skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, that's right. In the TechCrunch thread about this, "Valentin" noticed that this is documented in their FAQ as well. The reason given is that the item being sold off may not be available in one of the countries. I (@dmolnar) gave an example where the US bidders win an iPhone 3GS, while the UK bidders win a 3G. Quite different propositions!

Pierre Carion then pointed out that as far as he can tell, the API doesn't even count the type of currency. So even though it's not remotely fair, a 100 USD bid will beat a 99 EUR bid just because it's the most recent bid.

See the comments here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/26/unique-auction-site-swo...
No surface integrals!? (see eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergence_theorem, the one with the circle showing integral over the boundary surface, there's a triple version of that too).
Freemium did not work for Phanfare
So, I have a vague feeling that "sweetening the deal" when making a change like this can seem like apologizing, and apologizing means you've done something wrong. Charging money for a service isn't wrong, so why apologize? Even if not, I don't think you can win with the folks who get really indignant about paying for a product.

That said, I think it's wise if you think you're going to eventually need to raise your prices (and going from free to not free is a price increase) to have your initial pricing labeled as an "introductory offer". Our prices were discounted 50% for the first two years of our operation...partly because we weren't "finished" with the product yet, and partly because we wanted to learn more about the market and what people wanted to pay. We're doing the same with our new product just launched a couple of weeks ago.

When you then increase prices later, nobody can feel misled or like they're paying too much now; they just feel like they got a good deal while it was available. This probably does have some impact on sales with folks who think ahead to whether they'd want to pay the higher price later...but I don't think it would introduce much skew.
These kind of bags are very convenient:

http://www.gazelle.nl/assets/Producten/Accessoires/Fietstass...

Riding a bike instead of your car has advantages even if you're not poor: it's good for your health & good for the environment. But if it's dangerous because of the city I can see why you don't use a bike...
Share with HN: Bookmarklet to graph HN polls
I made a bookmarklet that makes a simple bar graph for HN polls. Nothing fancy, but it makes interpreting polls here way easier for me.

Tested in Safari and Firefox.

Make a new bookmark with the following location:

javascript:(function(cells){var%20totalPoints=0;for(var%20i=0;i<cells.length;i++){if(cells[i].className==%22default%22){totalPoints+=parseInt(cells[i].textContent.match(/^[0-9]+/),10);}}for(i=0;i<cells.length;i++){if(cells[i].className==%22default%22){var%20optionPoints=parseInt(cells[i].textContent.match(/^[0-9]+/),10);cells[i].setAttribute(%22style%22,%22padding-left:.25em;border-left:%22+(optionPoints/totalPoints)*500+%22px%20solid%20#dcb;%22);}}})(document.getElementsByTagName(%22table%22)[3].getElementsByTagName(%22td%22));
We also have this;

> But [MS .Net is] not revolutionary as Java was (by introducing the virtual machine, garbage collection and unified error reporting into the programming mainstream).

which is odd, because Visual Basic had been running a bytecode interpreter with garbage collection since 1991.
After attempting to get a Hackintosh up and running a couple of times (and failing), I would advice anyone who attempts this and intends to remain somewhat honest, to stall the purchase of a proper version OS X until you actually have a successful, working install.

In my opinion getting the install to work can easily be considered more complex than getting an equivalent box running Linux properly was back in the days.
Lots of 'probablys.' You should probably do more reading and less writing.

There are elevated lead levels around "civilization" due to human activity. (Lead paint, tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline, pesticides, etc). Food crops vary in the degree to which they accumulate lead, but they do. In general, the skin of roots and tubers have the higest levels and fruits the lowest. Keep in mind though, stems and leaves can have higher levels, particularly since various members of the mustard family (which includes broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, etc) are deliberately used for phytoremediation of lead.
You can still buy them today. Pricing from roughly $20,000 and up for some pretty impressive machinery. Or build your own for a fraction of that...
TwitPic Launches Free Advertising for Partners
Thanks. I'm reading the Kestrel source and it looks very interesting.
A hidden benefit to consumers might be seen with complicated systems. If you were told that a complicated system was $10,000 base price, you might be upset that the typical price for the complete system is $30,000. You were expecting to pay one amount, but after realizing what your needs are you have a totally different price. The selling company can't expect to know what you need until you meet with them, which is why you have to meet before seeing a price.
patents now expire in 20 years, so http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6285999 expires in 2018. agreed, however, that the world will be so vastly different by then that this won't be as significant as, say, the rsa or lzw expirations (unless google's lawyers get their teeth into anything).
Various members of the mustard family are used for phytorememdiation. People eat many members of the mustard family.

You realize, right, that you are reasoning from a very shaky foundation and using that reasoning to make advice about health and safety. My advice: Don't do that any more.
Wow, this is awesome! Tested it on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=692672 if you need a quick test subject. Worked really well. (+1 for fitting in with the color scheme.)
And don't forget how its spurred other perversions, like the corn ethanol industy.
To me, their "savings" window math implies that the 122 is the number of bids the winner placed; the winner only.
YouTube link, if you don't want to download the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCXzcPNsqGA
I'm trying to develop my own mobile device. Going to be fun. Intel Atom 1.6ghz, Ubuntu-based, hopefully some kind of 5" capitative touch, software written in Qt/C++ (for lack of a better framework/X drawing option). http://avecora.com

Also working with hnuser://jasonlbaptiste on Ramamia (beta), which lets you keep in touch with your family. http://ramamia.com -- as well as status updates for sports games at http://tickrtalk.com (we were launched, but the data source pulled the plug on our API access...)

...and Classleaf, http://classleaf.com - bringing education a bit more into the 21st century by helping teachers create class websites, with homework, test and due dates, events, file attachments, email lists, pages, and more, and class tracking for students. (You can tell I say that pitch too much.) Mostly managing sales staff (they're working on commission, $1000 per sale) to make sales to high schools primarily.

Lastly, working to study/improve SAT/ACT/SATIIs/my abysmal GPA so I can actually get into a decent college come this fall... sigh. Anyway, overview's mostly at http://markbao.com.
Nice work. Should be the default IMO.
Start-up, while undergrad at Georgia Tech. Fun times :)
Rule 17: Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!
We Choose The Moon - Apollo 11 mission recreated in realtime
I have pictures of my nieces and nephews, and friends babies in my wallet- why would there be any embarrassment or difficult questions as a result of this?
Startup - http://www.learnitfirst.com is a video training company I started in 2004 as a side business cum full-time business.

You, OP?
I'm really disappointed in how little you're doing with your time ;-)
webpagetest actually renders the document and all referenced items. It's more similar to what firebug/yslow will tell you, and very useful for designing a site to load quickly.
So the key question, to me, is how do you define success? Is it $10m in the bank or is it working full-time on something you love that you wrote and built?
Why would they give 1gb away for free? They could give away a few hundred meg or whatever and not kill their margins.

They should have thought this through before going ahead with it.
On my hosting start-up: http://webbynode.com. I am the programmer behind our Manager app. :-)

Our main difference is providing ReadyStacks for easy bootstrap of servers: watch the screencast for more info here - http://webbynode.com/railsvimeo.
screenshot for the unmotivated: http://timfreeman.org/pollgraph.png
Oh, hey, cool. I heard about Webbynode with the video that RailsEnvy did documenting the reasons to use it (which I found on Rubyflow). Can't seem to find it right now, but really liked the features. We're on Linode right now, but looking at our other options...
It's good to hear a counter-point to the freemium pressure. Freemium has its place, as the article notes properly, but it's not for everyone. It's about time people speak out :-)
I've been considering having a look at Scala as the next potential language that I'll learn.

It looks pretty nice. I'd add another point to the article - what I've seen of the community from mailing lists and such has been very positive. It seems like they're all (or mostly) very smart and welcoming.
Moral of the story: think before you act.

If you decide to go for the freemium model there are several things you should check before taking the plunge:

- are other companies offering what you intend to offer behind the pay-wall for free or not ?
- are you going to be able to monetize your free users in some other way ?
- what is your expected conversion rate from free users to paying users and can your business survive on that rate (+ a healthy margin for safety) ?
- what is the cost of supporting a free user in case the monetization of a free user is less than the income on that user ?

A fairly simple spreadsheet will give you the answers, if you can't determine the conversion rate then do a survey with a pledge. That way you get a ballpark figure, reality should be within 50% of that figure, so to be on the safe side discount it by a factor of 2.

Last but definitely not least, if your 'premium' package offers nothing of value to your user (because for instance multiple free accounts give the equivalent of a paid account) then don't bother trying.
Well, I agree that there's nothing morally wrong about it in the abstract (but I think gambling is quite all right too, if the rules are on the up and up), but we don't know that they're not cheating.

They could have people acting as shills, "winning" the items and ensuring that no goods ever have to actually be delivered, or even exist at all. This would be impossible for a casual user to detect.
Talent is going to be a much bigger variable than hours. When you work 80, 90, 100 hours a week you're hitting diminishing returns in a big way. Also, even at 40 hours a week, very few people achieve maximum efficiency every second from 9 to 5.

I think rather than worrying about hours, entrepreneurs and other people who want to be highly effective should worry about how to improve their skills and focus when they are at work. There's a way in which a 100-hour work week can become a scapegoat... if you fail to produce at least no one can say you weren't committed. However, if you are truly only interested in results, you need to step back and ask yourself objectively are you making the best choices or are you just trying to cover your ass? I realize that outside perceptions actually do matter a tremendous amount to business success, but the bottom line is that the best person to build something is not simply the person who is willing to work the longest hours.
Want To Give Pinboard A Try? You’ll Have To Pay $2.84
I'm getting ready to switch from consulting to bootstrapping for a while, so I'm looking for new startup ideas and partners.
Working fulltime for http://transpond.com (web-based widget generator/builder)

In my spare time I'm making tools for web developers at http://www.binaryage.com.

Also look at http://hashpage.com (mashup builder on top bespin, github and google app engine) code: "michael" -> click to generate homepage -> woid -> "edit"

Anyone uses XRefresh, FirePython, FireQuery, FireRainbow, Visor? Gimme feedback! :-)
First, not having DTD is not the same as not being able to validate: there is a validator for HTML5, validator.nu.
You can also use XML serialization of HTML5 and XML tools to make sure your document is valid XML.

Second, having means to validate markup does not mean that authors will care and do that: what portion of document having doctype with dtd slapped on top are actually valid?
Good markup is not produced by tools, but by those who care.
the real trick with freemium is drawing the line between free and paid. as you start to offer less and less in the free version, it starts to approach a free trial. as you start to offer more and more, it starts to approach a fully free service. everybody attempting freemium needs to carefully consider where to draw the line.
Yeah, the commute isn't bad unless some idiot wipes out at the summit on 17 :)

I would have to second your recommendation of Santa Cruz if surfing is a priority. Unlike Pacifica or Half Moon Bay there is actually a "there" there when you compare SC to the other two locations. There is even a bit of local tech so the possibility of not needing to commute exists. In my previous startup I had three employees who commuted from SC to Mountain View and all of us were pleased with the arrangement. One other advantage of SC is that if your wife does not work she is less likely to go insane from boredom in SC.
Thanks for your comments! You're most welcomed to give us a try. Is this the video you mentioned:

http://www.webbynode.com/screencasts/webbynode-sixreasons.mo...

?
This reminds me of C.P.Snow's infamous "The Two Cultures" essay:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
Starting up my second start-up, in the mobile space. Doing customer discovery right now, so it's a bit early to talk about it, but I have high hopes (and no, it's not making iPhone apps). There are a lot of opportunities in mobile if you don't focus on the app store.

Other than that, doing iPhone and (soon) Android consulting to pay the bills.
Yeah, that'd be it! Nice promo.
It's not just short words that count; simple words count too.

A 5-word sentence with words that nobody knows, communicates nothing (or at least wastes time, as the dictionary is consulted).

The programming equivalent of this is to have a very good reason (and compactness isn't one) for using an advanced language feature. If nobody knows what the hell it does, and it isn't doing anything all that complicated, then you've wasted everyone's time.

This is an interesting statement:

"Code is not written to be read by Everyman: it needs an audience, and will be better off for having one in mind."

Well, yes it is written for the everyman. Organizations will have more average programmers than good ones, and if you care at all about maintainability, you will choose the path that is clearest (even if you are an expert).

Even if you can prove that a fancy solution is worthwhile -- and sometimes it may be, for speed/etc. -- you're still generally making debugging more difficult by hiding everything away, so it's a trade-off at best.

Take the article's for-loop example. The for_each() function is very hard to debug, because the only logical breakpoint is inside the code that iterates. And as a reusable object, that code could be run in 1000 other places besides the point of interest; if you needed to insert a logging instance for just one case, you couldn't do it without affecting the 1000 other cases. With a regular for-loop, there's an easy place to insert code for debugging just that loop.
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/8223/picture5vdg.png
She is an amazing woman: My wife knows me well enough to know that entrepreneurship is part of who I am, and that I'm miserable without it. I tried to give it up - we moved to the beach and I focused on surfing. We moved to the country and I focused on farming. Both times I got extremely bored and wound up working on a startup.

Giving up who I am is not a good basis of a marriage. Thats why I talk about changing things so that they are sustainable.
Akka Actor Kernel
GM script to download all your tweets. Own them, back them up, search them...
Any tips on finding "opportunities in mobile if you don't focus on the app store."?

Also how does one get into iPhone consulting. Do you still get paid if your client's app gets rejected?
Is Free The Future Of Enterprise Software?  Yes And No.
Feel free to shoot some ideas by me. I'm looking for ideas/partners too.
Does Twitter even make money? Buying them would end up just like youtube.
Just switched my personal website from Wordpress over to GitHub pages using Jekyll. So far, so good.
I've tried this. Its not who I am.
> Second, people are going to clone this business model.

I was pondering variations on Swoopo, and think I went and made it even worse: I would cross it with an MMORPG.
working full-time on http://www.CrowdMind.com
And no, I don't go back and split commits.

After all, that will make it all the more fun the next time you are under a deadline, and you are wondering why that commit broke something. You have the added benefit of having to imagine what you were thinking a few months ago, in addition to debugging. Fun!

In other news, writing tests is a waste of time when you are under a deadline. It mostly works in the browser!
I don't think PageRank is what set Google apart. It was multi-word tokens.
I do this too, although it's not a bad idea (from a history-preserving standpoint) to filter-branch and kill that off from time to time.

(Cue the "omg, it can break stuff!" comments in 3... 2... 1...)
I've actually lived at the beach and surfed before - and as long as there were waves, I've found the time. Whats more - I have ZERO interest in working 80 hour weeks. Its just what I have to do right now to get anything done with my startup. Its not a normal thing for me, its terrible. I think I'm more likely to have a single job in the valley because they fund early stage startups there (here that mostly does not happen), and because there are all kinds of interesting jobs in big data I could get that would probably satisfy me.

I don't think California is magic - I just think it has a tech center at the beach - which suits my lifestyle :)
According to Matt Cutts, PageRank is the main way Google orders pages for crawling. If you have high page rank, you get crawled first.

mat didn't say this, but beyond that, I think the reaction of users is by far the biggest determinant in which pages get top ranked.
You don't have access to the e-mail addresses for your meetup group members so it's difficult to move to a new service. I think this analysis ignored the switching costs issues and the fact that it's still free for attendees. The second point means that there is a large group that is notified when you launch a new group and they have no incentive to switch to a new system.
It's either yay or ney, there's no someday. There's no reason why we can't use it now. The implementations are there. You just have to use a pure language, like Haskell.
I actually did a one week trip to silicon valley where I had a lot of relaxing fun. It was work, but not 'work' work - I was doing research for writing, and my wife was my camera-lady. I can't much afford another vacation right now.

You're absolutely right about the communal thing.

I don't think SF will make me work less. I think I could have an interesting single job there - that would satisfy my intellectual needs and my financial needs, either as a founder or an early employee of a startup.
If I could write something in a week, its an interesting idea in social psychology that I'd love to play around with. It's not just the money -- it's finding out what would work and what wouldn't. It'd be a fascinating exploration of the human mind.

Would people do this with real money for virtual goods? Would they trade things that would have more monetary value later for things that have less monetary value now? Could you just write an app that had people pushing a button for "free" cash? Is there a tie-in to social networks? Could you tie it into the iPod, or an addictive game? with the right combination, the whole thing could go viral.

The idea of "cheating" people doesn't interest me -- If I did something like that I'd be clear about this being for entertainment value only and I'd even support limits on the amount of play per day. It's just the rest of the man-machine interaction that's so cool here. Are the people somehow "broken" and the machine is taking advantage of them? Or is this just entertainment, no more different than going to Vegas for a weekend?
Lastly, working to study/improve SAT/ACT/SATIIs/my abysmal GPA so I can actually get into a decent college come this fall...

Enjoy having no time for your personal projects and instead having to do mindless "introduction to cutting-and-pasting java 1.1".
You choose to stay. A person may be born in an apartment, but that doesn't mean they can live there rent free for the rest of their life. And yes, you are not just free to walk into some other country and live there. But nor are you are allowed to walk onto someone else's property and live on it.
Cool. Will do.

The most interesting topic today for me along those lines had to be the auction site story

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700738
http://blog.jimmyr.com/Auction_site_Swoopo_a_scam_or_a_barga... has a list of the most money swoopo has made on some of their auctions. Bots don't help at all either, the whole system is designed to where swoopo always wins.
Bringing up a new embedded hardware design (RFID) at work (small and stable private company).
Doing my 9 to 5 at http://www.cukerdesign.com

Nights and weekends are split between developing my side-startup (a service to help makes diabetes management simpler), the occasional WoW session, and spending time with my wife and year-old daughter (not necessarily in that order).

Also planning a natural language datetime parsing service with a friend who was an old boss at another startup.
this may be true. I lost my wallet today, and a very honest man found it and returned it to me. The wallet contained a large sum of money.
Firefox 3.5 supports Ogg right in the browser. Just click the link (for those using Firefox)