kind of gives the impression that he is seriously going for it, perhaps it is not good now, but maybe it will become a serious contender later.
The answer is yes. They can. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20267989
I've been using powwow since early development days. It is a great product, been useful to me many many times. it is good to fix your mom's computer or to help your peer programmer across the sea.
I said in most of the world. The US uses more energy on AC than the rest of the world combined. It is true that gas heating is common elsewhere, but so is electric heating. Fuel oil globally is no longer that important an energy source.
Mailgun and sendgrid both have email parsing. I've used them in a couple projects and work quite well.
These are exactly my feelings in last one year after i left my job and working solo from 2+ years now. While i love the work & freedom and comfort as i am a natural loner/introvert, sometimes it sucks real bad. And unfortunately, we don't have much of work at cafe & co-working culture here.

And with the time i have lost interest in "social media". It feels like i am talking to projections of characters and not real people.
Right, so "in the majority of rapes." Which extends to the "majority of crimes."
Looks great. There's a UK company with similar branding doing conference calling (they advertise all over the tube with really terrible posters). Called PowWowNow.
It's better than restricting speech through law AND enforcement. I'm not supporting the current state of affairs; not at all. Just pointing out that you'd have trouble pushing such a (legal) restriction on the US press.
I meant no offense. Companies "that are big enough to have an HR department" are generally bigger than the size of companies I like working for. It wasn't a dig at HR. Replace "HR department" with "front desk receptionist/dedicated IT/security badges/have a cafeteria" if that will make my preferences less offensive.
Nonsense. IMAP IDLE push works fine, but for some reason quite a few clients don't support it.
They could display a warning on every goddamn person's Facebook going "No, the Adam/Ryan Lanza here is NOT the killer on the news, please leave them alone."
Richard Branson shares image with stats mentioning "West Germany"
I mean the whole package -- even if a protocol exists, if the client I want to use/must use doesn't support it, it doesn't help. I mostly use iOS Mail on iOS, so I'm stuck there.
first year maths at a UK university normally includes a lot more than just "calculus and basic linear algebra"
Just to be clear - their Linux version is really windows one running under wine.
Sharpen The Python Saw Or Die Trying
Building Great Presentations
That's very variable by language. If strings are interned they are equivalent to enums anyway for example.
ActiveSync also gives you some awesome benefits "for free" -- super lightweight MDM functionality.
The Mythical Man Month. When it comes to software, uniformly accepting and mentoring newcomers into a project does not bring uniformly good return- and in many or most cases, will result in NEGATIVE return, that is, a bad developer can cause progress to move backward, making more work for the other developers- both in working around the badness, and in time spent educating the newbie.
I wonder if previously the lack of support for IMAP Push was to try and sell you MobileMe Push Email (which used a different protocol for some reason). Now I don't see why it lacks it.
1. Fun (business development)

2. Fun (technology)

3. Self determination

4. Not having to deal with unmotivated employees and their low quality results
Yes, it's funny. Back in the mid-90s there was much talk of Microsoft's strategy for pretty much any product being to get everybody into a room, then close the doors and pump the air out of it.

Sounds like that's what's happening here too.

Introducing new services that are not available to the free-riders seems to me to be a much more friendly thing to do than to take away features that were previously on offer. The latter strategy will make people wary.
Anyone can write unsolicited reviews for anyone, with an option of it being visible only to the manager (aka graffiti in the executive washroom).

If someone gets pissed off about his transhumanism (especially if he starts talking about the Singularity on eng-misc, or if he has questions related to assigning Real Names to AIs, or if someone just doesn't like Canada and won't forgive him for his work with Our Lady Peace in 2000-1) and decides to "Perf" him, he could be in trouble.

If someone like Ray Kurzweil ends up on a PIP I will call the fabric of the universe broken.
Yes I remember that, was involved in a client scraper that would pull the email via webmail interface so could merge into a mobile device stream. Microsoft kept changing and tweaking there web interface just enough to make it a rather annoying battle to keep up with the cheapskate route.

Guess Google has hit saturation point and are now trying to leveridge some services as a package instead of just gaining income from ad's.

Still at least getting some notice, albiet timed rather interestingly right before the holiday season and also after the canges to there app accounts.
All other news reports seem to indicate that this Facebook-Ryan is the brother of the killer.
Please don't ever do fixed headers or footers. They drive me crazy. It's like being back in the web of the 90's where frames were all the rage.

With the exception of true, complete web "apps", web pages should be documents that I can scroll without hassle and not have content possibly obscured by a bad implementation.
Ask HN: Books about Product Design?
Are there books available that can help to make software products?
As far as I understand it, it is based on educated guesswork. The idea is that you make a prognosis of where you think the company will be in the coming 5-10 years, and how much money they will be making at that time.

To aid your guesswork you look at the state of the market the company will be in, and if possible compare it to similar companies.

Once you think you have an idea of what the company will be making, you can calculate its worth. The worth of a company is usually between 5 and 15 times its yearly profits (depending on the market), multiplied by some risk factor.

Though in practice this is hard because early-stage companies invest most/all/more of their profits back in to the company to allow it to grow. And ofcourse estimating risk is also a very hard thing to do.

This is the process as far as I understand it. If you think I missed something or got something wrong please let me know. Also remember this is more a science than an art, most of these parameters come from experience and gut feeling.
All people are different...

There are many OPs that assert that JS syntax/lang are beautiful once you get handle of it, and may be it is...

However, there may be enough people like myself for whom the JS syntax/lang just do not fit into the brain. Since at my last job of CFO of $200+m pharma country org I have architected multidimensional db for an OLAP cube for SAP Business Objects, I do not think that I am that dumb. But this JS stuff just does not fit in.

Also, I do value my time. So although I could persist in learning JS, as a general rule when things do not flow - the learning time multiplies. I do not have time.

Hence, personally I would love to be able to write/maintain code in Python [even subset of Python would be fine], knowing that it cleanly compiles to JS. It will be then my choice whether I want it client-side or server-side [smth like what css pre-processors SASS/Less are doing].
Plenty of developers write software never hoping to make a dime from it or hire anyone else to work on it. But they have little reason to worry about incorporation or branding or 'pivoting' or 'series a funding' or 'growth hacking', and they self-identify as 'open source developers' rather than 'start up entrepreneurs'.
>> Also worthy of mention in this context: http://pyjaco.org/about and http://pyjs.org/

Based on your personal experience - with which one to start?
Sure, on the iPhone. But won't work on a Windows Phone. Which sucks, quite frankly.
You're right about not giving a very large amount of money to people who aren't ready for it. When the protagonist of this article gave money to his daughter, he was basically giving her the same problem he had.

I'd feel obligated to pay for modest things for family and friends, like large holiday and birthday gifts, partial college for nieces and nephews -- maybe buy an "AirBnB condo" near campus and give them free room & board. Maybe give away a cheap good used car every year. Maybe angel invest in a couple of friends' startups.

Maybe it's because of my poor roots, but I would try to help out the people around me who've helped me in the past, in small ways.
I think it's just that Apple is really really bad at online services (iCloud is doing better than anything they ever did before, and it's still not great). Safari is essentially the only top-quality piece of client software they've written, and even it 1) largely re-used something and 2) has peaked and sucks more and more now.

I don't think they made a conscious decision to suck in a specific way to push their own product.
I think I can safely say this is HN's Retort Of The Year.
Its a nice way to create a presentation, thanks for the share...
I suppose you can get around this issue with a outlook account or another account that offers activesync for free or a cheaper price by having that account poll the gmail account via IMAP or the like. Also believe RIM device will not have an issue as they have a nice arsenal of webmail and other form of scrapers to centeralise your email push.

So in effect this realy will only effect the less-techy minded people out there with non android phones.
>iCloud is doing better than anything they ever did before

But iCloud is simply the third incarnation of a line of online services. Of course it's better than before, because they've had a lot of time to improve it.

>I don't think they made a conscious decision to suck in a specific way to push their own product.

I suppose so.
Of course, otherwise buyers would compare your content to real books ;)
Why White Tigers Should Go Extinct
I'd love to be able to pay Google to not serve me ads/creep on my searches/documents. $100/mo, $200/mo? What would it take? People derive enormous value from Google--they're paying for that value even if they don't realize it.
PDF is provided on the book's page I gave above. You're correct, small mark-up changes are needed to make use of the PDF-linking macros now available that weren't then.
Never, ever go in #rubyonrails. Every time I've ever been in there I get nothing but industrial strength sarcasm from people who don't actually know what they're talking about.

Who are these people? Are they socially awkward nerdy types, or are they more the "jock" side of the coin who understand social rules better than most but simply consider themselves above them?

My first instinct is to assume they're all 14 years old, because that was what everyone I knew was like when I was 14. Inevitably these people turn out to be in their 30s and have somehow assembled complete lives with jobs and houses and so on. The mind boggles.

By the way, #ruby on freenode is very noob friendly, with people going far out of their way to help beginning coders. There's probably a better class of noob in there as compared to #rubyonrails though.
Open Source Software: Compliance Basics And Best Practices
FYI This discusses various types of indices for SQL server. Which is fine, but not what I expected from the title.
Wind, solar could provide 99.9% of all power by 2030
Facebook have a responsibility, insofar as privacy is concerned: users are now forced to be included in searches; how easy is it to make your posts saying your are not the killer; how easy is it to delete your Facebook profile, as the wrongly accused brother eventually did?

What's more important is that other people like the Ryan Lanza namesakes are affected by this erosion of privacy - people who also face threats and the like.

It doesn't make them culpable, but they should know that they have a responsibility, because when people are on the look-out for someone, they are going to choose the path of least resistance to tracking them down.

For what it's worth, how should Twitter go about it, when a Ryan Lanza receives death threats from people on Twitter? What can be really complicated is figuring out how to deal with the problem; what isn't is understanding that the proprietors of the most popular social media platforms have a responsibility to their users.
Thinking about it, I dont think so. Because if you ask google and also ask a folk that is an expert on something or loves the subject, the person will give you much better information and links.
Heh, Google Life Extension, so you can live longer and thus view more ads in your lifetime.
So are most companies.
I believe your summary suffers from selection bias.

I think most people have views that are controversial. Only when one is famous do others hear about those controversial views. Furthermore, just about every famous project has its distractors, leading to controversy.

Take Stephen Hawking as an example. He doesn't believe there was a god who created the universe. That's a controversial view to many. But when an non-famous atheist says exactly the same thing, few take notice, so you don't hear about those people.

Take Alan Kay as another example. He's one of the key people behind OLPC, which given its criticism could be considered controversial. But name any big project which has neither criticism nor controversy.

Ole Kirk Christiansen founded Lego. He was visionary in that he saw a future in plastic bricks as toys for children. What were his controversial views? I have no clue. But he probably had some. Perhaps his motto "Only the Best is Good Enough" is controversial to someone who believes that that second best may be good enough for some cases.
Offer HN: iOS prototype, before Christmas $999
I'm a full time iOS freelance developer for the last 4 years, based in the UK.

I've ended up with the next week available (client can't provide assets until the new year). At the same time I'd like to purchase a little gift for myself but can't justify dipping in to savings for it.

Since its Christmas I'm offering 4 or 5 full days iOS development to get your app prototyped, or even completed depending on complexity, for only $999 (or $1000 - it is the holidays after all).

Anything goes, any idea, preferably simple so we can concentrate on getting the basic prototype slick and smooth.
My strengths are in consuming web services, IAP, UIKit, Games built with UIKit, etc. Happy to delve in to other areas but my real strength is in the core of iOS dev rather than audio/video/3D games.

I'm comfortable taking care of design/layout providing you have some rough ideas. I usually take on the role of design and suggesting what would work for my clients, although I'm not a designer by trade. Existing branding, or examples of what needs to be achieved is required to start this.

Some ideas:
A client for your startup, or portion of.

Mashup of some APIs you find interesting.

A small utility to make your life easier.

Something fun, small game or something entertaining that you'd like to release in the App Store.

Further development past this week would be charged at normal rates ($100/hr). On the off chance that its something I find interesting we could even discuss further development at reduced costs (if there's little left to do).

You can get in touch with me at Lewis.Sharder at gmail
UK based, standard rate about $100/hr.
I'm offering some cheaper to HN'ers for Christmas, so I can purchase myself a gift: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4925205
Yes, I have a part-time employee in current, but not co-founder.
I'm announcing microcrowdfunding flush-investment platfrom Flushstart. We all have pockets full of change by the end of the day. To participate in Flushstart you you just flush all the change down the toilet and Flushstart employees collect your investments in the sewers. You automatically get equity in all projects listed in Flushstart. I just started the platform by flushing 10 cents.
And there's something of an irony.

I'm glad to see that rational distinction prevails in this smaller forum. It's difficult to derive an as useful moderator as yours is here to the much larger colosseum of Facebook.

Anyone can be a deputy on Facebook. If it was the physical world and someone put up a notice in a meeting place inviting a hundred people to come and trash a citizens home, or where a lynch mob gathered under that roof to engage in hysterical damaging acts against a citizen protected ordinarily by law, we would not say that the owner of the meeting place did not at least have a duty of care.

It would be an impossible contradiction to require the venue owner to install fire exit signs to protect an individual and yet allow no interference if the individual is set alight inside the building instead.

Maybe Facebook is a bit like a nightclub. Go and have a good time and no one should get in your face while you're partying. Just don't expect that you won't get in a bar fight once in a while. And if it gets too messy, management will throw you out.
Nancy and VB.Net: The bootstrapper
Damn, govt, get off the internets.
Porn is the very foudation of Internet's Maslow pyramid.
If you remove all porn from the 'net (which is near-impossible and not worth an effort), there will be the only one website left. It will read "Put the porn back".
And what the funk with all this opt-out bullshit? Why should I all of a sudden use the service I do not need and not even know about? If I want to filter my or my kid's (or sister, or whoever the funk is on my home network) browsing experience, I'd do that on my own gateway. I know better what I should and should not browse.
Which leads me to expect, that the true target of filtering is not really porn.
Should have been empty string f[4:4]
>But there it stops. Once you hit a threshold of "better than pretty much everybody in the world, even those who have dedicated their life to this stuff", you don't really see this sort of elitism anymore.

I'm not so sure. Consider Linus, Rob Pike, and others...
Very impressive! I can see myself using this someday!
Build things that work. Repeat.
Best way to protect them is to let them the choice.
Apple's Decision To Make The New iMacs Super Thin Was A Mistake
Grasshopper - you ask the difference between knowledge and wisdom. This is a well understood question with not a well understood answer. Illumination is left to dear reader.

[edit - added below]

Knowing how to do something demonstrates technical ability.

Knowing what to do and when to do it demonstrates experience, judgment, finesse, and sometimes, political savvy.

Depending on what kind of role one is interviewing for, the interviewer may be interested in whether you can do the things they tell you to do. So little of hiring managers want people who can think; they want people who can do.

While I recognize that these hiring managers are short-sighted, I submit that they are the majority.

In spite of their preference, certainly an implementor has to make decisions about which choices to make all the time. Yet, many people view a 'programmer' as a do-er, not a decision maker.