skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very cool - no doubt. But I'll take a pass on letting someone else back up my credit card info for me.

Is there really no challenge-confirm-response built into this technology?
They are definitely different businesses. No argument there.

But, there are still very real costs involved with the Pinterests/Twitters of the world--especially at scale.

Money lost is money lost. Whether it's because your price point doesn't allow you to recoup inventory carrying costs or because you have costs with no revenue.

But, I think the main point here is that it would seem more feasible to discount products and give up margin as a means to growth than it is to just grow with no idea of how you'll ever monetize.

I guess I don't understand what good it is to have a big, indispensable business without knowing how or if it would ever make money.

That we're having this discussion is kind of homage to how odd things have become.
Very odd message on bing.com
It seems Microsoft Bing isn't doing so well this evening. http://www.bing.com/

On each refresh, I receive a message like:
Ref A: 357bf3f4244348b59339ec9220af1257 Ref B: 01D5D1617DBB772F4C77D54C43995845 Ref C: Wed Apr 24 21:13:31 2013 PST

Ref A and Ref B change on each refresh, and the timestamp updates.
OK, but look at the growth after 9/11. Are all of those simply hardening/defensive mechanisms?

BTW: I firmly believe that the best defense against a possible attack from ~7B+ people is:

A) in cyberspace: to simply build better security rather than counter-attack those that attack us, as there are countless attackers from anyone with internet, often with nothing to lose, so counter attacks are futile.

B) In physical space: deal with attacks as criminals, not state or stateless organizations that require sacrificing civil liberties & core morals. There are not 7B+ people who can physically attack a structure, so standard policing suffices. Giving them more attention than that is playing directly into their goals, & counter-productive.

C) Nobody likes a police state. Jefferson famously said, that all governments creep towards tyranny, so we must remain vigilant towards increased power for our "safety".
The mix of interests of governments, companies and individuals are never going to be perfectly aligned. Indeed greater transparency on the motives of companies can only be a good thing - then nobody is disillusioned when they act in ways which are apparently at odds with other groups in society. The problem is how do individuals create institutions which are supportive and sustaining. The two options so far have either been government or unions, both of which, given their track record, are discredited to different degrees. For STEMs some form of professional society (non-political union) along the lines of the American Medical Association would seem to be a good approach. However this carries significant risk of degenerating back into the morass of competing factions and once more the interests of individuals lose out. Perhaps a step up from the current levels of organization, based on technical interests, e.g. The Professional Society of Python Developers or Amalgamated Interests Of Developers in the Finance Industry, similar to the original Friendly Societies, might provide a more robust model that meets the long-term interests of its members.
Forwarding logistics|China freight forwarding
Not sure if I can see what you're talking about.
Hey Ken, can't find a way to contact you but drop me an email at mqudsi@neosmart.net - you seem to know what you're doing when it comes to actual marketing (and sales) for products, there may be something we could work on together (and you'd be well compensated)!

EDIT: Anyone else that would consider themselves to be the equivalent of a (to use a very-much cliched term) rock-star hacker in the field of sales, PR, or marketing: please drop me an email!
> It's trying to right a historical wrong, discrimination against certain groups based on race.

It's been almost sixty years since discrimination based on race (or sex) was legal. It's time to let affirmative action die.
> It's funny, because you look at companies like Twitter and Pinterest which come up to scale with absolutely no revenue model, let alone revenue. That seems to be "normal". Nothing to see here. But, when a company with actual revenue deeply discounts products to scale up, it's somehow shockingly bad.

I think this is a function of the marked difference in needs between companies that deal in physical goods and those that offer services.
All I get is:

Ref A: 357bf3f4244348b59339ec9220af1257 Ref B: 01D5D1617DBB772F4C77D54C43995845 Ref C: Wed Apr 24 21:13:31 2013 PST

A few friends are experiencing the same message. Perhaps it's geography specific.
I like how one of the positives mentioned for a team following a 40 hour schedule is that they're more able to crunch...
It might've been a better idea to remap the eject button on CD drive less MacBooks. But it would still be weird, I'd just use fn + delete.
I wouldn't recommend venturing that far out into left field -- just the premise of having to lay off half (or more) of your team to stay afloat (In addition, a team you've worked with since the start) would be disheartening & depressing enough to drive even the most capable leaders into a corner.

Toss the bad publicity into the mix while you're simultaneously trying to raise more funding and you've got a dark corner.
>"More is often the solution proposed by the leaders of the 9/11 enterprise. After the Christmas Day bombing attempt, Leiter also pleaded for more - more analysts to join the 300 or so he already had.

>"The Department of Homeland Security asked for more air marshals, more body scanners and more analysts, too, even though it can't find nearly enough qualified people to fill its intelligence unit now. Obama has said he will not freeze spending on national security, making it likely that those requests will be funded."

and this scares me the most:

>"Meanwhile, five miles southeast of the White House, the DHS has broken ground for its new headquarters, to be shared with the Coast Guard. DHS, in existence for only seven years, already has its own Special Access Programs, its own research arm, its own command center, its own fleet of armored cars and its own 230,000-person workforce, the third-largest after the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs."

More more more, funny how all this makes me far more uneasy then any terrorist threat. At least I can fight off a terrorist, lord help you if you try to say no to the SWAT team wanting to search your home for a teenager who made a homemade explosive.
Maybe you didn't really understand what the app does. It is only useful for people who have already switched from Android to Windows. This is a useful tool for them to be able to make that switch easier by automagically locating apps for their new phone that should be able to replace the apps they used on their old phone. I don't see any bashing going on here. And it doesn't seem that aggressive to me. Again... these are people who have already made that switch. The only thing it might do to make people want to switch is by making it less painful to switch... thereby lowering the barrier to entry. But that seems like a stretch to me.
Creating Flood Effects in Uncharted 3
Yeah, it strikes me as crazy that they'd make a new technology and not use some sort of public key/private key encryption to make non-duplicable transactions.
That would be the power button. :)
The problem now is that (imho) 99% of the links posted on the internet are spam.

Unless you have a baseline of "what was here first" and "exactly when every website went live with what links" like Google does (because they have been indexing websites since the dawn of time as far as the internet and linking is concerned. Heck, there wasn't even backlink spamming prior to Google because Google was the first search engine to rank by number of backlinks!)... you're going to have a really tough time determining what spam is and what it isn't.

Which 1% do you decide to focus in on?
> How is a family in India going to come up with $40,000 to send their child to a US university for one year?

You're kidding right?
There are tens of thousands of millionaires (in US$ terms) in India. You only ever see the cream of the crop from India in your US universities... rich kids from wealthy families.
I'm super sorry to have just learned about microconf only to find that it is completely, totally sold out for this year (plus being only a few days away).

Any other good conferences like this one? From what I can see, this is all content and zero fluff, not cheap but not outrageously expensive either. I'm more than ready and willing to book even if it's a few hours from now for something like this. Share your thoughts, guys!
That was the most nuanced and poignantly intense business case study I've ever read.
Also, keep in mind that he killed himself as his company imploded. It's a sad cautionary tale.

Those who knew him spoke very highly of how nice he was. A genuinely nice guy. Hopefully most aren't judging him too harshly in light of that.
How to rip DVD to iPhone4S with DVDFab9
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I agree that using someone's first name can be overly personal and insincere. OTOH last name comes across as formal and stuffy.

How about using their internet handle?
Thanks for digging these up. These numbers may not be fully representative, however:
http://www.cfo.com/printable/article.cfm/2987898

Rather famously, Amazon in its early days included the cost of fulfillment (shipping, warehousing, etc.) in Sales and Marketing expense, not COGS. As a result, gross margins were thought to be somewhat inflated.

Apparently they also counted their equity investments in the stock of companies including Webvan and Sotheby's as cash and marketable securities.

At the time, analysts were worried about what all this implied for operating cash flow and gross margin.
Divesting For A Sustainable Future
I use sublime for WordPress because it doesn't use PEAR coding standards and that's what my emacs phone is setup for (also you don't have to set up multiple major modes).

Everything else is done in emacs because it is the better editor. Just wish it was pretty.
((-17 * (x**2)) + (69 * x) + 47) is hiring
I get a similar Bing screen of death, although the text string is a bit different.
this type of comment is lazy and pointless. Trolling at it's most insipid.

Here is an idea; if it bothers you that much, don't read it and don't comment on it either.
Hi! I'll preface this by letting you know that I'm not a marketing professional -- I'm in development, and so my POV is going to be more technically-oriented, but I did give your site a glance and it's very approachable by my standards:

* a simple, non-distracting design

* text is easy to read and there's no feel of keyword stuffing or buzzword bingo

* you define the problem and offer product differentiation both in the first 2 sentences (can't get much better than that IMO)

* you have both an "about" and a FAQ

* terms are easy to find

The main thing I'm seeing that you're missing are more of what the OP talks about, in the sense that the 'call to action' seems weak. There's the "for developers" part, though nothing for the "for users". If I understand correctly, perhaps you could link to /browse for the users? Or conversely, if the "for developers" is the meat & bones and there really isn't too much for users, I might suggest making the "for devs" a little more prominent and the "for users" a little less prominent -- such as placing devs above users or something... not sure, but it does seem that your site has a strong opening and good content, but is lacking somewhat in guiding users what to do next. For instance, I'll keep it in mind incase a need for something like this ever makes itself apparent, though if it a list of projects involved and recognized one I use, I might dig in further to see if I wanted to pledge (I do realize this could be the chicken & egg problem if it's a new site).
You're right about diversity, and accepting the impact it has on the process. You should probably be pissed about the legacies, though. Why doesn't Yale set up a second school called, say, "Yale Legacies", and fill it up with the same?
Hacking Flask: A Success Story
OpenTok on WebRTC
I don't really see this any more broken than trying to switch your PC from Windows to Linux. As it is right now, I've been using Windows for so long and have a decent list of apps I use everyday... I don't really have the time/energy to start all over in a new OS and try to find the replacement apps. But if I had an app that would analyze the currently installed apps on my Windows machine and then gave me a super easy way to install all those same (or replacement) apps on a Linux machine, I might be less hesitant to make that switch.
"This makes for a non-trivial contribution to most university budgets."

Just what is it about paying for 1/3rd of
the total cost instead of the full cost
you don't get? Again, yet again, once
more, just for you, again, over again,
students don't pay for the full cost of
a college or university education in the US;
not US
students, not foreign students, with only
very rare exceptions not foreign students
of wealthy families and, instead, US citizens
through gifts or taxes pay for 2/3rds or more.

E.g., Mike Bloomberg gave $100 million to
Johns Hopkins. One of the founders of QUALCOMM
just gave $133 million to the Cornell
technical university to be built on Roosevelt
Island. As I recall, there's a Gates building
at Stanford, from Bill and Melinda Gates. It
goes on and on.

When a foreign student gets an education in the
US, their education is being paid for mostly by US
citizens, via gifts or taxes.

This point is tough to understand?

Sure, there are now a few wealthy families in
China and India. But we're talking about
flooding the US with cheap labor via H1Bs
and US university educations, and the students
of the wealthy families are at most only a
tiny fraction of that.

As I explained, one reason foreign students
get graduate educations in US research universities
is that the US NSF wrote into research grants
that students must be supported on the grants
and the students can come for foreign countries --
commonly not England, France, or Germany but
India and Taiwan.

I can fully understand that with rare exceptions
a foreign student who
pays for some or all of tuition, fees,
books, room, board, etc. at a US college
or university believes that they are paying a lot,
and they are, but they still are not paying nearly
the full cost, and US citizens are making up the
difference.

This is difficult to understand?
The Pro's Guide to Working Remotely
I'm flattered, but I'm really not into marketing or sales at all, just a developer that reviews many poorly-marketed projects. So, I'm not really qualified to do much more than rant about it here on HN :) Thanks though, perhaps the OP would be more than willing to help you out as he definitely sounds like he specializes in it.
Unexplained Mysteries - This Strange Planet [HD]
I wasn't taking a stance toward affirmative action, so... okay, I guess.
I'm a Python (specifically Django, currently) developer. The key isn't what you do though. It's A) being an entrepreneur (1099 > W2), B)work your ass off, and C) always ask for more but act like you have some humility in the process (don't play much hardball with dev managers...).
OS X has an delightful affinity for Emacs bindings in standard implementations - try Ctrl-d to delete without leaving home row.

Mind you, if you're in MS Word for Mac then you'll just have to suck on an egg: no Ctrl-d, Ctrl-a, Ctrl-e for you.
For international sales PayPal takes 3.9% plus a flat rate fee ($1-$5) plus a poor exchange rate which adds in a hidden 2-3%.

In total they can end up taking $12 on a $100 purchase.

But you're right, most of that probably goes to the credit card company.
In my view, the top universities' admission process is just like how the VC select start-ups. The school's goal is to seek the maximum return just like any other investors. What will this student bring to the university as the return of the investment, it could be more chance to get donation from a potential entrepreneur, academic fame from a genius, or a beautiful story of a student coming from some difficult background. And also, this seems aligned with the long term success defined by the main stream. No sure for the public school, though no problem with the private school.
What do you think made you stand out? What does the list of "other reasons" look like?
I saw the original broadcast on CBC.

I just don't believe the reporting on this. They demo'd it. The girl had her credit card basically falling out of her pocket. A guy had to touch his phone to the credit card for a few seconds in order to get it to scan. He then used his phone to buy a coke at a coke machine using her card.

I'd like to see a demo of this where the credit card owner is not aware of whats going on. Presumably the phone can't scan the card when its inside a wallet, or even fully inside a pocket protected by 1/8" of cloth.

With access to the physical card, yes you can use someones credit card. Call 1985 - the problem is the exact same as with cards back then.
That's alot of buzzwords!! :

"I learned early on how to drive more effective results by fixing time and flexing scope, while flowing value, and optimizing team health. I also learned the value of figuring out effective product-lines, managing portfolios of investments, finding the best “Hot Spots” on heat maps of customer pain and opportunity, and mastering the art of the WBS (work breakdown structures) and cuttable scope."
Good luck!

If you swap my big players and niche for your big players and niche, I could have written your reply here.

Specifically:

1. We've been called a one stop shop by multiple people.
2. We're self-funded by my day job with a trivial burn rate.
3. I've probably read "How Not to Die" > 100 times.

Before my current project, I tried to create small niche websites that would eek out enough to get me out of my day job. They never did. Some success, but not enough. So I decided to go big or go home. I like this approach way better.

I think grabbing a beachhead is crucial in a competitive space. I'm in year two. I pursued 5 or 6 different niches my first year, following the philosophy that you should release a minimum version one. And if you are going to be a one stop shop, the minimum has to thinly cover several niches/sub-niches. I was definitely embarrassed by some aspects, but people sent me unsolicited emails with feedback and appreciation.

I laughed a bit at the fact that I was trying to outdo the big players as a solo shop, when everyone else is trying to carefully test their lean startup principles. I convinced someone to join me because of the initial traction. And now we're beefing up 2 of the initial niches. Under the theory that we'll hopefully get traction in one of them by the end of the year. And patching holes in the rest will be sufficient until we have time to work on them more. Or find another team member.

If we can get traction in a 2nd sub-niche, we're going to be working on monetization in the highly competitive space (as well as the sub-niches we've got traction) in year three (next year). As it turns out, even when things have gone right, making money in a competitive space is still tough! We were able to grab traction in the first sub-niche because there isn't a clear path to revenue in it. We've got some ideas though; we just don't have enough people to go after both user growth and revenue growth. So we're going after user growth right now, given our infinite runway to learn ... limited only by our ability to stay motivated.
grab the spec file, edit, and build.
then use yum localinstall.

EDIT: looks like spdy (on same port as https) requires openssl >= 1.0.1. centos has 1.0.0. nuts.
I'm surprised this post doesn't mention Markov chains. The author seems to think that finding and implementing a grammar quality checker will help stop spam. Aside from provides endless hours of entertainment viz. DissociatedPress, Markov chains are abused by spammers to generate grammatically correct nonsense. You can easily add meaning to the "nonsense" by adding formatting to certain words to add a secondary message. Does anyone know of a way to stop this?
Just because a link is added to content after the content already exists doesn't immediately qualify it as spam. 99% of links being spam is a pretty massive assertion, is that anecdotal or backed by any actual data?
this is completely of topic, i know. But could not not think about Obamacare when reading about "This is what bureaucracies do, they grow, more complex, more political, more expensive, and exponentially harder to dismantle. "
... I would also add to that: undemocratic.
Thanks for the info. I was mainly speaking of the audience that the OP was addressing, i.e. engineers who likely haven't had much if any formal marketing training (I've only had 1 semester worth), as they are the ones on small (or solo) teams that are likely to not pay much attention to any sort of marketing. It's good to see a top-down perspective from a large organization like you've laid out too, though.
How to replicate Facebook's compose status screen for iOS?
"You only ever see the cream of the crop from India in your US universities... rich kids from wealthy families."

No, as I explained, the US NSF long had a program to
increase STEM majors by requiring that research grants
also support students and, hint, hint, students were
available from Taiwan and India. For a while those
students made up roughly half the US STEM graduate
student populations, were on scholarships paid for by
the US NSF, and were rarely if ever from wealthy families.

We're talking about the US Federal Government using
foreign students and workers to flood the US labor
market in STEM fields. Foreign students from wealthy
families are a very different matter. For such students,
the US has long welcomed them because US foreign policy
holds that it is better for the US for such students to have US educations. Since the families are wealthy,
scholarships are no doubt small potatoes. E.g., if the
student is living in a $3 million condo and getting to school in a new Ferrari, he doesn't need a scholarship.

This is difficult material to understand?
Jobs: Why do so many people hate their jobs?
40 hours is still too much: http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/21-hours
Show HN (again): Download free PSDs made by Dribbble users.
Having done some link spam (in decent volume) in the past, your best bet in stopping it would be using more sophisticated captchas (such as the ones that have you identify a cartoon in an image or something non textual) and identifying the system posting the comment/spam link and seeing if they're a real user with a real browser or just an automated spambot like xrumer or scrapebox.

You can also turn off links in comment bodies and the URL field of the comment form to try and prevent scrapers from even finding you a worthy target. Won't help identify spam though.

Finally, centralized spam identification systems like Akismet work really damn well because they are watching the whole site network at once and can use those heuristics to identify spammers rather than the actual spam content itself.
Content mirror: http://peg.gd/38G