skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have to agree. Even though I don't like to admit it, maybe my time in higher education would have been better spent studying a business related subject. If you're passionate enough about CS/hacking, there's so much info available online these days, you'll learn just as much by immersing yourself in the hacker communities in your own time as you would have studying for a degree.
I have to second this. I do not have an eye for design and I know this. It's just my weakness. Having a good designer on board is an absolute must. If you want a suggestion, try http://www.monfx.com/ | http://www.mdolon.com/ -- he is here on Hacker News and he designed http://www.feedbackarmy.com and http://www.afterthedeadline.com for me.
A subscription model similar to NetFlix is the most logical way to sell books on the Kindle since books are consumed in a similar way to movies.

I suspect Amazon would get a lot of pushback from publishers, worrying that Kindle book sales would hurt their existing retail sales and damage their relationship retailers.
It must have something to do with Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
This is quite interesting given the "London startup scene is dead, world revolves around Silicon Valley" post by Paul Carr from today too. What gives? You can succeed anywhere; some parts of it may be easier in the Valley, but it's not the only place successful businesses are growing by any means.
From The Register... I'm not holding my breath.
Changed it to "small teams" -- we were trying to say "not big companies"
We were looking for a way of saying "startup" without excluding non-tech small businesses that didn't consider themselves "startups." Changed to "small."
Question: If you pooled together a ton of people through some social networking, etc (say 1k people per each state across the US), and got these people to commit to selling their "junk" on a new service for say 1-year, would this be enough of a critical mass to get the ball rolling in terms of creating a real competitor to ebay?

You could start a grass roots movment and have people sign an online petition that says they will boycott ebay and use your service instead. There's enough people that are tired of ebay's overpriced fees that they would probably sign the petition and create some internet awareness.

Is this crazy talk?
Code Rush, the 2000 film about Mozilla, is released by the director
While it's nice that it doesn't look like a shit Flex app anymore, the interaction behaviors are still awful -- let me use my goddamn scroll wheel!

Google's PDF viewer used for attachments in Gmail is better by leaps and bounds -- I hope they start using it in SERPs at some point. I wonder if an API could be hacked together for use from a Firefox extension...
I really enjoyed taking AI and a Natural Language Processing class my senior year.
Thanks!

position: relative is now fixed on the screenshot. Sign up and learn more buttons are now clickable.
Reading your text is particularly hard with your choice of background color, you need more contrast there. The landing page shouldn't make people scroll to read about your product.

It isn't about whether it looks like Microsoft designed it not but what works effectively. There are a lot of companies that have created a product that doesn't look like it is enterprise oriented in the area you are working on example, http://www.pivotaltracker.com/. I personally don't think the macbook image would in anyway convince me, hacker & small company, to use your product. I am more interested in your product not somebody else's. Hope that helps.
Wow, this is much better. Loads quicker too.
This is what comes from trying too hard to look like a Real Business -- we saw all of the other companies with Marketing Departments using phrases like "Deep Email Integration" and assumed it was a good place to start. We don't have much traffic yet, but we have a split testing architecture in place to start playing with less ridiculous ways of expressing the same thing.
The people who click on TEH BOOBS don't have to directly convert into paying customers, as just having more people playing adds to network effect.
The comment by ZachS pointed this out and a fix has been deployed. It should be working now. Please let me know if it's not.
The power of no reward (affiliate fees may backfire)
PubSubHubbub Demo - Real-Time CrunchUp
Your pricing plan page is especially difficult to read, let alone trying to compare the 3 different plans. Take a look at 37Signals' or even Apple's.

I click on the screenshot on the about page to see it larger, but it's the same (small) size.

Overall, it looks like you've got an interesting service but the whole thing could use an aesthetic retooling. The font is hard to read, and I almost get a medieval RPG feel from the icons and nav bar.
Ouch! That guy sounds like total asshole, to say the least! Definitely not doing his job and does not deserve your time and business.

My experiences with commercial agents has been relegated to the broker that we have been using for over a 10 year period.

I agree though, a redfin type service will also evolve and take shape for commercial properties. However, from the commercial side of things, a lot more due diligence needs to be done (depending on the property type) as opposed to buying a home. And often times many 'good' commercial properties never make it to a listing service like loopnet etc.
If you can find a course that teaches finite automata and formal languages you should definitely take that in addition to those already mentioned.
I know monji personally through entrepreneur meet ups and he's great. Also worked on a YC funded start up way back when as well.
Russian Plans Floating Nuclear Plants
And this my friends is why government research is awesome. DARPA and crackpot scientists--coming to a future near you.
Love the concept - Like the Design a bit - big, blocky - easy to read, but the layout needs a bit of work to make it more concise.

A little too much information to digest immediately - brain was fried on landing and didn't know where to turn.

I created a test project, and the first thing I noticed is I couldn't add name@shephard.org, but could add name@mailinator.com - weird.

For a brainstorm app targeted at the enterprise, or small work groups, I should NOT be exposed to Featured Lists or Open Membership Lists - I'd yank that - makes no sense for this class of App.

It _feels_ like a professional application - easy to get into, easy to start using. I like the way that it interacts with the user. VERY smooth - I like the way closing a Help Window opens up more space on the screen to work.

I wasn't sure what "adding users" to the list actually did - Send them an Email? Invite them? Anything? That needs to be more clear somewhow - It apparently sends out an invitation.
Great find! I assume the API is asynchronous. Is there a mechanism to detect if the voice is done speaking?
XP-Dev.com gets taken offline by Goldman source code theft
Please don't label yourself as a YC reject.

I know it's frustrating not to join the program, but we're interested in you for who you are- Defining yourself by has turned has turned you down just makes you look a little desperate.

One post that I agree with is http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550351

Your product looks great, and I wish you all the best with it.
Goodbye, Divmod. Hello, World
I also used to work at Amazon, and this is all true.

Personally, I like having an ergonomically reasonable desk, and don't miss my door desk at all.

The downside of frugal is, employees don't feel treated as well. Amazon had free coffee and water, and that's it. No sodas, no free vending machines, none of that kind of stuff that are reasonably common in software development houses. The cafeteria on-site is not any cheaper than eating out (though the food isn't bad.) The office supplies are always the cheapest possible - use a bic pen or buy your own if you actually care about your writing utensil. Company swag, like free T-Shirts, are a rare thing. And the 'employee discount' is distinctly unimpressive - 10% off for the first $1000 per year, aka $100.

It's all little things, but it can add up to a feeling of being a cog in an uncaring machine. It wasn't really related to why I left, but I can't say I miss being part of the Amazon family. People vary, but for me, I honestly think things like free vending machines generate more long-term good will than if they'd paid me ten times that amount in a bonus instead.
Thanks! Changed the title.
Steve Yegge's blog entry "Rich Programmer Food" is about why Compilers is the most important real CS class. Great read. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food...
This is a great tool. I've used Google Docs in the past to collaborate with others on an idea. It's not real time and there are often conflicts.

The interface is great (while some design work might help). Seemingly trivial things like the search for an idea as I'm typing one is brilliant and keeps dups from showing up. I haven't done this in a collaborative manner just yet but am inviting a friend now.

This is a great service for free. I would consider paying for it if it really does help make the brainstorming and collaboration of an idea easier. The cost would have to be nominal though, since other methods still work even though they're might not be as effective.

Additionally, it would be nice to invite someone by email address in addition to a username. I have to email or IM my friend to sign up and then wait to get his username and then add him. Would be great if I could enter an email address and it would ask them to sign up and automatically add them to the idea.

Not sure I love the name though.
Megan McArdle's Takedown Of Matt Taibbi's Goldman Piece
Thanks for the comments! Adding member allows them to interact with your list. Try adding jacob@stormweight.com or jbr and I'll come play with you to show you how group interaction can work.
Sounds like Yammer.com, which is Twitter aimed at internal business teams.
I couldn't agree more. Discrete Mathematics is one of those areas I wish I'd explored further during my undergrad years. Logic, set theory, operations research, and information theory will all prove to be fundamentally important in your later years, irrespective of your ultimate concentration.
Huh, if they were disqualifying students for modifying URLs, I wonder how hard it'd be to scan the results for all students applying.
<sarcasm>
Surely any robot built by the U.S. government will be bound by Asimov's three laws of robotics.
</sarcasm>
Try inviting jbr to your list and I'll come interact with you to show you live updating features.
it's scary how the actions of one of your users can cause prolonged outages, regardless of how redundant or robust your infrastructure setup is
You can invite people by email address and Stormweight will send them an invite. When they sign up, they'll go straight to your list.
How to Get More Traffic with Google Trends | TechJaws: Internet Security and SEO
They cite their sources - just follow the trail a few more steps.

http://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/EATR:

At the sixth (System of Systems) level, which has not yet been implemented, the 4D/RCS serves as an overarching intelligent control and decision system for (all or part of) a manifold of distributed unmanned and manned platforms, unattended sensors and weapons, and control centers.

Ambitious!
The full text of "Prodigal Genius", a somewhat hagiographic but still fascinating biography of Tesla, is online at http://www.rastko.rs/istorija/tesla/oniell-tesla.html.
"So far, the evidence is anecdotal. No global or national data have been reported." In other words: There is NO evidence that there is a connection between obesity and swine flu.
Like it's more deadly cousin, the seasonal flu (thousands of people die every year of it) the hyped swine flu "pandemic" is more severe and dangerous for people who are weaker. Carrying too much weight around makes you weaker obviously like other illnesses, being a child or elderly.

I hope Roche has soon sold out their Tamiflu so all the "viral marketing" stops.
My coworker and I were just (10 minutes ago) talking about the need for a site like this, so I'm giving the idea a big thumbs-up! We might try it out and offer additional suggestions as we use it.

As others have said, it could use a different design. Specifically, the fonts look kind of strange (letters don't have a consistent height) in my browser (Firefox 3.0 on Linux). Also you might want to streamline the javascript, as it looks like it caused firefox to use a lot more CPU.
Decline of the Enterprise Data Warehouse
They could massively improve the App Store interface for customers if they made the app URLs ( like http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa... ) more than a shitass redirect to a proprietary itunes:// URL.

The directory of apps doesn't have to be any good, just crawlable -- all this shit just needs to be Googleable, and possible for third-parties to build sites and communities around.
I'd love to see what would happen if they tried to do this to a big firm like Google (or hell, GS). There would be congressional hearings.
Is the assertion that terrestrial radio "pays zilch" accurate? I've never heard that and it actually surprises me.
I really like Potion's syntax. It's implementation also borrows some cool stuff from Lua.

I'd like to see a scripting environment with Lisp or Scheme as an underlying implementation for a variety of others. (I need to look at Guile.) I think one language, be it Lisp/Java/Python/Smalltalk uber alles is sadly misguided. Erlang is awesome in its areas of strength. So is Prolog. Haskell was ruling the programming contests for awhile. Rob Pike once spent 6 months developing a concurrency-friendly language that let him write an entire windowing system in one afternoon.

Languages have different strengths. Programmers as a whole would benefit from VMs that run and unify many languages. If those languages also ran on many different VMs with diverse capabilities, this gives us to always leverage the best tool for the job.
A perfect example of a solution in search of a problem.
Silverlight 3's chicken-or-the-egg conundrum
When modifying a list, you can't get back to the list by clicking on "Dashboard --> LIST", you have to find the "BACK" button on the left. Letting me always get back to a list with the "DASHBOARD" is a good idea.
I was expecting something more MySQL specific, and was pleasantly surprised. It's certainly worth thinking twice before violating any of these.
The title is horrible. This article is actually a very thoughtful review of the iTunes App Store from a app developer's point of view.
"That stuff on the internet? Yeah, it stays around forever."

This is a wide spread myth. I'm on the web since 1997 (I know, I was late). Back then I started with publishing poems online. Most of them are sadly lost and gone forever. I relied on the Web to keep them and was quite sure that by posting them on mailing lists, forums and publishing on websites they will make me a famous poet one day (no, I hoped at least that they will stay available).

Searching today for some of the most ofen published ones yields zero results.

So back up your stuff and don't believe the stays forever thing. I never shun away from an argument online and I'm quite successful on the Web. Of course I do some ORM (Online Reputation management) myself but on the whole I don't have to hide much about me.
Good point. We'll make it so the dashboard lets you go back.
Much Ado About IE6
British views on privacy are bollocks
Interesting - this (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/health/research/24fat.html...) recent NYTimes article reported on a new hypothesis that obesity may have offered an evolutionary advantage against tuberculosis, by "revving up" the immune system. I'm not sure about swine flu, but I recall that avian flu kills by forcing the immune system into overdrive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm), killing the host. Is this a possible mechanism? Anyone know more about influenza or the immune system?
Hm, interesting. I hadn't even thought to use pop like that because I just assumed the admins or their automated scripts would get annoyed and block me.

Yeah, good approach. Just do the simplest thing that could possibly work; upgrade if and when you need to. I should perhaps tattoo that somewhere since it never seems to sink in : /
He is good. Or was. He is dead now. But his recordings live on.

His strategy seems to be to teach languages in how they're similar to what you already know.
They really just need to completely kill the review and rating system, and start over from scratch -- they somehow managed to make something shittier than eBay ratings!

The star ratings are totally useless -- everything trends to the same average. It should be replaced with a 'flagging' system -- Craigslist is a good example. There'd be only two buttons: "Report this app" and "This is awesome!". Both would be followed up with annoying email surveys, and the results would not be directly shown in the UI anywhere.

An Amazon-style review system could work: a Pro Apple review for prominent apps, along with user reviews filtered by "Was this insightful?" voting from other users who downloaded the app, with a strong version-decay. I highly doubt Apple will ever do something anywhere near that decent.
Is it me or has Pandora completely surpassed Last.Fm in terms of popularity?
What bothers me about this discussion is the assumption that crappy software people are used to is the only type it's possible to build.

A capability system would be a lot harder to completely corrupt. Sandboxing can limit damage to manageable compartments, and enable the system to roll back without user intervention. I think you could make an OS two orders of magnitude harder than current commonly used systems. It will never be complete mathematically provable security. Just make it so hard to do, that the cost increases enough to change the fundamental economics, so that only very high value targets will ever get that degree of attention. (Which means that the cost has to be much higher than someone's credit card number.)
Besides what sho said about SMTP uptime not being that important, Lamson can read messages from a Maildir queue. You could use Gmail -> fetchmail -> Lamson.

http://lamsonproject.org/docs/deferred_processing_to_queues....
Camtweet Does Justin.tv Live On Twitter
Well don't take anyone's word for it, make sure to test it yourself! But I am fairly confident you'll be reassured by the results of those tests. Just make sure you're not actually testing the language the driver is in ...

Do share more details of the setup you end up with eventually, though, it's an interesting topic and I for one will be curious to see what you came up with.
Sorry, but apparently these ads managed to gain some extra attention. I don't believe the sex sells mantra (most wankers don't buy unrelated products) but a well known blog like this spreading them is not a bad thing in today's tight attention economy.
Displaying sexist ads as "bad" is like beating someone up to show how bad it hurts.
Don't use modpython. It's pretty obsolete.
The js is certainly processor-intensive; the client polls every 2 seconds for updates. Search is also done in the client, which can get kinda slow. We'll look into optimizing that code a bit more, but we are trying for "rich client," which involves a bit of client-side processor tradeoff. I'm hoping that the newest wave of JS engines (sunspider, v8, whatever's in FF3.5) will also increase the adoption of rich web clients.
I'd really like to perform a split A/B test on some of these ads or similar ones to prove one of these theories. I'd rather support the sex gains attention but doesn't sell off topic products assumption at least on the Web.

Btw. I did a similar thing in real life already. A post on "Apple porn" didn't get many click thrues on Apple ads. Something like 0,x %.
He's upset that they don't know about his specialist subject, yet is completely ignorant about theirs. And I bet he doesn't get why none of his employees respect him either.
THere is definite weirdness when trying to add people to the list. I've been trying to invite people by entering their email address - but I keep getting "user xxxx@foo.com not found" - How can an Email address not be found? I was able to enter a few addresses, but not others. It's almost like the acceptance criteria has changed in the last 10 minutes.
She's getting railed on pretty heavily by her commenters.
Ask HN: I'm Contractor 0, now being offered equity--in an LLC. Can this work?
= TL/DR Version =

Partners want to let me buy into an LLC in small, incremental, non-voting, non-LLC-member bits. To the extent I do, it'll slow the cash burn rate and give me a share in the potential upside, which partners and I would both like me to have. I trust them in the reliable business associate way, not the pick them as godparents way. Can stock options be simulated for an LLC by contract?

= Details =

(I'm a regular reader & writer here--this is a new account for semi-anonymity.)

I've been contracting for a web startup for more than a year now, the first and longest-running of a small team of developers. There are two partners and no true employees.

The partners want to give me the opportunity to buy options at the company's current valuation (based on angel investment) with a 1.5 multiplier. E.g., $100 buys $150 of stock.

* The company is currently an LLC with the two partners as the main members and the two angels as minority members.

* So far, the partners are selling only their shares, so the second angel didn't dilute the first. My equity would come out of the partners' shares in the same way.

* The idea is that any time I bill them, I can say, "Pay this much in cash, put that much toward equity." I can do this under the current terms until the next funding/valuation.

The Big Complication:

There's not a really obvious way to assign small bits of equity in an LLC. [EDIT: We're actually trying to simulate stock options, not pure stock.] The proposed mechanism is to have a written agreement (and log of actual purchases) that my share in the company converts to stock options (to buy at $0.01/share, or whatever) whenever the company converts to a C corp (in preparation for sale or larger funding round).

Anyone have experience with such an arrangement? Is it possible/legal? I know, ask a lawyer--I'm trying to get a framework for asking before spending the $$.
Sure. I think it's accepted that you go to business school to network with students with rich parents. A friend of mine applying said that if she didn't get into any of the top 5 programs, it wasn't worth going.
The site looks really nice!

It's a bit Strange not being able to select the text on the page- I can see from a quick look at the source that it's not all just pre-rendered images, so I'm a bit confused ;)

The idea sounds really fun, but a bit hard to understand at first. Adding a live demo page might help people understand what's going on. I know you have free signup, but it would be easier to play with a demo account before deciding if people want to join

I do like the way panels appear and dissapear as needed.Show/hide advanced options. I have a bit of flicker on FF3.5/Linux, but it's not distracting.

A demo page might alleviate the need for you founders to personally come and play with people's lists.

Good luck with the site!
The next hacking frontier: Your brain?
On the upside, it may be easier to add keys to the ring, since you can grip it by the fixed key while you're forcing the new key through the tracks.

On the downside, how do you remove a key from the ring without the other keys getting in the way? Wouldn't the fixed key get in the way of being able to slide other keys aside?

Is there a topologist in the house?
From the RTI website, a presentation they supposedly gave to the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute in April:

A code of moral behavior for intelligent robots will be
developed. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws are
insufficient (especially for military).