skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't get this article at all.

If you didn't read it, the author is basically saying that 3D printers will never go "mainstream" for the same reasons that most people don't own or use sewing machines and make their own clothes. But this is almost a completely spurious point and refers only to the current and near future state of technology. He is right in that no-one but nerds would be interested in current or even substantially improved 3D printers, where there's still a lot of cost, time and fiddling around to do in order to print your useless plasticky widget. But who doesn't think the technology will improve, massively?

It's a completely bogus comparison. Clothes are almost a special case. The source textile is important, the way it's designed is hugely important - more important than function, a lot of the time. Good textiles, in case you've ever tried to buy any, are not available below truly massive quantities and half the time not available at all. I once had the idea that I was going to make myself a "kewl" jacket out of black gore-tex (or similar) based on a pattern from a disassembled other jacket. I could not source any material from anywhere in quantities under 100m or so. This is $60+/m fabric or something, so my starting cost, just to get the material, was $6k+ (numbers were probably higher, I forgot). Needless to say, I didn't bother. So it's not like you can just sew anything at all - you are dependent on upstream factors a lot.

There's another factor he overlooks, too. Clothes are a huge but fairly generic category. Most people wear fairly "normal" clothes like, say, jeans and t-shirts, or suits and shirts. If you need, say, another black t-shirt, it is fairly safe to assume you can find one nearby, and these basic items can be produced on massive scale at low cost. Of course no-one is going to sew their own black t-shirt. And most people don't really wear clothes that aren't available at scale. You could make a good case that 90+% of clothing is widely available mass market, and the psychology of clothes prevents deviating from that too much.

But the 3D printing idea isn't supposed to cover the generic cases, it's supposed to cover everything.

No, I think 3D printers will be more like, well, 2D printers, and right now we're in about the 70s level of small-scale print development. Does anyone know someone who doesn't own an inkjet or something? And yet you have to feed that as well - paper and ink - and you have to tell the computer to print. Is that just for nerds?

When the technology is there, imagine buying the raw materials at a nearby shop, just like you'd buy a ream of paper. You plug the thing into your computer, just like a 2D printer. You open the "document" and hit print. Anything the thing can build - and the potential is almost unlimited, in time - will be built. How is that not going to be popular?

It's not going to be this year or next, but in a decade I'd be pretty surprised if there wasn't a much, much larger market for on-demand manufacturing (and, for that matter, book printing). It just seems inevitable. This guy needs to think more long-term.
Standard Ruby style is to use { } when the code block is inline or a single liner, and do/end on multi-line blocks. This is only common style though.
To some degree, I would argue that the crafting community has a strong track record of sharing, but usually in an offline way e.g. sewing circles, meeting friends at sewing supply shops, etc. The point I am trying to make is that even though most people (esp. customization enthusiasts) could at this time make their own clothes few do. Even the legions that read Craft: magazine who are tech savvy and crafty don't seem to be making clothes en masse, but the argument for 3D printers is that once they are cheap enough people will flock to them.
That's an interesting way of looking at it, not something that would have occurred to me at all.
If your goal is to get a Ph.D., then you are correct. If your goal is to start a research career, then it is not the rational course of action. The irrelevant and obscure thesis will not get you a research job.

Incidentally, getting "scooped" is not as bad as you seem to think. My thesis cites quite a few papers which "scooped" me, and the guy who hired me for my current job actually had a student who "scooped" me. My approach is different enough to be interesting.
This sounds like stealing to me. DNS/ICMP tunneling is a clever hack, but the end result is that you are using someone else's bandwidth without paying for it.
Handling timezone conversion with PHP DateTime
Sho, you make good points, but the comparison is closer than you think. You mention the high cost of specialty fabrics, but the plastics market is even more complex. The 1-7 coding for recycling on plastic containers is a gross oversimplification. Plastics are engineered for specialty applications to be more flexible, heat resistant, more easily bonded to other plastics, etc. Trying to get an ounce of plastics like that will also cost considerable sums.

To your point about 2D printing, think about how uniform the feedstocks are. 4 colors of ink can be sprayed on paper to recreate a rainbow of colors. 2D printing is almost platonic in its simplicity. 3D printers may work with a subset of materials in the future, but its a drop in the bucket.

Also, I see clothes as a special case as well, but one that is MORE likely to be customized. Sure you may just need a commodity item like a black Tshirt, but clothing is one of the most personalized product cateogries. Custom neck ties, new fashions, printed Tshirts, etc. Just look at the startups in the space: Threadless, Cafepress, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, etc.
With respect, I think you only think you're making a different point. The lack of overlap goes both ways. There are few sewing machine enthusiasts who share designs online. Similarly, few of the people who want to share stuff online think clothes are the obvious place to start. Is this really that surprising, in light of what you know about hacker culture?

To use your HTML example, you're saying that since few early web hackers had pages dedicated to kitty cats and bad poetry, nobody interested in such things was ever going to turn up online.
I agree with this. There should be no place for pains in the asses, no matter how smart they think they are. I remember when I was interviewing (seems so long ago), I got to interview with one of these kinds of guys. I felt so belittled after the process. Even though I liked the company (and found the best HR I've ever seen!!)--I said no to their offer. Not the team I want to be on.
the thing is, the "he really knows his stuff" guy usually doesn't. He somehow convinced the top guys 5-6 years ago that he did, and now they think he shits gold, when in reality he is very mediocre by current standards
Twitter’s Constant Stream Of Update Messages Suddenly Grinds To A Halt
How Barclays Ensured That Everyone Would See Their Confidential Tax Avoidance Documents
California jobless rate climbs to 10.5 percent
What Consumers Cling to in Lean Times: Cell phones in, cable TV out
The dangers of operating a Tor exit node
While I have nothing against the idea of "resolving" jerks/bullies, I think suggesting that deep technical skills and being an unproductive jerk are concomitant is insulting, and dangerously wrong.

Fortunately, this suggestion is made by a marketing guy, and everyone knows they're full of hot air.
I'm impressed that they had 100 people including 30 PhDs at year 2.
Cliff Click Jr: Experiences with Hardware Transactional Memory for Java
Firefox May Already Be Dead
Ask HN: I've had some software developed, now the coder is holding me for ransom.
I'm not a hacker/coder, but I've hired a coder to create me a desktop app using JAVA swing that I planned to sell.

I hired him in August 2008, he quoted me $2500 and said it would take two months. Its now almost april and hes almost finished. Throughout the process hes been angry, rude and keeps talking about how incredibly patient he's being with me.

I offered him 10 percent of profits, just because I thought I might as well seeing as my initial investment looked like it was going down the pan anyway. But hes been holding me ransom the whole time, basically wanting more money, a lump sum at the end of development and he wants my investor (who may invest a modest amount in the software) to buy him out.

What can I do? I cant afford to pay him bonuses, I dont want to give him more percentage and I definitely want to try and get him off my back and cut him out of the project.

I'm thinking the best way would be to get someone to reverse engineer the software so I have complete control over it. It currently authenticates the user on startup using a script on his server.

My question is, can anyone tell me what the best way to do it would be? Is reverse engineering Java Swing apps doable? Im thinking I should hire someone of Rentacoder to do this and just get this headache over and done with.

Thanks for any advice.
A platitude about platitudes: they don't apply universally. If I find myself in a management position where this situation occurs, I would not be so hasty to fire. There's more legwork involved to make a prudent choice in this situation than Seth lets on to. I'm just sayin'...
Hm, also good points, but I still think your conclusions are too "confused by the present situation".

For example, you rightly mention the awesome variety of plastics. But how many of them are really, when it comes down to it, essential to the functionality of the end product?

I see many, many of these different plastics as existing not because of their inherent qualities in the end product but due to other factors. For example, you mention a type of plastic that bonds well to others. That is a manufacturing concern. It could be essential for the final idealised product to glue two plastics, but it could just as easily be an artefact of the manufacturing process.

Another thing you fail to consider is the disappearance of the scale manufacturing incentive to reduce material costs. If you're making 100,000 copies of something, every percent reduction in your materials cost, and in the complexity of manufacture, becomes very significant. But if you're making 1, the materials cost is almost irrelevant, and you don't care about being able to stamp out one a second. How much could the removal of that factor influence the design?

Consider a milk bottle. In manufacturing millions of them, there is every incentive to reduce costs. So we have the cheapest possible plastic which is food-safe but strong and moldable enough to have a handle, etc. Another type of plastic for a soft drink bottle. Another for a jar of honey, another for your takeaway food container. But every single one of these could actually be functionally replaced by, say, metal. The different plastics, the use of plastic at all, is not fundamental to the function, it is a side-effect of marginal costs in scale manufacturing. This is probably a bad example but I hope it shows the point.

How many types of "building block" do we need? It is probably an unanswerable question but even so, it is surely orders of magnitude less than the question you're answering, which is "how many do we currently have".

And your point about clothes - the "customisations" you are talking about are superficial only, just what is printed on the front! The actual clothing is identical. Cafepress do not design and manufacture a unique type of t-shirt just for you. You are actually kind of proving my point ;)
Ask YC: Where I can learn the basics of a startup.
HN has been shedding light on lot of startup related stuff which are really helpful. But if someone still wants to know about the basics like how to get in to the correct mindset, Howto know whether I'm actually ready to leap etc. it'll be great if the experienced folks here can share some ideas/sources. Care to share?
i downloaded this thing and installed it. it looks kind of interesting.

then i started poking around in the config settings, and discovered that it was saving tens of megabytes of mpeg movies to disk. i resent it taking up that much disk space for a screen saver. so i fiddled with the config settings, trying to get it to not save them. after that, it didn't make fractal screen images anymore, just a static image that's primarily an ad for the website. so i deleted the screen saver and all its mpg files.

perhaps there's some bigger purpose to this thing that i'm not getting, but whatever it is, it's not worth tens of megabytes of disk space to me.
Some people are worth 10 average people (some people are worth 100). If you want your startup to outcompete, you need them. You may have to put up with some amount of shit, but hiring talent is a non-negotiable requirement for business success.
Didn't you come to any kind of written agreement on your DEAL? If not You have to be very careful of every step you are planning to take.

I suggest you to be flexible in this matter & take a step which would do less damage to your investment. I hope HN folks will come up with some good advices :).
Segway Meets Big Dog - The Cajun Crawler, Interviews & Video
So why isn't Cassano sitting in jail with Bernie Madoff?
Agree with tmpg. If you are planning to go to a better school (more precisely, a school KNOWN TO BE better) then it's fine. Else don't do it any way. If you have problems convincing yourself that love is not a very good thing hope this blog post of mine will help

http://chanux.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/the-post-valentine-da...

And also you better read following article, at least the topic "School" of it.

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/02/25/a_glimpse_a...
Use REST because it's a convention. As far as I can tell, there is no other earthly reason to use it. It certainly doesn't simplify the coding of web applications.

In fact, REST barely exists in the Django world. The problem that Rails solved with CRUD, Django solved with the Admin interface.
Well there was a written agreement, but the funds were released in 4 separate milestones.

However, once I'd released 40 percent of the money and it was slightly late, I'd already wasted 2 months and said goodbye to 40 percent of the funds, so I felt like I had to stick with it. A foolish move in retrospect!
Sounds like making use of the generous DNS and ICMP features they're providing for free to me.

"Stealing" is an overstatement for stuff like this. In the grand scheme of things it's like taking a penny from the penny tray, like plugging your computer in for power at a tech conference, like "testing" a few grapes in the grocery store, or like picking a pretty flower from a hedgerow.
okay, first, you can't use html in an hn post for formatting. you should go back and add two-return-key paragraph breaks, so your post will be readable.

second, getting someone to "reverse engineer" an existing app is a very bad idea. you're already in a bad situation, that would make it even worse.

assuming you find someone to do this, they are going to be morally questionable. i, for one, would never agree to do such a thing, not for any price.

if you're not happy with the work you're getting, you should have said so a long time ago. if the terms you've negotiated so far allow you to do so, i'd offer him some smaller amount for the source code and call it a day. if he says no, hire another coder to start again from scratch.

2500 bucks is not very much money to lose. i just lost six months of my time working on a startup that didn't pan out, for which i received a grand total of 1500 bucks. given how much i was making at my last full-time job, that's an opportunity cost to me of about 50 grand. but i'm sure as hell not going to make things worse by mucking around in the situation any longer. i took my lumps and i'm moving on.
Listening to music has been a fairly established wish for humans for thousands of years. Video comments on blogs? Not so much. It's less useful than text in almost all circumstances.
From the computers I've been asked by friends and family to repair of their malware epidemics lately, I could retitle this article "The dangers of operating Windows XP". Every single one has been in one botnet or another.

Tor is a sticky problem, sure, but uninformed law enforcement is as well. An IP is not a telephone number. With the onslaught of voip, soon a telephone number won't be either.

At least this case had a prosecution free resolution.
I can work around bad attitude, but I can't work around incompetence. Besides, you do not gain true technical expertise without the ability to eventually recognize a good solution for one. So while you may encounter initial resistance when you broach a new idea to a good techie (usually because if he's good, he's already given the problem a lot of thought and hence really thinks his is the right solution) if your idea has merit, she will usually come around after cooling down a little. That has been my experience, anyway.

Conversely, if you think your idea is really good and he refuses to come around and is unable to give a logical reason why, then a) he's not really that good or b) he's good but you did not understand what he said.
To quote scripture: "Hast thou seen a man speedy in his business? Before kings he doth station himself, He stations not himself before obscure men!"

Modern paraphrase: Even Obama gets to put up with this guy's shit.
2500 dollars is a lot for me, in my current situation. Surely it's not morally questionable as I paid for a service, to be completed at an agreed date at an agreed price. If he refuses to stick to the deal then I don't see how its amoral for me to pay him the 2500 dollars and keep my software, even if he wants to try and squeeze more money out of me.

Please feel free to let me know why it would be wrong for me to do that, as I'm not trying to be unethical.

Also: corrected the dodgy formatting!
gigablast finds stuff for me that others miss.
okay, first, you can't use html in an hn post for formatting. you should go back and add two-return-key paragraph breaks, so your post will be readable.

I had the exact same thing happen to me the other day when trying to submit a poll, it popped up <p> tags all over the place, so I'm sure it's not the guys fault.

I had to go back and edit the thread to make it readable after someone pointed it out to me.
Who bears responsibility for layoffs?
But he doesn't suggest that:

"You'll find someone else who really knows this stuff. No doubt about it. And firing one intransigent bully is a lot less painful than shutting down an entire division next year because he paralyzed your decision-making."
I found this part at the end of the post amusing:

They need to be disciplined and retrained, and their senior managers need to be named and shamed, as they are an unacceptable risk to innocent members of the public, and the real criminals must be running rings around them.

There's absolutely no incentive for the police to understand these things (or let on that they do) and avoid freaking out "innocent" members of the public. Look at this example: this guy won't be running a Tor exit node again, so in a way, they got what they wanted.
Simple...sue him.

Dude I'm in your exact situation...hired someone to do a project, and he is now a year late. I gave the guy concession after concession just to get him to finish...hell I cut about 70% of the features just to have him finish quicker. And told him...as long as he finish quickly I'd waive the late fees.

You can't work with these people...even after all my concessions the guy still gave me major attitude when I demanded that he hurry up or I'll sue him.

So Monday I'm getting the lawyers involved. Not sure about your situation, but I had my guy sign a contract that specified late fees. So its a little easier to sue him, since the late fees will more than cover lawyer fees. Of course since you have a smaller amount, you can try your luck at small claims court.
heh! a guy who makes a living blowing up obvious platitudes into book length anecdote laden "management advice" has a problem with technically sharp people (who as someone pointed out earlier here) he conflates with "bullies" (what an ill defined catchall phrase) and advocates getting rid of them.

Why am I not surprised?
I've hired a coder to create me a desktop app using JAVA swing that I planned to sell.

You might be asking for advice in the wrong place.

If you want to make money selling desktop apps, the advice you'll likely get from this crowd is "learn how to do it yourself." Otherwise, give your coder at least a 50 percent interest in all of the proceeds from this app.

Given what you tell us of his reaction, it sounds like you might be offering him an insulting percentage; think about it like: where would your idea to make a quick buck be without somebody who writes code?

Sometimes it's all about respect; other times it's about credit (being known for coming up with X); and still sometimes it's all about money, but most of the time it's a combination of the three. Find out what his combination is.
oh. huh, didn't know that.

by the way, by putting a couple of blank spaces at the beginning of the quote, your comment is causing the page width to get stretched out.
Sho, Great critique, but I think your conclusions underplay the importance of manufacturing. Granted we probably don't need as many plastics as we currently have, but even a single polymer like Lexan would need to come in many colors. These colors also also impacted by "flake" material being included to introduce reflectivity and a variety of other special effects. Also, the nature of molding something allows you to have certain material properties that cannot be achieved through additive fabrication.

Of course, we could move to metal for some product categories, but cost becomes an issue there as well, you might be willing to pay more for a one off object, but 20X as is the norm now?

Regarding the superficial nature of most clothing customization, you are correct that most offerings only allow you to change graphics, but Walmart has a tremendous business along those lines. Also, next generation startups like www.propercloth.com are allowing more customization in fit and function.

In any case I think we both have valid points and there is only so much we can accomplish on a message board. If you are ever in Boston give me a shout.
Check out these:

http://www.faxitnice.com

http://www.faxzero.com
Ask HN: Moving buku files from one remote server to another?
I'm about to move many GB (about 11GB) of files from one unix based host to another.

Here is how:
1. SSH into old.
2. tar and gzip everything (to save on bandwidth and time in transfer).
3. SSH into new.
4. use scp to move this tar/gzipped file
5. gunzip the file
6. Profit (well, be done anyway)

Can anyone tell me if there is a better (more bandwidth efficient, faster, safer, smarter, etc.) way than this?
I appreciate that I can't write code, he has a skill I don't have. But I hired him to do it, he agreed a price, but hes now almost a year late and despite me offering him bonuses, 10% of the profits, hes still holding me to ransom and wanting more.

If I hire someone to build a house they don't get insulted when I offer them 10% of future rental yields. How can it be insulting to offer a percentage which wasn't even in the initial agreement?
Seth states that "Deep technical competency is overrated compared with the ability to make excellent decisions"

I'd rather say technical competency doesn't make up for destroying the team spirit. There are probably several movies, where the coach throws out the star of the team and gets a better overall team afterwards.

On the other hand it is important to know that technical competency is a requirement for excellent decisions.
Blogspam, flagged.

Original: http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-o...
I'd like to be indignant at this, but the imagery is hilarious. But now I feel like a troll [lowers head in shame]. Better content next time, k?