skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have actually done a similar deal in my early days. Turned out the management were pathological liars. I would have needed to pay for an auditor to suss out the truth in the accounts they "revealed" to me. They also were too caught up in internal politics which actually lead to their eventual demise. From my very painful data point of one -- never again!
It's a reference to a famous scene from the movie Pulp Fiction (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/).

You can find a transcript of the original dialogue at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/quotes#qt0447135 .
Why? It's revenue, not profit.

If Facebook is actually "almost profitable", then my little 8-hour iPhone app is more profitable than Facebook.

Think about that. All those people; all that effort; all that busy-work. It's just wealth redistribution.

Now, investors expect that Facebook will scale (financially) better than Jaba's little iPhone app that you've never heard of -- once it starts making money it'll make heaps of money.

Thing is, if they're wrong, it's just a huge misuse of capital. OTOH there is a value to having subsidized geek nirvanas (to the geeks, not the investors).
Oh, thanks for clarification. Still weird though.
You guys are adiso or something, right? My wife just used you to find a flight
"I was already so convinced of how much better our product was than our competitors I’d forgotten the specifics of exactly how it was better in a way that could easily be explained to someone else."

I have this experience all the time (not just in this sort of situation). Thanks for telling us about it!
> Goldman Sachs was owed $10B. 7.5B was available in pledged securities. Goldman got $10B in cash because of govt flow-through via AIG.

If someone has pledged the majority of what is owed to me in collateral, it is wrong for people to imply that the 10 billion flowing through the government was just some windfall flowthrough. They got what they were owed, and the taxpayers got their 7.5 billion in collateral back. If the taxpayers did not pay the 10 billion, then they wouldn't have gotten 7.5 billion worth in treasuries returned to them--Goldman would have had the right to keep it, and this is the whole point of having collateral pledged to them in the first place.

> Shouldn't the insurer be paying off, if solvent, and not the US govt? And, if the insurer is not solvent, why shouldn't Goldman take the hit?

Are you talking about the CDS insurer? The insurance only needs to be paid if AIG defaults. If AIG defaults then the US govt doesn't have to pay anything, the insurer does. Since AIG was bailed out, no credit event was triggered and the CDS insurance becomes worthless. The upside is of course they actually get their money. In either case, whether AIG was allowed to fail or not, they would have been made whole.

Goldman was not treated differently in this case. Many other banks were treated the exact same way. Yes, Goldman was paid out in their insurance. So is any individual who took out insurance with AIG--they will actually get paid what is owed to them as well now.
Some quick thoughts:

* Make the logo link back to the index.

* Don't make me register. I'd like to try the problems but am not interested in saving my results. I can't try such and such problems because I need an account simply to validate my answers .

* I'm not sure if displaying the last 10 on the front page is a good idea... if I come back tomorrow to check this problem I saw there, will I have to go to page 2? ProjectEuler's page has them in increasing order.

* Remove some text. “Average User Rating: easy ” can be transformed into “Easy” in the blue problem header, for example. Make it easy to see and filter. You can use images there as well, or colors. Difficulty: Green → Orange → Red.

* The list of solvers is unreadable. Why is it in italics? What's its maximum length? You could use something like the “following” list on twitter: lots of small icons (24x24 or so).

* Also either display the login or the name, not both.

* Why do you limit top user to 10? It makes sense for problems as they take a lot of space, but you could easily display users hundred by hundred.

* Are tests made of problems? What if I've already completed the 5 problems a test contains when I start it? Do I automatically win?

* I don't have an account so I can't check, but do you allow LaTeX in the discussions on each problem? Is there an option to add code? Is it allowed? Is it colored when entered?

* The white space on top is way too large.

* Is this a website or a “framework”? Revise your wording on the right.

* In general, try to avoid “database views”. I don't know how to word this better, but don't put “fieldname: fieldvalue” in your texts. For example in the submitter name: “test submitted by $name on: $date”. You don't need a colon here, this is not how you would write it in a letter for example.

* Put all your tags in lowercase. Fibonacci stands out and Einstein is missing a capital E.

* Are you displaying ALL the tags? What will happend when you get to a thousand?

* Could the problems be put in different math groups? Set theory, algebra, geometry (can a submitter upload images?), trigo, etc. Beware, this could be confusing: should I put this in the “Algebra” category or tag it as algebra?

All in all, these are small things. Great website!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snW3cM1KipQ

NSFW language
3mindme - Dead Simple Reminders
Good for you! It's not so great for Facebook's investors, though.

FB: Hi, we're a conduit that funnels small sums of money from millions of people into a smaller number of developer's pockets.

Investors: So, how much of that do we get?

FB: Um. Almost 0, but we're working on that.

Investors: ...
The only local one I've tried is boodler: http://boodler.org/ (it's a "soundscape generator" written in python, which from memory has at least white and pink noise reasonably out-of-the-box).
BlackBerry app developers must make key choices
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I think the laconi.ca folks could gain a significant share of the market if they indeed would make it possible for their users to have the same username for all identi.ca installations in the world, just as it is possible for wordpress users to comment on every wordpress blog using the same wordpress identity.

A while back, I reasoned on Twitter vs identi.ca. -- Here's the bit on roaming micro-blogging services: http://is.gd/sJtL
If you have Windows, you can play along to a degree using Cygwin and /dev/dsp instead.
The fact that linkedin has the highest CPM rate of any of the major networks would seem to suggest otherwise.
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Already been done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Furlong
2430m/1.509 mile confirmed kill by Canadian sniper in Afghanistan.

This new tech will make it easier, but there are already some really incredible shots out there.
Captcha makes it harder, but it doesn't block bots. You can use Python's sphinx library (the voice one) to turn those mp3s back into the original text, then use mechanize or windmill or whatever to re-enter it.
Wow, that was hard to understand. I thought HN mainly posted things in English?
The author is citing Office 2007 as an example of how consistency across similar applications is a good thing. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint have consistent interfaces which is a good thing. How usable those interfaces are, on the other hand, is a different question altogether.
In 1979 I was debugging some Z80 assembler by putting a radio next to the processsor and picking up the RF noise. I could tell by the quality of the sound which loop it was in, and trace the execution as it happened. This was on a device that only had a serial line as its interface, and the problem was in the processing of the data, so it would occasionally just hang, making "standard" debugging impossible.

Later (1980) when I wrote a BASIC to Z80 compiler I used the same technique to profile the code and achieved a 5x speed-up by knowing which loops ran slowly.
I like it.

Your notification e-mails were flagged as spam by Yahoo mail. Consider using DomainKeys or something like that.

I noticed your TOS requires that we only monitor sites that we own. Smart. In case someone breaks this rule, you might want to give site owners a chance to report problems. Maybe you could have a unique string in the user-agent that would let you look up which of your users created that notification?
I've done just that at http://jobs.plasis.co.uk - it currently only supports 9 of the sites but I'm adding more all the time.
Firstly, mapping consonants to digits is hardly original, Derren Brown teaches the method in one of his books, and its one of the techniques used by people who do this seriously. Its also not very space efficient because all of your vowels are counted as whitespace.

Secondly, it would be a lot harder to randomly access the nth digit using your conventional method because you would also need to be counting the consonants as you go along through the sequence, rather than just +5 for every word.
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Cloud Gaming Is The Nebulous Shape Of Ubiquitous Gaming
Real life Snakes on a plane
not 100% staple HN content but I thought you lot would appreciate the irony :D
When You Are A Public Company Without Being Public
The comparison of Ruby's Hash and Array classes to Java's collections API is not very relevant - first of all, the graph is from 1999 (there are more classes now), and secondly, Java's collections API does cover quite specific use cases which Ruby's Hash and Array classes don't (e.g. concurrent access.)

In Java, you could also always use List or HashMap without thinking about Sets, Trees, or weak references, but that's not the point; the Java collections API isn't an alternative to 'should I use Hash or Array', the use cases for the two APIs are completely different.
Thanks for sharing. Thats my greatest fear and the only way to avoid falling into that pitfall is to have a deal that you can measure too without relying on their data.
cool---could this be a decent substitute for iwantsandy?
Access helps. But one thing I've realized is that everyone (well, almost everyone) is knowable if you're willing to make the effort. A little confidence, and a little intelligently done networking will open most doors you're looking for. YC is a great opportunity, but this is a good thing to keep in mind regardless of whether you get in. They can only give you so many shortcuts. Eventually, you'll have to do the heavy lifting yourself.
You wonder whether you get out any more than the creators put into it.
Polaris backs MIT prof's solar hydrogen device
In Defense of Pirates (The Old Time Ones)
Does workflow always have to suck?
> About five years ago, I managed to read all of Everything2

It would probably take you a few years to read all of e2. There are currently 442,874 writeups. 5 years ago there were much more. Place has changed a lot. Doesn't have the same sense of community and freedom as before. Shame really, as it was a great place to hang out. I've made some lifelong friends thought e2.
That's like saying "Thomas Edison didn't go to college, so nobody should be excited about going to college".

YC is in the business of creating entrepreneurs, which I'd expect most people here would agree is a noble (and profitable) cause. You don't have to read the interview writeups if you don't want to. :)
Does a court ruling raise the risks of open source?
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How can they reliably ensure that an email will arrive at certain time? Does email protocol support this? (just asking)
Lehman Brothers sitting on toxic nuke stockpile
If the pirates restricted their activity to illegal fishing boats and boats dumping industrial waste you would have a point.
I'm curious then, what do YOU see as their road to profitability? And at this stage, I would say "profitability" should mean being able to pay a return to the investors in a timely manner and becoming a stand-alone company.
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This is a pretty good example of why asking people to write code in an interview is a pretty poor way to measure their fitness for the job...
There is a good book about why parents matter, that addresses Harris's ideas: Hold on to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld, a clinical psychologist. See: http://www.gordonneufeld.com/book.php
There a lesson here; if you invent a sensational, high tech product, don’t invite competitors to come and have a good look at it.

Does that still apply? How about to software?
An Introduction to Progressive Caching
I imagine they receive your email, extract the requested time, create the reply, then store the outgoing email in a cron-like outgoing batch system. Then at the appointed time your email is sent back from their system. Emails are usually prompt, and they probably assume a flight time of seconds.

If I'm right then the system will work pretty well almost all the time. It's a simple but great/fun idea. Their ability to interpret times may be taken from something like the *n?x "at" command, but it looks quite nice.

Don't rely on this working to sub-minute accuracy, though. Email flight times can be significantly longer when things go wrong.

But I like it - I may well be using this.
Computer science in JavaScript: Linked list
Actually, newer 737's have emergency exits that swing open outwards. They are probably locked into position, but not by the pressure, so, I guess, it would not be that difficult to pop them open.

Most A320's I ride have the plug-type emergency exit that would be rather difficult to open mid-flight.
Ask HN: How much equity do you give to employees?
When working out employee share scheme, how much equity should be given to each employee? How is this best calculated in proportion to the overall available share capital, founders capital, etc.
Good implementation.

You could cut the text on the homepage way down - the complexity of the instructions is incongruous with the simplicity of the system. You could dump all the text I've put in square brackets:

[Hi! Thanks for contacting 3mindMe.com, here are some instructions to get you started:]

Quick reference:
help@3mindme.com - Emails you back this information
<when>@3mindme.com - Emails you at <when>
echo@3mindme.com - Emails you at the <when> specified in the Subject:

Quick examples:
tomorrow@3mindme.com - Emails you in 24 hours
5pm@3mindme.com - Emails you at today 5pm (in your timezone)
5pmPSTtomorrow@3mindme.com - Emails you tomorrow at 5pm PST
2days@3mindme.com - Emails you in 48 hours

What does 3mindMe.com do?
Basically, we're a gateway to your future self: email us anything, and we'll mail it back to you at a future time and date of your choosing.

[How much does it cost?
Nothing! This is just a fun project for me.]

[put this on a separate page]
What's new? (updated 2008/5/3)
Hooray, the first update not for timezones! Unfortunately, it's for spam. Luckily, I did something really tricky, so I'm hoping it won't be a problem... If you do get any spam via 3mindme, let me know.
[/put this on a separate page]

How do I use 3mindMe.com?
There are two primary ways:
- Email <when>@3mindme.com and your email will be reflected back to you at whatever time or date you specify.
- Email echo@3mindme.com and it'll be sent back to whatever time is set in the Subject line

[What do you mean by "<when>"?]
You can construct your <when> in three steps:

[1) Ask yourself "When you want your email sent back to you?"]

2) Write that down just as you'd say it out loud, for example:
friday
tomorrow noon
next tuesday at 5pm PST
2 weeks
5 minutes before January 1st 2008

3) If you're emailing echo@3mindme.com, you're done! Just put that on the Subject: line of the email and send it, and it'll be sent back to you at the time and day you picked. For example, you could make the subject:
5 minutes before January 1st 2008: Get champagne, quick!!

4) Alternatively, just take all the spaces out and stick @3mindme.com on the back, and mail to that. For example, the above ones would be converted to:
friday@3mindme.com
tomorrownoon@3mindme.com
nexttuesdayat5pmPST@3mindme.com
2weeks@3mindme.com
5minutesbeforeJanuary1st2008@3mindme.com

[put this on a separate page]
Do you store my mail?
Only as long as it takes to deliver it. After it's sent back to you, the mail is deleted.
[/put this on a separate page]

[What's with the crappy name?
Ya, 3mindMe.com doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but all the good names were taken. Please don't hesitate to email me suggestions at dbarrett@quinthar.com.]

[put this on a separate page]
Who are you?
I'm David Barrett, and you can read more about me at http://quinthar.com, or just email me at dbarrett@quinthar.com.
[/put this on a separate page]

[Thanks for using 3mindMe.com, and enjoy!]

[-david]
Future of mobile phones is in the cloud, ex-Nokia CTO says
I have 1.6 million files on my computer at the moment. Not sure how they'd map to bumptop. Even just photos; all the demos I've seen limit files to only a dozen or so. How would you manage a few thousand photos?
Website Response Times tips: guide on how to make your website Fast
Equity equation...

You should give them a vested share amount equal in proportion to the amount of value you feel they will add to the company. This is usually a variable range (and it varies), but something along the lines of:
Every new developer adds .25% of value to the company minimum. Higher caliber people in the same position will add .35% of value. So your equity range, per developer, will be .25%-.35% (in this example).
google cal has reminder emails, but it's a bit more of a hassle to setup.
Obama Commits to Simplification of Tax Suckness
Don't waste time on guides like this - it's nopthing more than thinly-veiled procrastination. Get stuck in.
[pdf] Solving Maximum Flow Problems on Real World Bipartite Graphs
Does it even worth researching? To simplify - provider (let's say Amazon) spends A dollars to build and support data center and makes B dollars profit. It charges you A+B.

DIY cost is very close to A (if you're talking datacenter scale).

A+B > A
Choosing a new salt that isn't easily obtainable in a flash applet would certainly help :)
Shutdown of Wikia Search proves empty rhetoric of collaboration
> and at least half of this is from ads

What is the other half from? Do facebook users pay for applications? Are users buying services? (I can see a travel agent service.)
For starters, it only works with the Desktop folder, not any other folders. Personally, I like to keep my Windows desktop very tidy and so having the power of BumpTop is useless.

It would be great if BumpTop can navigate the full drive and directory tree using the cool features of BumpTop without resorting to Explorer and without being tied to the desktop.
From the book "How to Get Rich" - by Felix Dennis (worth about $1 billion):

"To become rich, you must be an owner, and you must try to own it all. You must strive with every fiber of your being, while recognizing the idiocy of your behavior, to own and retain control of as near to 100% of any company as you can."

"Never never never hand over a single share of anything you've created or acquired, if you can help it. Nothing. Not one share, to no one, no matter what the reason, unless you genuinely have to."

"Ownership is the only thing that counts."
Yes, but compiling for several hours? Even on my Bondi-blue iMac compiles don't take long enough.

On my Atom-based netbook, compiles don't even increase fan activity.

And why would that be related to a dual-head setup?

That's something seriously wrong going on here.
Information Architecture Task Failures Remain Costly
What log analysis tools do you use to see where people get stuck on your site?
Coding Horror: Is Open Source Experience Overrated?
We put SiteCanary in the user agent for that very reason -- we figure a really curious person could figure it out from there. That said, the fastest polling period is 1 minute, so we think it would be pretty hard to DoS someone with this :-)

Good idea with DomainKeys -- gmail seems to be alright with a reverse DNS lookup resolving to our domain.

Cheers!
At what stage? For a pre-money or single-digit employee, 0.35% is extremely small. For a company that has 50 developers and is about to IPO, it's a lot.
5 sins of php
Anyone know of any other facial recognition products/libraries? (other than PittPatt or OpenCV)
On the flip side of that coin is the point that a smaller percentage of something successful is much better than a large percentage of zero.

In theory, investor dilution shouldn't matter. If you have 50% of a $10 million company and $5 million is invested, you now have 33.3% of a $15 million company. In fact, due to intangible benefits of the investment (mentorship, connections, prestige) you should be coming out ahead. In practice, this obviously isn't always true-- because no one knows what the true fair value of a company is, and giving up control can be disadvantageous-- but it is often true. Turning down, say, Y Combinator because 100% matters that much more to you than 94% would just be stupid.
> If the logo pictured therein represents the mockup he gave to the designer, I hope he'd be prepared to have it entirely modified or discarded. The logo is busy, repetitive, and difficult to digest.

He adresses the quality of the current logo in a comment, in reply to an anonymous commenter who said something along the same lines (but much more rudely).

"Nope, wasn't "implying" that! In fact, a careful read would have indicated the Chowhound logo was NOT created according to this advice. It was, in fact, done by a pro with vast experience, "condensation" or not.

"You clearly have no idea what a graphic designer does"

Well, hmm. Actually, you, like many (though by no means all) graphic designers, have no idea what a graphic designer ought to do. I'll explain:

The function of graphics for commercial use is not to impress graphics people. Its purpose is to set a tone and demarcate a brand for a given market. Chowhound reached nearly a million people and became a nationally-known brand with a marketing budget of exactly zero. A great many people grew emotionally attached to the brand as soon as they came through our door, and identified with it quite strongly.

All along, graphics pros such as yourself denigrated our design (totally their right, of course!). But I'd say the design was awesome....not to impress the likes of you, but to accomplish our goal: to attract and engage a vast number of eaters of a certain stripe. THAT'S what a (good) graphic designer does. A bad designer designs to please other designers."
Summary: a funding turf war is about to erupt at NASA and I'm getting in there first.
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