skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How many little web services have you all used, that have come and gone over the years, that never had as much money behind them as Google? Most people are going to trust that Google has a better chance long-term, even if the product has a chance of going away some day. I am always leery of my data with small companies, and make sure there is a good backup/exit strategy (obviously, this applies to Google too).

I see a lot of passionate tweets over just another web service. If Google wasn't killing the service, but asking users to spread the word to keep the service, would they be so passionate about it then? Maybe. People don't often go to Twitter when their service is working, generally when they're pissed (unless the service is mind-blowing great). I just don't think all the whining is going to do much convincing at this point, or that it will impact Google all that much.
Well, I don't think it'll stay this way, though I'm grateful for it. If everyone who used Firefox donated a dollar...
No one said zero cost. Your claim was that "you can't decrease net emissions." If solar is lower net emissions-wise, you have decreased net emissions.
Was this poker?
How was the casino able to see the hole cards?
What other game could this have been?
And who would play at these stakes? Was it the casino's money that was lost or other players?
There is no mention of victims, so perhaps it wasn't poker?
Will Effective Gun Control Come from The Hill or The Valley?
View Google at a new light, not give them the benefit of a doubt. If Google does something, they'll try to see what's the catch. Google has gotten a lot of good, free press
I don’t know why the Reader on WordPress.com isn’t mentioned more often. It looks just right for a small, carefully chosen set of subscriptions.
What does Paul Graham think about Mailbox?
Litely – Beautiful, Subtle, Analogue Inspired Photo Presets
You know what commands respect in my book? Actually doing something. Doing a startup is hard, getting as many users as formspring is even harder.

You know what doesn't command respect? Being an armchair quarterback snarking that they should have done more.
The CIA's eerily accurate technology predictions from 1962
Hey glanch, I'm happy to hear you enjoyed OSE. Your account is hellbanned, FYI.
> around $100 million in cash and stock

There was talk of Dropbox being valued in the billions, if the majority of the sale price is stock (say, $90 million?) would that be a high amount of stock for Dropbox to use on an acquisition ($4 billion valuation, $90 million = ~2%?) or does that sound reasonable for something they're expecting to be important in the future?
Many people do much of the fancy stuff with system managment products (Tivoli or BMC patrol spring to mind from past experiences). With that they can do centralised monitoring of the server and services and software and automate responses to defined conditions allowing automatic responses with the right thought and alerting callout when exceptions to the rules occur and when things need looking at.

Now all that said, I'm not uptodate on that side of things and even less uptodate on open source alternative, though my quick look at this does indicate that it is a start in the right directon and can only get better. So quick look and glance over gave me a good gut feeling, which is always nice to have.
There are a lot of users that don't need the more advanced stuff.
To be fair, it's easier these days to afford both a smartphone AND a piece of much more hackable hardware. At least as far as prices go.

One of the main real reasons for Linus's success (other than say his talent) is that there wasn't a good alternative to Linux so even version 0.2 which could barely do anything by today's standards got interest and community involvement.
Following Blogs — WordPress.com
It should be clear that in 1996, a funding freeze was put in place for all federal research funds to stay away from gun control research that went even touched policy. From the top down, it was just a no touch area and so the science just stopped.

Because this project is crowdfunded, there will be no restrictions. For the first time in a long time, a researcher will be able to dive into a previously released CDC data set looking at gun control policies and related gun violence.

This is huge, because this project is picking up the slack where others are unable to go.
It's a general feeling, mostly. Google seems to be growing more and more out of touch with its users in general. Some major warning signs for a company going down this road are: pet projects being given importance well beyond any hard-headed rational assessment; "strategy tax" behavior, making decisions which only make sense in the broader sense of serving the "greater good" of advancing a platform or what-have-you; making big decisions that are out of touch with what the market/public wants; using sheer size and resources as a market weapon instead of letting competition do its work.

Google's social endeavors have always shown them to be out of touch and incapable of engaging the market with a product that people care about (orkut, knol, buzz, wave, and now plus). Their approach to "customer service" for many of their products is to actively disconnect from their users and let the natural release cycle take care of things. They have a long history of ugly interfaces with poor usability. Youtube is a good example, discoverability of new content has only gotten worse over the years and many fundamental features are really very broken or at best poorly implemented (such as playlists), despite being an otherwise mature product. They've killed off lots of small products and projects for the sin of not fitting in to the grand strategy. And they've tried as much as they dare to force people into using google+ whether they want to or not.

Google still has a huge number of world-class engineers, and that will enable them to continue making some truly great things over the next years and perhaps decades. But fundamentally google is on a track toward becoming just another run-of-the-mill mega-corp, and if they continue along that route eventually a lot of the talent is going to evaporate away (as has happened and is continuing to happen at MS) and there won't be anything to save them from mediocrity.
It would be interesting to see what they are predicting for 50 years from now. Transporters maybe?
I thought that blog post didn't live up to the title. It mainly said two things: 1) no renderings and 2) no offering multiple quantities, and they're not even enforcing the second part (Lace Anchors, eg).

The post itself says, "The new guidelines only apply to [projects] that are developing new products ... that backers are expecting in their mailboxes." They're not disallowing such campaigns at all. But we are offering an easier alternative.

[Edit: clarity]
We've built Luigi at Spotify to solve a lot of similar problems: https://github.com/spotify/luigi

Might be worth checking out if you are building large data flows. We probably run 10k Luigi "tasks" every day, of which the majority is Hadoop jobs. They are all organized in a large dependency graph expressed within Python, and you also get visualization, exception handling, atomic file operation, etc.
Sadly, this is sucky on both ends of the equation.

When I interned at Facebook two years ago, it was a PITA to change the API to work around bugs that were fixed in old versions of FB4A because people wouldn't upgrade -- whereas the vast majority of iOS users upgraded the Facebook app within days of a new release showing up in the App Store. The addition of non-Play devices makes this even worse.

Granted, I had my own reasons for not wanting to upgrade, so I can sympathize with users, too. (Facebook was pre-installed on my device, and upgrading caused it to take up space in the 180 MB volatile/userdata partition on my Nexus One. I eventually solved the issue by buying a Galaxy Nexus, but I recognize not everyone can buy new phones that frequently.)
Marissa Mayer: How to Avoid Burnout
Many people will see the title, realise that if they actual were busy then they would not be reading about people who are busy. But worth a read though, just for a time out :).
I think most other people would call that feature creep. The day Dropbox does anything more than sync files is the day I stop using Dropbox.
Blind player Ben Shaw on raiding and WoW for the sightless
What a surprise...commodity producers aren't happy with commodity pay. Never would have predicted that.
I still think that is a terrible default for the truly paranoid.

Google could, at any time, initiate a cloud-to-device intent to install arbitrary software that you "wanted" from Google Play. They don't unless they ask you to, but the capability is there.

The bigger thorn is if you're on a device where the manufacturer or carrier has hidden or removed the option to install arbitrary APKs.
Mailbox is the Draw Something of Email.
Ask HN: Visionary, Ambitious Media Startup Seeks Technical Co-Founder
I'm looking for someone that otherwise does not have interest in current music startups - I didn't (it seems the music business did things better before it jumped the stream and became complacent).

Details can be found at duvo1.jottit.com/cto - thank you!

Note: Building just a music company would be boring for me...
Technically, Google can install arbitrary software on your phone -- Google Play installations are served by "push", not "pull".

If you own a cell phone, you're already screwed from a privacy standpoint with carriers tracking which tower you're connected to.

tl;dr: You should be freaked out, but not by this.
Discover The Secrets Of IPhone With Magical Features
Well, the US is a Republic and not a democracy. Even in the case of a direct democracy, should we have 50.1% deciding for the 100%? If only it were a trivial game it would be an easy answer!

Quoting Jefferson isn't a call to action, but a call to remember those words, the context and the inspiration. It's insightful to remember that Jefferson was the founder of a third-party known as the Democratic-Republicans.

As much as people think the world is different, the difference is really only technologically. Instead of stealing horses, people steal cars. Instead of bootlegging liquor, people run marijuana.

Instead of slave masters, we have human resources.
This could alternatively be titled the Thinks-they're-Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls. The "smarter, not harder" mantra being misapplied can be a classic case of a lack of intelligence (which is bad) and a lack of foresight (which is worse). And no, you don't need a super intelligence to have foresight; just some experience and a willingness to listen to people who are smarter than you without your pride getting in the way.

If I knew what I know now when I was 18-19, I would have slapped myself upside the head and say, "You idiot! You know nothing! Stop pretending that you do and you'll actually get something done!"
Can someone please explain the economics behind this deal? Congrats to those involved...but at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense (to an outsider at least).
It's probably not gonna happen this way, but my vision of the future is one where, after just about every career is automated, people take to their hobbies. However, there's a poem by Robert Frost that really makes me wonder why we don't just take to our hobbies now: http://www.etymonline.com/poems/tramps.htm

Here's hoping you manage to unite your vocation and avocation.
Mail had too much hype from day #1; something like RIP Airtime on steroids. Usually when it happens it means the board/owners/executive managment is very deeply connected to the media world (like with Color). For that reason alone, it doesn't surprise me they sold it to a large player. Such a quick sale may mean they were dissapointed with their growth but thats speculation. I could be a favor from one exec to another; something like board members of both FB and Instagram selling one to another.

I wouldn't be surprised if Mail will share the faith of Color, Airtime or many others...
If they hate Uber so much they should stop using it. They aren't obligated to Uber in any way.

The "rampant firing" happens when drivers who suck get poor ratings (below 4.7 and you go on probation according to an Uber driver I talked to) sounds like their own problem not Uber's.
"But at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense" could describe every startup M&A deal made in the past year.
There is an interesting twist here that relates to the reflexivity (reflexivity, that thing Soros likes to talk about) of the value of gold. Precious metals may start off being precious because they are rare and beautiful materials that are easily crafted into decorative shapes. Girls like it. Guys like it. But then, because it doesn't decay it's value increases because it starts to be used as a standard trading commodity! Because that pile of gold can be converted into a house or food for a year or a farm, etc. that pile of gold increases in value. Indeed, pretty quickly this reflexive value eclipses intrinsic value, to the point where the gold itself doesn't matter except as a placeholder.

We can then jump to fiat currency. The key question is: how much real wealth can that pile of fiat money be converted into? The details vary (e.g. you can negotiate a better price) but fundamentally the real-world convertibility of a currency requires a functional, working market: the US dollar is powerful because you can easily and stably convert it into a basket of real goods. Indeed, the sheer size of the US economy means that this basket is unusually independent of demand, and can meet essentially unlimited demand in real goods. I mean, you could probably buy $100M of US corn today and not have any real effect on the supply. (Yes, you could overwhelm almost any single commodity market with $36B. Luckily Bill Gates did not decide to blow it all on bottled Coke, otherwise the world would be totally without Coke for probably a good two weeks!)

It is the physical, political, social, and legal environment that defines the machinery with which money is converted into real goods. Indeed, one could even justify US geopolitical goals (which pretty much boil down to "become invulnerable") as making possible the ultimately stable marketplace, which further strengthens the currency.

The problems arise, of course, when the machinery itself becomes perverted. We can define market perversion as "adversely affecting the machinery that converts money into real goods". There are a wide variety of such perversions, ranging from patent trolling (which perverts the R&D market), to the increase in size and complexity of the legal system to the point where prosecution is itself punishment (which also dampens innovation and reduces risk taking). This is partly why it is important to have a healthy middle class and not have too much concentration of wealth: if wealth is concentrated enough, then the wealthy wed with the machinery, and the perversion becomes systematic. We already see that with telecom and the FCC, banks and the SEC.
What's with the absurd valuation?

Are they gonna bump the price to $10 and hope to sell 10 million copies?

Do they hope adding a mail client to Dropbox will bring them.. um.. how many million new customers?

Is it some sort of tax evasion scheme? Or do they plan to flip it to the next bigger idiot for $200mio? Or what, the hell, is the idea here?

I'd really like to understand the rationale behind these kind of deals. Who profits from doing that?
I love the way Uber works and use it all the time. It is hard for me to assess whether they have a legitimate gripe though since every driver I have asked directly about the service (which is every ride I take) has answered enthusiastically positive. Maybe just trying to use their leverage to negotiate rather than being truly harmed?
2005 video interview with John McCarthy published today
Goodbye WordPress, Hello Jekyll
Are they teaching the "100 chest pumps per minute" technique now?

I recall seeing that it is almost as effective as the "legacy" CPR rescue breaths.

It's honestly super easy to remember, and I'll feel comfortable performing it if I find myself in that situation.
Black car service is hardly commodity labor. Corn is a commodity. Oil is a commodity. The difference between a good driver and a bad one is tremendous--the better ones drive confidently and know where they're going, and the bad ones are tethered to their GPS. As a frequent user of Uber (in NYC) I've seen both.

But I understand I'm not paying for a commodity, which is why this concerns me. My relationship with Uber is through its drivers, not their app--I'm just worried they don't understand that.
I would say +1 to this, but also add butter & onions :)
Are you implying that it'll sell in an overvalued acquisition and then languish in the hands of its new parent company?

Or are you saying that it's popular?
No technical skills? Read hacker news.

Brilliant.
Eye opener, really.
Personally, the hype was what pushed me past the Ambivalence Tipping Point. The last time anyone really tried to get me excited about email was when Google had a mysterious beta webmail that was invite only. It was a good five years before there was anything in the market that gave me any second thought on switching away from gmail as my email browser.

That said, Mailbox is sleek but gimmicky, and I have doubts about its long-term value.

Finally getting accepted for Mailbox was exciting. I wouldn't want everyone to do the same thing, but I'm glad that they did.
The 19 Best Investment Blogs You Can Learn From
Not sure why this is getting downvoted, seems like a valid point (specifically, if they dislike Uber they should stop using it). Can anyone elaborate?
I took part in this:

https://www.cprundead.ca/guinness-event

and they specifically said that mouth-to-mouth is no longer a part of it. It's all about the chest compressions.
Actually the equivalent of the above Perl 6 code would be:

f(g(h(a)))

It can get kind of gnarly when any of the values are non-trivial.
As far as I can tell this is mostly a consequence of Uber responding to the market (i.e.: competitors like Lyft). With Uber X, Black car drivers no longer have a monopoly on convenient transportation (and from what I hear, that has significantly decreased their business). I can't entirely fault Uber for this...they need to adapt or die.
Google Reader Being Retired
There are degres of commodity, it does not only apply to raw material, i.e. IT infrastructure is turning into commodity, but you will still find differentials. The range of differentials is what defines if it's commodity or not.

I would agree with the previous poster, drivers are mostly commodity producers. Just like barbers, you might find one exceptional here and then, but generally it's all commodity.
I didn't downvote you. I agree with the Microsoft tax, but I think "Successful or well-known .Net programs are invariably closed source" is an unfair exaggeration.
Backspace: Chrome's Biggest Flaw
In Chrome for Mac and Windows, you can hit backspace as a shortcut for the back button in the browser. In some ways, this is kind of smart—great for accessibility—it’s fast and one-handed, but the web has changed. With web apps, typing effectively and confidently is more important than ever.

These applications try to be smart about where your cursor should be, but they aren’t perfect and often don’t account for every possibility. Or your banking/shopping website is coded by a moron and somehow you end up hitting delete and losing your transaction details when it jumps you between fields.

If you haven’t experienced this, you’re a more accurate typist than me, even more of a lurker, or using Chrome for linux (where it’s been fixed), but when I’m writing, backspace should mean backspace and should never delete ALL of what I’m working on.

Google has a number of open issues for this merged into:
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=36533
2% is not at all a high amount of stock to issue.
I would love to be corrected, and preferably not a developer-related app!
It still doesnt make it right, nor is it any sane or logic reasoning behind the drone use.

Ever time I hear someone explain the wars as an legit response to the 9/11 attack, it sounds as an "excuse" a kid would make after a school massacre. Oh look he say, there was this evil kid who hit and kicked me that other day, so I took my dads machine gun and extracted my revenged. The other children and teachers sheltered that bully, so they deserved what they got. It was justice, he said.

There are no sane reasoning behind such claim. There are also no sane reasoning behind any claimed connection between 9/11 and the current wars or drone usage. I understand that the kid received a great injustice from the bully. I can understand the need for revenge. 9/11 was also a great injustice where people craved for revenge. But sanity left quick after, and we got schools with dead bodies and two wars. That, and drones.
Wages are only part (I've heard 50% before) of the cost of hiring. There are other expenses like training, desk space, insurance, etc. So I can't imagine that it'd be much easier getting an unpaid position as a paid one. At the very least there'd have to be some expectation that you'd offer a return on any training you receive. If you've got the potential, they'd probably just pay you. There's nothing stopping them from employing casually or on a short term contract to alleviate risk. Taking people on for free might even violate labour laws in some jurisdictions.

Volunteering for a not-for-profit is a different matter of course.
This is what happens when you don't win the "acquisition lottery" in the game of startups. This could've easily been the fate of Instagram, or Foodspotting.

On a side note.. the most politically correct way to shutdown a service is to let users export their data.. but I wonder if even 1 person is going to want to do that here.
Wrong OTR

Edit: that came out a little curt. The OTR protocol is different than what Gmail calls OTR. Gmail's just turns off logging; the protocol is encryption.
I like it.

I'd recommend that you make a block link out of the text bubble that contains your 'next' link. Honing in on the actual word 'next' slowed me down.

For especially... uninitiated (?) web/computer users I could see there being an issue wherein the text bubble containing 'next' is cut off by the bottom boundary of the browser window.

Just recently I had to make a series of screenshots to walk someone through something. Great weekend project.
Agree with this guy. Cutting the work into small tranches is an option too. Remember that the one who is employing is afraid of being scammed as well!
actually if you take that argument to its natural conclusion the only people in the US with jobs would be people who innovate and create new value.
Don't think that waiters and baristas fit in that category. If i was either, i'd be really worried about my prospect, and would probably fall back to organized labor to protect my jobs, because the economic mechanism definitely would not!
haha, no it's not. no one is going to care about this in a grand total of 3 days.
Ah ok, I had the slight impression that you didn't want to discuss this and instead just voice your opinion. Confirmed and noted.
I can't subscribe to <insert-generic-Wordpress-blog-here> with Twitter/Facebook. With RSS, content authors only have to update their websites and not worry about crossposting to a social feed.
Would be interesting to get a comparative retrospective on why these guys lost while Quora seems to have come from nowhere solidly into the mainstream.
We’re at 4+ billion responses. Obviously, many more questions were sent. If you were to guess 5Q/1R you wouldn’t be far.
I have a hard time criticizing someone for taking a ride on something that was grew from 0 to 30 million uniques in 6 months, just to see where it goes. You're right it wasn't super sticky and failed to drive long term utility for users, but I think most of us here would want to take a swing at that kind of growth and turn it into something that had long term value.