skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, they are better than those atrocious ones with Seinfeld and Bill Gates. But they still have a long way to go to compete with the humor of the Apple ads.
Not my startup, but this site looks pretty slick and wondering if anyone here is involved with it.
I agree with the core of your argument, however in this instance we have private market manipulation.

In most situations the employers have more leverage then the employee. The very best hires will not accept sub par offers. But a lot of others, including some very good ones, will.

The result being that private companies influence the labor market for their own benefit and everyone else's detriment. That includes other employers and employees.

Think of non competes for utilities, as in only one cable co. can serve your area. Does that make the private market manipulation more obvious? Private market distortion is no better then public market distortion.

Cartels, non-competes, etc, are legitimate targets for government busting from my libertarian perspective.
Have you seen how much drug users are willing to spend on stuff!??
How is this different from seeqpod, which filed for chapter last week...
"Click here to register for $20. $15 of which goes to the 'legalize marijuana fund!'"
nevermind. they pay to license the music. Serves me right for commenting before reading the About page...
It's a nice idea, but please remove the background image, it makes my eyes bleed. Your main website at http://www.cornify.com/ has a much better design.
Thanks for the feedback, disappointing though it is. What really makes it a shame is that I know how much better I am than when I was younger. More mature and with a much better business sense. Damn.
"Isn't DnD the essence of hask'n'slash without much personality? "

Even in the computer rpgs based on D&D, Planescape Torment [review - without giving away the plot- http://www.gamespot.com/features/6135401/index.html] is very non hack and slashy (and the best computer RPG ever!!)
It has nothing to do with your imputed (in)competence.

All a decision like this would mean is: the state of MA has decided it's not in the interests of the state of MA to enforce noncompete clauses, so from here on out it will not enforce them.

You can still sign whatever you want.
Some Lisp Machine Minutia
I always found it more entertaining then interesting. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Fish that aren't even wrong.

P.S.
Don't mistake the above italicized for my agreeing with mumbo jumbo, quite to the contrary.
The Internet Storm Center has a somewhat more even-handed breakdown of the proposed legislation: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6124

The “shut down the Internet” part can be found in S.773 §18 (2): (http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s773/text?version=is...)

> [The President] may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network […]

So we're talking about emergency airgapping federal/military networks, and whatever other domestic sections of the backbone are deemed “critical infrastructure.” It's quite an extreme measure, but there's no implication of claiming the power to turn off the lights for everyone around the world (or even in the US).
MA courts have a reputation for enforcing non-competes so strongly that many silicon valley companies have a blanket no MA hiring policy.
That is beginning to hurt companies in MA, whether they use non-competes or not, when they try and hire. Ultimately this hurts the state's income.
Just to clarify, Matt and Jessica Flannery (married) founded Kiva. Matt's the CEO. Premal is the president. Also, Kiva is awesome.

Story from Matt's perspective: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/itgg.2007.2....
I don't see anything in that article that doesn't equally apply to all white and even most blue collar workers.
And the whole thing has a Ooo poor me, the world is so dire! feel.
"languages are defined in large part by their communities"

For the longest time, Clean wasn't open sourced. These days, the chances of a non open source language gathering a strong community around it is hard (except maybe for Microsoft languages), and even when a community forms, it is likely to remain small. I for one, would never put my time in to a community around a closed source language.
There's a meta keywords entry but no content. They're not that important nowadays, but you might as well fill it in.

You could do with a bookmarklet to make generating links easier.

Perhaps you could add a feature to allow URLs to be prefixed by http://hapylink.com/ to then change them into the final link. For example: http://hapylink.com/http://www.foxnews.com/ would return a page with the resulting Hapylink. Diggbar does it like this and makes it so easy to use.

Could you make the resulting links /slightly/ shorter (optionally, perhaps)? I'd like to use this on Twitter but Twitter would shorten (or at least truncate) these URLs again as they're a bit long, I think.

A logo would be cool.
I completely agree. I am going to recommend this to everyone who seems sad to me.
It's the dismal science for a reason.
Or, highlight the first http://, so a paste will overwrite it.
Works != Makes Money.

When you "make a profit" you are successful. Twitter has a long way to go before its successful. Thankfully it has patient investors who are allowing it to experiment with a revenue model, because they're convinced its a cash cow. I'm more skeptical of it being the next best thing.

Hardware, besides the cue cat, has to sell, and sell well enough that people are making money off the slim margins. TC will know its design is successful when Dell puts out a knock-off tablet for half the price.
The Bluray! chorus was just hilarious.

Boy: "I'm a PC and I'm 11"
Mum: "And I'm not"

She's not 11 and she's not a PC? She has a Mac at home doesn't she! That's my final impression anyway :/
Please don't do that, even if you feel you have "karma to burn." You're decreasing the signal to noise ratio, which is the point of the moderating system here. HN is a nice place to have discussions because people tend to avoid such comments.
The heat map is good, too.

It's pretty, but quite a bit unclear. There's no legend, for example -- do the red areas or the yellow areas have the highest per-capita startup rates?

Since even the article is talking about small cities, and the cities on the map tend to be redder dots, I'll assume redder means more startups per capita.

Still, what does the map tell us? It seems a little surprising that the big open-spaces counties of the west, especially around Idaho, Wyoming, and Vegas/Northern Arizona are so red. But we can't be sure this isn't an artifact of their shading choices. An eastern city-plus-surrounding-counties might hide all its 'red' in a tiny dot, making its region look yellower than a western county, when the eastern rate over the same total area is actually higher, and even no more concentrated. (It just looks that way because of the smaller counties.)
Seems to me that the 'most single' countries are also ones where women are unlikely to have the same level of internet access as men and where women's social position is considerably subservient to men's. There may also be an element of 'youth skew.' Less-single countries seem to have a higher technical sophistication in general, so there are likely more older not-single people online there.
I think you'll find that most tech people will fall into the reactive category: that's what makes us so good at solving problems and figuring non-mainstream things out.
Any thoughts on a movable type plugin?
It's great to try and spin this as Microsoft being out-of-touch, but in this case they've hit the nail on the head. Their previous "I'm a PC" and "Seinfeld" ads have been terrible - trying to convince us that their computers were cool or every-day machines against Apple's bourgeois style. Those were stupid.

These ads drive to the heart of the issue - many people want something Apple doesn't sell (or doesn't sell at a price they can afford). Microsoft has hit Apple where it counts and that's why these ads are great - and I say that typing from my MacBook Pro. I really don't think this should get into a Macs vs PCs are more expensive argument - those never end well. What I can say is that PCs offer more choice - you can get a 17" PC laptop without having to buy the most expensive processor and the like. In Apple's world, all upgrades come in tandem with things you may or may not want and that makes certain things (like a 17" screen) start at a whopping $2,800.

I'm a programmer. My computer is my livelihood and I'm going to pay up for something because I use it so much. However, Microsoft's ads hit home for many people who go looking for a computer on a budget and don't want to come home with a 13" laptop when they wanted a 15" one - and might not need some of the other things in a MacBook. If your budget is $1,500, the only Mac laptop you can get is the MacBook 13". It's a tight spot for many people buying computers.

And this ad puts that tight spot on the screen. It's not going to convince me to buy a PC, but it's going to get others thinking about the features they want and the availability of those features in Macs at a price they'll accept. Again, I hope this doesn't start a Mac vs PC price crap thing because it's really about the customization - aka, why do I need to buy a 2.66GHz processor to get a 17" screen?
Granted some of them are silly, but a fair amout of the Ferengi Rules make sense.
Scale. It's easy to give real time stats when you're only monitoring a few hundred sites. There's a lot more data to crunch when you're trying to monitor half the web.
Maybe instead of exclaiming "Blu-ray!", they could have exclaimed "Conficker!" or "IE!". Sheesh.
Hey, I'm at UFL too! I'm taking Dr. Gader's class in machine learning right now. Are you a grad student?
Update: Pretty much all better, except for headaches that I have to take a pill daily to suppress.
When Will Apple Hit 1 Billion App Downloads?
Wow, I have an opposite problem. I instantly get absract explanations, but often fail to see patterns in real life.
You bring up a good point, but distributing this as a database is a convenient interchange format. It means I can quickly start playing around with it to see how accurate and precise it is. I downloaded it, imported it into a test database, and was querying it in under 2 minutes. It took me longer than that just to figure out what sort of license I would need to use Maxmind.
I hope this doesn't start a Mac vs PC price crap thing

I hope it does, becuase the irony is that Microsoft is going to lose the price war. The Windows-less netbooks are much cheaper than the ones that come with Windows. As the price point pushes users there, they are going to realize that they don't actually need Windows for anything, and that's going to change the computer world.
I don't see anything about searching personal email here. Is the original arcticle inaccurate?
Depends on the area of the industry you're working in. I believe corporate IT departments are ironically more forgiving than the supposedly liberal startup scene, which tends to be younger and more suspicious of older workers, reflecting a trend in the society at large which equates youth with being "in one's prime".
I like it, a nice example of how you can run with an idea and get something cool out the other end quickly using today's frameworks etc.

But where are the kittens?
Then it sounds like he's not following the rules very well.
I agree. If you feel your employee is a value to you and potentially a competitor, you ought to compensate them accordingly. Personally, I would never sign a non-compete unless there were not only adequate considerations for compensation, but also equity.
Cool! Thanks for letting us now, i go to nu and i didnt even know about it!
From rags to microfiber: inside the rapid rise of Under Armour
we probably need another option - "both" (I am not sure if "neither" makes any sense)
Your comment has added to the signal to noise ratio, as now has my response! "Please don't do that".

Lighten-up a little bit, step outside and get some fresh air, life isn't as serious as you make it, you're missing out.

By the way, I do think Apple is better than Microsoft and I have as much right to voice that opinion here as anyone else has, it doesn't devalue anything; I simply added about karma burn because you know if you say A is better than B, especially in the context of Apple and Microsoft, you're going to get down voted--that doesn't take away from me having the right to say it though if I believe it to be true.
It wasn't an assessment of a book, but of the link it was a comment on.
I'd disagree, as other professions - say for example, accounting, finance, customer service, HR, would not have a similar limitation so specifically limited.

And it is a dire feel when you actually experience it. As a 45 year old developer currently seeking employment, it's tough. Your ability and potential does not matter anymore (even when willing to take a step-back to an entry-level position), it's just a specific skill set. The so-called lack of programming talent in America is not taking into account the lack of companies willing to actually hire experienced and competent, but just lacking a specific language, programmers that are available.
There are already plenty of things that can't be enforced by contract. You can't sell yourself into slavery, for instance, because the state isn't allowed to make sure you submit to your agreement.

As another commenter said, sign whatever you like. Some companies make you sign non-competes in California, we just all know they don't mean anything.
I only ran the test against the first name server listed. It would have been more complete to test again all/several, but I thought this would be sufficient.

LuiLui.com has changed its name servers since I ran the test. I just used the first domain that I found that used them.

Regarding Anycast, all 3 providers advertise as such, so I assumed that all their name servers would use it

My reason for publishing this is that I couldn't find any data comparing providers, or even any good ways to compare them.
May be you are correct, but I am pretty sure that in this opensource world soon there will be a good free option available
I think higher taxes for the rich make more sense, and here is why.

When I have more money, I am more careless, and I start to lose sight of the value of a dollar. I am more out of touch with where my money goes ($1 ATM fees unnoticed), and I tend to not spend as much time looking for values when I shop. Heck, I even see myself doing this in "fake" economies, such as World of Warcraft. The tendency to be reckless when economically "safe", is very real.

If money is spent recklessly anyway, and is barely noticed when it's gone, why not put it into a pot where it at least stands a chance of benefiting more of society?

People living paycheck to paycheck are much more in tune with what their lives are costing them. They could tell you instantly what $1000 more in taxes would mean, and having to pay it would completely change their lives. Whereas, someone with millions of dollars would have no clue what $1000 is worth. (Actually, they would; see the $1000 pizza: "http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN14298520...)
I read the article but I'm not sure what you mean by this statement.
> I'd disagree, as other professions - say for example, accounting, finance, customer service, HR, would not have a similar limitation so specifically limited.

Could you please elaborate?
I think I prefer the web 1.0 way of "manage it yourself" (tabs) as oppose to the web 2.0 way of "we'll do everything we think you want" (the digg bar).
Thomas Piketty argues that we should impose a very high tax rate of about 80 percent on the top income earners in society

80 percent. The scary thing is, in middle school I would probably have agreed with him. Hell, pure communism sounded ok back then. I think it takes a fairly naive view of human nature and society to think that policies like this can lead to economic growth.
That's not to say that you can't find a job - just that there are certain people who will have a bias against you. Perhaps you're not interested in working there anyway.
I don't know if you are using the word correctly either (or if there is a better word to describe it), but I find my self on the reactive side as well.

I know in my java lectures I'm kind of zoned out and don't really pick up much on the material being presented. But wait until lecture is over and the lab session is starting, and I tend to be all over it.

I think also, to answer your question about what you can do to be more active when learning new abstract concepts, I try to relate it to something familiar. I have a lot of trouble in the calculus class I'm currently in. But I feel like if I take a theorem or proof and relate it to a problem that needs to be solved in ruby or java, I'm able to think about it in a familiar way and can generally understand it better than before.
Very interesting. I'm normally not a fan of entirely flash-based websites, but since they need it here in order to play the music, I can certainly understand.

I've been using lala.com for streaming music recently- They have a model which more emulates iTunes on the web, for $1/album.

I'll be interested in learning more about their Membership once it goes live, which allows you to create a media library- That's what I like about lala.com currently.

I think their business model could certainly work, but it's going to be a tough sell- Let's say they charge a $6/month subscription for membership - Assuming a 1 cent fee per play (per http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/27/the-sorry-state-of-musi...) Unless I listen to over an hour of tracks, every single day, they're ahead.

If they can target people who only listen once in a while, they might do well.. The problem is, those people are unlikely to sign up for a web-service specifically to play music.

I see on the site that they're going to offer Advertising, but the click through rates have to be pretty abysmal.. If I'm listening to a playlist, I'll likely not be paying close attention.

This works in traditional radio, but advertisers have been hesitant to pay high rates without clickthrough online.

I'll love to watch and see how things turn out!
Absolutely!

I'm all for an incentive-based economy, but at a certain point, an incentive-based economy becomes luck-based. Bill Gates didn't become so rich based off of hard work. I'm sure he worked hard, I'm sure he had long hours, I'm sure he had skill. But all of those things might get you to multi-millionare's club. They don't make you a multi-billionare. He lucked out that software became so important and that the industry standardized on his software.

How often do we see winner-take-all economies in our business where the winner isn't necessarily the hardest working? Is it that hard to imagine that being successful is hard work, but that being the winner of a winner-take-all (or winner-take-most) economy is partly luck? And I don't think it's unreasonable to highly tax the portion that is luck. Plus, would you chase a goal less knowing that it was a hundred-million-dollar goal than a ten-billion-dollar goal? Remember, we're talking about individual money, not corporations here and I doubt any of us would cough at $100M.
So it's like grooveshark?
Ask HN: Advice on my application (iCue)
One day when I was listening to music from a recorded radio show I realized that I had no way of knowing what the individual songs were that were playing. I'm a big trance music listener so I regularly download and listen to A State of Trance, Global DJ Broadcast etc. All these mixes come as single file mp3s usually over 2 hours long. So whenever I hear a good song I have to go look up the track list and guess what I'm listening to.

I decided to remedy this for myself. I mostly use iTunes on my Mac to listen to these sets. So I wrote a Mac OSX cocoa application that takes advantage of CUE Sheets which are usually released with single-file mp3 sets. My application hooks into iTunes and displays Growl notifications when a new song inside a set starts playing. You can even skip between songs, inside the giant mp3. I find it quite useful and I haven't found anything at all that is functionally similar.

Anyway to my question.

At the moment I have released the application as freeware and submitted it to Apple downloads. The response has been great, a lot of people are downloading it and it has climbed to the top 20 (#7) most downloaded applications in the iTunes section.

I was wondering how easy it would be to monetize the application/website. Have any of you accomplished something similar? Is it doable?
I realize that I would need a richer feature set before I can charge for the application, I'm just trying to see how far I can take this project.

I currently have a single adsense banner on the website but obviously nobody clicks. I'm thinking of replacing it with a donate button. Do donate buttons work?

I would appreciate any and all suggestions and comments about the application or the website.

iCue - http://icue.suprak.com
The problem with saying "Apple > Microsoft" isn't that you're expressing an opinion. The problem is that you're not adding to the conversation. Lightening-up has nothing to do with it. Conversations here are pleasant because we try to avoid comments devoid of content.

You're new here, so I figured I should explain how our community works. I feel that is worth some noise.
I saw a Wacom Cintiq the other day in use. Wow. If you have $2k, it's better than pen and paper

As someone who has used both the Cintiq and pen and paper, I prefer the pencil/paper combination for storyboarding and general sketching as you get more feedback (feeling on your fingertips) than with a Cintiq because of the rough vs smooth surface.

Don't get me wrong, the Cintiq's are awesome and can allow some amazing tasks to be completed (especially with storyboarding & appropriate software), but often times I feel people need to make a deeper connection with the task at hand that the cintiq's just don't allow in certain creative arts.

I guess it's all a case of perspective. Sometimes imperfections are the key to making things special.
How to Supercharge Your Savings (a.k.a Save Like a Champ)
Sure, I'll provide some examples

The companies copying Microsoft products:

C# -> Novell

Visual Studio -> Just about every other IDE out there rips off features that appear in Visual Studio first.Intellisense is the obvious example here.

Office -> Open Office, parts of Google Docs

Powershell -> Open source projects are directly copying this shell for linux

WPF -> KDE 4, Nokia

Gazelle -> Google is doing something very similar to this

As for the line:
Apple: IPhone

I was trying to get the point across that this was the only product from apple that I could think of which has been copied by others. Perhaps you could make a case for parts of OSX as well. Either way my main point was that it's easy to find products that illustrate Microsoft's innovation.

I find it frustrating when people dismiss Microsoft's products as inferior to the alternatives when they haven't even given them a fair evaluation. I find I encounter a lot of people where I work that immediately dismiss Microsoft's products, just because it's Microsoft or because it costs more than the open source alternatives. In my mind this is nothing more than "software racism". It shows that these people are just closed minded.
From the article: Personal testimonials are even more powerful than the statistics

Statistics can be molded to fit whatever the statitician wants to say, but anecdotes are worse.