skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a very interesting idea because it drastically lowers the bareer to entry for someone wishing to try A/B testing.

I think business intelligence should be part of any company's core competences, but there is a market for this kind of automation too.

Some more general feedback:

- big call-to-action link in the middle of the top goes nowhere!
- better styling everywhere
- pricing should fit on one screen!
- marketing: focus on GET RESULTS, and IMPROVE CONVERSIONS
and less on the technical side---my guess is that your
main customers will be business people not technical folk,
so talk about the RESULTS and not so much about the tech.
keywords: ML, OPTIMIZE, BETTER, AUTOMATED, SMART, etc...
- who are you targeting with this pricing?
I think if your product really works it is delivering the
same value as a full time employee doing A/B testing and
optimizing the website for you --- so you should charge more.
Also -- the ppl who are most likely to benefit from this
are high traffic websites (1000+ visitors for stat. signif?)
so you should focus on them as your target market.
I think it will be much better to get 2-3 BIG customers than
chase mom-and-pop and their little website.
- maybe have a demo? (tell user to keep reloading a page/iframe)
so they see the different versions.

On a separate note, I think the notion of an "interactive" sales pitch that is custom generated for the user is interesting in its own right. Check out the link to my book on my hn profile page --- I have little conversation-like bubbles which add a bit of interactivity. This concept could go so much further though... Think "webpage as a conversation."

Good job on the coding. Now go open the right .css file and make your site look pretty ;)
It sounds like you're using Hadoop correctly, which is fine. But a lot of people are using "big data" that isn't very big (<1TB) and crunching it with small clusters that are less powerful than a single server due to the massive overhead of Hadoop.
Thanks for the suggestion! That could actually be added really easily. :)
Nintendo makes second consecutive annual loss as Wii U misses expectations
On Firefox (Aurora) it has about double cloth dimensions here.
The Wayback Machine archives old snapshots of pages as they appeared at various times. If the Cuil crawler has snapshots from 2007-08 of pages that aren't already in the Wayback Machine's own snapshots from that time (the Internet Archive crawler doesn't manage to get to everything), they could be used to supplement the archive.
I don't think $120k is possible as a new grad in Austin.

New grad rates tend to be $50 - 70k, while some bigger companies offer ~$90k.

$90k in Austin is a much better standard of living than $120k in Bay Area though...
Nice! LOL.
Bayan09, I will look into adding it tonight to what I scrape. I will comment and let you know how it goes! Thanks!+
> The bill appears to address the collection/audit concerns, but not the burden of correctly calculating the tax due on any particular sale.

The bill addresses that by requiring each state to provide software free of charge to retailers that does that for the entire state, and by providing explicit uniform rules for sourcing (well, technically, there are two sets of sourcing rules -- one in the bill for states that are not part of the "Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement", and one in that agreement that the bill adopts by reference for states that are a member of the agreement.)

You provide the sourcing information (applying the rules in the bill for sourcing), the state software provides the tax rate. The state software is the only part that has to care about identifying substate jurisdictions and applying their rules.
D'oh, I was being stupid, thanks.
Before MOOCs, ‘Colleges of the Air’
If you were to come to my job interview, I would probably agree you are disadvantaged. :(
Is this based in the EU? Or a non EU European country? EU =/= Europe. The blog post keeps mentioning Europe, but a lot of aliases are EU. This is important to figure out what law is applicable. (The graphic implies it's hosted in Ireland)
Not having any issues in latest FireFox nightly / OSX / Retina MBP, am running at 225x110 or something like that. Nice job!
Maybe states will pick up the cost of the tax rate info aggregation. The FAQ from TaxCloud is pretty interesting:

As a Certified Service Provider, we are compensated by participating states for providing TaxCloud to retailers.

https://taxcloud.net/tour/faq/

Also note that they say they rely on Amazon EC2.
Well, in the sense that it cost $3.5mil to make and made $26.7mil just in NA, it was a "pretty big hit".

This is the same reason Kevin Smith gets to keep making movies: he doesn't spend a lot and makes the studio a bunch of profit on DVD and foreign sales, even if his NA box office tanks.
And then you get called in for lengthy interviews, and you get scared and make unrelated false statements, and get convicted of a felony. C.f., Martha Stewart.
Optimizing Your Life
This reminds me of a signature I once saw on a forum: "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.". As it turns out, that's actually proverbs 27:17.
Probably the author would have been interested in an article which I didn't finally publish ;) ... here are some (not always good ;)) Google alternatives

Search: DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ask, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, Baidu
Scholar: TODO
Patent:TODO
Image: Bing
Shopping/price compare:
Photos (Picasa): Flickr, SmugMug
YouTube: Vimeo
News: Yahoo, TODO
Mail: Yahoo, Hotmail, Thunderbird, Fastmail
GDrive (storage): Spideroak, Dropbox,
Documents: Microsoft, Zoho, OpenOffice
Calendar: Zoho, Hotmail, AOL Calendar, 1Calendar, Outlook, Thunderbird, 30 boxes
Chrome (Browser): Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chromium with Chromatic
Google+: Facebook, Twitter, Identica, Diaspora, LinkedIn, Foursquare
Maps
routing: OSRM, Bing (=Yahoo), MapQuest, GraphHopper ;)
local search: Yelp, Bing (no API!)
mobile: TomTom
Google Streetmaps/Earth: Bing 3D
News: Netvibes (full of google search ;)), Yahoo, Twitter, breakingnews
Reader: Netvibes, liferea (Linux only)
Alerts: Netvibes
Translation: Microsoft
Analytics: Piwik
AdWords: TODO
Google Books: nothing found!?
Google Sites: Wikispaces, Zoho
Google Talk/Hangout: skype, talkyoo
Blogs: Wordpress, tumblr
Code: GitHub, SourceForge, BitBucket
Groups: SourceForge
Checkout/Wallet: TODO
Google Apps: Amazon
Speech Recognition: Nuance
Google Voice: PhoneBooth
Google TV: Apple TV, Samsung, LG, ...
Chrome OS: it's Lubuntu!
Smartphone (Android): iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry, Ubuntu
Play Store: Apple Store
music: spotify, itunes
Self-driving car: BMW, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Nissan, ...

Parts of those information through lifehacker

ToDos for Google: Offline routing, Own Games, Porn, Ebay, Amazon clone
SEO and AdWords are my mainstays for my software businesses. This year I'm going to be dipping my toes into a bit of offline marketing, like e.g. going to the (without loss of generality) Omaha Conference For Orthodontics Practice Managers and just talking to people. Given what I currently surmise about the per-account LTVs for higher-end customers of Appointment Reminder, at many plausible guesses for how many conversations I can have per day and how many people I can convert, it might be worth my time to do that. (Step 1: Do it. Step 2: Do it systematically with predictable ROI. Step 3: Pay someone to execute on Step 2.)
Thanks for the kind words! To be honest I am just looking to beef up my portfolio before I go job hunting next year (yikes!).

:)
I can barely remember Cuil, but what I do remember is it being touted as a "Google Killer". Funny how that worked out; I wonder where they went wrong. Oh that's right, I searched for Fedora Linux and got pointed to a menswear retailer in the south of France.
> That one point specifically concerns me. I should read the bill to see if virtual goods are explicitly exempted, or classified as a taxable item.

The bill doesn't address what goods are taxable; those are set by states. The bill simply sets the conditions on which states can extend the sales and use taxes they collect on goods sold by vendors within the state to goods sold into the state by remote sellers.
For those wondering:

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7da5i/police_raid...
"First build the sharing site. Then worry about analytics and top 10s and other ass-backward ideas."
This is based in the AWS EU datacenter in Ireland. However, as far as the law is concerned, we are not yet Safe Harbor compliant, but are actively working on it.

Sign up for updates to stay informed heroku.com/europe
I'm using the exact same rig and testing same version of Chrome, and they seem the same. We're really just comparing WebGL to canvas. Note that I had to use WebGL because with asm.js, the cloth gets so dense that canvas couldn't handle it.
Given that it was just opensourced it's highly probably that it was developed only against Intel's own compiler. Those who want it to work with other compilers are now able to contribute code for that themselves, it's not Intel's responsibility to do that (though they certainly can if they wish).
I disagree.

I think the comparison is valid. Some hardline atheists can be as vindicative, presumptuous and arrogant as religious people and that attitude is a problem (

Parent isn't implying atheism is a religion by the layman definition (sthg along the lines of'a belief in sthg unprovable') but that its proponents behave like they were a part of sthg that looks like a religion.
These are a few things off the top of my head that I'd love to read a blog post on:

- SAAS Pricing when marginal costs are fairly high. For example, how would you price a service that offered human translation of a company's social media posts into N different languages?

- Accounting / corporate structure for bootstrapped SAAS companies: do you use an LLC, and if so things to take into account for cash vs accrual accounting, pass-through vs. corporate taxation, guaranteed payments vs. distributions, finding a good accountant, etc.

- The 8,000 word "stake through Bitcoin's heart", or at least the part that talks about how and why banks are going to stop taking Bitcoin exchanges as clients. There is a surprising amount of doublethink going on to allow people simultaneously believe "Bitcoin and traditional banking are natural enemies", "at least one Bitcoin exchange will always be able to access the banking system", and "the nominal price of Bitcoins can only increase in the long run."
I've followed/stalked you for years Patrick. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. You helped transition me from grey to white.

On a side note, if your Vimeo account is Pro/Plus, please check the 'make accessible for mobile devices' option in account settings.
Using the official YUM repo http://nginx.org/packages/centos/6/$basearch/ they don't build with the `ngx_http_spdy_module` enabled. Is there a way to get it, without doing a custom compile? I'd like to continue to use the YUM package manager.
Seems like a good business opportunity for someone to open a software-selling business in all 50 states, take .5% of sales plus add necessary tax depending on buyer address and deal with the sales tax. I really hope it doesn't come to this. If states are that desperate wouldn't a flat-rate federal tax cover it and distribute it evenly?
As a european it feels equally strange every time I read about "unlimited" vacation. IMHO, it's just as bad as unlimited bandwidth, or whatever. It's just not unlimited.

Where I work I have 30 days paid vacation (in adition to big holidays). If I don't use them, I get to push 5-10 of the unused days to the next year (and can save them for up to five years, after which I get their worth in salary; I guess about $150-200 per day).

Currently I have ~20 days saved, so theoretically I could take 50 days vacation this year (work permitting).

This system sets both a lower and upper limit to how much vacation is expected. Much fairer for the employee - no more guessing when it becomes too much vacation.

I'm guessing most employers in USA would consider 30 days to be too many?

And yes, even though I don't work for a startup I still consider my team mates my friends.
According to the README, gcc can be used by running "make compiler=gcc". But it also says it's only supported on Linux...

It makes sense that they built it with their own compiler by default.

In any case, I wonder if clang could use this to jump start its OpenMP support.
Personal Assistant Indigo Now Available in Windows Phone Store
Peter,

So funny that you mentioned github docs, as I am working on something custom for that (my sentence parsing works really bad with code... who would've thought!). You are exactly right on the potential of things that can be summarized. Currently Summary.io only shows sites with images, but the summaries are still being generated! Appreciate the comment. If you have any other ideas on what I could summarize let me know!
Is anyone else a little unclear on why it should work this way? If I live in California, fly to New York, and then go on a shopping spree, I'm going to pay the New York tax rates that will end up going to New York. The store doesn't ask me where I'm from, charge me California tax rates, and then send the money to California. That would be absurd.

I also can't claim that, since I live in California, I shouldn't pay any New York sales taxes. I'd be laughed out of the store ("interstate commerce" be damned).

Wouldn't it make more sense for an online retailer to charge their local sales tax rate for everyone? Why is this the only option that isn't being seriously entertained?
List of 16 Sentiment Analysis APIs
What a boring, round about way to say something.
Hi Xorlev - nothing is beyond improvement but we normally get excellent feedback from customers - and at very high volumes and performance! Having said that if you're having / issues problems then definitely contact us and we'd be happy to help.
Wow thanks DanBC some really good points here. To answer your question we were specifically discussing primary education in developing countries, but I think she was just an interested bystander. I will take your advice on following back up with her.

Corruption is a foremost concern for us, we have an extensive due diligence process that allows us to understand the operations of any school we fund. In Ghana, where we started we also have a trusted volunteer who is regularly in contact with the faculty to make sure they are conforming to the standards they agreed to. I think a similar volunteer will be essential in any area we expand to.

The problem I have with just donating to existing NGOs is I don't know where the money goes. Most just blend it into their general budget, I want to know that my dollars are creating direct and immediate change.
Is there a reason why a proper websocket connection along with the client pinging the server is preferable over long-polling?
Have you actually been an early employee, or are you just speculating? I can tell you that in a lot of cases the paperwork you love so much often simply doesn't exist. Even if it did, it might not be worth the paper it was written on.

There are a lot of ways to lose out. If you're not a lawyer, there is almost certainly something in the contract you overlooked. The contract might not even be valid if two non-lawyers came up with it after a few beers. You could be fired right before your options vest. (This happened to a lot of people at Skype, for example.) Or you could be diluted down to nothing after a few rounds of financing.

Sure, you can sue, but is that really going to help? If the company goes out of business you're trying to get blood from a stone. If the company succeeds, they'll have a legal budget 1000x yours.

Ultimately, the founders are going to set the direction of the company. You have to trust them, and also trust that you will be useful to them over the long term. Any other strategy is just a losing bet.
Thanks, I will fix that!
This is a thoughtful article, except for the basic premise that if Reddit wants to be useful at crowdsourcing of this nature, it needs to be something other than Reddit.

Reddit is a social forum. It allowed people to feel part of things, and that's great. Expecting your hammer to be good at driving screws, though? That's just doomed to failure.

Moral of this story for me: just because you have a crowd doesn't mean you're crowdsourcing. Use tools appropriate to the task and you might actually get results.

Sure didn't stop the national media - who actually get paid to know better - from blowing Reddit crowdsourcing up as some kind of magical deus ex machina, though.
Here, ask the maintainers: https://launchpad.net/~nginx/+contactuser
Your girlfriend thinks you're just a 'good friend'. Impedance mismatch.
since I'm assuming they're eating their own dogfood isn't it just a matter of time before the page morphs into a version that addresses all your points? The big call-to-action that goes nowhere will be tested out... maybe the pricing page you get that doesn't fit on one screen is just one version that will get phased out :)

Maybe I'll check back in a few weeks, and if the site has morphed into the best sales page ever then it means the tech works
No, I like the general idea. Especially if not everyone gets the same questions. Given the demand vs. scarcity, there'd be enough lag in the dispersal and consumption of answers that most of the tickets would be obtained by the intended audience.

Now we can talk about who that "intended audience" is. Certainly there are some people who belong at WWDC that don't do Objective-C?
reality tv + vigilantism = a new form of journalism?

im being glib, but there are some serious ethical journalism questions that deserve to be brought up. First of all, does every step of the investigation need to be broadcast? Is this reality tv (in internet form) or actual journalism? Can rampant vigilantism on the internet be stopped? Can real journalism prevail in the face of the instant-gratification ppl can get on reddit? Do people want real journalism?

The redditors are basically using the scorched-earth method of journalism, with no regard to who they accuse. Theyre causing considerably more harm than help, which is typical of vigilantism.

An interesting question is this: why is having reporters in vietnam a good thing while redditors following every move of the bombing investigation a bad thing (considered so by some of us at least)?
(please dont answer that with a smug, poorly thought-out answer. sometimes its better to think things through and not just go straight to whipping out the epeen)
SalesPortal Blog Roundup for April 24th, 2013
Oh, you people with fully functional color vision are always complaining about this kind of thing. I'll just stand over here with Van Gogh.
Interesting. Of I course, I'm not trying to discourage this at all. I really dig this stuff. Just writing my thoughts on another, complimentary approach. I guess this makes sense from the perspective of a hacker who wants to build a cool thing for his/her own use.

The questions of efficiency really come into play when you see Yahoo! spending $30 million for Summly. For that, you could hire 60 people to work for $50,000/yr for one year. I wonder how 60 happily-employed English majors might stack up to something produced by Summly et al.
How he created the canvas animation: https://github.com/rprichard/x11-canvas-screencast

source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5445158
Here's the Markdown template if anyone is interested: https://gist.github.com/vegasje/5454527
Electric Children
MapReduce is handy at terabyte-data volumes, but how often do we run jobs with input size > 1 TB? According to the paper:

at least two analytics production clusters (at Microsoft and
Yahoo) have median job input sizes under 14 GB, and 90%
of jobs on a Facebook cluster have input sizes under 100 GB

The other point the authors make is that DRAM costs are following Moore's law and terabyte-data workloads should "soon" be cost-feasible on single servers with DRAM.
You didn't get far enough into the article. Company policy at the startup he runs is unlimited paid time off and a 'just short of mandatory' two week paid "precation" immediately before beginning work.
Ask HN: How do you track individually targeted emails?
There are many products to manage lists and API-driven transactional emails, but nothing that combines the 2 where each email is customized to the receiver with some general templating.

How do you track whether such an email is opened or clicked on?
Enterprise rails consulting.

Enterprise is never going to be as sexy as working for a startup. But they do have project budgets that exceed most company A rounds. The work is not very exciting and things often have to be done in ways that you wound never even fathom on a personal project but they make up for it by paying above market rates.
"What are some "business problems" that I could solve with RoR? "

That's why you'd make the big bucks. Someone just telling you what to build makes you contractor bucks. Looking at a business problem, and identifying how you can apply your programming skills to save or make your company money makes you rock star bucks
That story is related to a public school, private schools are not as concerned with standardized test scores. Unlike the public sector their funding isn't determined by government review.
I just learned today that asm.js has landed on Aurora as well, so that's why. It's really neat to see it going out so fast.
> Each state that wants “remote sellers” to collect sales tax must establish a single entity to manage tax collection and audits for the entire state. Sellers won’t have to deal with all 5,900+ separate taxing municipalities in the country, just 50.

Even in a best case scenario it seems like this is going to involve live access to state "software"/API to keep up-to-date with ever changing municipal tax rates, "tax free weekends", and all kinds of other things that usually only affect physically local businesses.

So states are going to be responsible for keeping their databases up to date and maintaining access to them? What happens when State X forgets to update that County Y had a tax free weekend for Z items? What happens when the server goes down and no one can calculate rates? What happens when it's just really slow and you have to give customers slow page loads in the checkout process?

Even with states and certified providers as middlemen, I'm not looking forward to the implementation of this...

Edit: Thanks, dan, so maybe we'll be able to cache some rates. Though we still may need reliable & quick access to state servers to figure out which rate belongs to each 9 digit address... Hopefully the states can be about as reliable as FedEx/UPS rate querying services, though the odds are at least one state will have some ugly blackouts at some point...
I don't think that's a workable solution.

The professionals had identified the brothers as suspects - but only as very probable suspects. They could still have been wrong. Publicly definitely clearing someone who might later turn out to be the actual bomber or an associate would have enormous political (and perhaps legal) consequences.

I believe that any form of crowdsourced investigation is reasonable only if there just isn't enough professional interest or resources to pursue a case. For example finding your stolen laptop. If there are thousands of FBI agents working on a priority case, with additional private data feeds from security cameras, telephone logs and wiretaps, public "help" is of no use beyond stroking the ego of the participants.
Thats a problem when a centralized philosophy is followed ,even though it is for privacy sake