skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm basically going to copy and paste from the other thread - I'll edit out a few unimportant bits though

I applied to YC with a friend last year, we were rejected.

It was a very difficult idea to pitch.

We thought our idea was the best thing since sliced bread and all of our friends told us so (this should have been a warning sign... false positives)

We went on to building it anyway.

We got a version built, up and running in a couple months after initially dragging our feet. It basically worked, but poorly - we never took into account that battery life would be an issue on the phone app.

We got a little disheartened, started bickering and eventually the thing failed - before we even launched.

Somehow we had gotten the idea in our head that we needed YC to be successful. No, we needed a good idea and our idea was, at the time, not so good.

Not being accepted isn't the worst thing in the world. Everyone thinks their idea is the best idea EVER... We sure did.

The partnership broke down as a result of us forging ahead anyway without really looking at our product and only talking to people who only gave us positive answers.

Anyway, moral of the story for us? Being rejected was the best thing that could have happened for us.

I learned a lot about the other person during this process and also a lot about myself. I'm not bulletproof.

On reflection, I also learned that being unwilling to discuss my idea openly with others for fear of it being stolen was stupid. We would have discovered flaws early on and saved us a lot of trouble.

I openly discuss my new idea with others now.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=502164

Some people tell me it's stupid, I ask them why and we discuss it. Some others tell me it's interesting, and we discuss it. Some tell me it's great and we discuss it.

I refuse to accept simple answers now and discuss as many different aspects as I can think up. I also appreciate other's perspectives on it.

This has also helped cement the idea in my head and I can pitch it relatively easily now. I've come up with a solution to a problem, rather than having a solution and looking for a problem.

Will I apply to YC again? Probably, I'm not sure. I've got a clearer head now - not so caught up in the hype.
Its funny how no one is apologizing, but everyone is asking how I am doing.
IMVU's Timothy Fitz on how to do continuous deployment (podcast)
I'm not insulting anyone. I felt the comments are misinformed and lacking any knowledge or awareness. May be my language suggested so.

As for, "... aware of these aspects and attitudes are changing. But it's a culture ... and deep-rooted aspects about cultures don't change overnight..."

No comments, it's a simple statement. And if you don't get it, well..
What I meant was, will it be as easy to use as lisp macros?

To take most everything good existing and sum it, is how you make Perls. :-) I'm not arguing here, I do Perl today.

You should have put the content of the last sentence first; too few will read it.
streaming NHL games for me but same concept :).

I feel bad for all the brits at my work that are probably dying to see good soccer on the TV and can't find any. They'd probably love a streaming sports site as well.
Yes, but then he wouldn't be a "good student."
Do you seriously think that other countries have more respect for rule of law or knowledge of data centers than the FBI? It's not that I have any respect for the FBI when it comes to how they have handled this or other investigations but I have a hard time believing that this couldn't easily happen in any other country you might choose to house your servers in.

What this case tells me if I'm running a business or in charge of the operations group is to make the case for investing in a good disaster recovery strategy. Basically, this is the equivalent of your data center catching on fire, blowing up, falling into a sinkhole, etc.

You should always budget for and have plans to be able to be back up and running with 24 hours if your business depends on what's in the co-location facility. If you're big enough then probably already have multiple sites and can sustain the hit from one going down or being removed anyways.
Humans and Aliens Might Share DNA Pattern
Don't be so sure that will help: http://cryptome.org/fbi-imc/fbi-imc-doc.htm
Who Has The Most Photos Of Them All?

NA?SA.
well facebook is more or less limited to user pictures, imageshack is pretty much everything from photos to lolcats to beastiality
Seems like there's a new branch of law or law enforcement that needs to be developed. People who have some expertise in IT need to advise law enforcement about raids like this.
ShoeMoney Sues Google Employee For AdWords Violations
and yet just because they nailed it - still doesn't mean it was a bad idea...

There are plenty of bad ideas that are executed well and don't succeed. There are plenty of good ideas that are executed poorly and succeed anyway.

The point isn't how they executed, it really was a reflection on the david927's assertion that there is a correlation between ease of pitch and how good an idea is, is wrong, plain and simple.

"our site is like facebook meets digg" is an easy pitch (I've actually heard this from someone), and in my humble opinion, is a bad idea

"we want to index all of the world's information" is an easy pitch, and so happens to be a good idea.
By reading books and simply regurgitating the most recent tagline of a management fad you are doing it wrong.

Business books are a primarily a source of other peoples failures and successes. Businesses have such a long gestation cycle that it doesn't make financial sense to make the mistakes yourself.

In those business people I have met that aren't well read, often times their entire business strategy could be drastically improved by reading a couple of seminal pieces. But, for them, ignorance is bliss. I know which one I would choose.
if this post starts a new wave of domain squatters(only for twitter accounts) I'll laugh my ass off.
The new entrepreneurs you're meeting are probably working in markets that aren't established; you can't plan for what you don't understand. The best you can do is make something that's good NOW, but be prepared to change your product if not your mission as the circumstances dictate.
If I remember correctly the Dilberito was designed along those lines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilberito
On that same machine?
Earthquake Near Rome Destroys Many Homes; Ice bridge collapses in Antarctica
I'm taking the bait. I'll either love this book or hate it. Either way, it's on the way from Amazon. I'll let you know later. Thanks, ibsulon.
I haven't tried, but I'm thinking about trying assertions for this based on the Smart::Comments module.

But maybe it's not a win and you never want to turn off (most?) assertions in dynamic languages.

(For non-Perl people, Smart::Comments are a neat way to e.g. allow runtime checks that are easy to turn off. Like C's assertions.)
Sounds like Texas!
You need location redundancy anyway. Fires, floods, earthquakes, etc. A few years ago burglars broke in and took all my machines. So there are many reasons to have an off-site separate-provider backup of everything.
So by this logic, they could raid Amazon's datacenters and seize everything because a few people were using EC2 to send spam?
wow.... my ex-team and I were planning to build something scarily similar, except packaged as an RSS reader.
that plus a few disposable parts and you're in business. It might take some time to convince the health dept, though.
When the University of Michigan Health System experimented with full disclosure, existing claims and lawsuits dropped from 262 in 2001 to 83 in 2007.

Wow. That speaks to me since it directly translates to dollars saved.
While access to textbooks would be nice, it wouldn't need to be a major selling point. If the book is for a class in my major, I want to own a copy so I can use it as a reference after the class is over. And used textbooks can be had for a decent price. I just paid $40 including expediated shipping for a circuits book. The book is in great condition, and I am happy with my purchase.

And renting textbooks is pretty expensive, especially for older books. I bought a different used textbook for around $15. The book is in great condition, and renting it would have cost $40.
Well that's just great. I'll have to add incompetent law-enforcement to the BCP/DRP list of stuff you have to take into account along with network outages, terrorism, fire, flood and all the rest.
i have sites with hovering ajax and yes the performance can be slow (it's the ajax)

i don't like 'loading' message on every ajax call so what did i do? i pre-load every js and combine few images into one (not sprites due to dynamic nature) to reduce http request

in your case, it could be:
sprite the shoe.jpg to watch.jpg to top.jpg
sprite the pumps.jpg ... evening.jpg to middle-shoe.jpg
sprite the first 6 shoes into down-shoe.jpg

so for these sprites: 1 + 4 + (10 + 6 + 6 + 4) = 31 files

or you can combine into one big file

the point is not to make user wait for the 'first impression' when (for example) s/he clicks handbags > baby

if s/he wants to click next after seeing the first items, then ajax call can be used (make it one file instead of six) but pre-load the prices into js (or <bad> put price into the file-name like shoe-2-59-49-99-29-39-79.jpg and parse -, map the prices </bad>) so you only need to call 1 instead of 2 or 6 or more http
One issue with this is that all of the FBI raids that go well and consist of competent decision making regardless of IT knowledge involvement will never make the news. No one wants to read that a raid went off without a hitch. Or that the field agents sent in to raid a data center were competent enough that no network other than the suspect's was interrupted. Those stories don't make the news.

* Admission of possible bias - I'm a member of the Chicago FBI InfraGard program that exists for information sharing between private industry and the government. I've met, talked to, and shaken hands with, many smart and knowledgeable people in the FBI working on computer crime cases.
this is silly. the job market is not determined by how undesirable YOU think a job is. It is determined by supply and demand. Many people have the aptitude and willingness to work a street sweeping job, since supply of workers is high demand is low and pay is low.
PeopleBrowsr does this and is an in-browser JavaScript app. http://www.peoplebrowsr.com/
This is motivated by the fact that I'm in Australia and our broadband sucks.

Netflix send a whole heap of DVDs through the mail, so they're trust you not to rip them and distribute copies. If there was a massive content distribution network with kiosks in shopping centres where I could put in a DVD-RW or usb storage device (or pay for a blank DVD) and pay for the latest movies and TV shows I'd make a good amount of use of it.

It's mostly about saving bandwidth, but also trying to provide an extremely fast and convinient alternative to piracy. If that existed, I'd probably use it. I already buy TV shows on DVD if someone I trust recommends them highly enough - a much better experience for me than watching them on TV, no adds, pause, rewind, etc...

We get some shows quite a bit later here, and a few of the good shows only come to pay tv. So the timing would be the key. As soon as the TV show is aired anywhere - bam - available from the kiosk. The premium for being ad free and not getting it on the studios timeline might more or less balance out with the savings in packaging and distribution.

Same with movies. Theaters wouldn't be happy, but we're rapidly approaching the days when people will go to the movies for the theater experience and otherwise just get hold of it online (one way or another).

As a bonus idea, if the kiosks kept records of what you'd bought then buying a whole series through the kiosk gets you a big discount on the DVDs if you want the physical media since you've already paid for the IP at the point.
Damn Zynga is good: Mafia Wars Kicks Ass, $50m revenue in 09?
I was eating two Clif bars a day until I discovered that they caused gas. If I discovered a Clif-like bar that didn't, I'd pick the habit up again.
I want cable TV service and this is how I want it:

- A la carte pricing: $1 per channel per month (I'd go $1.50 for HD channels and more for premium channels of course)

- I want an IP-based/wifi-enabled DVR that records shows in a non-proprietary video format. I can browse the files from any computer in my home or configure my router so I can access them from work. If it can browse web videos ala boxee, great. I don't care about it skipping commercial–heck, I don't even care if it appends pre-roll/ticker ads to the files.
Flickr should have higher quality "artsy" images than all of them, imo.
Halfbakery - a communal database of original, fictitious inventions
Replace "learn <language>" with "port <program> to <language>" and it can be directly applied. It would probably help if there was an existing test-suite for you to measure progress against.
It would be hard to maintain, since a lot of textbooks change version number relatively frequently.
Google boss tells papers how to run their websites
Turmeric, pygmies and piracy
Tell HN: Come hear me speak at BSDCan'09
On May 9th I'm going to be speaking at BSDCan'09 in Ottawa, Canada. BSDCan is a great conference not only for people interested in BSD but also for those interested in open source or operating system development generally.

My talk is about key derivation functions -- that is, how to hash passwords so that they are maximally secure against brute-force attack; contrary to popular belief, bcrypt is not the gold standard.

The conference website is http://www.bsdcan.org/2009/ and registration (for both days of the conference) costs $195.
Domain Pigeon adds 20K+ available Twitter names--more on the way
When I was tech support engineer many times people were really surprised and thankful for a quick answer.

The trick is to be able to come up with an intelligent answer and not just buying time with the customer. Even though I usually found that it's better to respond fast asking for more info if you don't have the definite answer. The customer usually is happy to have a quick answer but doesn't necessarily get back to you fast. It gives you time to figure it out...
Sadly, in this "check with your attorney" world, the very first thing they tell you is never ever, under any circumstances or in any way indicate the possibility of any wrongdoing on your part, accidental or otherwise.

Who is at fault is something that should only be decided in court at $450/hour.

We have taken their advice with alacrity.
Ask HN: Amazon.com broken for IE7?
I've tried this at various locations and machines and it seems that adding a product to your cart crashes IE7 (and sometimes the whole computer), am I just crazy or is this for real?
Some flexibility would be nice here. I'm sure there'd be a few books I'd like to read in the future, so maybe 10 books with the reader and 10 free ones I can choose later would be nice.

Still, the XKCD on the Kindle made me really want to try one, if only because of sentimental reasons.
[attitude=prudent]

I do not want my company's communications disrupted by an FBI raid on a service firm that turned out to be a criminal enterprise. I had best look for a service provider that has been _pre-investigated_ by the government. After all, I have a responsibility to my company's shareholders and customers.

[/attitude]
Sorry for being pedantic, but it's 'Hiro'.

Good call, btw.
I really appreciate your comment. For a while, I thought it was an Asian thing (never as an Immigrant thing); you logic makes sense. From personal experience all the things I labeled as "Asian" that's causing pressure, actually, in reality, can probably be associated with "Immigrant" instead.
Final Report and Timeline of Fedora Server Compromise in 2008
I actually mean for DATING. lol
Yeah that only happens when you have FireBug -- need to fix that one
Get Chrome For Mac Now
Not yet the official release though...
As businesspeople, it is our job to take the advice of counsel, and integrate that into our strategy. They do not dictate strategy.

In other words, its sometimes better to admit and apologize, even if it means you may face a worst court case by doing so. Depending on the situation, it may be beneficial to lose a court case but win customers over for the long run.
Heh oops didn't realize that would appear in the browser history. Will have to change that.
> Dear children, your silly worldview of objective rights and wrongs is outdated and wrong. Morality is purely subjective, a matter of taste. I provide no evidence or reasoning for my opinions but I do expect you to be challenged and wowed by their far-reaching consequences.

If you think that there is some objective morality that is inherent to the universe, the burden of proof is very much on you to show that, not on me to disprove it. (But if you need a disproof, here's as close as I can get: I am 100% certain that you cannot give a definition of "morality" that both meshes with what's expected of the term and that implies the existence of some fundamental objective framework for determining what's right and what's wrong. Just think about it for a while.

Or, alternatively [and not equivalently, but evocatively]: we're all just particles. You can give any brilliant argument you like about the morality of an action, and my particles are just gonna keep on doing whatever the fuck they want.)

As you discuss, lack of objective morality is horrible. It still makes me feel weird when I think about it, and I decided that "ethics" was bullshit when I was thirteen. My brain is hard-wired to believe that certain actions are "right" and certain actions are "wrong" in a sense that encompasses more than just my brain's response to those actions, so thinking about (what I see as) the truth about morality causes a dissonance between my conscious and my subconscious.

In the same way, my brain believes very deeply that everything has a cause, so it believes that there's a meaningful answer to the question, "Why does the universe exist?"

But that question doesn't have an answer. And objective morality doesn't exist. Sorry.
Given the relative incidence of FBI raids to datacenters you might as well pick your server location based on perceived threat of meteorite strikes.
"Authorities also raided his home, where they seized eight iPods, some belonging to his three children, five XBoxes, a PlayStation3 system and a Wii gaming console, among other equipment. Agents also seized about $200,000 from the owner's business accounts, $1,000 from his teenage daughter's account and more than $10,000 in a personal bank account belonging to the elderly mother of his former comptroller."

I'm sure no-one doubts there are numerous smart, knowledgable people working for the FBI. Unfortunately, looking at the above, there are obviously plenty of the opposite as well, and they have just as much power as the first.

The FBI has a duty to ensure that its overwhelming powers are wielded only by those competent to do so, in the same way that it has a duty to ensure that anyone it issues with a firearm is sufficiently trained in its use.

There is no room for such wild discrepancies in competence when the agency in question has such power to ruin lives. They are entirely at fault here, and "but it mostly goes well!" is no excuse at all.
Even if it is more expensive, I am inclined to think the nuclear power plant is far more friendly to the planet than solar, and if you care about carbon footprints or very-long-term sustainability, it's better than natural gas, too. (I am not too big on the former, but the latter is important. Going big on fission buys us a lot of time to develop fusion, which in the end is the only truly sustainable energy source. When you run out of fusion, you've run out of the Universe.)

However, I've seen tons of analyses of the costs of nuclear, and I'm inclined to think that when push comes to shove, nobody really knows how much they could cost if society wanted them enough to construct them in quantity. How much of the cost of a plant in the US is defending against absolutely inevitable litigation, in a process designed to be used by environmentalists against anything they don't like? How much of the cost is because we refuse to consider any actually modern design, in much the same way we get stuck on refusing to consider how to deal with waste because the problem is perceived to be so big that people's minds just irrationally shut down? How much of the expense is due to compliance with an outdated regulatory regime that hasn't been updated for the properties of pebble bed or other modern designs? Why are China and France able to put them up?

I don't think there's any actual engineering reason that nuclear plants should be more expensive (per watt) than natural gas or coal, even before fuel price spikes. (Which will come again... and again... and again...) A given design, certainly, but across the whole set of safe, modern nuclear designs? I doubt it. Our thinking on this topic is so deeply 1960s (OMG RADIATION!!1!) that we are all but incapable of considering the topic rationally in 2010.
Maybe you should drop some of your FBI contacts a note and explain how this story is all over the internet?
Video: Trent Reznor’s insights into the future of music as a business
Upvoted for XUL
Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
Umm, I submitted this hours ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=551455

I don't care that this submission got voted up and mine didn't, but I don't like that HN doesn't filter out the hash(#) mark that was added to this url to get around the uniqueness filter.
I'm absolutely astounded that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often.

There are tens of thousands of Google employees who have access to data which is commercially sensitive and worth, literally, millions. (To say nothing of how many search engineers could transfer a million dollars with a single hand-edit to "remove web-spam" on a single keyword.) Most of them are AdWords account reps, Google's dirty little secret: we'll pay you $40,000 to about one step above a call center monkey intellectually, you have no opportunity for advancement, and the work is soul-suckingly boring next to the Wow I Get To Work At Google thoughts that brought you here.

(Disclosure: I was once a call-center monkey, though not at Google.)

In banking or finance, there would be an entire department tasked with nothing but playing Big Brother over these employees. Failure to aggressively monitor for non-compliance would result in regulatory slap-down.

Does Google strike you as the kind of place where they monitor every entry made by employees and have an actual human perform random audits just to be sure?
I essentially see this as an extension of the naturalistic fallacy. "we should surrender to human nature because it is better than anything human reason can come up with."

such claims are not new, and they are not right.
Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies
Thanks for the link. It's another data point in a line of thinking I'm currently researching. Unlike donw, I don't believe teepees are the answer though ;)
Ask your local library system about interlibrary loan. You may have trouble with books released in the last 6 months (it's peak borrowing time, libraries like to hold them for their local patrons), but otherwise you can get basically everything.
What's wrong with inserting a DVD on a computer's DVD drive and watching it using this distro's media player? GP didn't say anything about ripping.