skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Write them a thoughtful, well-reasoned letter explaining:

1. How as an active member of he developer community, you have enjoyed building useful tools which expand the reach of the Zillow brand.

2. How you have dedicated significant time and energy to this project, on the understanding that they provided the API to encourage enterprising and curious developers such as yourself to find new valuable ways to interact with Zillow.

3. You are a reasonable person, and would be willing to sell the domain for a reasonable amount.

4. What you think is a reasonable amount, and some simple calculations/reasoning supporting this number.

You might even say that you were surprised by the small sum the initially offered, but with the information given I don't think there's any reason to be too offended-they probably just threw something out there to see if it worked. I also think it's quite early to start talking about negative pr campaigns etc. as others are suggesting. That won't get you any extra money, which as I understand it is your goal at this point.

edit- to suggest maybe including something from their "about us" section to describe what you were doing; trying to "help consumers by giving them access" to information.

Also to note, while their tactics aren't particularly subtle or magnanimous, I do believe in giving some benefit of the doubt- especially until after you've seen their response to your thoughtful response.

edit2- in 1.) above, you probably don't want to say you're expanding the "zillow brand"- no reason to help their IP/trademark position. just say something similarly pleasant sounding.
I'm a reasonably experienced Mac User - and I have no idea how to tile my windows. Can't find a utility to manage windows. No way in OS X to do it cleanly. It continues to be the most annoying element of my Macintosh experience - particularly as there a number of great tools in Microsoft Windows (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000928.html) - and don't even get me started on the wealth of WM available for Linux.....
So by removing that word, I'd be adding 'truthiness'?
They are non-binding.

You know all these documents marked confidential that people give me. Unless I previously signed an NDA that says I will respect the confidentiality of such documents, it's just wishful thinking on your part.
Great Deals Discount Card Fundraisers | Fundraising Ideas
Can he legally redirect to his new site?
What Would You Do With A Billion?
While I largely agree, there are downsides to launching so many "project" services. They end up with a lot of half-baked products under the Google brand.

The end result is that I'm wary of investing time in new Google services. As a business owner, its of the utmost importance to me that my vendors are in for the long haul, and outside of its core areas I don't feel that way about Google.

Google Talk is a great example: I would never switch my primary point of contact to a Google service because I don't trust them to maintain it.
Can we cool it with the New York Times articles? I've noticed more and more of these puff pieces and its lowering the tone.
Also, the offer was super-cheap: Acquire a site with 1M uniques per month for $125K in cash (plus the same amount in highly volatile stock).

That's barely a 6 months of salary for the founder. Frankly, it's insulting. Even YC offers you a better valuation, and that's before you have any traffic :-)
Thanks for the tip!

The list of features that justify using a commercial database keeps getting shorter each year.
They just asked you to wait two months. They can't really complain if you want to wait either zero months or four months. If you feel bad saying you are doing it just for the money, say there is a project at your current job that would take about four months, and you would feel bad starting it and not completing it.
It's all bs, basically.
* get a new domain name and

* 301 redirect all request to it FAST

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection#HTTP_status_cod...
It appears to me that it's more a problem of unrealistic expectations. If somebody else is willing to do a better job for less money, a person's got to either improve/update their skills or start asking for a smaller salary.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I sympathize with the employers, but I can certainly understand the rationale.
Don't buy .TV domains. The island of Tuvalu is sinking.
Take a look at trademarks for Zillow and derivatives: http://bit.ly/jrJ8v

Zillow could argue that your domain is confusingly similar and violates their trademark. They are probably offering you a few hundred bucks because it would cost more than that for them to send you a cease and desist.

Not sure how much you can squeeze out of them given this.
This is very interesting. Please follow up on this story when it comes to a conclusion.
Agreed. Erlang is actually very friendly. (Much more so than Clojure, for that matter ..)
Also proof that they're going to have to change their name at some point. Sooner is better.
Tell HN: They Might Be Giants looking for iphone developer help
Just saw this and am passing this on:

> They Might Be Giants Official Call to iPhone app Developers!

> Are you an iPhone app developer?

> Would you or someone you know like to work with TMBG to develop their first ever iPhone app.?

> If you're an experienced designer and interested in a new challenge, make yourself known!

> Email digital#hornblowgroup.com and give us examples of your work experience!

(The # should be a different symbol above.)
It is possible to make it portable, you just need a portable API for synchronization. That's not too hard to do - take a look at atomic operations in the Linux kernel.

Click was probably talking about the fact that Java has a consistent and defined memory model. C and C++ have no such memory model, but there always is one. It's just the memory model of the underlying architecture - which is sometimes extremely subtle.
How many accounts are inactive and with the last few logins failed?
It creates repeating groups (gender -> M,F; location -> Boston, Cagliari, etc; dept -> Development, Personel, etc)—to me, that looks like denormalization.

I'm not sure this is what you're objecting to, but whether or not the data is _stored_ denormalized (as opposed to just using the result set and throwing it away), is not really of consequence. I think we'll both agree that we can and should keep our transactional data normalized.

Either way, this method goes against the grain of what SQL is supposed to do (otherwise you could meta-program queries without having to resort to a Perl script to string this thing together). My critique still stands that these queries can grow to intractable sizes.

If one is going to be a lot of reporting like this, they should really look to separate their transactional and analytical databases.

But hey, like I said YMMV. In a simple case it works. But trust me when I say, after 5 years of data growth and requirements shifts, I wish I knew then the burden that it is now. :)
You're hired - next year
$500.

Maybe we'll have an auction here in the comments? Of course, the later bids will take longer to show up with the new reply rules.

At least the poster can tell them he has better offers.
The thing is, they let him use their site for a while. They even opened a line of communication with him and requested that he include "Unofficial Version" on the site. Their only communication to the poster should have been to stop using their trademark. The fact that they endorsed the site and didn't protect their trademark puts them in a bad spot if they try to leverage their trademark in any way.
> presumably, only one of the parties has agreed that the information should be public.

Sending an email like this to Arrington and telling him he might find it 'interesting' amounts to saying 'print this'. Further, all involved parties in a story do not have to agree before it's published. If an employee is harassed by her manager, does the NYT seek the manager's permission before publishing the story? I have indulged in TC-bashing on several previous occasions, but I don't think expecting Arrington to keep this stuff confidential is reasonable under the circumstances. If anyone's to blame, it's Goodrich.

And as far as Arrington's reputation is concerned, I don't think it's going to take a hit - he's a 'journalist' and he has to make a living =) It might actually save him some trouble because now people are going to think twice before sending him 'interesting' crap.
Go to the press!
Ask HN: Hackers With Disabilities
I've seen many questions asked about the age and sex of community members, but have yet to see one that tackles this.

I'm curious, do we have any hackers, coders, IT workers, or especially entrepreneurs that have a disability? And more importantly, do you have any tools you use that you couldn't live without?
Netbook Boom Likely To End With Better Economy
I guess that makes it more of a "stimulus loan", eh? Debt slavery indeed...
Apple's Twitter Profile
raw io? facebook better go ipo soon, they're running out of abstraction layers to code through
I would disagree that it's reasonably possible that Warner's lawyers are idiots. They're almost certainly not. They could be mistaken. Or they could have not really been involved in this decision process (though if the publicity picks up, they will be). But they're almost certainly not stupid.
I can recommend some good developers if you are willing to pay a good developer. My email is my HN user name at gmail. If you want to minimize your budget try GetAFreelancer.
There are many examples of competition between in the OSS world. Desktop environments, database engines, programming languages, text editors.

The author of vim told me that at one point he felt pretty content with the program and had not been changing much for a number of years. Then some other guy took on a very active development of another vi clone (forgot the name, sorry) and this gave Bram the incentive to speed up and add many new features to vim. So in this case the competition was beneficial, and I expect that it usually is.

And BTW I don't think competition in science is primarily driven by funding. You need little or no funding for theoretical physics, and yet they're as competitive as anyone or more. The main reason for the very fierce competition in science IMO is that the number of tenured positions is very small compared to the number of PhD graduates. You have to be better than the other guy or else you can kiss your academic career goodbye.
i don't know anything about cal's departure, but i can say that any large co like yahoo, google, msft, apple etc is more or less impervious against the loss of one or a few technical individuals. his departure may have symbolic value but the machine that is chugging there will keep chugging, for better or for worse
I must say that these lectures look to be of high quality. The slides are done really well. Though, the one on OpenGL was a bit light on info;)
viva *bsd. and the linux kernel is progressing nicely as well. its a great time for free OSs.
... with a guaranteed 2 year contract. (since it's not worth much to be hired if you're then fired after a month)
IBM used to market in exactly this way: "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".
I would just send them the link to this thread if I were you...
Does the U.S. need an auto industry?
Apparently I don't have enough karma to flag this, so I'll just complain loudly.

shouts Desktop wallpapers? Really?
So what happens to a TLD when its corresponding country is gone? I, personally, have no idea - mostly because this seems to be without precedent.

Whatever happens, it's bound to be interesting and have an impact. Bring on the changes.
I just heard TMBG on a (major) network tv show my wife watches. I was walking by the living room and I almost snorted Dr. Pepper out my nose.

Good to hear from those guys again.
No doubt. I am studying this further, for sure.

The info from a public-facing, private company is striking. I'm amazed how much code and knowledge Facebook has already given back to the community given their state. Though perhaps being private and not publicly traded makes it easier. Still, it seems like they have done some things very well and wouldn't want to expose them.
So what? The Soviet Union has been gone since 1991 and it's still possible to buy a .su domain name.
This may not help you in the short term, however, I was recommended a great book called "Secrets of Power Negotiating". The information contained in there is useful beyond this specific dilemma you have.
There's an Island of Tuvalu? Why do I get the feeling that top level domains are their chief export?
Google Talk is based on XMPP, although their implementation of it is supposedly not up to par. I know I can use my gtalk account through pidgin's implementation of XMMP, though.

Gtalk isn't that bad - I know a lot more people who use that than, say, AIM or Yahoo. The client is better than iChat, at least.

What do you use for instant messaging? Time Warner is spinning off AOL. What if AOL finally goes under? Yahoo probably won't go under, but what if they need to make drastic cost cuts and decide to cut off the YIM service?

Probably better off running your own XMPP server and rolling your own client. I mean, you can never tell if any of these other chumps will stay around for the long haul! /s
I agree they can be light on content and oversimplify things to appeal to a broader audience, but they're usually still a pretty good starting point for decent discussions.
Someday around June, 2010.
> What makes you believe Lisp is so superior to other classes of programming language?

Because I feel straightjacketed whenever I cannot redefine my language on a whim in every conceivable way, or am forced to write a whit of boilerplate. (Yes, none of the existing Lisps fully meet this ideal, but nothing else comes close.)
Pandemic Planning for IT Professionals
You're using their name in your URL. They're being nice by giving you a fair price for the domain, and not sending lawyers after you.
They'd have to make the changes to 10 stores to hit 1%. Just nitpicking, though :)
> C is better than Lisp, depending on your metrics.

A camel is also a better vehicle than a truck, depending on your metrics. (Quite seriously.)
Both of these books are great. After those, the book "Seeking the Heart of Wisdom" is recommended for those who want more of the whole picture.
A full-time job? Sounds more like punishment than a prize. Mental freedom is worth more than $150k/yr.
Tokelau Island and Chirstmas Island are huge too; they gave us .tk and .cx respectively.

Actually, never mind, Christmas Island might have ruined Christmas for me :-(
The only way to deal with these people is the same way you'd deal with the Soviets: through MAD. Explain to them that without API access, the only possible use of the domain to you would be as an anti-Zillow news site.
From http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/12/tuvalu_that_... :

"If you strong, you get fish," a weathered fisherman tells her. "If you not strong, oh, you gonna die."

Something tells me that fisherman is missing out on all the domain name action.
At least in the first sense. Hard to say for sure about the second, since they don't need to.
For canada, look into BootUp labs, their based out of Vancouver. Their doing lots of stuff in the Vancouver Start-up community, part of which includes operating an incubator fund.
The great purpose of Tokelau Island is to make sure that if you type "tcl.tk" into your address bar, you will get a web site about Tcl/Tk programming.
This sucks, and I feel for you, but I think it is the risk you take when building an app around someone else's API and trademark without establishing an agreement with them first.

From other comments, it looks like they can legitimately cut off access to the API and get the domain. All you really have going for you is that you can make some noise about it, because if Zillow values their developer community they need to demonstrate that they won't try to pull stuff like this.
Don't confuse continuing to operate with continuing to innovate.

A few technical individuals can move the needle more than you'd imagine, even at a big co.
The reactor at Three Mile Island only had a containment vessel because it was on the flight path in/out of a nearby airport. Otherwise federal regulators were going to let it be built without a containment vessel.

The containment vessel at Three Mile Island was designed to survive a direct hit by a loaded 707 - because those flew over the reactor. They were NOT over-designed.
In Soviet Russia, .su buy you.
ask them is they forgot to add K at the end of the figure. Seriously.
I have worked with dozens of I.T. groups, and their behavior is startlingly consistent: they're not about to risk changing anything. And it's for a simple reason: they are measured on Not F*cking Things Up. They are not about to have everything fall apart on their watch, because they honestly believe they will not have a job.

Realistically, I think the only way business I.T. will ever change, is for the metrics to change. Rather than the stupid and threatening measure of "don't screw up, ever, or else" and these 99.999999999% uptime numbers, I.T. must be guided under a new principle: "evolve constantly, at a reasonable pace, taking acceptable risks".

What's frustrating to me is that they "freeze", wanting to delay change as long as possible, not appreciating the irony that a snowball is being created. If they wait 5 years to upgrade a browser instead of 1 or 2, the cost of a mistake is far higher. If they refuse to allow beta software, ever, they are losing lead time on detecting possible issues. The list goes on.
Funny, I thought I had you pegged as a Solaris guy.
Demand driven teaching: Social VRM applied in education
Don't sell -- certainly not for $250. What cheapskates. You probably know Frink and Barton capitalized zillow with $57,000,000, part of their profits off Expedia.com: if zillow is doing so swell, if you believe all the self-hype you read on that blog, izillow is not only worth more, but Frink and Barton can afford to pay you much, much more. I like the idea someone suggested of "parody and criticism." That's not hard to do with zillow -- so easy and fun to make a "comedy" out of all the bs they've pulled on homeowners and agents alike since they've been running. A number of people have been working on a future site called zillowclassaction.com, a data collection tool. We may decorate the site with a Z upsidedown and backwards. There are sites like zilo, I've been told, and no one has copyright on the letter "Z" -- to my mind it still stands for that horseman who rides "out of the night, when the full moon is bright" ... that bold renegade making ZZZZs with his blade, Z's that stands for A LOT MORE than zillow. "Stand sure" on principle -- and give em hell. Th
"Odds are, nothing your VC does, no matter how helpful or well-intentioned, is going to tip the balance between success and failure."

The effect of VC advice is in principle measurable. That would suggest an empirical approach is possible to determine whether YC is really 10x better than a 'regular' angel. Of course you'd have to consider the effect of how being chosen by YC might affect the performance of a startup. Also, whether YC is better at picking 'winners' than a regular angel.

YC is really the first angel/excubator to sell themselves on the idea that they are mostly not money. They have to, because they don't give a lot of it.
Technically, the island isn't sinking, but it's so low and flat that rising sea levels could put it underwater.

http://www.tuvaluislands.com/warming.htm
My top three:

Darkroom: This one should have seriously come as an option for the camera. It waits until you have stabilized and then takes the picture. Great App. The only thing I wish it did is to save faster.

GuitarToolkit: this is a slick app for anyone that likes guitars. Scales, tuner, alternate tunings, metronome, chords, etc....

Sportacular: great app to check sports scores. It's basic but comprehensive at the same time.
ps. Just saw something I DIDN't like: don't use their zillow logo on your site: modify it -- make it the Z upsidedown and backwards if you like: that's what I mean by "parody."
Being a hacker has always meant being a social engineer. NY Times is an excellent window onto mainstream media and how society thinks.
While I was in my senior year in college (1999) at Brown, there was a fatal accident at a fuel reprocessing facility in Japan. It was a criticality accident; some solution of Ur was put in a bucket or something when it needed to be in a nice, skinny cylinder to stay sub-critical. Three workers died, and they all saw the "blue flash" from Cerenkov radiation in their optic fluid. I only happen to know this because I was taking a class on radiation and health at the time, and the professor found it topical; I got the impression that things like this happen with some regularity.

Fuel reprocessing plants are much less heavily scrutinized than the power plants themselves, since they are less likely to cause massive damage to the surrounding populace. I don't have the numbers to hand, but my impression is that if you're looking for serious worker safety issues in nuclear energy, you should look to the reprocessing plants.
but couldn't because people kept using car and cdr instead of first and rest

Huh? What do names have to do with it?

If I recall correctly, first and rest were introduced 6 months after car and cdr were. The difference between 50 years and 49.5 years is hardly great enough to have affected the subsequent evolution of Lisp.
What's new in Firefox 3.5
> Determine a fair price

That term has no definition.

Instead "determine a price that you can live with and they would rather pay than go with their second best plan".
I'm surprised that we haven't seen the urban legend about Carter outlawing breeder reactors only for Saint Ronnie to overturn it.

Reprocessing of spent fuel was banned by PL 95-242 as reprocessing fuel is a nuclear weapon proliferation risk. Separating U from Pl is a simple chemical reaction, and if you want to maximize production of Pl-239 (even numbered isotopes of plutonium suck for weapon use), then you want to use a graphite reactor and continuously push fuel through them (which is what the first generation of nuclear reactors did - at Hanford and similar places).

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=189253

http://www.nti.org/db/china/engdocs/nnpa1978.htm

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=30475

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execut...

We've got about 1700 tons of plutonium in private ownership in the US. That is far more than enough to make tens of thousands of Nagasaki sized nukes.

If you want to know more about the politics and chemistry of nuclear fuel reprocessing, I recommend you read McPhee's book The Curve of Binding Energy.

http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming-Theodore...