skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At Mixrank we've started doing mini-AI competitions. We'll have to try your game!

We've been doing Connect Four the last two weeks: https://github.com/smilliken/aigames/tree/master/connect-fou.... The runner is in Python, but you can write a bot in any language you like.

PS: if anyone wants to join, we're in San Francisco by the ballpark, and compete on Wednesday evenings.
Also, many employers will balk at employing people with criminal records. Many are legally prohibited from hiring them too (banks, etc).

Want to help? Make a company, hire people at the bottom who need help getting their sons and daughters out of shelters and to school on time at 7:48 am with a full breakfast in them after a good night's sleep. Keep your company going by providing excellent and valuable service to your customers. And when your janitor invites you to his daughter's middle school graduation, put on your best suit and go. Just because a man has darker skin, tattoos, a shaved head, doesn't want to talk about his past, and clams up with a frown and a thousand-yard stare when discussions get heated at the office, doesn't mean he's spending his pay on drugs and hookers. He's probably thinking that his girlfriend needs him to keep his job so he can make the car payment and the rent and buy groceries so he can feed the three year old at home that's watching Curious George right now.
Ask HN: Which companies have 4-day workweeks?
Hey HN, I'm interested in companies that follow a 4-day workweek (with normal work hours--not compressed).

IIRC here are two:

- 37Signals

- Treehouse

Know of any others?
I've interviewed a couple of people who are using Square right now. They are very happy with their systems and I cannot argue with that. Square is doing awesome things; more power to them.

My position is that more choices is a good thing. If Square were good enough for everyone, then the iPhone would be good enough for everyone. But it's not. There is room in the market for choice. I'd like to make choice as simple and painless as possible.

In my original post, I talked about being inspired by Ubuntu and Linux Mint and Arduino and the like. The way they work for grabbing the zeitgeist of people is that they make it very easy to bring people into the FOSS wheelhouse, which opens the doors for them to explore into the vast choice that FOSS provides. You might buy a preconfigured Ubuntu system today, and maybe, just maybe, 6 months down the road you are compiling your own software.

I just can see someone sitting in their newly-opened microbrewpub with an RPi in their hands (it's not that big of a stretch, the same people who are interested in brewing are often interested in a variety of DIY projects) and thinking "what can I do with this?" Let's make that simple for them. Let's make a brewpub distro. Or something.
Living in NYC is an amazing experience. If you are relocating, I recommend staying in the city first, before moving into Brooklyn, Astoria or NJ for example. Williamsburg is hot right now, but don't expect to pay less to live in the good parts. I have seen others cut corners and live outside of the popular pockets and it's the equivalent of me moving to the Sunset - close but no cigar.

Commute: Within Manhattan your travel will be 5-25 minutes depending on how far you're going. Cabs are cheap when your in a hurry. If you enjoy walking, even better. Bicycles are taking over NYC, it's been an amazing transformation as of recent and if you enjoy riding, thats a bonus.

Work: I do freelance development and there is alot of business in the city, ALOT. I get calls every week for developer roles. Another great part of being in the city is the diversity across all boards. You will meet people from all over the world, working in so many different industries...it will give you an amazing perspective.

Rent: Expect to pay at least $1800 for a small studio or a room share in a nice 2 bedroom apartment. You can definitely find cheaper places in the city, but where you live in the city defines you and your lifestyle to an extent.

Areas to consider: (without knowing much about you)

East Village, West Village, Lower East Side, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, Union Square, Murray Hill, Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Midtown (East and West). Great food, convenient, always busy.

Meeting people:

There are many meetups and networking events, but your work will be your gateway to expanding your circle. If your single, NYC is a huge dating market. Get some good pics, throw it up on Tinder, Match, Howaboutwe and have fun. Also there are great places like 3rd Ward in Williamsburg which is just a few stops away on the L Train and they have an amazing creative community. Going back to my emphasis of staying in the city, it's 100X easier to meet people while living there than commuting into it.
Wait, why does my insurance company care about my HOA rules?

You've clearly got a bit of a nanny mentality about this. Maybe that's unfair.. But you have strongly criticized this and posted rebuttals to anybody disagreeing with you. All on the grounds of "this is probably bad, don't make your HOA [or govt, or insurance company]" mad at you.

I have to confess I feel a bit of... revulsion... in your advocacy of docile compliance. It must be the rebellious streak in me. But it's something I bet others here can relate to. I'm more of a "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" type of guy.

All that said, I won't be rushing out to buy a condo to rent on AirBnB. But I also would never sit on HN and try to argue against it because of HOA.

Though I also think you're totally within your rights, to be clear.
Perhaps I'm not being clear. Groovy and Rhino emit bytecode that translates to Java at compile-time. Their runtime code generation facilities crash on Dalvik because Dalvik does not support runtime-generated, JVM-compatible code. Dalvik does not support legal J2SE operations because it doesn't support Java bytecode as per the JVM spec.

I am not saying that Dalvik is bad. I'm saying it isn't a JVM; I was using this as just one example of its not-JVMness.
As promised, here's my working clone in meteor: https://travel.meteor.com
Why does fat have more electrical resistance than muscle?
And the barge should... toss down a fishing line to it?
I can tell you're frustrated with this Project, but I still think you deserve some congrats. Good job! It's not easy to build something and get that much traffic. I think the frustration stems from the platform it's built on, and how hard it is to monetize on that platform. Since the content is basically given away for free, advertising is your only option. And since they advertise as well... it’s tough to pull it off. I can think of three basic options here (and I'm sure there are many many more):

1. Keep it running, keep it free, and use it as a "Bullet Point" project to increase your perceived value on other projects that have the potential to monetize more successfully

2. Go the complete opposite and just start charging money for it, and see what happens. Of course you risk losing traffic and/or the whole thing imploding, but you never know until you try

3. Just scrap it and re-use the Tech to build a different product that is focused on a niche market that you believe can monetize better. Perhaps News related businesses that would find value in an easy /easier way to find Images for the stories they write
Its a cheesy video but if you can force yourself to watch to the end there might be a couple of points to make your time worthwhile.

6 Ways To Make Money Online
http://www.shoemoney.com/6-ways-to-make-money-online

(Yes I know its Shoemoney)
Why do you prioritize giving work to Americans over those in developing nations?
If he made it sooner, many people won't get hurt when try programming. anyway, best learning material for everyone!
I'm not at a computer to look at the code right now, but I have that working with chart.js and off the top of my head I don't remember having to tweak code. Feel free to look at the page / code: https://pl.ant.sr/

(Edit: Just re-read your comment. So, yes, its likely that they did add it.)
That's incredible, congratulations!

Care to share what you're working on? Or at least what process led you to the new project?
You don't have to spend the extra money on things that will blow out the schedule.

Anyone aware of the realities of software development enough to think about capping the max should be aware of the mythical man month and cognizant enough to realize they can just bank that extra money as a rainy day fund for when the product almost certainly goes over schedule even with the original plan (Hofstadter's law).
Berlin Startups: SoundCloud Blazes Lonely Trail to Top
Do you have any advice for getting a (good) place without knowing anyone there, and without giving an arm to a broker?

I tracked Craigslist ads daily for all of those neighborhoods a couple of years ago when I was considering relocating, and it looked _brutal_.

(I suppose an employer or potential co-workers might be able to help, but it just seems so competitive I'm not sure what can really be done.)
Would love to know what's the source of the location name autocomplete, this is not the first page where my city name of "Taipei" gets corrected to merely "Da-an District, Taiwan" - no city name, just one of the many districts of the city. If I wasn't living here, it would be mighty confusing.
CircleCI (https://circleci.com/jobs) - SF or REMOTE fulltime (in the US)
At CircleCI we're building Heroku for Continuous Integration and Deployment. We have traction and revenue (and funding!). Our customers love us, because we move quickly and provide amazing support. All employees talk to customers and are on support rotation.
We're still a small team, so you'll have a large impact on company culture. We're highly influenced by Valve's Employee handbook. SF-local employees have catered lunch every day.

- Frontend Engineer: You'll work on improving the page responsiveness, adding new features and improving the out-of-the-box experience and UX. Our frontend is a single page javascript app, using HamlCoffee, Less and Knockout. We have a lot of interesting design and data-visualization problems that need to be solved, as well as A/B testing, landing page creation and funnel optimization.

- Backend Engineer: Our entire server is written in Clojure. We're looking for candidates with experience in any "weird" language: Clojure, Scheme, CL, Haskell, OCaml, Erlang, Brainfuck, C. Experience w/ Linux & DevOps is also a plus.
JD Power Explains Why Samsung Beat Apple In Its Latest Tablet Study
That's right. "High speed" is 3G and "4g"
Wistia.com
Khitchdee (http://www.khitchdee.com) Allahabad, India.

We're building Inck, an app to help first time programmer students think. Inck teaches them a new approach to thinking and communication that incorporates rhythm into the process. Through the same interface, Inck also provides mechanisms for them to engage in Generative Programming to build one of a menu of useful programs. Students choose what to build based on their own requirements for a software agent to help make their PCs more productive. The first prototype of Inck will be released on Jan 14th, 2014 to students at a local high tech institute.

Inck is written in C for the (old) Windows platform. Your work, to start with, will mostly involve programming. Over time, as you internalize the product idea, you will become more involved with product definition and the productization process (higher level stuff).

We pay you a market rate salary and upon successful completion of a six month probation process, we give you 1% equity in the company. We work a 36 hour, six hours a day, six day work week. Our work environment is intense and challenges you to grow. Allahabad is a laid back town with an academic tilt. This position provides you an opportunity to learn a lot of good engineering while at the same time share in the success of a new company. You will be working with a founder, CEO with over 20 years of experience in the industry and excellent academic and professional credentials.

To apply, go through our website, then send me an email at rohit@khitchdee.com. We're very selective in our hiring and haven't hired anyone yet.
> As for the reason why non-C++ programmers don't like C++, perhaps you are in a better position to say.

As an ex-C++ programmer who did in fact do a large-scale web application deployment in C++ back in '99, and who used to do template meta-programming for fun:

It's too verbose.

C++11 does go some way to alleviate that, and might slow the number of people leaving C++, but it's unlikely to bring many people back, as the performance difference matters less and less, and the performance of language implementations for the languages people have jumped ship for (Ruby in my case) keeps getting better, narrowing the gap (and we already decided we could tolerate the much larger performance gaps of the past when we left in the first place).
I think we agree on this point.

My post was in response to the parent, which suggested that any property "solely" used for short-term leases should be regulated.

I was not suggesting that was a useful or appropriate test. Leaving aside the question of whether regulation is necessary, a "dominant purpose" or even "substantial purpose" test would lead to less absurdity.
Can you describe your setup when doing this? It's also annoying and irritating having half the comment ignored. Don't care about the testimony unless it's backed up.
San Francisco, CA and Cambridge, MA - Locu is hiring Frontend Engineers, Backend Engineers and Visual Designers for Full-time; H-1B is OK

Locu helps local businesses be found. With a patent-pending technology platform that digitizes and structures real-world data, Locu is building tools that help businesses connect with customers. Locu’s content platform is the easiest way for merchants to keep business information, menus and price lists updated and distributed across the Web, and Locu’s API gives developers access to the world's largest real-time, structured repository of local business data. Over 30,000 local merchants are using Locu to promote their businesses online. Locu was founded by MIT graduates and is backed by investors including General Catalyst Capital Partners, Lowercase, Lightbank, and SV Angel.
Our beautiful offices are in downtown San Francisco, CA (Union Square) and Cambridge, MA (Kendall Square). Check out photos and learn more about our other perks: http://locu.com/about/jobs/

Frontend Engineering

If you are passionate about building products that will touch millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of consumers through the applications powered by our local data APIs, Locu is the right place for you. [JQuery, Less, Django, etc.]

Backend engineering

We started Locu out of MIT to solve real-world problems by leveraging the latest research in computer science. If you are looking to solve some of the most challenging problems in machine learning, NLP and human computation, you'll feel right at home. [Python, Django, Node.js, Postgres, Redis, AWS, etc.]

Design

We're looking for visual designers who are excited to redefine what the future of local business data looks like across web and print, and to create tools that put modern web technology in the hands of merchants.

Interested? Drop us a line at jobs@locu.com. Please include "[HN]" in the subject of your letter. Learn more about us (now with photos!) at: http://locu.com/about/jobs/
State involvement is probably preferable to angry neighbors taking matters into their own hands.
I find that sadly, more and more HTML email does not include a plain text part. I realize I'm in in a small minority of people who don't use a graphical email app. But if you care about that at all (and you probably should so that you also make life easier for your visually impaired clients who use screen readers) you should include plain text. Otherwise I simply won't read the email that you spent so much time and effort painstakingly formatting.
Let's be Productive
Shocking Startup Secret You Won't Believe
The guy could certainly have just ignored the phone call, just because the company contacts you does not mean you need to help them (even if they are being nice).

While I think that a bug bounty is the RIGHT thing to do in this scenario, the security guy likely couldn't just decide on his own to give out thousands of dollars, so something is better than nothing, and if the expectation was nothing, then well, sounds decent to me.
"The company has been experimenting with small bits of thorium, creating a laser that heats water, produces steam and powers a mini turbine." This is the only line in the article about how it works and it doesn't make any sense. It certainly isn't a nuclear reactor. If they meant that thorium is used in the laser, what powers the laser?

The company website (http://www.laserpowersystems.com) certainly doesn't add any credibility.
You can also use it to run things like a daemon. For instance rtorrent does not have a daemon mode because you can use screen or tmux to "hide" it by running it in tmux and then detaching. You can then re-attach to the processes to interact with them later. You could probably do this with tags in a tiling WM. I like to do this with rtorrent and pianobar (command line www.pandora.com client).
This comment thread in particular may provide more information about your challenge in finding monetary success than your entire wonderfully written blog post.

Here, in quick succession you first suggest that you have very little ability to change the UI because you are a bad developer, then quickly follow that up with a confession to somebody who wants to give you money, that you've made it annoying to contact you because you don't want spam.

I'm trying to be helpful here, not trying to be an a$$, and I understand that you're frustrated with your current situation with Twicsy and your generally long-challenging experiences making a mint with your startups.

However, take a deep breath and realise you've done 3 times what so many have failed to do even once. You've launched 3 products which have seen some manner of success, two raised rounds of financing, and the other has a good volume of traffic. Give yourself a bit of credit on the positive.

Now the negative.

It is said time and time again, execution is everything. You should know that. I just took a look at Twicsy, and honestly the design isn't that bad, but it could use a touch up. If you aren't good at 'web development', get somebody to help you. I'm sure you can find a local developer who would like to have twicsy on their portfolio, or spend a few bucks and get it done.

Secondly, make it easy for people to advertise on the site. If you are going through an ad network, you're not doing the work anyway or put up a contact form on the site, or even put your e-mail in your HN profile. You want to be a success, ABC/S/whatever. You're missing opportunities where people want to give you money, and if you're missing those opportunities, I assume you're also missing opportunities to sell.

The 'build it and the money will come rolling in' days are long gone. Nobody is an overnight success, particularly those that make it look easiest. If you want success, you'll have to work for it. Or else, you'll have to settle for telling everybody about your 'almost successes'.

As I said, I hope this isn't coming across poorly, as I'm truly trying to help you, this thread just made me make a bunch of assumptions about you, and if I'm right, hopefully it will help you or somebody else.

You've struck a nerve with me here, which is why my writing may have a tinge of hostility, but maybe a small crack of the whip will wake you up to your current opportunities and how you can seize them.
All the best.
One of the more interesting things I read in Derek Sivers' book was about the mob. A cab driver he was chatting with indicated that the mob system was easier to work with than the government that replaced it when the city legitimized. You paid people for nothing more than keeping them off your back, sure, but you had someone to turn to if you got leaned on by someone else, in a town filled with assholes willing to break your arm on a pretext.

The mob had no incentive to shut commerce down, only to extract a rent. It was pretty straightforward, you set up shop in a certain part of town, and you knew the mob controlling that area would be around to "welcome" you. Paying them off is a cost of doing business. They have to be reasonable because if you get shut down, they won't get paid.

Compare that to the environment we have here. Trolls have no interest in keeping you around, and there's no way to work them into a business plan. The only thing you can do is set up shop and pray.

Personally, I'd rather deal with the mob.
They can disclose the source (without a license to distribute it). That'll go a long way in satisfying the FOSS audience, even if not perfect.
25 years, no way!

The SUN workstation-wielding guy in the lab next door to me got hit by this, though we were unscathed. Periodically you could hear him yelling through the wall.

Amusingly (in hindsight), I had recently cleaned up a bunch of virus-choked PCs in some student labs and because of this fell under departmental suspicion (very briefly) of having something to do with these new problems. From then on I left such thankless scut work to someone else.

Another interesting -though brief- account appears in the epilogue of Cliff Stoll's "Cuckoo's Egg" (itself a classic tale from the early Internet days).
Why would you need funding? Your product seems "finished" and you have a ton of users. You just need to monetize better than crappy ads
I agree with this perspective. Every idea can't be curing cancer, and many innovative ideas are stumbled on while playing with something else - like Feynman discovering quantum electrodynamics because he was curious about why spinning plates wobble. You need to follow your instincts.

At a minimum, you're providing a service to thousands of people and sheparding a product through its lifecycle. I don't know if working on Twicsy will have any real influence on your future work, but following its story seems more valuable than dropping it to "pivot" off in some random trajectory.
It’s The People You May Know, Stupid
Check out git-extras from TJ Holowaychuk. It's git-summary function is excellent for finding solid contributors that are not the maintainer on open-source projects:

https://github.com/visionmedia/git-extras
Or perhaps, earlier still, when Apple revealed their intention to roll out a platform over which they had complete gatekeeper control over any third party software installation?