skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Pull off election manipulation would take a lot of balls, a lot of secrecy, and a lot of collaboration... three things an organization as diverse as the government does not have.

There is strong evidence this has been done in the recent past on a massive scale, in the US, by the intelligence agencies and president - see Nixon's plumbers, and J Edgar Hoover, and that was before these capabilities were available. Your assumption about a conspiracy being required is completely unfounded [1]. That is not a theory, that is fact, and it is in no way tenuous, so it lends serious credibility to the idea that in the present new tools are being used in similar ways.

The other point which lends this credibility is the evidence we have seen of use of these powers for all sorts of industrial and political espionage abroad - they are doing exactly this sort of activity abroad (e.g. bugging Merkel before she was leader, Petrobras, Belgacom) - I find it highly likely they are also using these powers at home, at the very least to stymie investigations into their power. Note how obedient to the wishes of the spying agencies almost every politician is.

it wants to make sure that people in power aren't corrupt and aren't being manipulated

You seem to trust the current admin, even though they have been shown to lie repeatedly (Clapper, Obama [2]). Why do you trust that if given power they would use it in your best interests and to clean up politics, doesn't that strike you as somewhat naive given the huge compromises every politician has to make just to get elected president?

[1] http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Church_Committee
[2] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114276/obama-surveillance...
> My standard rule is that to properly satirise or ridicule something, a story must simultaneously be a good example of target being parodied as well as having a strong parody element.

The obvious counterexample that leaps to mind is Catch-22, which isn't a good war novel at all but is a brilliant antiwar satire.
I'm also off the grid, and fortunately it's sunny now so I can write this message :)

Can you please explain what kind of batteries are you using?And what are your usage patterns? For example I'm using two 12V 200A lead batteries, I'm trying to use then only on 30% discharge so that they will last longer.
The only thing you can't get in a PC is the high-bandwidth shared memory. You can probably make up for it by having tons of RAM on your PC's video card, but I still think the shared memory architecture will be the most interesting part of the current generation of consoles.
So what's the link between charging money and growth?

P/M-fit is easier to achieve when price is $0.00, but that isn't a sustainable business model.

Perhaps the ideal is achieving P/M-fit in a large market at price that moves the needle for the business (i.e. demonstrates revenue traction) but does not appear to hinder growth.
Interesting how much structure this exhibits.
Maybe you should read this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrix_Corporation
> This valuation (along with the recent surge in Facebook stock) will send a rising tide of valuations rippling down through the ecosystem until “my friend and I have a pitch deck and an idea for a web app” is worth $10 million.

The opposite has been shown to be true (and correlated with my own experience) for early stage companies. The biggest startup valuation bubbles happen when there are no public tech companies for money to be invested in (eg. the '07 startup bubble and more recently in '11).

With Facebook, LinkedIn, Pandora, and now Twitter etc. public early stage startup valuations have shrunk again.

Where it does get competitive is in the later stage rounds, but that was happening anyway as the mega-funds like DST competed with traditional VC and mezzanine funding (the business model here changed, as companies wanted to go public later).

> Snapchat and Pinterest are worth around $4 billion dollars each. Evernote and Airbnb are each worth over $2 billion. Path is worth $500 million.

Snapchat never raised on $4b, that was a rumor (and it continues to get cited as signs of a bubble even though the round never happen). The only other valuation here that would be out now is Path, and that is only because that startup has struggled. Were it a real bubble, Path would not have any problems raising a new round at $1b, fact is they are laying people off and searching for bridge loans from friends).

> “People who think the company is overvalued,” they scoff, “just don’t get the power of Twitter.”

There is nothing magic to understand, the business model is centuries old - sell services to individuals whose attention you have. Twitter currently has 250M subscribers, larger than most traditional media companies (that required printing presses, expensive TV spectrum to be purchased, entire studios like 30rock, dealing with the politics of media ownership, expensive distribution etc.) and growing quicker.

I am a twitter user, I don't watch television anymore and I don't pick up newspapers or magazines. For advertisers to reach me and people like me, they need to find me on Twitter (or others on Facebook - this is the competition).

The Twitter IPO is great for startups, for a few reasons: first, it returns money to investors who will inturn invest in the next generation of startups, it reinforces the hit parade and that the industry depends on, and it will bloom and entire new generation of angel investors who will be supporting the ecosystem (in the same way former Google employees did 10 years ago and FB employees did 2 years ago).

edit: and I think the Buffett quote argues for Twitter, i've seen that quote used before to argue against Bitcoin, but not against an actual company that is producing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and growing at almost 100% a year.
The hardest thing a person can do is to accept another person exactly the way they are.

I would say there is something to be gained from conflict. It is easy to find people that will nod and agree.
what's 6800 paying users of everpix to millions of non paying users of snapchat? snapchat has the sporadic but consistent attention of millions that has considerable value and should not be written off because it hasn't been monetized... yet
This one was really striking:
http://maximecb.github.io/Turing-Drawings/#2,10,1,8,2,0,3,3,...
Not from Spring. Spring is a solid reasonable framework. Unfortunately the modifications were enough to cause confusion, the Windows-biased support (not good support for Mac) for the dev environment, forcing people to use Eclipse, having lots of server-side solutions for stuff that is already readily available on github as a simple JS library and on and on.

I still feel that even set against Spring or GWT or any Java server-side UI framework, Node plays much nicer and really gets you to the Shift-Refresh type of programming that is perfect for app development.

We used (and use) node modules completely out of the box. We add additional modules to augment. We are really adamant not to follow the roll your own mindset. We have had numerous times that we threw away our work in lieu of a new npm module that did what we were doing as good or better than ours. Why spend time doing that when we have so much technical debt to overcome to get to the state of really innovating.
What I find scary is that we live in a nation where such scandals are capable of ending political careers. Where we even have political careers. Where we think it's okay to be worried about single politicians rather than policy in general, because eliminating a politician is capable of shuttering a policy. Where protecting someone's reputation is a necessary political factor.
While the first part covers my feelings very well about the current 'state of the nation', I'm more concerned that newly minted millionaires (not just from a recent IPO, but others too) see this as status quo as they join the Angel/VC group.

This is not the trend, and making it so is very dangerous.

Silicon Valley has a great opportunity to become an integral part of the resuscitation of the US economy. This is a bad time for a bubble burst.

If the bubble is about to burst, smart money will start making safe bets.
I think I agree, but the existing scale does have one redeeming property which is that it makes very clear which countries have the most and which have the lest depression. Both the red and the blue stand out against the middling regions, which would not be the case if white was the bottom of the scale.
You do realize that many of the people who object to IP laws don't object because they want to build consumer services without having to pay for content, but because they want to produce hardware and software without having to cripple them, right?

This is not "just another market with a a wide variety of interested parties." This is people telling me what I am legally allowed to do in my own home. This is passing laws saying that you can't produce an innovative new device because someone, somewhere may use it to subvert someone else's IP interests.

And the issue with the treaty process is that a treaty can be used to bypass the democratic process within a country. A proposal that would be shot down due to public outcry can instead be done in a secret treaty, only revealed once it's fait accompli, with everyone involved being able to disclaim that "I didn't want that, but that's what we had to do to get the treaty passed" and thus dodge the political ramifications.
There's nothing about Snapchat that is valuable. It's an app that could be thrown together in a few days, and a userbase that is fairly fleeting. If they incorporate invasive advertising, then people will just move to a clone of it. How else would you make money with the retched thing?
I have a similar feeling as you. The few times Pat does speak up end up being about really important issues that have impact for more than just the distro.

I still remember his public dropping of support for GNOME in 2005 to be a really big deal. I feel like it motivated a lot of people into putting in more effort to fix GNOME and got rid of a lot of problems that were plaguing the build process back then.
Fast, synchronous Objective-C wrapper around BSD sockets for iOS and OS X
You were treated fairly. Bluntly but fairly.

When you turn in your resignation, your notice is just an offer of a grace period. They are not obligated to take you up on your offer.
Hmmm... That is kind of humorous, given that Nicholas was a consultant for us early last year as we started this effort. His team was also at PayPal today (from Box). That article was influenced to some degree by me giving a talk at Box HQ on this very topic.

Also, maybe you misunderstand what we are doing. We are using nodejs for the web app layer. But it could be used for services (like Walmart Labs is doing). You really have to determine the context, the people, the technology, the amount of risk, and so on to decide.

But I do agree, no one should see nodejs as a silver bullet.
I've never used it. Is there not a network effect, like Facebook, where leaving is costly "because all my friends use Snapchat"? This switching cost is what ultimately allows social networks to place ads without people jumping ship.
Ask HN: Is it okay to copy someone else's idea?
Sometimes I see a Show HN or product launch and think "wow, I'd love to do something like that", perhaps as simple as changing the target customer.

Is it okay, for example, to take an idea aimed at developers and build something almost identical, but selling to designers? If it's pretty obvious the author of the original idea plans to expand in that direction, am I crossing the line by jumping ahead and trying to get there first?
This wouldn't have been enough to save them, but if your AWS bill is $35,000/month, it's likely much cheaper to buy (or even lease) hardware and co-locate -- even if you factor in making 1-2 new hires to support the hardware.
i'm getting tired of all these people that don't understand how the startup world works and feel like they need to write whinny blog posts about it.
I started working at GoDaddy right after the SOPA issue with some reservations. I'll try to address your points.

* Advertising

If you haven't noticed, marketing has taken a completely different approach. At our last "town hall" meeting, the CEO confirmed that there will, "be no more GoDaddy girls". Now we have Jean Claude Van Damme playing bongos.

* Founder

Bob left the company when it was purchased by investors over two years ago.

* SOPA

This was an internal fiasco. It was driven by an executive in the legal department and was not known in other parts of the company. From what I'm told, Bob didn't really understand what she was doing. No one that works here agreed with that position, included senior management.

The justification she gave was that it would allow GoDaddy to more proactively take down "bad" sites. However, we already have a department that deals with that.

* Support

I haven't called so I can't comment directly, but I will say that at least there's someone to call. Google and many others don't even provide a means to talk to a real person. 2/3 of employees at GoDaddy are call center. Internally we do recognize that support can be improved.

* Hosting

There's current a big push with new infrastructure to improve this.

* Upselling

There's actually a common feeling among employees that this behavior is... not the best. It was brought up a few months ago at a corporate "town hall" and there has been work done to improve and simplify the customer experience. Changes are happening but there's a lot of work to be done.

* Mocking developers

Are you referring to that kissing commercial? That was weird. Again, there's been a dramatic shift in advertising and push to target specific segments, including developers.

Don't forget, we're developers here too. We want to build great products and our new management team has, at least in my department, given us a lot more freedom to be more innovative. In fact, my department is getting ready to announce new products aimed at helping small businesses.

I understand where your perception comes from and management recognizes that. The company is trying hard to do things differently now.
> The government probably watches over everyone in a position of power, regardless of their political opinions. It wants to make sure that the people in power aren't corrupt and aren't being manipulated.

What is the government if not "the people in power", and if it is, how can it make sure they're not corrupt?

You're talking about The Watchers watching themselves, which just doesn't work all that well. Besides, as grey-area points out, that ship has sailed long ago. Governments (and the shadowy figures pulling the strings behind them) are all corrupt, evil sacks of shit.
I'm guessing the effort to switch to a different cloud wasn't something they wanted to invest in?
I love Verhoeven and the long running joke he played at the expense of Hollywood (mostly with Starship Troopers, Robocop, Basic Instinct and Showgirls - Flesh + Blood is great but not as sarcastic as his later american movies).

Starship Trooper, the novel, is hilarious on its own, with its hawkishness and interesting political views (it's less creepy than Ender's Game in that aspect though). But Heinlein is a much better writer than Card and Stranger in a Strange land makes up for the juvenile tripe he wrote earlier. I guess Vietnam had to happen for some people to reflect on the Rah-rah-rah kind of military Sci-Fi.

(I know there's a cult of Heinlein on HN - I've always wondered if there was an intersection with the Cult of Rand and the Cult of Card)

Edit: as a thought experiment, it would be interesting (as in "depressing") to imagine the exact opposite: an adaptation of Old Man's War by the current Hollywood industry.
People said pretty much the exact same thing about Facebook.

Look how that turned out.
Yes it is fun to hate on VCs as there is a lot wrong with the model, but this article is misguided. If you want to run a business growing linearly which makes a profit, don't take VC. There is nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't fit their model.

But if you take VC, go in knowing how they measure success. And it's based on mega-wins - not on profitable, dividend-paying companies.

Everpix might have been a great co. They just weren't a great VC- backable biz.
I'm not trying to counter your argument because you're totally right, but Arch pretty much exactly matches Slackware on points 1, 3 and 4.
Now in Europe, there are solar batteries for less than 1Eu/Watt, on E-Bay for less than $1.6/Watt, you can buy for these money more than 60kWatt of solar panels, but with bulk prices you could buy even more, and all this energy will be available during peak hours during day, to power condition systems.
Snapchat also hasn't proven it can generate a single real-world dollar from end users or advertisers.

They could implement advertising, fuck the entire service up, and all the teens jump ship to the next app that allows you to easily import all your contacts.

There's no "lock in" with social networks like Snapchat. Want proof? Friendster, Myspace, etc.

The main theme I was trying to get across is that it's more realistic to build a profitable business, instead of throwing efforts towards eyeballs, vc-cash, and a lottery ticket chance of cashing out.
Hahaha, that's a good one. Lets just upload our votes to the net. Then we can outsource our voting machines to Diebold and neglect any sort of actual engineering for hardware tamper resistance. At this point, I'm wondering who hasn't cheated voters yet.

What a fucking stupid article.
This is ridiculously untrue. The value of AirBNB isn't the code and server time. The value of AirBNB is the marketplace. Building a marketplace is a long, hard slog, and a large economic moat for any business, online or offline.
CIL is a public company in the ran-by-a-government sense, so it's a little different. BTU is the largest private sector coal company.
Possibly, but the ease of moving between networks with a common hub (Facebook integration, probably) seems to make the user base fairly fluid.
Yeah, I don't understand it at all. I've only been involved with startups since 1999, and run one myself.

I'm a huge fraud. You've exposed me!
I do like how some distributions ship with an alias of rm to 'rm -i'. But, I prefer having the raw power of rm available at all times, because it led to a habit of checking everything into git, backing up critical files, and always thinking twice before I type -rf or hit Enter.
Political careers don't end. People just stop being "politicians" and start being "consultants" or "board members".
> Let's fix this before it causes a scandal even bigger than Watergate—or permits behavior more scandalous than Watergate that is never uncovered, rectified or punished.

That's the thing. It can not be "fixed", it will not (although our representatives will offer all kinds of PR actions/"legislations" to try to calm us down and "accept it"). This kind of power is already strong enough to defend itself. Rather, it's going to become stronger (also because it is being attacked). It will take some sort of serious revolution for this sort of cancer to be undone. And for that to happen, we're going to have to feel some serious pain, first. That's our nature.
> 1 - PAY OUT LOWER SALARIES

No self-respecting engineer should or would take $50/60k a year in the Bay Area (heck, most of the country). It's fine for founders to pay themselves that (and, indeed, they probably should) but asking employees to take that tiny salary for your dream is never going to fly.
The rumor internally is that she helped write the law and was trying to use it as a way to gain political points for a potential future political career.
Too fat to fly: French family stranded in US
Hi ibstudios,

I understand what you said. I love when people disagree with me because I always learn from them. However, what happen with this employee is completely different.

For example, the person was 30 mins so I asked this person to be on-time. This person then said "why are you targeting me when so-and-so is always late as well?".

This person is only 5 weeks in but has an attitude to deflate responsibility and bringing others into the discussion.
Show HN: How much does Twitter owe me
2 points:

1. Of course an average programmer could build twitter. It would just take a very long time.

2. "Not well understood in 2006-2007" is the key. Its easy to say "I could build blah-blah-blah in a weekend" now. Because that's after the non-average programmers at companies like twitter figured out all the hard problems.
I worked a bit once with the founders of a tech company that's long since gone under. They would say things like "We're going to push ourselves harder than we've ever pushed ourselves!" or "We've got to be working faster!" I ended up impressing them by being able to keep up with their insane pace, and then declining to join their company.

I think that statements like these are things that inexperienced, starry-eyed founders say because they don't realize how stupid it makes them seem. It's the employee equivalent of saying "We have no competition!" or "When we build it, customers will come!" to investors. Anyone who's observed how things actually play out knows that it doesn't work like that, but it seems plausible to first-time founders who aren't particularly grounded in reality.
At what point is the satire become so thickly veiled that it's not actually satire?
100 Ted Talks in 5 Minutes
I think that is precisely what your interlocutor is doing.
Not making revenue is bad for startups. Once you have investment on board, the model is "grow the top line and we'll worry about the bottom line later." That is how venture capital works.

Twitter's revenue so far in 2013 is $422 million [1].

[1] http://www.itworldcanada.com/post/twitter-loses-growing-sec-...
Growing Virally (where virality coefficient and cycle are really important[1]) is different than growing with Paying Users (where Lifetime Value (LTV) and Cost to aqcuire customers (CAC) is really important[2]) that its different than growing through very high retention rates[3]. You can achieve P/M fit with any of them.

You can argue that you don't need growth. Which investors won't particularly like (in particular, VCs have LPs to give a return on investment[4]). But ultimately, if your company is not growing in any way, is any of your work actually making a difference? Are the people working on the company getting a return on investment on their time investment?

Growth also doesn't need to be about money (or eventual money, as it can be the case if you are growing virally). Think of Khan Academy (which is a Non Profit[5]): they can grow on more people using them, and on people using them more. They can also grow on impact they have on the students.

[1] http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/lessons-learnt-viral-marketi...

[2] http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/startup-killer/

[3] http://larslofgren.com/marketingbasics/the-three-engines-of-...

[4] http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
Wow, did this really get flagged off the front page?
There's one possible 'rational' explanation: the underlying economy between day and night electricity rates is mostly due to non-elasticity energy generation, which is a common thing for coal, hydro and nuclear plants. Recently, the US has got lots of gas and lots of gas plants which are pretty elastic, so that the utilities can produce the energy on demand (so, there's smaller losses for them).
He already believes he's the sole exception to everything he's observed by definition of being a solipsist.
The map vs. the territory