skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One result was a free software called Freegate, small enough to carry on a flash drive. It takes a surfer to an overseas server that changes I.P. addresses every second or so, too quickly for a government to block it, and then from there to a banned site.

There's something I'm missing here. It seems to me that any server that changes its IP so frequently would:

1) Reveal reasonably quickly the full range of the IP pool from which it chooses those addresses. Therefore, it would be simple to ban the whole IP range.

2) Rely on dynamic DNS that has to be queried directly. Therefore, it would be simple to ban access that DNS server.

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but if I'm not missing some crucial piece of information, this would mean that this "hacktivist" tool is merely being hyped by journalists who aren't tech-savvy.
Yes. While it seems to be the trend to bash on PHP there's nothing wrong with discussing it's shortcomings in a constructive manner.
"oh darn, they were right when they told me I shouldn't post that picture of me from that crazy party the other night"
Yes, I used Twisted as the non-blocking network substrate for JTV chat. Actually in the initial implementation I used their IRC protocol library too, but that has been gradually dropped and replaced as more and more problems have been found. This is my general impression of Twisted actually - as an i/o core, it's rock-solid, but the protocol libraries are much more rough and many have clearly not been tested under significant load or with real-world messy data.

As for whether I would use it again... I think I'd be really tempted to use Clojure to be honest. Python is nice enough, but I still find myself missing a real Lisp (I did a lot of CL work before I joined JTV).
assistance with ban evasion in exchange for money

That is absurd.
As others have said, it really needs to be per project. There may be some projects where frustration and resentment can creep in. For example, when the work is all design/static content or heavy programming.

Perhaps the best way to do this is treat it like a company. Your friend gets a reasonable finder's fee or percent of sales for bringing in the business. Someone else might have a better number but I would think 5-8%. When writing project estimates, you each add the hours it will take to complete your respective tasks. Track your hours in detail (I like to use Klok, but there may be better) and when the project is complete get paid accordingly. If you both come in under, then perhaps consider splitting the 'profits' 50/50.

I think this type of structure accommodates the variation of skill requirements in web projects and will also ensure that you both are getting what you deserve.
I disagree with his position, but think I was getting this discussion too far away from technology. So yeah, trolling - not intentionally, but in effect yes. So I deleted my earlier comments.
The Newsweekly’s Last Stand
Along the same line OS X has has this too with Spotlight. Though quicksilver is more adept at the different tasks that he is looking to do.
BTW, I am part of this meetup called 'Hackers & Founders' which is exactly meant for that.
Sure, if you also think it's "better" to be the drunk obnoxious guy at the party.
Everyone has given really great recommendations. I second caffeine's PROCESS. The way I learned most mathematics is from working through problems on a white board I bought. From there I got a great grasp of probability theory and linear algebra, which gave me the legs to study statistical learning.

While I have nothing to add on the math front, on the intuition / implementation front you should definitely check out Chris Manning's (currently) free textbook on Information Retrieval. He delves into the history, technical details, and state of the art of IR. Let's hope he opens up his NLP book as well (great CS prof at Stanford).

If humanly possible, I'd recommend making a friend who can help you solve confusion or quandary about certain problems. This is probably less likely for most people, but if you DO know someone with domain knowledge, I'd buy them dinner and pick their brain. I've fully traversed the learning curve from both wrestling with problems and talking to people much smarter than me.

http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~hinrich/information-retrieval-...
We are equal partners. Is it so strange? We come from the advertising world. He is an award winning creative director. I was the CTO at our former employer.
So what is an alternative Web Based IRC client? For those of us working behind a corporate firewall, Mibbit.com was the only way to access IRC.
This is a sad thing in terms of Freenode, and users trying to access it from Mibbit, but will not affect Mibbit as such.

I remember using Freenode early on when I discovered open source. It was a fantastic vibrant place with hackers all over the place. openprojects, lilo, great...

Unfortunately, maybe it's got too big. The atmosphere has changed for the worse IMHO. In my opinion, the staff no longer represent the community.

Today, they put their own ideals ahead of their users. Their objections to Mibbit have been

* It's not open source
* It makes money

The 'abuse' reason I believe is a red herring. Abuse is easy enough to deal with, and them operating their own web client won't change how often people abuse using a web client. In fact their own web client is less secure than mibbit in terms of preventing abuse.

So, IMHO, a sad day for Freenode and all that they used to represent, but an opportunity to create a new haven for hackers.
Moving past the heated conjecture, the more accurate statement from a freenode staffer:

njan: Xenos, for what it delivered, mibbit i)
disrupted a large number of our network users, and ii)
used a disproportionate amount of staff time.

njan: Xenos, we chose a solution that fixed those two
problems - using staff time and disrupting our 50k users
- whilst giving the mibbit users an alternative.
This is very true, the important thing about reading is in actually doing it. It is probably more helpful if you can remember a fair amount of detail on the book, but the act of reading will certainly improve not only your understanding of ideas but your ability to read and write too.

I remember reading a psychological study on musicians and that they can selectively hear their favourite instruments in a piece. Personally as a bass guitarist I can relate, in fact I have a problem listening to music without good bass playing.

I believe this will happen with all artistic talents including reading and writing. The more you read, the more it will increase all of you abilities related to it. I can barely remember any songs on bass because I haven't played since before I moved country, but I'm still highly proficient at playing.

Stephen King once stated that there is no point in writing if you don't read and from my understanding, virtually all writers are well read and it largely doesn't matter what you read, just that you read. Hopefully scientists will come along and prove this sentiment some day as it's almost universally held in writing circles.

So I would say with a certainty to the OP that with a margin of doubt so small that it would be too big to write out here, that you truly are a better person for having read more books. Not only have you likely enlightened yourself to a broader world view, but you have likely also distanced yourself further from the unpunctuated and grammarless masses. Also, this maybe because of the reading, but you seem quite adept at philosophising so kudos.
Actually #startups has not moved. It is still alive and kicking on freenode.
Good advice for all C programmers out there.
Want to Work for the City of Bozeman, MT? Hand Over Your Passwords
Netshare is a hack, a pain to set up, and when I tried it was far slower than tethering is now. I bought the app, tried it, and never used it again.
Are these companies started by couples where one part failed and the other succeeded?

Because if they're just companies started by couples where both relationship and business have been a success then the preceeding warning could still apply to them.
If freenode is really having that much difficulty with Mibbit clients, why not allow individual channels to allow/deny Mibbit clients.
"Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability" by Hartley Rogers is excellent.
I still don't see how a computer is going to be able to handle the complex logic and detect whether or now something makes sense of not.

The best way to handle disputed information is to do your own research. Don't count on a computer to tell you what is right and wrong.
Go to http://help.benm.at/au.php on your iPhone.
To answer your quest: no, not really- but it is still important to name and shame.
> I was talking about your use of block-capitals

It was obviously colloquial language. But since you were being so prickly about it, I decided to repay you in kind.

> Look buddy, I've worked as a writer

Look, buddy, you're not going to see expressions like "all the time", save from direct spoken-word quotations, in any newspaper worth its salt.

> Commas are used however the writer sees fit and in the paragraph you take your third point from, they were elisions not clauses.

For the comma issue I refer you to "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk, Jr., page 8:

"3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas."

> I generally don't waste my time picking apart peoples sentences unless someone has offered to pay me for the service, perhaps you should consider doing the same.

Nor do I; I just do it when someone gets pedantic about "basic" grammar in what was obvously a colloquial expression and then proceeds to make numerous -- admittedly minor -- similar "basic" grammar mistakes. And I didn't appreciate the vindictiveness and severity vis a vis a very small abuse of all-caps.
Or if your accountants are clever enough, amortize it over 200.
sorry to burst your bubbles people, but i don't think this was intentional. i don't think this was some genius marketing strategy that 37signals came up with, although maybe it is working in their favor. it's just over-reaction to over-planning is all, a slip, and not brilliance. read the guy's twitter page, and blog, this post is nothing extraordinary, so either he is a genius writer who can break into marketing with ease and mimic casualness on a regular basis, is a generated persona entirely, or just happened to say the wrong thing and 37signals already was talked about all the time, and thus this.

I keep checking out 37signals products because people make a fuss about it, so it's working, except I can't see what anyone sees in them.
This is being worked on. Check out http://www.startuplounge.com and use the contact form to get in touch and pledge support.
seems to be a setting: https://bitbucket.org/slug/qwebirc/src/tip/config.py.example...
Upvoted because I'm pleasantly surprised by your reply.
Will you please stop this?
Not sure who's dumber -- the person working for the City that decides this is actually a good idea, or the person applying for the job who actually gives them their user name and password on the job application.
i imagine the default irc:// protocol handler set to mibbit in future firefoxen influenced their decision
Sex Lures in Twitter Followers | TechJaws: Internet Security and SEO
I guess BMI isn't horrible, but what you really want to measure for any meaningful indicator of health is body fat percentage and strength. It's pretty easy to test both of these things.

BMI also has problems with race. Blacks have naturally higher muscle mass and get false overweight signals. Asians have naturally lower muscle mass and get false healthy weight signals.
Author's page

http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/cvvanroy.html

I'm guessing the PDF chapter is from this textbook, described on the author's page:

Programming textbook: Concepts, techniques, and models of computer programming

It's published by MIT Press.

EDIT: Page for English version of book: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html
IPhone Dev Team releases 3.0 Jailbreak and more.
Rakudo Perl 6 development release #18 ("Pittsburgh")
He's not the typical startup founder. He started a game company with the millions he got from Microsoft.
Yes; apologies.
I wonder if anyone is pointing out to them that the privacy violation goes beyond the privacy of just the job applicant.

Friends and business associates of the job applicant also have privacy expectations around content they intend to be viewable only by trusted individuals.
Montana town demands job applicants' Facebook passwords
Sounds like an intelligence test. Anyone who would submit their password is too dumb to work there.
Career advice from Terence Tao
Instead of trying to piggyback on to something that's just a new industry, see if you can find something that is a new niche within an industry you're already familiar with or are interested in working in.

I'd also recommend against freelancing as a first step towards starting a company. Finding freelance work in itself can be a huge distraction towards your end goal of creating a product--not to mention the actual work, dealing with clients, etc.

Think about problems you or maybe your employers have faced in the past and how a product might've solved that problem or at least facilitated its resolution.

From there, do some googling, find some market research studies, talk to people in the industry you want to break in to.

Unfortunately it can be hard to track down credible information among the millions of "expert" blogs that populate most search results. The best source of market data I've found to date is actually my old college's library. Now that my student account is long since decommissioned, they do offer paid access to info databases for alumni at a reduced rate.
> But the way it destroys you is by failing to get users, and that is not a function of your location.

Well, it is easier to meet Joe Influencer at the evening at build up some buzz if the flight to the 'party where this guy got an invitation to doesn't take too long.
Will be interesting to see if someone does this-- seems like WAY more than $50 of work/research.

Marc Beniof (Salesforce) isn't skinny, FWIW.

I bet there is a correlation between success and height, BMI, charm, and attractiveness (but I also imagine that there are plenty of exceptions).
Sick of Programming
John Resig: Unimpressed by NodeIterator
A good bodybuilder would have a high BMI, but it's all muscle, so BMI is not always a good indicator of health.

Personally I totally see the possibility of correlation. The habits and personality that allows one to stay in good shape are totally helpful towards creating a successful startup. Furthermore the willingness to spend time on taking care of your body as well as your company indicates a wideness of perspective that definitely helps in determining the long-term direction of the company.
My nose hurts from time to time. Maybe I should cut it off.
Serial Asynchronous XmlHttpRequests
Today, they put their own ideals ahead of their users. Their objections to Mibbit have been: It's not open source, It makes money

Working with Mibbit clearly costs freenode time and resources that they would rather not spend. Since Mibbit makes money, perhaps you should consider entering into a contractual relationship to provide them with financial incentive and other guarantees, in exchange for their investment in supporting your service?

The 'abuse' reason I believe is a red herring. Abuse is easy enough to deal with, and them operating their own web client won't change how often people abuse using a web client.

The abuse from Mibbit has been the only reason (in months) that I've had to set myself as an operator and ban users. As a user, I don't feel this is a 'red herring'.

So, IMHO, a sad day for Freenode and all that they used to represent, but an opportunity to create a new haven for hackers.

I'm perfectly happy on Freenode, and our IRC channels are quite vibrant. I hope you can reach a resolution with the Freenode staff.
You could start with Mathematics: A very short introduction by Timothy Gowers. It's a quick read, and the way Gowers writes about important Mathematical topics is interesting and, for the most part, easy to understand. http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Short-Introduction-Timothy...
Surgery and Robotics
Yeah, this is total BS. It's situations like this that make me consider leaving programming and becoming a lawyer for the ACLU.
A Network Theory of Conflict Resolution
When Contracts Destroy Trust
Next time please check the front page.
But we can also turn to all of us that up-vote before making sure what we vote up is new, authentic, and material of quality.
Freenode doesn't need -- or have any responsibility to support -- Mibbit. Moreover, we've banned mibbit entirely from our channels without receiving any complaints or noticing any significant drop in channel traffic.
I second that. Plus, people often subconsciously associate higher rates with better service.
There was a discussion yesterday about the 'typical startup founder'. Newell may be closer to the 'typical' one, given that most startups are run by people with experience and money from their previous jobs.
Here in the german advertising scene the standard comission for an "successful recommendation" is about 15% no questions asked.
there's a real disconnect between the academic literature and tradebooks on using web application frameworks.

I fell into writing about it this way:

me: I want to write about securing databases from attack via the web front end

prof: go find me the most common vulnerability

me: that's sql injection

prof: that's your topic
> These two guys are doing some contracting on the side. There are no investments and no liabilities. Their worst case scenario is walking away, not talking to each other, maybe disputing a few $1000. Doing ten rounds with a lawyer (there's really no boiler contract that can cover every conflict two friends working together might encounter) easily costs that, AND then you'll still have to go to court to enforce the contract.

Well then we disagree. This contract would require about 2 hours from a good lawyer. At least when I entered in a similar partnership with a friend that's what we spent.

I'm more thorough/cautious than you. All that means is that you and I are unlikely to do business with each other:)
Do you go in the opposite direction when you shop in the other hemisphere?

Seriously, are you suggesting that part of "geekiness" is a tendency to think through and design an approach before doing anything? Or maybe that it's a skill for rationalizing any approach afterwards?
Bozeman City job requirement raises privacy concerns
I offered to sponsor servers, to help with coding, etc many many times. My emails were ignored. When I popped into #freenode to ask, they said "We assumed you wanted something in return so we ignored them".

I also offered to help with the abuse. I've asked several times for details of abuse. I haven't been able to get concrete details on what abuse happens, when, what they have to do etc. The staff are incredibly secretive - unlike other networks, they don't link servers, their staff run everything, and I believe this was one of the reasons - they want complete control over everything including web clients.

Out of 500 or so people @peak times, I think the abuse level was really low. Also it's easily solved with a WEBIRC setup which we have with a large number of IRC networks (Which we never hear from, because abuse is handled by WEBIRC and their own systems as with direct connections).

I hope freenode will decide to reconsider, but they clearly want people to use their own web client, rather than mibbit. It would have been nice to at least give people some notice rather than just shut off access.
"'Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,' the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords."
Right, because insinuating anyone who uses mibbit is incapable of installing an IRC client is not a sniping remark?

I have no problem with basic aptitude tests. I have no problem with restricting a community to the technically literate. What I have a problem with is the assumption that anyone choosing to use X over Y is some kind of moron.
Ask HN: How do I teach myself to be a salesman?
So we hackers are always saying that we can learn business, but the business guys can't learn to hack. Now I'm suddenly in a place where I need some salesmanship skills, and I don't know the first thing.

I'm trying to recruit initial sellers for my plant marketplace, doleaf.com On the upside, there are thousands of specialty nurseries all over the country. A simple Google search turns up dozens, and most of them don't sell online (which is what we provide!)

I've sent a few cold-emails trying to generate some interest, but it feels very spammy, and hasn't generated any response.

What should I do? Are there some books I should read? My guess is that I just need some basic instruction and a little practice, but I don't know where to start. Recommendations on reading material, blogs to follow, etc.?
You were criticizing the adding up of the whatToShow filter parameters like:

NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT + NodeFilter.SHOW_COMMENT + NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT

Can you suggest a better way than this?
a contractual obligation is exactly the type of hassle I believe they are trying to avoid.

freenode deals with a lot of closed source and for profit projects, the idea that the ban is purely for those reasons is "very" far fetched.

the freenode admins have said multiple times that they will be happy to reverse their position as they have in the past

the entire problem seems to be down to a lack of communication between mibbit and freenode, and both sides have blamed each other for the miscommunication.

after witnessing axods attempt at communicating, and seeing freenode communicating find with a large number of other partners, Its fairly reasonable to assume axod needs to the communication issues sorted at his end.
FTA:

"You know, I can understand that concern. One thing that's important for folks to understand about what we look for is none of the things that the federal constitution lists as protected things, we don't use those. We're not putting out this broad brush stroke of trying to find out all kinds of information about the person that we're not able to use or shouldn't use in the hiring process," Sullivan said.
Great ideas. Somebody get that CEO a megaphone.
Mountain Dew Commercial Features Girl Gamer Fight
There are different schools of thought on this. The author advocates implementing some flexibility in a formation contract, including setting aside some equity for whoever emerges as the dominant contributor or some future reallocation. On the other hand, there's the view that any up-front contract should be iron clad and detailed so that the parties expectations are aligned, and any ambiguity just leaves open a possible dispute. I'd imagine a lawyer would subscribe to the latter view.

Thought this crowd would be interested since this comes up in the context of an equity split among founders almost always. Interested in hearing opinions.