skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A business case for Continuous Integration
Maybe this guy will get his wish if the Winklevoss twins lose everything: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c525e/ive_lost_mor... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c5m6w/class_action...
Clarifying a bit, were either of you a (very) part time worker? It's not impossible to make 40k a year in retail, but not in seasonal, disposable employment.
You are talking about terrestrial networks; that's not what WISPs are building. In a number of developing countries, the ground networks are owned and regulated, but wireless operators are not regulated in the same way.

In San Francisco we have a TON of small wireless ISPs fulfilling the needs of the companies that do business here, without using the last mile telco access.

I'm not living in a dystopian Ayn Rand reality; I'm suggesting an alternative method of delivery, one which is not subject to the same regulatory hurdles.

Of course you can't go and jack into BT's network and undercut them, but you can probably build a WISP without running afoul of the law.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken :).
So, I appreciate this perspective and think it's valid. But the counterpoint to "work/life balance" in these discussions always seems to be "we'll figure out work/life balance after we figure out traction for our company". That's a false dichotomy, is my point. If you're going to engage a small team of people in an endeavor that is going to demand some of their evenings or even weekends, you can still do that in a way that doesn't alienate them from their family life.

It's also helpful for the founding team to keep in mind that employees are human beings with human needs, and not Gravatars with particular Github histories.
Control of a currency has little to do with taxation.

Eurozone countries manage to tax income just fine even though they do not have "control" over their currencies.
XForms is dead
There are all sorts of off-brand "bit-coins" already. Litecoins are hoisted on certain forums quite regularly.
The U.S. Constitution connects copyright to authorship. There is no enabling clause to connect it to broadcast.
But I do contend that being able to work 4/12 hours at home versus all 12 hours at work is a substantial improvement for both yourself and for your family (especially if you have young children).

I agree. Completely. My employer gives me similar freedoms (assuming something isn't actively melting down at 5:00 PM), and I can say that it has contributed to the strength of my family and marriage.

Many nights I don't get back online at 9:00 PM, but knowing that I can be productive and be present for my family is an enormous perk.
Of course it is much easier to demonstrate and sell free food, ping pong tables, couches, posters, etc.

It's much more difficult to communicate and sell your culture to the people you are wooing. Perhaps we as applicants really need to take the initiative in calibrating ourselves to look for such culture fit. (Having worked at two places now, I now see this as my top priority that I'm willing to trade in 10~20% of compensation for. Hopefully I can act on these words!)
I'd say more "consistent" than "ironic".
It's not spam if you sign up for it and want to get it. But even wanted emails need good design to be effective.
For a lot of startups, this idea of not mixing business with employee personal lives tacitly does mix them up, but does so by co-opting time and energy from employee personal lives.
Why does there seem to be some confusion between opencoin.org and OpenCoin Inc. (ripple)?
opencoin.org is NOT ripple (as the site states here: http://opencoin.org/Members/jhb/opencoin-and-ripple)!
Can you eat dollars? Can you make anything useful with them, other than small fires or cocaine straws? If there was a zombie apocalypse today and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with dollars, I'd tell them off. Dollars have ZERO inherent value.

When you understand that the purposes (PLURAL) for a currency are (according to wikipedia and many other places) a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; you'll reach the conclusion that the dollar standard is stupid because it cannot be a store of value so long as there is a printing press. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
Do you get any email you did really opt-in for? If so, just think of those.
How is taunting customers "work stuff"? They're encouraged to be evangelists, not jerks.
Does Costco offer free 2-day shipping? (or free shipping, period?)

If you are comparing an in-store price to the amazon Prime one you have to factor in the costs (implicit and explicit) of actually making a trip out for a particular item or waiting for your monthly Costco run to pick-up X rather than having it here by Saturday.
Some more insight on the project: Instagram is huge in terms of fashion and also has great fashion content, but it lacks eCommerce functionality, which I think would be something brands could benefit from in terms of actively driving sales/traffic to their stores - that's why I built fashion.gram.

How we do it: We monitor Instagram's popular feed for interesting content and add it to our own stream - plus some meta data, thus making it shoppable.

Version 1.1 with some improvements is on its way. Feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
agree, is Survey Monkey really a worth a billion plus dollars?
No, you can checkin anywhere (assuming one can produce gps cords for the location).
LinkedIn Acquires Pulse For $90M In Stock And Cash
>Can you make anything useful with it, other than some component in electronics?

Yes, you can. Gold has uses in dentistry and aerospace as well. For example, a space suit has a really thin layer of gold foil to keep out (some kinds of) radiation.

Also, there's a reason jewelers like to use gold. It's very malleable, so it's easier to make intricate designs. Yeah, that property won't help much in the zombie apocalypse, but in the real world there will always be some amount of demand for gold in jewelry (plus jewelry-like products such as guns with gold inlay).

While it's true 90% of the gold that gets mined goes straight into a vault somewhere it has far more intrinsic value than any fiat currency.
given that this is a meta thread, could somebody explain why all my posts end up on the News page rather than the Ask page. Is my karma too low to post the Ask page? I'm new

see this for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5534167
What do you think were the interest rates on these loans? Historically loan interest rates were extremely high, for multiple reasons:
1) To cover the opportunity cost of holding the money during actual deflation
2) To cover the risk of a possibility of deflation
3) To allow the loaning institution to profit even when deflation occurs
4) The high demand for loans, due to a vastly diminished supply of loans

If you live in a time of high barriers to borrowing money, you will live in a time of vastly decreased social mobility. You know, kind of like the time prior to the last 80 years. That wonderful age you gold-standard lovers wish you lived in.
In a country drowning in debt, both public and private, limits on the ability to borrow money could be a welcome development. It all depends on how much deflation discourages people from lending money. This is derived from the expected rate of return of the borrowed money vs the current rate of deflation.
hardly true in my experience
https://vimeo.com/59014944
Not exactly slowing you down if you don't get a 3rd party app but e.g. Draw Something will give you extra coins to watch ads for other apps.
That second reddit thread is amazing.

OP: "Do we have any legal ground to stand on here? Lots of people have had their lives torn apart by this.

I remember NASDAQ had to compensate people after the debacle that was the Facebook IPO. Why is this any different?

I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks."

Top response: "Well, considering bitcoin isn't regulated by the SEC - no you have no legal ground to stand on."

Further down: "So you want your unregulated currency to be.... regulated?"

OP in response: "There is a difference between financial regulations and corporate liability/consumer protection laws.

It's not about financial regulations."

In Bitcoin, we are currently watching a microcosm of how the traditional financial system came to be the way it is. It's really a rare opportunity to see the evolution of complex social systems in real-time.
Aaron Sorkin is already drafting a script for his next movie.
And what time does he get in and his employees get in at?
It's obvious that your google example is bad, as google redirects you to the host without the dot as soon as it can. So if you really were running a local .com domain named google.com, it wouldn't exactly be easy to get to the real google.
I've interviewed a fair number of people for tech positions over the years and one of the fastest lessons I learned was that the correlation between a CS degree on the resume and technical ability is basically non-existent. More so, among the best devs and engineers I have worked with one was a physicist by training and several had no college degree whatsoever. Credentialism is a sucker's game, if you fall victim to it you'll be at a competitive hiring disadvantage. Hiring is tough, but it's also one of the most important things you can do as a company, make sure to put the right amount of effort into it.

P.S. As the article points out, falling victim to the credentialism trap as an employee is also a sign of conformity. Some companies want that, but hiring extremely talented non-conformists is an easy and excellent way to kick the competition's ass in many cases. The future of technology is almost never created by conformists.
2-8% deflation? Where did that number come from?
If video game companies have learned anything from the relation between "rage on the Internets" and "sales figures," it's that they are positively correlated.
Behind the Scenes: Airbnb Neighborhoods
> Deflationary, sure. But where are the problems?

With the "deflationary" part.

> More people are CHOOSING to conduct transactions in bitcoin.

Which isn't really an issue now because the total volume is small enough as to be irrelevant to any well-defined economy. It would be an issue if it was to become used, globally or in any region, as the principal currency, which is the only situation where its supply characteristics would actually be deflationary.

> If we can tolerate 2-8% inflation yearly surely we could tolerate that much deflation.

This relies on the premise that inflation and deflation of similar percentage magnitude are equally tolerable. I would suggest that the justification for making this assumption is, at best, non-obvious.
"And yet despite all the deflation people are conducting transactions in bitcoin."

Yes, because how else are they going to buy weed, ecstacy, cocaine, illegal electronics, steroids or any other banned substances that form the backbone of the commodities people are actually purchasing with bitcoins. Have you ever been to the Silk Road site? I bet you haven't. Here's a hint: you won't be able to use your browser to go, so look up Tor.

Edit: For the noninformed who say "dollars?" There is a huge incentive to use Bitcoins on Tornet sites like Silk Road to trade black market goods. This is because Bitcoins can cross international borders and are encrypted, are not subject to bank regulations, etc. They are essentially difficult for Law Enforcement Agencies to trace, but not impossible.
It's amazing how consistently the defense of gold is "because we used to". Autocracy and theocracy served humanity so long also, why do we need this democracy thing?
Logistics and Ecommerce: How Fashion Startup Jolietta is Moving Forward
"If you want to try, I wish you luck in figuring out who my employers were/are"

If you say something stupid enough, one of your acquaintances will do it for us.
Doesn't MtGox send out an email or SMS with a verification code before a transfer can take place? Ouch...
Yes, it is. They do $100M in revenue, and it all pretty much flows to the bottom line. They have less than 200 employees and no matter what you assume for compensation, they are tremendously profitable.
It's surprising how much I've learned about evolution just as a natural phenomenon since I started learning about computational evolution and genetic algorithms. It's a fascinating field with applications I find very exciting, and lots of research to be done.
Yeah, noticed that. Title and 2 sentences into the intro!
A whole load of Kickstarting (Django Schema Migrations)
How to Overcome Fear, by Skydiver Felix Baumgartner
I don't remember Sourceforge ever being anything but clunky and inaccessible, even back then. To be fair, I wasn't much of a programmer at that time, either.
r/bitcoin is an interesting subreddit. There was a thread yesterday where someone asked, completely serious:

"Theoetically speaking, what would happen if someone bought all the bitcoin? My friend wants to invest and he's concerned that the currency could be completely bought."
Is there any way to measure the "Gross Bitcoin Product"? Krugman mentions that as of that writing (2011) the GBP was falling. Is that still the case?
GitHub Challenge on CheckiO
There’s a new island that players all across the globe are traveling to in a hurry. They say that there’s a competition being held there that measures the skills of coders near and far and rewards the victors with awesome prizes — not to mention great prestige.<p>Set your destination to GitHub Island: the home of CheckiO’s first, but certainly not last, global competition. Are you up for the challenge? Go head to head against both friends and strangers as you strive to write the best, creative code for each task on GitHub Island. The top 3 contestants in each task will win Medium, Small, and Micro GitHub accounts and will be crowned a GitHub challenge winner. Fire up your engine and head towards the newest island on the CheckiO.org Map!
How we implemented find-on-page with infinite scroll
It's good to self-censor, but you can't always predict what others might be outraged by, take personally, or want to retaliate for. Plenty of internet persons aren't well off.
This would be a limit on borrowing money for EVERYONE, regardless of their ability to pay it back. Lots of people overeat, so I guess we should jack up the price of food.

What you have just proposed is an increase in the cost of starting a new business, no matter how good an idea is. Just because the banks are bad at determining who can and can't pay back a loan doesn' mean those who CAN should pay a tax.
Before the modern era, economies were quite fragile, falling into crisis frequently and severely (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Unemployment_1800-1890....). The one saving grace was that in those times most people were farmers, and thus were self-employed (and could at least eat).
This is a statement of political ideology and not one of settled fact. If the comparison you're making is to the USD, our borrowing costs are so low that there are lots of activities for which short-term potential inflation is more than offset by gains to the economy. This isn't voodoo macroeconomics; it's no more complicated than the decision between paying down a home mortgage and investing that money for a return.
Most definitely. Looking forward to seeing the results.
>Thanks for the point by point there, but you basically just confirmed my initial opinion that you really have no clue beyond your own media-infused bias of the situation.

Ironic, coming from a citizen of the same country where 80% of the people believe in "miracles" ( http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1240075... ) and a large percentage cannot point their country on a map, much less a foreign country. Heck, it's the country the Presidents and political candidates are even know to do grave mistakes on international affairs, even confusing whole countries with others on camera.

>Boo hoo, US evil, blah blah.

I don't believe in "evil". I'm rational. US is just ruthlessly pursuing it's interests, and fuck everybody else (literally). Including fuck them with illegal and unethical means (from invading a sovereign country to drone murders). You can afford it when you are top dog. It's not like European colonial powers on their day behaved any better.
That was a great bit of satire. Very nicely done. And I went in expecting another boring, bullshit article about how "you shouldn't call your startup a startup unless $FOO". Instead, I got a nice chuckle and a LOL.
And how exactly would that work?

Do you expect all governments of the world to collectively agree on a ban of digital currencies? When was the last time all governments of the world agreed on anything?

Bitcoin's future is certainly uncertain, but I doubt its demise will stem from this angle.
Working Not Working - The Universe's Top Freelance Creatives
My trip to Bogotá was 10x better experience because of FourSquare. GMaps was totally wrong, Yelp didn't exist, tourist guides are all cookie cutter. FourSquare had all these amazing recommendations, most of which came from people I follow. Great service.
The problem the Winklevoss twins have is that they seem to be placing a bet on what they believe will be a long-term secular trend through an instrument that is extremely volatile and better suited to speculation, and that will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future. In doing so, they're taking on a level of risk that is unnecessary given their investment thesis.

If the Winklevoss twins truly believe that the future of "virtual currencies" is bright, their investments should be focused almost exclusively on ecosystem companies, not the currencies themselves.
You can't just say that "deflationary is a problem because it is" as that's a non-argument rather than an argument.

I will address the notion of deflation and inflation of a similar percentage being tolerable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Major_deflations_in_t... That graph shows that inflation and deflation largely canceled out for many, many years here in the US. And the world survived those times or else we would not be here today. As such I would argue that it is possible for an economy to handle deflation as well as inflation.

One of the arguments that people make re:inflation is we're modern and look at all the good things the modern world has. I'm not convinced of the causal link between modernity and inflation; just because they happened at the same time doesn't mean there's causality. http://xkcd.com/552/
Kind of like human sacrifice, rain dancing, the application of leeches to cure disease, etc? Yes, truly the ancients knew best.
Exactly, and honestly, this is something that more experienced people will see immediately.

The "culture icons" of the first bubble are actually red-flags in some situations.

There is a balance of providing real perks, while being on a startup budget, and using fake incentives to lure in talent.

The fact is that you will have both long-houred positions and people who will work 8-5 only. Both are valuable employees, and their commitment should be based on their productivity and value - not in how much free/extra time you can get out of them.

As people get older, they have kids and they have out-of-work priorities.

This does not make them less of a person/employee/resource.

If you require your employees to work ~12 hour days - then maybe you should be able to actually pay them for each hour of work.
> 79% of your readers spent longer than 2+ seconds looking at your email

I understand how opened emails can be tracked without javascript, via server hits to img files, but what magic allows you to track how long it was opened?
E-commerce startup sweetens online shopping by saving you money
That totally freaks me out...
I frequently receive marketing emails from sites I never opted into. Either the site didn't provide a choice to opt-in or opt-out on the same form where I provided my e-mail address or they ignored my preference.
"Companies really need do be less uptight and more grown up about the web."

Companies taking responsibility for the actions of their employees is far more grownup than whatever you're suggesting.

"Twitter isn't even connected to MS. Seriously."

What a meaningless statement.
> Can you eat dollars? Can you make anything useful with them, other than small fires or cocaine straws? If there was a zombie apocalypse today and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with dollars, I'd tell them off. Dollars have ZERO inherent value.

Yes, precisely. Gold is just another kind of 'fiat' currency. You're catching on.

Given the choice between two kinds of arbitrary, intrinsically valueless currency, I'll take the one whose supply we have far more control over.
Curious, without HTML do you expect everyone to copy-paste confirmation and password reset links? How do you account for broken links due to message truncate or unicode rendering? What about aligning various sections of the message? Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

HTML has as much history in emails as it does in the web. Taking HTML out of email is as hard as trying to take the Smart Phone out of phones today.
My understanding is that Bitcoin production difficulty is inversely proportional to the amount of power being spent on mining. If the price of BTC drops so much that it's not worth it to mine and some people stop, the difficulty will drop and it will thus be more worth it for the remaining miners.
Nonsense. You can simply state that can simply agree to pay back an amount of bitcoin equivalent to a certain amount of gold, the most stable commodity there is. Or dollars. Or bread sticks. Or anything else you prefer.