skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe there is room here for some alternative e-book-only business model (that doesn't involve parrots)?

Get some unknown authors, outsource the slush reading, concentrate on some niche genres, don't put ads on the NYT. Make sure the books are fun to read and price the Kindle version at $2.00.
It is 1.5 cents per instance per hour. ($0.015)

[source : http://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/]
As they should. That's highly unethical and, as I mention in my article, it's unnecessary. I certainly don't condone it.
Yeah, but I don't really know any game programmers, ads for sound designers were rare, and when they did exist they wanted you to have a degree or so (which I don't). So I went into film sound instead, then to producing. I have no idea how all the people who do 'sound installations' and so forth (most of which don't engage me very much) get famous enough to charge high $. I'm not really the self-promoting type, though.
Deja Vu - my personal favorite.
Personally, I was curious. Why doesn't a distinction need to be made between a random salt and the same salt used every time? Don't they have dramatically different results in terms of security?

And yeah, his choice of MD5 is an abomination, but that wasn't something that I thought was even nonobvious.
A point to add to the discussion from the metrics perspective: the net promoter score.

Net promoter score is an easy tool you can use to determine trends in your users' experience. It can be used as a leading indicator of the 'N' part of your viral coefficient. eries goes in to detail in "Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction" (http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/net-promot...).

Additional reading from HN members:

jfarmer's "Three myths of Viral Growth" (http://20bits.com/articles/three-myths-of-viral-growth/)
Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing!

From my (limited) experience, it feels like small European languages are particularly susceptible to domain loss from English. Since they all share a common alphabet and the phonemes are "close enough", it's often trivial to grab a word or phrase from English when there isn't a proper native substitute. The technical fields are obviously going to go first, but other fields will follow as the world changes.

English is a highly predatory language. It absorbs foreign vocabulary extremely easily, and the grammar is remarkably flexible. If a language doesn't cover some conceptual territory, odds are that English will step in to fill the gap. I can easily envision a world where most people eventually speak some kind of English creole.

Oddly, the only major language (100 million+ speakers) I've seen that's resistant to English invasion is Chinese. The pictographic writing system, coupled with its monosyllabic tonal nature make it really hard for Chinese speakers to use unmodified foreign vocabulary. English has grabbed a number of Chinese words, but the transfer has been almost entirely one way.

I'm sure there's other languages that are incompatible with English, but they're in a distinct minority. I think the rest are going to experience at least some domain loss to English.
Well, I thought, you guys are being mean. But then I noticed that it's not tracking Guido's new blogs. Aggregation is useful, but not, if the site isn't getting any attention.
You couldn't get white onions, because of the war.
From the Amazon page its $0.015/hr:

With Amazon CloudWatch... at a rate of $0.015 per hour for each Amazon EC2 instance you choose to monitor...

As an example, a developer may want to monitor 10 Amazon EC2 instances 24×7 for a 30-day period. The Amazon CloudWatch cost would be $108 (or $0.015 per Amazon EC2 instance hour x 10 Amazon EC2 instances x 24 hours per day x 30 days)...

That is close to what it costs to run a single instance to collect all your statistics (75$ if its small + your time is worth something!).
There is also concept of so-called viral-advertisements. For example - put some video on youtube with something "freaky", "sexy" or "funny" and put your product placement or "message" inside. Then promote that video in some loaded community on social network. Then your link will be spreaded like virus - people will send that "funny" thing to friends, post in blogs and so on.

There are uncounted examples of political statements packed into some music videos of marginal and pseudo-underground bands and the like.
I think just the human ability to record thoughts for future generations and a strong communication system.

Without the ability to effectively communicate we wouldn't have achieved anything else.
It kind of shocked me when I came back to Denmark. Then it just amused me. It's funniest when people write it as "fåhk", which I'm seeing more and more.

It is also probably the reason why DHH uses it so liberally in keynotes etc. It might have happened unwittingly of course he has made it his trademark now.

25% of the content of my favorite (only?) Danish startup podcasts http://thorborg.tv/ consists of this word.
US Dollar redesigns
Why Linux Is Not Yet Ready For the Desktop
Oh yes you should. They (publishers) set the price of things, so if they're not having to pay for any of the things that they always said makes printing books so expensive, then it's reasonable to ask where the money is going. 'Formatting for e-book'? don't make me laugh, that's trivial in the case of something like a novel which is just a long stream of text with occasional chapter headers.

The fact is that publisher want to obscure what a small proportion of the cover price usually goes to the author, because with the advent of E-Books it's a valid question whether authors need publishers the way way they used to any more.

Edit: this isn't the whole story of course - naturally, a book does have value to the reader (though it's not always obvious until after you've read it!). Also, having been screwed by a publisher in the past I'm a little cynical about the breed :)
While that's true, it can be kind of a pain in the ass to learn different key bindings for every program you might have to use.
I agree.

As an occasional angel, I see a lot of startups that exist solely in the shade of another tree, so to speak. It seems hard to defend (if it becomes too big, the overarching company can easily cut you off and/or adopt the features) and easy to replicate.
Ask HN: WebNotes Launches Web Annotation Research Product. Questions, Comments?
After a year of work, the WebNotes team just launched our flagship freemium product at www.webnotes.net. Would you guys have any questions or comments? What do you think of the service?

I'm the founder of WebNotes and have been working with the company for about two years. Btw, we're based in Cambridge. (Shout out to my Cambridge peers!)
Ask HN: Anyone have experience with forming a Vermont Virtual Company?
I'm just looking for more information on VVCs. I know there's some information here: http://vermontvirtual.org and in various other places around the web, but its spotty at best because the entity is so new.

Has anyone formed one? Anyone have any in-depth knowledge about them? Any insight into whether or not there is any substantial difference in the entity, as compared to an LLC, besides the lack of physical address? Etc..

I'm considering starting one just to see the process. I wouldn't do it for a serious project, of course -- it would be for a small, fun side-project. I just wanted to see if anyone had any reliable info before I take the plunge blindfolded.
Toward a technology bill of rights
I think the point is to say something about the boundaries of "embedded systems," (a vague concept that I'm not convinced makes any sense outside of certain kinds of world simulations) in the style of Douglas Hofstadter (or that's my guess, as I haven't actually read GEB myself). In part two he says "the goal of this series is to pound a stake through the heart of a certain way of thinking about the world that has become quite popular."

Unfortunately I have no idea what that way of thinking is or what he is trying to say about it, and, frankly, at this point I don't care very much. So far his unintentional point is that this style of writing is hard to do well.

Sorry Steve - I read the whole thing, but I don't understand it well enough to know if it's actually disrespectful, or if I should be mad about anything. Hopefully parts four and five will shed some more light.
One thing that I'm surprised I don't see more often is an un-required mailing list sign-up integrated into the download. iTunes does this (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/) and it makes sense. You're asking something simple of the downloader, not getting in their way, and you have the chance of getting another email on your mailing list. Mailing lists are valuable, so it's a great way to monetize a free user without being an ass.
An example: http://www.themeswiki.org/Creating_template_for_Python_packa...
Ok, admittedly the "dying industry" bit was hyperbole, but it irks me to no end that "old media" can't simply adapt. If it doesn't work like it's been working for the past 100 years, it must the end of the world. That kind of thinking is slowing progress, and causing all kinds of headaches for consumers more than anyone else. I would feel ripped off paying the same price for an E-book as I would for a paper book, and this is what customers are trying to tell publishers. The problem is, just like the music industry, change is scaring them away from making rational decisions to support the 'new' consumer model.
The article is utter nonsense. They took a peak number, 100,000, multiplied it by 86,400 seconds in a day and came up with 8.64 trillion; should be 8.64 billion. Possibly Indians name their number groupings differently; the British do.
Amisha patel - News, Videos, Pictures and more
Rapid Learning Center - Master Chemistry Visually in 24 Hours
Rapid Learning Center provides the visual chemistry learning for high school and college students. Master chemistry in 24 hours. The courses include high school chemistry, AP Chemistry, SAT Chemistry, College Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry and other chemistry courses.
Agree! But strange that today they also added a Perl one as well: http://perl.alltop.com/

Something going on? http://jjames.posterous.com/perlalltopcom-a-modest-proposal
You could try eLance or oDesk. I believe they charge around 10%, but work in all countries.
Although not free, I find the plugin at viplugin.com to integrate far better with Eclipse. Eclim to me feels like I'm running two separate applications, vim and eclipse, and they don't seem to play together very well. The implementation of the viplugin.com emulation layer isn't nearly as good as actual vim, but the eclipse integration more than makes up for it.

On that note, if you prefer netbeans to eclipse, the jvi plugin for netbeans is much better than the eclipse vi plugin and I very rarely miss a vim feature when using it, and it's completely free as well. I really wish there were something as good as the jvi plugin available for eclipse, as eclipse is more feature-rich for java projects.
This works for me - barely. While the finances are fine, the stress level at home can get out of hand. Having a well-paid spouse who is willing to accept the uncertainty inherent in early-stage, pre-funding startups is MUCH more difficult to arrange than just the well-paid part.
She is originally a U.S. resident, that's what enables her to have a U.S. bank account.
Does anyone actually read headlines on Alltop, or does everyone just grab the blogs they haven't seen before and subscribe to them in their feed readers?
No mention of Dina? That's a shame. I love Proggy, but Dina is much more readable IMO. (It's on the Proggy site as well)
You need explanations as to which one is better? Really?

'Cuz all I need is a 5yr. old and a 55yr. old to point to which one they think is easier to use.
A very interesting correlation. As for the cause & effect goes resilient behavior is well explained and I buy that argument.

However what strikes me the most is not about the traits dysfunctional families force you to develop but the part he notes "those who have channeled all the chaos for a positive effect" - a very small percentage does.

And they have channeled all this into whatever activity they could find outside of their home – sports, business, or …entrepreneurship."

Even a high number of criminals, under world dons and other socially unacceptable traits are also correlated highly to dysfunctional families. They too are resilient and in fact have a lot of traits that entrepreneurs have except for the value system, a socially acceptable behavior & positive contribution.

A very small percentage of dysfunctional families would generate great entrepreneurs and I would like to believe that this is just a correlation. One is probably better off to grow in proper functional and stable families but with good exposure/support to possess necessary traits.

Edit: Additionally an unstable or dysfunctionally childhood even among those small percentage might have caused them to have extreme bahaviours on rudeness, temper, patience, trust etc. which is very adverse for startups.
Disagree. If your product is not viral by nature or solve a real problem people know they have, you had better work on a different product.
A Life Offline
The Maven Adoption Curve
Kool-Aid recovery. ;-)
The Git Parable (building a Git-like system from the ground up)
I can't find `wrapper` module. The relevant blog post [1] refers to `twitter` module (available via `$ easy_install twitter`)

"""Print info on twitter friends that are not following back.

"""
from twitter import Twitter

t = Twitter()
creds = dict(screen_name='scorpion032')
non_followers = set(t.friends.ids(**creds)) - set(t.followers.ids(**creds))
for id in non_followers:
user_info = t.users.show(id=id)
print "%(name)s with %(followers_count)d followers "\
"and %(friends_count)d following" % user_info

[1] http://becomingguru.com/2009/05/awesome-python-twitter-libra...
Singalong,

We do in fact have a per user model. Noone has complained to date about the small percentage of revenue that we ask. We just want to share in a small way in our developer's success. Send a message to sales@rhomobile.com and Pierre will work out something for you.
|It's almost a testament to the general incompetence of microsoft web developers who still think that programming against IE is good enough.

lol...much of a zealot?
Ask HN: With DocStoc's Paid Upload Release, When Will Scribd Respond?
I got this emailed to me today:

"Docstoc has officially come out of public beta. Along with this milestone, we have launched a number of exciting new features, including our DocCash program where you get paid for uploading.
DocCash – Get Paid for Uploading Documents to Docstoc
New Home Page – Featuring the Most Topical Documents in the News Today.
DocStoc API – Access our Data to Build Rich Web Apps and Websites.
DocShots – A New and Better Way to Showcase Documents on Your Blog or Website

DocCash
Offers you a way to profit from the documents you upload. Simply sign up for DocCash and we’ll split the revenue generated from the Google Ads that run alongside your documents. Earn recurring and passive income from your documents, and get a check sent to you each month.

New Docstoc Home Page
Our new home page has been redesigned to feature topical documents breaking in the news, as well as collections of highly sought-after professional documents. Our content is refreshed daily, so there is always something new and interesting to discover at Docstoc. And our new homepage is a powerful way to promote and feature you and your content to the millions of our visitors.

Docstoc API
Allows you access to Docstoc’s arsenal of document storing, previewing and showcasing tools for incorporation into your product or service. Docstoc’s API offers a customizable and powerful way to upload documents to either Docstoc or your Website, convert these documents to our Docstoc viewer, manage existing documents on your website, and much more.

DocShots
The best way to showcase multiple documents via your Website and Blog without consuming site real estate. Simply add your custom DocShots code one time into the background of your site and all your posted documents (.doc, .pdf, .ppt, .xls) will be converted to hover-able links that enable instant document previewing and downloading.

We appreciate and value you as a member of Docstoc. You have our promise that we’re going to continue to build the best product for you. If you have any feedback or recommendations on features you’d like to see, please feel free to email us at info@docstoc.com.

Thankfully,

The DocStoc Team"

As a loyal Scribd user, I'll never switch. Ever. The speed with Scribd is why I'll be staying. However, Doc Stoc's feature is pretty cool.

Do you think Scribd will launch a similar system, and when?
Larry King "Interview" with LHC
One of the hardest things to do when hiring a consultant is to figure out what they're like to work with ... will they have a good attitude, work well with people, understand and listen to requirements etc. Surprisingly to some, many companies value this kind of thing very highly.
Yes but have you seen the serving sizes in Japan? A meal there would barely count as an appetizer for your average (overweight) American.
Good point, I've never flown either but have heard plenty of stories. I think there is a fine line here between inexpensive and cheap which those airlines have go walk wisely.
I can vouch for the fact that the Election Commission's web site crashed early in the morning of counting day and stayed that way till the next day. Even now there is no detailed data available on the voting - the number of registered voters per constituency, the number of votes each party got, etc (there is only the winners vote count, 3 days after the election!). With the large number of candidates in each constituency, the candidate/partywise listing is critical for any detailed analysis.

From what I've seen of government websites( I do a lot of work for the Indian Defence Dept) most of them run on single Win XP "servers". The EC server was a (set of) Windows machine (s)(I got an ASPX error saying (effectively) "IIS crashed" :-P). The local subcontractors that write programs for the government have atrocious development skills and are usually people who can't get jobs in the Indian IT industry (the standards are low there too, but that is another story)

The one department that gets its backend right is the Indian Railways (the front end design is completely unusable, as with other govt departments).

Oh yeah the government spokesman is clueless, as someone else pointed out already.
A System for Handling Imposter Complaints
Wikipedia is static

Wolfram Alpha is dynamic

Google is the linker

We need all of them, but if you ask me ten years from know who will be the unifier, I'd go with W|A, but google has the money.
Self promotion just got a little stranger
The graphic with all the X'ed out logos is pretty interesting. I noticed that the founders of a many of the "dead" companies have since moved on to newer, more successful, projects.

I'd say it's more damning of the Web 2.0 companies w/ no traction which aren't X'ed out. Maybe their founders/investors just don't know when to quit?
Why you should write a business plan.
Study: Potential criminals deterred by longer sentences
If anyone is willing to share... Who here does this solve a specific problem for, and are you actively/planning on implementing it ASAP? What is your use case? It's a sweet feature, and I can't wait to see how it manifests in the hands of hackers.
Paul Allen's business cards are better. (That's the Paul Allen from Pierce and Pierce, not the one from Microsoft.)
This is a very long article, but the gist of it is that the victim should file a DCMA-like complaint citing the "Anti-Impersonation Act of 2009". This will get the complaint into the ISP's DCMA queue where it will be investigated and acted on.

Edit: gojopmo pointed out that the "Act" does not exist. So much for speed reading. The only safe way to use DCMA takedown is to have something copyrighted on the offending site. BTW IANAL. As for the photographs, in general the photographer owns the rights to the images. I suppose if it were taken with victim's camera, she could claim ownership. If it were me, I would claim DCMA and see where the chips may fall.
I have to agree with the more general case if not his exact point. middle class is the enemy of rich and dysfunctional is probably highly correlated with household income.
When I was traveling in Krakow, Poland, I was living on 10USD a day, including lodging, food (really awesome food), transportation and entertainment. I still don't understand how a train ride away the same lifestyle would cost 50USD a day. Why?

A lot of the numbers people use to describe how people live are misleading. In poorer countries, organizational structures are flatter. You pay the owner of the chicken for the eggs. This leaves out the money for the factory workers, the truckers, the marketing, the grocery store (and all its hierarchies), and profits for the shareholders who perform no labor at all. This is monetary waste. This waste increases prices for the consumer.

This is true in a lot of countries outside the u.s. The food in the restaurant is cooked by the owner of the restaurant, not a wage earner. The efficiencies found by automation and commoditization of labor are lost in the waste of trickle down economics.

Another aspect of life in poorer areas of the world - including many areas of the united states - is the barter that occurs between many individuals. I'll mow your lawn if you paint my house. I have the mower, you have the ladder and the brushes.

This type of cooperation is lost in an individualistic society like the united states where everyone performs a role. The cashier, the delivery person, the accountant. In "poorer" societies, these roles are performed by a single person in many cases.

This division of labor has, rather than increased productivity and decreased cost, in fact increased cost due to monetary waste at each exchange. Listen to Noam Chomsky describe the "real Adam Smith" and how he believes the division of labor will destroy the individual through wage slavery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugq86q9KyPE I have not read "wealth of nations" myself, to verify Chomsky's opinion of Smith's work, but I have it on hold at the library and will soon.

Think of it like physics. Just as energy is lost when it changes form, money is lost when it changes hands. The more hands through which that money passes between the producer and the consumer, the more money is lost to waste.
I agree with your point that the money belongs to the authors, not to a middleman.

You have to take into account however that production/handling costs don't play a role in ebook pricing. Publishers make ebooks expensive for a single reason: to slow ebook adoption as much as they can.

They have long realized that once the cat is out the bag their business model inevitably ends (cf. the music industry). And since they can't do anything to prevent it, they at least do their best to slow it...
we number the same as the british. The colonial rule had something to do with it.
Give the guy a break, he clearly does now how to code, he writes well crafted blog entries in which he humbly explains some of the mistake's he's made for the benefit of others. If he's being voted up in news aggregator then a lot of people must appreciate what he's doing. Why is that so bad?
If you're trying to crack a specific password, there's no difference: you still need to hash (password + salt) for all passwords. If you're trying to crack all passwords out of a database, however, you need to hash (password + salt) for all salt. In the latter case, increasing the number of distinct salts in use increases the time-complexity of cracking, without doing anything to the time-complexity of authentication (though requiring O(n) space).
Looks like 2009 vs. 2008.
10 Common Words Uttered by Programmers [Quite Interesting]:)
news channel crawlers, generating real time tickers in the news rooms??
I can't disagree. I just haven't had the budget :)