skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> 3) The guy from a culture where the average TV viewership per capita is 4 hours and 38 minutes per day (per Neilson 2012) could never have spare the five minutes to throw some beans in a slow cooker. Also all home cooked meals take 8 hours to prepare because he says so. Finally multitasking has not been invented (serious, HN?) so time spent stirring a pot must be spent 100% focused on the stirring never a single brain cell firing on any other task. I honestly believe there is some kind of cooking phobia loose on HN.

This is low quality, and doesn't add to the discussion.

Here's a real case study; a mother, two children under six years old, mid-twenties, high school dropout, only has a bus pass and foodstamps. The closest grocery store is 3 miles away and she lives on government checks.

How much time do you believe it would take her to go to the grocery store to get fresh produce? How much time does it take someone with kids AND a car to get to the grocery store and back?

How much time have you devoted towards helping the poor? I mean actually sitting down with someone in the bottom 15% (not your friends-friend who's eating ramen at college or someone you heard of from high school) and how successful were you in training them to spend less money?

These topics are fine for what they are: Affluent people trying to spend less. They lose value when people look at the numbers and say "Gosh, this is so easy, why don't the poor just do this! Why don't they just buy a hybrid and save money on gas? Or maybe order all this stuff online with their macbooks to save time?".
As a plus on this, my startup idea is derived from my long career in enterprise software. It's a much more solid concept and more solid market than the sort of monetize-pictures-of-cats stuff that seems to infect young developers. I'm working on a real problem that I understand really well, for customers who have money and are willing to spend it. I'm far more likely to succeed now than I would have been 15 years ago.
So? I'm not an accountant.

I'm an individual with an interest in multinationals paying tax on their profits rather than spiriting them out of the country tax free. This is why I hope to see the law change.
QR SO Beautiful, QR Code Mural Shop in Frankfurt Airport
Well, the great designers don't work at large companies (of course there are exceptions...). That said, a large corporation will also have hundreds, if not thousands, of intranet sites that are likely using the same resources. Some companies have a "web dev" group that handles all the internal and external sites. A lot of time is spent doing impact analysis, planning, and requirements gathering.
Looks like someone stole a noun from their post title too. Crazy stuff.
The site looks out-of-date, but would the average potential customer for table planning software know that? I'm not sure. If anything, it seems likely to me that the complexity of the site is reducing conversions, but not the fact that it is "out-of-date".
I've never been in the military, so I'm sure there is a great deal that I don't understand- or worse, think I understand when I've got it backwards.

When I watch something like this, I'm absolutely blown away by how utterly incompetent the local military is no matter how much time we put into attempting to train them. Somehow in the US we're able to take (often poor) 17/18 year olds, and in 10 weeks of BCT (Basic) and then in 3 week to 2 years of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) we're able to create pretty damn disciplined soldiers. Yet, how many years did it take for us to try to train troops in Iraq, and it sounds like they still just unloaded entire clips whenever they saw a rabbit in the desert.

When these countries turn over top leadership (Iraq, Afganistan, Egypt, etc) it feels that they completely lose all historical training/ability for the military and go back to square one. Complete anarchy. It sounds like a huge percentage of their people defect seemingly randomly.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't feel like this happens (generally) in European countries when there is a massive leadership change. A post WW1 Germany was able to keep enough military knowledge/discipline together to be a seriously powerful force by WW2- and that certainly didn't have external forces in there trying their hardest to give them all the help possible. Post Russian Revolution USSR was quite a force to be reckoned with as well.

Why is it so damn hard to set up decent military training? Seems like a process we should understand by now, since we've put millions of young people through it. We (americans) initially setup West Point in the middle of a revolution and have been running it since (although it wasn't the United States Military Academy until 1802).

I'm absolutely certain it isn't because westerners are smarter, better, etc (we aren't)... but there is something seriously weird over there at the same time (malnutrition, lack of basic formal education system, cultural differences, too many generations of instability (maybe one generation works ok, but 3 breaks things seriously))
Or a tablet. I find my Mother uses her iPad way more than she ever used any other computer, probably in part because it's so easy to use she's not afraid to "break something".
Sorry to hijack, but what's with the compensation estimates on gun.io?

It seems like there is some good work on the site but everything seems to be < $500 or > $10k, but there is no basis for the price (is it project pricing, is it per week, did the client estimate it or did you?)

I'm interested in using the site, I guess I just don't know how.
Corporate sites usually have rigid branding guidelines that define the message and imaging the site should convey. Startup sites usually have much looser guidelines. It's a lot easier to design something awesome when you're not as constrained.
Just so we are clear on one thing: the last war that US took a part of that was a war fought in the name of freedom was War War 2 that ended in 1945. Every single War after that date had nothing to do with Americans living on American soil being free, safe, or whatever. You had to have your brain removed to believe that invading Iraq or Afghanistan (and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent, as a by-result of every military conflict) was necessary, because otherwise those nations and their people will come here and violate the US soil.

Both Iraq and Afghan war were carefully crafted by Military Industrial Complex from day one (first step: create problem, like in Iraq WMD's that were never found {glad there are some countries like Switzerland where they still prosecuted war criminals [1]}, step two: offer solution: offer piece by using force, step three: execute - by spending trillions of tax dollars), so you should understand war is nothing more than good business. Bloody but good. Stalin said one person killed that's a murder, millions is only a statistics, and that's how I believe those pulling strings can sleep at night. Oh by the way: as you remember those WMDs were never found (but sure they existed, okay?), but rest assured they moved them somewhere around, conveniently. Never mind 100,000 civilians dead (or some surveys shows 600k, or .. 1 million! [2]).

I have a respect for american soldiers, but I wish they were more educated on what they are really doing. They are NOT protecting american soil or fighting for their own country. Those are gone long time ago, as Chief in Command (President of the USA) is carefully following NATO orders, and US becomes a part of North American Union. Their action, whether successful or not, have nothing to do with us here being safe on american soil. Had they been educated they are just a tool in hands of few with access to the highest standing politicians that grab more tax money and give it into hands of Military Industrial Complex, they would have stopped participating in the war, knowing the real name of the game, like fighting for oil in Iraq.

Just some of my thoughts on this Memorial Day.

[1] http://www.kulturekritic.com/2013/04/uncategorized/did-you-k...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
I have to wonder about this. Granted, many of my friends are in their late twenties, but the programmers I know are overwhelmingly more likely to cook than people I know from similar demographics in different occupations.

Perhaps -- assuming the cooking phobia does indeed exist -- it's something more specific to the kind of people who gravitate towards HN than it is an attribute of 20-something computer nuts.
Big corporations might have a big corporate slow-moving web site, but designers are sometimes set free on short-term ad campaigns. Like apple does. The big site doesn't change, but they incorporate cool html into it sometimes.
http://lukedurrant.com/2011/08/apples-360-rotating-ipod-html...
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gLrwaXfeLg.

this one's better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuEagQbk9k
I have read quite a few overviews, and I really like the direct C++03 vs C++11 code comparisons in this one. It's get right to the point of showing the things that C++11 is trying to fix.
Standard economics. As you start penetrating potential audience its going to get saturated after some point until you reach all of the audience. As impressions to get one more click are needed more, google needs to exhaust their inventory more. Apparently CTR is going to degrade, and google will start increasing marginal cost per click. Cost per click is curve is often going to be marginal cost curve, where maximum profitability is at lowest point on the curve. Its not about profitability of google adwords but the profitability of the media you're bidding for. When saturated you can always expand your potential market (audience) by adding more keywords/placements.
This is a valid argument. SaaS is a step in the wrong direction for use cases where continued access to the service is crucial.

I do not trust LastPass or similar third party systems with my passwords. Passwords are too important a part of my identity that I should have complete and exclusive control over it. (I use a mix of Text files+TrueCrypt+Timemachine and Dropbox for sync).

Same goes for email. I use IMAP to keep a local storage of my emails. But that is not a complete solution - my email address is still owned by a third party (Google) and they can lock me out of my identity any time they choose.

I'm currently cobbling together a couple of scripts to backup my pictures and media, mostly WORM (http://git-annex.branchable.com/backends/) data, onto multiple harddisks. The 1 TB storage of Flickr is enticing, but I'm not ready to exclusively trust a part of my identity which I want to indefinitely preserve, to yet another third party.
It's quite obviously stolen. I'm surprised they didn't throw the sha sums of the images into the article for good measure.

$20k in damages is an exaggeration. It's not like stampready would have received an extra $20k in revenue if Email On Acid didn't exist. Sounds like Lawyer math to me.
Adding Facebook authentication to your Android application
Scott Smith: Our New COO at the Innovation Factory
You can get higher paying gigs on oDesk if you're willing to do more than carpet bomb categories. Finding good gigs on their takes some time and effort, but it's possible. I did a gig on their that paid a fair amount below what my rate would normally be, but was still above the $10-20 range and I was able to make some good connections from that for more work outside of oDesk.

It came at a time when I was trying to pivot from developer to more of a marketing / marketing-dev role and it also provided me some exposure to tools, problems, and tactics that I wasn't familiar with.
Yes, but his complaint is rather valid. Those that prepared the release notes made a mistake in not mentioning Python 3 related improvements / status.
The last slide:

gcc (38/39) -- Not implemented: threads, regex

I think this is no longer true. I've some threads and regex code running well with gcc 4.7 and 4.8.

Anyone knows when was this presentation given? It doesn't have any date.
I'm not sure who "he" is in this comment.
I tried to solve it by creating http://railyo.com for Rails Freelancers!
Startups need to care more about appearance, because they operate on perceptions.

Established, monolithic corporations do not.
Hailing from Boston, I'm a big fan of Hubway. Easy and cheap access to rides across the city. Faster and far cheaper than a cab. Every city should have a similar set up.
When a big emotional upset is involved, it is important to separate the faulty math from the real evidence. They could claim millions of dollars in loss and it still wouldn't change the fact that they were stolen from.
Grain-bred animals totally lack omega-3, comparing to grass-fed.

And my intuition tells me that is only a small part.
Right. In Python you might check out my https://github.com/darius/peglet/blob/master/peglet.py which is PEG-based but tries to feel like a modest extension of the built-in re module.
I'm interested!
Info & contact @ http://kevin.fm
I agree, which is why perhaps military policy should be more like the first Iraq War. Go in, kick ass, withdraw, claim victory. Don't forget that there was incredible resistance to increasing the ground troop numbers across NATO nations.

Long protracted ground wars seem like something the West should give much more thought to going forward.
The law, as is always the way, is several steps behind social progress and business practices. I'm not sure this can ever be otherwise.
It's not just the total price, and it's not just the risk that you may disappear, it's also that the client will likely get a different product under the two pricing structures. In the flat-fee case, objectives are defined solely by the needs of the client; in the SaaS model, they're split between what the client needs and what you want for your future product. The split incentives can go bad for the client in all kinds of ways:

- they get a product that is kind of what they wanted but not really, because you built it to cover what you see as the general use case (i.e., the one that you might be able to sell widely), while they wanted you to cover their specific needs.

- alternately, they insist that it cover their specific needs (they started this process after all), and you end up fighting with them over design and over who should cover the costs of customization.

- maybe you were lucky and there weren't any of these conflicts with the first round of development, but now they want a second round that will take the product in a direction that isn't consistent with your plans for it. What then? Do you go to a hybrid pricing model, where the monthly fee covers the "base" product and they have to pay a one-time fee for their extensions? Do you tell them to take a hike and start all over again with a new dev, because you're not interested in their unmarketable extensions?

As others have said, we charge on T&M and make sure first and foremost that our client is happy. AND we retain a right to the code. If we think there might be a broader use for the tool, then AFTER we've made the client happy, we'll branch and adapt it to our sense of what is marketable.
Google is clearly in the right here, unless somebody can actually point out a law they're breaking. Simplifying a lot, Google have 2 responsibilities here: Pay at least the amount of tax they owe, maximise stuff shareholders care about. It doesn't take much to work out the optimal solution to them two problems is to pay exactly the minimum amount of tax possible.
Agreed.

Cyclists also greatly reduce congestion, at least when compared to cars.
> My first briefing when I got on the ground in 2004 was that we were past a simple insurgency and now in a small scale civil war that we were trying to stop from becoming a full scale humanitarian crisis.

That's what I thought, and
I was always in the US and getting only US news. Moreover, earlier still,
I believed the remarks reported from Saddam that
the US occupation would have one heck of a time
keeping the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds from having a
civil war.

W claimed that, of course, the Iraqis could "govern
themselves". Where'd George get that really strong
funny stuff he was smoking?

Net, W failed to see
what large fractions of common street thugs,
one step higher lone criminals, low level gang leaders,
various mid level opportunists, government
officials, religious leaders, tribal leaders,
the Iranians,
and international trouble makers saw: W's
defeat
of Saddam without a serious effort at occupation
had left Iraq
plowed fertile ground for
chaos.
The Lesson from Better Places bankruptcy - be more lean.
Possibly irrelevant, but if you don't mind me asking: wouldn't it be better to find a co-founder to take on some of the sales burden? (Either a pure business person or someone who could code as well?)
Have you ever been to an Islamic country ever? You just made up the whole history like a simplistic comic book story.

> In Afghanistan and much of the Muslim world, the 'culture' is heavily just Islam: Islam controls social structures, e.g., sex, marriage, child rearing, the role of family, etc.

I am from Pakistan. Our culture is massive mix of Indian/sub-continental traditions, Islamic values and most recently westerns customs. There is a strong case that our marriage, sex etc. are more inclined towards traditional indian culture than islamic (e.g. second marriages or marrying a divorcee is a taboo in Pakistan while in fact is encouraged in Islam). There is so much diversity in our provinces on how they deal with women (e.g. in Punjab in rural areas, it is very common for women to have jobs, unlike in the Pashtuns) that your claim of sweeping all Islamic countries under one broom is laughable.

> We can toss in architecture, what people eat, and what they wear. Basically from how people dress, eat, work, etc., its all Islam.
No it's not. Sorry that's just show your lack of research. Again the 'shalwar kameez' we wear here in Pakistan has more in common with Hindu lineage than Islam with the urban areas are totally jeans/suits. We have huge interest-based banks since forever where banks are a total no-no in Islam.

>Afghanistan is going to be an Islamic country, some version of an Islamic country, but still an Islamic country, likely run by a king, strong man, or cleric

Not sure you can lump up kings with clerics and make an argument out of that. The only thing common between then is opportunist. They wanted to be on the throne and they might've used religion in some cases or maybe sheer power in other. In Pakistan, more than half of our history, we've been ruled by dictators but not once we got an Imam or a cleric.
Startup Ranking
Did you come up with the graphics yourself?
On the other hand, if I'm researching companies, and see a small one trying to sell me something a bigger one is giving for free i just consider them scamers and move on.

How do you calculate the loss of sales for cases like this?

Edit: ...and this argument is totally invalid for what zeidrich said.
This is the second time I've seen you claim on HN that it's impossible to simultaneously be a company founder and a new parent. This will be the second time I'll tell you that's just not true. Plenty of early-stage founders have young kids. My kids are 13 and 11, and I was a founder when (a) both of them were born and (b) again before they both started school while my wife Erin was working.

This thread is full of other people who have done similar things.

The problem I have with your comments about starting companies and parenting is not that it discourages new parents from considering starting a company, but that it once again posits that tech startup founders are an oppressed class. But consider raising a kid while working full time cleaning offices. Or as a construction worker. We sometimes sound like we actually believe that only the wealthy in this country successfully raise kids, but we obviously must know that isn't true at all.

[edited to depersonalize the response; sorry]
I'm entirely ok with this. He really doesn't want his competitors knowing the numeric details of his business.

He explained his methods and gave useful graphs.

Yes, the article could have been more useful. But the way to make that happen in the future isn't to bitch endlessly about people not doing enough free work for you. It's to thank them for the good you got out of it, and politely suggest next time that their article could be even more valuable if they did X.
I know these biohacker spaces and whatnot are just getting started up, but more often than not, it seems like they're re-inventing the wheel.

DNA barcoding is old hat, and biofuel production using e.g. algae has been done before.

It's great that these ventures are sparking interest in the community at-large, but they aren't really advancing scientific knowledge forward as much as they're portrayed.
Filmmaker Looks At The World During an Outbreak
"the freelancer marketplace sites seem to be dominated by weak PHP developers" - all the "non-weak" PHP devs I know are in well paid positions already and hardly have time to be on freelancer.com or similar, maybe that's the reason you haven't found one. :-)
I'm going to come out and say it. Mostly when people are rude and inconsiderate it's because they haven't been trained and have gotten away with selfish behavior from over indulgent parents.

Aspergers is a RARE condition. It needs to be diagnosed properly (not over the internet and from movies).

Most people who are rude and inconsiderate are simply rude and inconsiderate - never having been trained that other people matter and encouraged by competitive parents to look out for number one.

I don't want my children growing up in a world where it is OK to be rude and inconsiderate with a cluster of people sitting at the sidelines claiming that this is excusable because they 'think different'.

We need to teach children, before it is too late, that social graces exist because though we are all imperfect at being considerate THERE is NO EXCUSE for being inconsiderate.

Sorry, that's my thing, my button. This fiction that there are some people, like the kings of old who had divine right, who have some kind of faux modern divine right, to be inconsiderate because they have some powerful brain that can't be bothered.
Interesting. Slightly OT, but my family started using FreshDirect in NYC when we had our second child. Figured we'd use it to get through those tough first few months, exhaust our "free delivery" phase, and be done with it. But what's kept us customers is that the produce quality somehow is consistently better than what we can get at most of our local markets (or on par with the upscale / expensive ones).
NY's Tax-Free Business Plan Is Bold but Uncertain
So would you agree that the exorbitant losses the media industries claim is excusable, since their IP is also being stolen?

EDIT: I apologize for going against the popular opinion on HN.
Clickable: http://muledrive.com
My parents and in-laws (60's) have all transitioned from windows based PC's to tablets (iPads). So much easier on me from a tech support standpoint. Much easier for them from a usability standpoint. Most of their usage is web, email, and a handful of apps. It's intuitive, and it doesn't break. Unless someone needs a laptop or a desktop, they should be on a tablet.
So, if they can prove it, why not sue them?
I'm not sure if he was "caught" per-se. More like he preemptively objected to the opposition in the court of public opinion for this round using excerpts from the last round.
I think it's generally never a good rhetorical strategy to argue how much better a parent you are than someone else.
Let me guess, were you writing bare-metal C?
I actually just read a book set in 2040 England where this basically happened, they'd created a system where if you tried to remove the hardware the CPU would be dissolved. The book was called "Pirate [something]" I can't remember the exact name but it had pirate in it...