skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At the core of the problem is that the European market is not homogenous, so building a big company is way harder.

* There's a significant overhead in expanding across borders because of different laws, language, culture, etc. That could even mean having to hire lawyers and business developers for every country.

* The pool of potential employees is smaller. Perhaps there's someone that would be a perfect fit for your startup, but he lives in a neigbouring country, so he's less likely to apply / want the job.

* For the above reasons, the investments are way lower, because startups have lower probability of becoming big.

Do you think it's possible to fix or mitigate this problem? What can the EU do to make operating across borders as easy as possible?
I hope they try to fine Google and they pull out of India entirely.
Perhaps this comment will start a good discussion, or maybe people won't like it because I'm one of the thieves mentioned. I'm the owner of the 1brain7kAZxPagLt2HRLxqyc3VgGSa1GR address.

First, for those curious, the passphrases of the wallets taken from so far:

19JsLFDRxuTsAjapE79FgoVNdNdB2hNU5M - "alfanumerico" (0.36875 BTC)

1PQiixL1SyytXoUGFBGA5ptW9uTjsBrdhX - "emergency" (0.00085 BTC)

1CqRJYoztkWifUYadFg13MHdmECx6uEdy7 - "butterfly" (0.00025 BTC)

16ga2uqnF1NqpAuQeeg7sTCAdtDUwDyJav - "password" (0.00085 BTC)

1HZwkjkeaoZfTSaJxDw6aKkxp45agDiEzN - "" (0.474972 BTC)

1HoSFymoqteYrmmr7s3jDDqmggoxacbk37 - "hello" (0.000555 BTC)

1C7zdTfnkzmr13HfA2vNm5SJYRK6nEKyq8 - "correct horse battery staple" (0.243762 BTC)

1JwSSubhmg6iPtRjtyqhUYYH7bZg3Lfy1T - "correct horse battery staple" (0.000079 BTC)

The implementation isn't particularly exciting. I have a PostgreSQL database containing a single `address' table storing (address, privKey, passphrase). Of course, the passphrase doesn't actually need to be stored, but I kept it around to satisfy my own curiosity. I run a modified bitcoind client that checks each transaction it hears about (in CTxMemPool::accept) to see if any of the outputs are in my database. If they are, a transaction is created, signed and broadcast to send the same number of BTC (minus fees) to 1brain7kAZxPagLt2HRLxqyc3VgGSa1GR.

I just wanted to point out that, when I started this, it was not for financial gain. I simply saw it as a fun and interesting exercise about the Bitcoin protocol. I wanted to see if I was capable to "winning the race" -- trust me when I say there are loads of people out there "mining" brainwallets, and whosever transaction is included in a block first tends to win and get the Bitcoin. I never expected to gain over 1 BTC, I think I got rather lucky. My database contains 19,412,020 passphrases (mostly single passwords, actually) which all came from various wordlists I found online. I consider this to be a fairly small dictionary, based on what I've read about other people doing the same thing. I originally had plans to make the database much bigger, however I've since moved onto other projects.

I'm happy to answer questions if people have any. There's a signed version of this comment at http://pastebin.com/s29kk2bb, which you can verify (rather ironically) at http://brainwallet.org/#verify.
Why? And what kind of bullying would that be?
Your videos are so informative. Thank you!
I especially loved the series on FPTP voting.
Using this and XEP-0313 allows for syncing conversations to all clients, whether they were online or offline. I helped implement an XMPP chat feature on a large web application last year and I think that implementing these two XEPs are critical to fixing the things users complain about most: Receiving a message in one browser window, opening a new tab or window and not being able to see those old messages, just new ones.
> The ancient empires had troubles feeding their populations at times. Today, most Americans are overweight.

Problem not solved: the population still has problems being fed the right things for their health to improve.
I don't agree with you. To quickly cite another WikiPedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_f...

How many of those figures are of the US?

Not trying to start a pissing contest. Sorry.
Hindsight is always 20/20. If I were a Panasonic/Sony executive in the 80's seeing the success of Atari with no means to compete, and had some company showing up with a standard that would allow me to just do my core business (manufacture at scale), of course I would get into it.

The only problem is that the MSX standard failed to gain adoption, not with the strategy itself. If you think about it, it is no different than what Google did with Samsung/LG/HTC/any other mobile manufacturer. And these executives are not seen as stupid for adopting Android and growing the market for Google, are they?
I mean, most people around here would prefer telecos to just be dumb pipes, with the most want innovation being faster speeds. Regardless, some developments I can remember recently:

- 4G roll outs
- Essentially free SMS (in the UK at least)
- Psudo-phone leasing (http://www.vodafone.co.uk/shop/pay-monthly/vodafone-red-hot/...)
- "Home Boosters" (i.e. http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/mobile-accessories/sure-sign...)
- Stuff like WiFi on the underground (http://www.vodafone.co.uk/shop/internet/wi-fi/index.htm)

Sure, nothing that changes their core value proposition, but plenty of products that indicate a willingness to "innovate". Things like the home boosters stand out particularly to me; the vast majority of their customers will never need such a device, but for those who do, it will be invaluable.
In the signup you ask for 'email', but on dashboard login you ask for 'username'. It took me way too long (and had to watch your video) to determine these are the same thing. Please remedy. You will have happier people when they get started with your system. As it is, I've had to walk away for a bit, because if I start trying to test your system now, I'll be viewing it through a negative lens.
Why we listen to our favorite music on repeat
I don't like it.
I think it's very important to make people comfortable with the idea that they often make mistakes and their thinking is not up to par. You need to make them comfortable thinking about their thinking and being open about it. To do that you need to point a lot of mistakes and encourage them to think about the process leading to them. That's difficult for many people (because of ego mainly).
However the woman from the article doesn't achieve it in my view.
Her way is to inflict guilt:

>>Spiegel’s face tensed. “We did not bring you here so that you could spend two seconds on a move,” she said with an edge in her voice

>>“This is pathetic. If you continue to play like this, I’m going to withdraw you from the tournament,

>> I’m very, very, very upset to be seeing such a careless and thoughtless game.

I call it bullying. Why not just focus on the thought process and try to detach emotions from it, that's what the kid needs to learn in the first place:

-"How much time did you spend here?"

-"Two seconds"

-"You see, spending two seconds here led to a blunder which you suffered from for rest of the game, we need to work on your thinking habits. There is not much time for that now and as I screw up as your teacher not teaching it to you before for now I only suggest that once you decide on a move, look away from the board, try to reset your mind, sit on your hands and look at the board as freshly as possible for 15 seconds to see if you are not blundering anything".

Then you add: "Thinking habits in chess are everything, a lot of brilliant players never make progress because occasional slips and a lot of not-so-brilliant ones enjoy success because they avoid simple mistake thanks to good habits". "We are going to work on this after the tournament, there are many ways. Rest assured it's main problem chess players have, you are not alone. How well people improve in that area is going to be a difference between winning and losing so it's exciting area to focus on".
Then you discuss ego, how not willing to admit your own mistakes is major road block and how it's perfectly ok to discuss mistakes but it's not ok to be happy about them or comfortable with them! You need healthy dose of ambition you need to be disappointed... but optimistic and believing you can get better.
Feeling guilty won't lead there. Feeling like you are disappointing other people won't lead there (even if it won't be long term, it's dependence on external motivator - disappointing someone. At one time this someone won't be there). If you act like the woman from the article people will avoid you - nobody wants to feel guilty after all. They want to improve, work on their thinking, compete and have fun.

Her way shows characteristics of bad teachers and bad parent. I've encountered both and I think it's the best way to kill natural joy and passion quickly even if you get some quick results - it won't be long term and it won't be to maximum potential.
In the UK not having a grievance procedure is an automatic fail at the industrial tribunal.
I think it's in the same spirit as a 100% update SLA or a 100% satisfaction guarantee
Pretty much oct, nov, december you will see large enterprise shops who have unspent capex budget, and are afraid that if they do not spend it, the next years budget will be reduced to last years spend.. So most enterprise fiefdoms spend 99-100% of capex budget regardless of if they needed it or not.
But wait, were the moon landings ever reported on Hacker News?
> Language is culture, good luck injecting chinese expressions into english... they just don't work.

Ni hao

English has a lot of loan words and imported phrases, and new ones are always on the horizon.
The interesting thing is that there is a large historical precedent for such activity by the Indian government. In 1977, they tried to do the same thing with IBM and Coca-Cola.[1] Both of the companies pulled out of the Indian market in a move that had widespread impact upon the nascent Indian economy. It is alleged that the desire for an equity grab by the existing power complex in India was the prime motivating factor for the acts that were sprung upon those companies. These acts were designed to force them to "partner" with an Indian company. At that time the market just wasn't big enough to warrant such sacrifice - even today Ikea refuses to enter the market because of this - and they pulled out.

Although there are several parallels over here, one of the key take-aways for me from this news is that India is just not a good place for anyone (other than its citizens perhaps) to do business. The system is inherently broken and flawed to the degree that any smart startup should look elsewhere if they're considering expanding to this market.

----

[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919167,...
We called cabs and got no response at all, not even a 45 min wait - I mean sure this could be a thing that is just a major difference between the UK + US, and of course different because of the heavy loading of SxSW, but the point is I don't think it's naive of me to think that'd be possible :)

Yes the people here are really amazingly nice. That is my abiding memory of this experience!
Man, what a dick.
This post contains a lot of loaded rhetoric.

Are you implying that the sort of people who assume the degree of risk required to build a financially-successful business (specifically of the "home-run" magnitude implied by a multi-billion-dollar acquisition, IPO, etc) are merely "self-aggrandizing money-chasers?"

Companies of that scale sometimes have the ability to improve society. There's also the potential for abuse.

But if a culture's general attitude toward aspiring to construct such a business entails disdain and mistrust, it hardly seems illogical to consider the possibility that cultural pressures are turning people away from the desire to do something entrepreneurial.

And that, I think, is the point that the author was attempting to make.
New machine turns water into wine in three days
This was started during Bloomberg's term. The same provisions were there.
I think because of the 70s/80s, you now have at least one generation of execs that at least have a more basic understanding of tech, and I suspect Samsung/LG/etc have a better idea of what they're getting in to.

Additionally, these players got in early enough in to a market (smartphones) which wasn't already saturated with competing standards. Indeed, many of these players were already in the phone market, and this was a more natural evolution for them. Contrast this with the MSX trying to get in to the market with Commodore, Atari, Apple, IBM, Acorn, Sinclair and others all vying for the same (albeit growing) pool of dollars. At that point it's about as 'me too' a play as you can execute.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, but even in 1985 I could somewhat explain why computers were different than VCRs - I'd spend every waking hour working with my ZX81 then later my C128. We used a VCR a few hours a week to watch a movie - passively. Fundamentally different use cases and interaction modes.
"built ... mostly by my friend Richard Alden", wait what? The thousands of other employees don't count?
And non techies seem surprised when some of us react so aggressively to the trustifariajn bus protestors those are the kids that bullied is at school.
stupid smart phone
Unencrypted WiFi on the Underground is a typical telco poorly executed "innovation". They actually promised mobile coverage originally.
Agreed. Having a lot of money doesn't make you a special person. If you're rich and want to be celebrated, you should probably do something worthy of it rather than making money. Similarly, just because a company was sold for billions of dollars doesn't mean it has any importance - just remember the tech bubble.
Gas Taxes are increasingly having trouble paying for roads. I think roads are normally paid for by property taxes.
So far the solution has been to include safety systems that do not depend on the driver. It's worked incredibly well.

The quip about the laws in the article is misguided, none of the laws so far have been about licensing self driving cars for everyday use, they have been to clarify the legality of putting test vehicles on public roads.
Bullshit. What is crass is the perspective that Americans are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success.

Most business owners I know started their business because they saw a need for something and they wanted to deliver what was needed. Financial success is important because it allows their organization to continue functioning but it's hardly the top motivator for business owners I've spoken with.

I will concede that there are a fair percentage of businesses that are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. However, to paint an entire nation with a broad stroke is ignorance at it's worst. It would be the same as saying "The Brits have terrible teeth" or "The French smell." It may be true for a percentage of people but is no way to address a body of people.
Getting the Fastest Connection Out of a Hostname in Python
To expound:

Why not be inclusive rather than exclusive? Isn't awesome so many more people can write now that the traditional barriers to entry have been lowered?
"Under competition regulations, an entity found violating the norms could be slapped with penalty of up to 10% of its three-year annual average turnover" Surely they don't mean their annual GLOBAL turnover, but only that in India? $5B just for their activity in India looks largely overstated to me.
I think your commentary on the impact of our peer group is spot on. We tend to only work hard enough to compete against our peers.

My assumption is that for a lot of us, we were able to get through school doing hardly any study, yet still achieving top results. The bad work/productivity habits (and that "overinflated sense of your own abilities") were established during this time.

I'm still working on overcoming these bad habits now that I am among smart AND hard working people.
None of those pre-modern great powers could compete either economically or militarily with the modern United States.

Of course, they might have been relatively more powerful in relation to their contemporaries, but that hardly implies anything relevant about the modern era.
The article is bylined to the news agency Press Trust of India, so expect even less rigour and fact-checking than you would from the newspaper that's carrying the report (Times of India).

While I can't comment on what the CCI will or won't do, I do find it silly the journalists think CCI can impose a fine which is a function of Google's global revenues (over which it has no jurisdiction).

Google India's revenue was around $330M last year, 10% of which will be $33M.
I can't even complete the most basic reddit tutorial on the free account, when I try to create the seventh page (subreddit) it tells me I went over the limit. On the page is says the limit is 7 pages.
Isn't working for a single client called a "job"?
If I'm not mistaken ONO wasn't a public company so I'm wondering why should basically anyone care except the parties involved?

Reading about big acquisitions of non-public companies (or public companies whose shares you don't own yourself) can sometimes be nice entertainment, but I fail to see the significance of the lack of news coverage as assumed by the OP.
A Quick Look at the BitSummit 2014
Google glasses?
Here it is on the BBC if anyone gets stuck behind the paywall
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20842836
The MSX scene is alive and kicking. Compared to the C64, there isn't that much of a demoscene presence, but a lot of original games and tools are released every year.

I have a soft spot for these scenes that cater only to its insiders. Outside reactions and impressions are secondary.
The question is "which country is the richest and most powerful". If we use the per capita statistics, Luxembourg is. That doesn't sound quite right, does it? If we look at the totals instead, the top ranks are USA, China, Japan and Germany. If you ask me, that seems more like what we're looking for.
I like your idea of a new window manager. There are a few more aspects that need to be taken care of if one wants to bridge Touch and Desktop UIs IMO:

* contextual menus should still be available to speed up certain tasks. For touch screens these should be available through a simple gesture, for mouse/keyboard it's the right click as always. I'm thinking that for touch UI the menu entries could be placed in a circle around the point where the gesture has been initiated, without hiding anything behind the finger (the OS should recognize from what direction the finger has been placed on the screen).

* the concept of a program menu should be reimplemented. Every function should be accessible through this menu, even if there are contextual elements that implement them as well. However, this menu needs to be easily usable on touch screens as well.

* there's one element I'd propose to be always visible, no matter what screen size starting at 7 inch: The search. This search should be able to find application commands and data, OS commands, other applications as well as and system wide data (in that order).
Thanks for the link. It brings to me lots of nostalgia reminding me the fun I have with my calculators in high school... You're free to ping me by email (in my profile) if you have any specific question.
Why is therapy necessarily the only, or the best solution?

Maybe therapy has an undeserved reputation. Maybe people who should og to it but don't are just prideful. But maybe conventional therapy just isn't the best way for people to deal with their problems? Maybe therapy, as a field, just hasn't lived up to its aspirations?

I'd agree that the GP has to do something about it. But I'm not sure about what, specifically.

> And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.

And that looks like a lack of empathy and/or projection. You can't reduce people's motivations to a small, neat set of emotions and/or intentions.
The idea of great risk for great reward is a myth. The risk that the founder of Facebook assumed for example was close to nil, because he didn't have any job or money to start with. He risked the precious time that he would otherwise use to party at some Harvard fraternity. Similarly for so many other tech founders. They just happened to do well something that they liked at the right time. There are many small business that represent a much bigger risk for their owners, in terms of financial investment and loss of income.
This seems a little extreme? I wonder if they're doing this because they want something else from Google that they know are not going to give as easily, such as helping them build the surveillance state in India:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A91idibgT0

Then again, I remember reading about Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Blackberry and others already giving in to their surveillance requests a couple of years ago, so they might've already done that.
GDP is a modern concept made to measure today's economy. But if you talk about power US is the most powerful country but not dominant (see Syria and Crimea).

The British empire at his peak held one fifth of the worlds population. The Roman empire conquered everything was worth conquering and he was providing free food and gigantic games to his poor citizens. If you consider modern Europe his GDP is very similar to the US, although his political situation is more fragmented.

So back to the OP in each era the economic conditions improved, and there was a place where this improvements was more evident, a country who was richer and more powerful than the others. US is one of these nations but it's not something exceptional in history as the OP suggested.
Too bad 3DO (or was it 3D0) didn't learn from this mistake ten years later.
Insofar as domestic policy is concerned, per-capita is relevant.

Foreign policy, which is decided by governments that tax the aggregate population (and thus draw from the GDP)? Not in the slightest.
Just to add: Google in India is Google India Pvt. Ltd.
Well the big difference between those two stories (Google buys ONO and Vodafone buys ONO) is that one would imply change (for the consumer - for founders both is of course a big change) and the other doesn't. Who cares if the corporate overlord at ONO is called Richard Alden (ONO "founder" in Varsavsky's eyes) or Vittorio Colao (Vodafone CEO)?
The dual accumulator and dual stack pointer design seem like they would make this one of the most straight forward 8-bitters to program. What home computers used this?

I remember reading about a Hitachi clone that extended it to use four accumulators that could either be paired into two 16-bit accumulators or all joint into a single 32 bit accumulator.
well it's pretty obvious that a gun is more efective than an arrow.

US is the most powerful country now, but it isn't dominant (see Syria, Crimea, etc..) and it not as dominant as the British Empire or the Roman Empire was at their time
But those people then have the option to use constructive dismissal reasons at tribunal.

I'm not saying that it's easy, but English employees at least have some protections.
You're disproving your own point. In the same paragraph, you say "The idea of great risk is a myth" and "There are many small business that represent a much bigger risk for their owners". Think about it.