skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"In time, though, people may very well decide they are comfortable with their social networking being public by default. That will be a different world, and today will have been one of the most important days in that new world's unfolding."

Isn't that world here already through myspace and xyz social networks? FB's value proposition was that it was a safe place to keep in touch with people in your life. Now it's changing its entire strategy and value proposition because Twitter took one feature and implemented it really well. Is the whole data and search business model that much lucrative to risk the trust and stickiness of its userbase?

In my opinion, I think facebook should improve on its strategy for encouraging real online identities. they already started this with fb connect. I believe there's value in knowing who people really are on the web.

Fb == extension of real life on web. Only makes sense for them to improve that identity platform.
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Sounds good in principle, but if you look at the matter empirically, very creative people almost invariably cluster in hubs. Empirically you seem to lose more from being in a backwater than you gain.
Silicon Valley is not the best place to have an enormous software company. Its the best place to have a startup.
Eliminating the word "Only" in the title, you get "6 of the 20 largest software companies are in Silicon Valley!"
Bullshit. They're all 8742 companies.

http://www.sec.gov/info/edgar/siccodes.htm
Oh. And here's the link to the actual document (PDF) that was ratified by the City Council of Portland.

http://www.pdxeconomicdevelopment.com/docs/Portland-Ec-Dev-S...
<sarcasm>Or better yet, why don't we try to destroy our nuclear arsenal by dropping it in cyclones? Two birds, one stone.</sarcasm>

Now let's see. First, there is a question of what effect it would have. How powerful should a nuke be in order to actually destroy a medium sized hurricane, and how will it affect the atmosphere and biosphere and the earth surface near the epicenter? Second, what should we do with the nuclear fallout? I am sure there are more questions to ask.
Google's fascinating when it comes to categorization. I think it's pretty clear that they make software. What's awesome is that they, as you say, don't monetize that s/w by selling it (like 37signals or whatever other internet company); they do so through the sale of advertising space. They're the biggest dichotomy between core competencies (software engineering) and monetization (ads) that I can think of, perhaps in history.
You could use the same argument to "prove" that the hub of any industry is not a particularly good place to do that kind of work. By the same reasoning, LA is not a particularly good place to make movies, or New York to run a hedge fund.
They claim that firefox since 1.9.1 respects the needsterminal in mailcap so it shouldn't run/show less etc:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=442629

if it doesn't you should reopen (also I wonder what it does if there are no lines without needsterminal).
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Alternatively, "30% of the 20 largest software companies are in SV".
I understand where you're coming from with this opinion, but I strongly disagree.

My disagreement comes from years of personal experience with exactly this situation. I'm an ERP consultant and work in places where the entrenched workers have the habit of holding information of how their systems run close to the vest. They seem to think that this enhances their job security. However, they are instead often simply viewed as "necessary evils."

I've come to the realization that every time I share my knowledge with as many people as possible, in as straightforward manner as possible, my value to the organization for which I'm working increases.

Now, I look at my job as one where I am literally finding ways to put myself out of a job. In other words: find efficiencies in the business processes I work with that will remove the need for manual (i.e. my) intervention. Ironically, the more I do this, the more work seems to fall on my lap.

I firmly believe that knowledge is not at all like a cheeseburger.
Presumably you could add this to your mailcap:

text/*; firefox '%s'; test=test "$DISPLAY" != ""
What's a "location"? I have friends who work in: Intel, Haifa, Israel; Google, New York, NY; IBM, Gaithersburg, MD; etc.

This "location" is, apparently, the location of the headquarters. Who works at the headquarters? Top management? Or is it about where the company started? A startup is normally a small company, and a small company is unlikely to spread wide (although these days it is far from unusual to find a company with management and the sales department in the US and development in the Ukraine). But when one deliberately selects a large company, I would expect them to explain how they define the location and for what purpose. I did not get it from the article.

(Aside: "one selects... them explain": modern English?)
After reading this person's initial post (http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/good-gcds-beginni...) and tweets about the keynote, I had a really poor impression of RMS.

Now, I now have a poor impression of the article's author and a higher impression of RMS.

I've seen videos and read interviews illustrating the crazy eccentricities of RMS. He certainly takes the nutty extreme on a variety of issues. However, this email exchange makes him sound like a person using his crazy persona to make a few points.

All this said, I'd really hope a video of the keynote gets posted.
But it's no worse than any other place. Meaning that if you had to pick anywhere, you'd pick the Valley.
I've had this nagging feeling/paranoia the past year, that I'm really not comfortable with the massive amounts of data that google obtains on me. If someone came along and gave me a better email experience with a calendaring system that I could pay for and be reasonably ensured that my payment was keeping my data private. Id jump off the Google platform relatively quickly.
One force of nature vs. another: Bill Gates tries to stop hurricanes
Except that, I notice, aside from IBM, Microsoft and SAP, I've only ever heard of the companies on that list that are from California.
I think sachinag is trying to say that consulting companies are services companies, whereas startups and silicon valley seem to revolve around product companies. The semantics of the distinction are around scalability of the business. You could also look at revenue per employee or P/E ratios as other indicators.

Personally I agree that scalability is a better metric for enterprise attractiveness than raw size. Investors agree. CSC has a P/E ratio of 5.8, whereas Microsoft's is 12.9.

The list also just feels mistaken, but that might be my misguided sense of enthusiasm for shiny companies. Fiserv is a $6B company that I had never heard of. I'd probably rather go long on Facebook or Twitter, but a savvy investor might disagree.
Will the stars align for space-based solar power?
But modern life can't tolerate such deep and profound respect for the planet that cyclone-acceptance requires.

People forget that Manhattan island was once under a glacier, a couple thousand years ago. When people talk about "preventing and reversing climate change", they're not talking about putting Manhattan back under a glacier.
I don't think all the nuclear weapons on the earth, detonated simultaneously, would have any affect at all on even the smallest of hurricanes. I once had the students in my intro chemistry course do some rough thermodynamics calculations on the topic. Essentially, if you assume that all of the thermal energy of the nuclear detonation is converted into expansion work and that this work is exerted specifically on the eye, what you come up with is that a single Hiroshima sized bomb would cause the radius of the eye of a strong hurricane to expand by around 30 cm.

The real problem, though, is that this represents an extreme upper limit on the effect that the nuclear weapon would have. Since most of a nuclear weapon's energy is in the initial impulse, most of it will pass through the hurricane with no effect whatsoever.
I agree. An analogy would be closing a long-term storage facility because someone stored a bomb-making manual in one of its lockers.

Well, perhaps they would still close it and search for an actual bomb. But would they also close all of the facilities owned by the same storage company? More to the point, I guess, would they suspect that the storage company is an accomplice? Unlikely.

The problem is, hi tech is outside of the daily experience of most of the people, and much less understood by them. So they have to rely on experts and take the most conservative point of view (as potentially the least dangerous one). We have to be patient with them: education takes time.
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Ask HN: Should I get U.S. citizenship?
Gentlemen,

I'm a permanent resident and I have green card. I was born in Russia but lived my whole life in Ukraine. My parents had Ukrainian passport but no more as they have naturalized. I was over 18 so I didn't naturalize with them. So, I don't really have any passport of any country.

Should I start applying for U.S. passport? I'm sort of scared of being deported for something, is that a valid reason for getting a passort?
True. It's not a Programming standard - as it is a way to manage IT Infrastructure which should be HW/SW/staff/etc to promote the goals of the business.

Remember everyone - there's a whole world of companies out there who don't know or care what AJAX or Python or Ruby is. They want to make the stuff they need to make, server their customers, and use computers as what they really are - a tool that should make stuff easier - not harder. (And it's in those industries that there is a lot of opportunity).

Oh - and don't take this as a post glorifying ITIL.. I think it's overdone and too verbose for an awful lot of companies.. (what do you expect coming out of a gov dept.) What I haven't seen is much of an alternative.
Apple nears wireless license for iPhone in China
as location becomes ever less important for running a business governments will hopefully be forced into competing more strongly for business with sensible tax structures.
Stormpulse goes freemium
With issues of this magnitude, talk to an immigration lawyer.
It's representative of the average person's inability to judge scale at the extremes. As a random person on the street which is bigger and by how much: an atom or a transistor in their iPod? It's the same with the very large/powerful. The average person thinks, "A nuclear bomb is big and a hurricane is big, ipso facto." It's hard to comprehend just how much more powerful a hurricane is than a nuke!
Full disclosure is shifting responsibility away from developers, and onto "security" companies and end users.

Why not look at it this way: Companies don't have a financial motivation to spend extra engineering man-hours on security in the absence of full-disclosure.

I think the problem here is that security researchers (and hackers concerned about security in general) believe that security should be a concern of software companies, but they don't realize the prisoner's dilemma that software companies find themselves in. If I run a software company and I spend extra man-hours on security, but my competitor doesn't, and they beat me to market, what do I gain? Will I have enough cash on hand to survive the 2 years it might take for a crippling exploit of their code to arrive and finally give me the market advantage?

In a perfect world all code would be security reviewed, all the hungry children in Africa would have plenty of food to eat, there would be no wars, and John Lennon would still be alive to sing about it all... go figure.
Install a drain heat recovery unit: worth the effort?
a nice back of the envelope calc to figure out if it's even worth your time thinking about it...
I agree the guy sounds like a condescending ass, and I think maybe you should file a complaint.

That said, he MAY have a point about changing the wording on the legal document. Most states have had strict laws about real estate professionals changing the wording on contracts since the '50s or '60s, believe it or not. In most states, brokers and salespersons are only allowed to fill in blanks on printed form contracts that are 'customarily used' (usually defined as drafted or pre-approved by the local bar association) and to insert or delete items only at the direction of the principal in the course of negotiations. While the last part sounds like it allows what you want, it is very easy for the broker to get sued for doing these insertions and deletions, because almost anything they say when this is happening can be construed to be the "unauthorized practice of law." And when I say "get sued" I don't necessarily mean by you. It was complaints and lawsuits from bar associations that led to these restrictive laws...the attorneys didn't want more competitors for basic services, just like they have sued internet companies that are selling legal documents such as wills. Anyway, many brokers are advised to completely avoid changing the wording on contracts. E&O insurers sometimes even write stricter guidelines brokers have to follow in these matters in order to get covered under insurance policies. And the broker's company may also have its own policies.

BTW, depending on where you're located, there ARE companies that are more on the Redfin end of the spectrum and that have Loopnet-ish sites.
Also, some locations are bogus. Accenture is incorporated in Bermuda for tax purposes, but the actual work is done in many major cities. IBM, though the headquarters are in NY, has major offices in Silicon Valley.
Absolutely yes - if you are a permanent resident and have held your green card for at least 5 years (the qualifying period) you should apply for citizenship. The reason is that a green card is not permanent; you lose it when you leave the country for a year or more. So if, for example, you got a consulting gig in Russia for a couple of years and then wanted to come back to the US, your previous green card would not be valid and you would have to start from scratch.

If you can afford it, there is really no reason not to, even if you didn't have the additional complications with unclear other citizenships.

The only people who should be careful about applying for US citizenship are those from countries (like Japan) who are barred from having dual citizenships; otherwise if you can afford it, it is frankly a no-brainer.

Plus, if you are a citizen you can vote. I don't know about you, but living and paying taxes in a country where I don't have the right to vote kinda drives me crazy.

I am not a lawyer, but look on the bright side, my opinion was free.
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I thought DARPA ceased to exist when they moved the island.
Can we have a distributed government outsourced to India to reduce costs?
And no other metro area has more than 1.
Poll: Star Wars or Star Trek?
What's your poison?
What counts as visible progress? In my experience, simply piling up code for every new feature leads to giant monolithic messes with little structure and organization. Since each feature always seems small and easy to do, it becomes tempting to just hack it into what you have without thinking about properly designing it.

Buildings are constructed foundation first, followed by the scaffold. Trying to construct a building room-by-room would be a disaster.
Exactly. And if you prune the consulting firms (and IBM, which was founded before Silicon Valley existed), it's striking how dominant California is.
Anyone has experience with it? As a user, as a developer? Thanks in advance!
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Yeah. That's what ServerBeach does. They give the sender and the receiver credit. The sender gets more, but the receiver gets a significant $100 off after 3 months.

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"The power of the eBay brand mated up with the four core brands from GM could be a really good thing," Docherty said. "It takes the shopping process online up about 4 notches because you've got a lot more information at your fingertips."

PR language is getting seriously out of hand.
This list is incorrect. The author asks "just where have most of the great software companies been started?", and proceeds to list headquarters. Three corrections, for US companies (yes, I checked the entire list):

2. Microsoft: Albuquerque, New Mexico
6. First Data: Omaha, Nebraska
11. Computer Sciences Corporation: El Segundo, California

So make that 7, for what it's worth. The list really isn't worth looking at, though. The other problems mentioned here are trivial, compared to the problem of a sample size of 20 being too damn small to have any meaning.

I hate lists like this, and the stupid conclusions drawn from them. Exercise for the reader my ass.
Before I even read the article it reminded me of the spiritual center of the universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Hill,_New_Zealand
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It wasn't until the end of the video did I realize that I met Dr. Tae. But back then, he was just "Tae", a physics grad student at U of I that introduced himself as "Tea, but with the last two letters transposed"

He's actually quite animated in person, and I remember his physics section was rather fun.
I'm impressed. Just went and bought it on my xbox, (400 points so about $5). Built a world or two, it took a bit of practice getting the controls down but then it was pretty fun. Some options are hidden in what I would consider weird places but I'm excited to take it and show the game to my younger siblings, I think they could really get into it.
According to wikipedia the current release is xbox only.
The center of spiritual self-satisfaction is more like it. (Notice what paper this is appearing in.)
GE: Core competency = training middle management. Monetization = jet engines, locomotives, formerly household appliances, etc.

Berkshire Hathaway: Core competencies = Warren Buffett, AAA credit rating, willingness to keep former owners on as managers. Monetization = insurance, furniture, candy.

WalMart: Core competency: Logistics management, supplier bargaining power. Monetization: every household good imaginable.

Nike: Core competency = advertising. Monetization = sneakers & sportswear.

Actually, seems like companies with wildly disparate core competencies and monetization schemes tend to do pretty well. Or maybe it's selection bias, and the ones that do well do really well but the rest fail miserably. Either way, I'm waiting for some company to close the Google -> Nike loop by leveraging their expertise in sneakers and sportswear to sell lots of software.
I think his voice was perfectly suited to the subject matter of the video. It conveyed just the right amount of contempt, and it didn't put me to sleep.
Sure. It's called exile.
Not really an article I'd mark as worth reading, but a little bit of ++ for daring to post something remotely to do with spirituality or religion.
I agree with you. Perhaps Facebook does too - we never know. Facebook's decided over the years that it ought to try out a new feature first, get feedback later.

I think this move is a big mistake on their part, but I also think Facebook will revert to their old idea the minute users get pissy. I almost don't mind, since it's fun seeing them mess with things and because they never make it impossible to avoid their changes.
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You're one of a few hundred thousand people who think that in the midst of a sea of a hundred million who are just getting used to Facebook.

Luckily, the Internet is free so everybody can use whatever they please. You can even Tweet your Facebook status messages if you don't want to disappoint anybody.
Maybe not on that list...but the Seattle area does have Microsoft, Amazon, and Nintendo...all very large companies.
"Currently, IE6 usage accounts for 10% of Digg visitors and 5% of page views on Digg. While this is down from 13% and 8% a year ago respectively, IE6 still accounts for a fairly large portion of Digg usage."

This makes me sick. I seem to recall that when Firefox had about 5% marketshare, lots of people were saying "Why go to the trouble of supporting Firefox for only 5%?!". And then now when IE6 has 5%, they don't seem to have the same reasoning.

(Yeah, just an impression).
I think sometimes "black triangles" are necessary, but you can advance them in a way that is visible to the programmer/technical people. Most programmers don't write the whole thing then see if it works, but that doesn't mean you can always have additional deliverables (at least from the point of view of the client/stakeholder) at every iteration.

That said, I wonder if he'd demonstrated a need for a custom TCP replacement before he wrote one. That feels a little excessive, but I was born into high bandwidth network coding so I don't remember the bad ol' days as well.
The money is in the valley.
San Francisco is a pretty cool guy. eh is famous for stuff and doesn't afraid of anything.
In Pandora's case it's almost certainly a fee per song, as it is the larger of those two values. Micahel Robertson (mp3.com) has a good write up of this http://michaelrobertson.com/ (i can't find permalinks on his site, wtf?)

I agree it's a great service. I use it frequently and have discovered lots of good music there. I'm still not optimistic it will be around long term, although $35 million should keep it around for a while. I wonder how close to profitability they are -- my guess is not very.