skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"and employees should always ask a startup how much runway they have. if they won't tell you, it's a big red flag."

To me I remember Ronald Regan saying "trust but verify".

While it's nice to get an answer to the question I think, having been in business for a long time, [1] the fact that one gets an answer is not necessarily the end of the investigation or proof of the statement.

Point being that if it is important to someone (the answer) before hopping on board it would be appropriate to be shown proof of the fact. (Noting of course that it wouldn't be to difficult to fake that and also noting that you don't have any control over whether the assumptions being made will hold).

Worried about insulting someone by implying that you don't trust? Figure out a creative way to put it into the appropriate words to get by that issue.

[1] As a kid, before car dealers gave loaner cars, I remember my father being told by each salesman "and if your car is in for service I'll lend you mine for the day".
When phones started having cameras, it was basically the same thing "oh my god now people are going to take pictures of everyone everywhere! good bye privacy!"
Facebook to Acquire Oculus
Little bit, yes. It is a cute thing. That can be all it is. They did not need to do this at all. It is unlikely that they are trying to insert subliminal negative messages at cross purposes to the dialog box.
Goddamn it, why does everything cool have to get ruined by a shitty massive company buying them out?
Well, this one has about ~6x the computing power (if their numbers are to be believed), and it has an ARM core rather than x86. Some differences at the least.
I'm kind of speechless here... Certainly did not see this coming.
The common wisdom is, "solve your own problems". If you scratch your own itch, you can get to a solution that others will appreciate, rather than attempting to have others describe where their itch is, and how you can scratch it.
>Google understands on some level how B2B works ... for a while, they only made money through B2B channels, especially via sales of the Google Search Appliance.

during last 14 years i've worked in 3 BigCo's and 1 mid-size. The corporate portal search in all of them i can describe only using long sequences of Russian unprintable words. Google not being able to penetrate these companies when these companies have during last decade bought so much of other enterprise software, incl. a lot of junk, is a very indicative in my view.

>I think that the people directing the App Engine lack a clear vision

another possibility would be that they calculated how much it would cost Google to implement the AWS's level of features/support/quality, and thus how much they would need to charge to break even, and probably they just balked at it as it is hard to beat Amazon in margin/pricing business. I mean, all these anecdotal "horror" stories about overworked Amazon engineers vs. Google guys enjoying the life/work balance :)
Stop pointing a camera at me, then.
The endgame for Bitcoin
wow..who's going to use oculus now..???
Facebook To Buy Oculus Rift For $2 Billion
"Google's initial response to hearing of Lady and Paterson's app was to threaten the researchers for violating the Glass developer terms."

To think I use to root heavily for Google. :(
Interesting... Is this a play against Google Glass ?

I'm not sure how Facebook could benefit from Oculus VR unless they're starting a completely unrelated business (never mind what Zuckerberg says in the post).
It's interesting to see the real specification for this system call, as only the device availability subfunctions were widely known outside of Microsoft [1].

I wonder if many other hidden or deprecated functions are present in these releases.

[1] http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/65/27.html
Wow. Didn't see that one coming. Hopefully this will speed the release of the commercial Oculus VR
"We fund companies at all stages, from just the faintest idea to post-Series B"

Does this mean that (i) YC will continue to invest in it companies up through their later rounds, or (ii) that YC will actually participate in a Series B for a company that it had no prior connection with?
The reason why people haven't commented yet because we can't find the words. I have no immediate idea what can FB do with Oculus VR, even if I read Zuck's comments.
Facebook acquirers Oculus
More money than brains.
Why not start with making something you want? If you don't know what other people want, you know exactly what pains you and just fix that. Why not even stop thinking about starting a startup when you start solving your own problem? If your product solves your own problem, find your niches to see if it bugs them also.

Someone put it nicely - facebook is Mark's side project 6, probably? Of course not all startups start that way, if you don't know what others want, that is a good way to start and at worst it is a good way to sharpen your programming/non-programming skills.
Couldn't turn down $2 billion :)
I was. I won't now.
I disagree with "insanely high". There are junior, mid and senior roles out there on the market. I can't comment specifically on this course, but there are courses which provide the groundwork for a junior role in the space of 4-6 months. I did one, built some projects and got a couple of job offers within two months of finishing.
This link doesn't seem to go to the right page?
this is dumb.
"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die" -- Cersei Lannister
Ah, I get it! SecondLife 2.0 now with facebook integration.

Which may not be a bad idea on its own, but I don't think people would be that interested in it for a long time... (quicker/better/easier mobile integration is what people would appreciate imho) I may be completely wrong though, maybe it's the new thing.
Waiting for Postgres 9.4: JSONB, A structured format for storing JSON
We can help with both of those. Send me an email (ben@datanitro.com) and I'll get you set up.
I am astonished. I wonder if John Carmack could have ever imagined he'd work for Facebook.
Facebook buying Oculus VR for $2 billion
I really hope Facebook has plans for VR besides mobile gaming. I don't want to see a technology that could really help high-end gaming just be used on phones.
huge WTF!
"i.e." means "that is"

"e.g." means "for example"
Just until you ditch citizenship of that prison country and live happily ever after spending your bitcoins in Germany or some warm paradise.
So next gen clippy?
Fuck. This pisses me off for some reason.
I just ordered my dev kit the other day, now I wonder if I should cancel it...
I don't like this. I don't trust facebook and they seem to acquiring many of the promising companies out there.
Although I understand this is a post by sama & for YC, I don't think that YC should be the reason you do a startup. That's what the article seemed to be insinuating to me. The hustle needed is just as impressive, if not more so, than the successful results we see.
Where do all the 'Craigslist cats' go? A warning to all pet owners
> The main benefit of say Heroku is that while migrating away is not trivial, in principle you shouldn't have to rearchitect your app to do it.

How is that an advantage over App Engine, given the existence of AppScale? [1]

[1] http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2013/09/appscale-bri...
They sure know how to increase their value.
Are you guessing the price or did you read it somewhere?
The comments on here are starting to look like a Facebook post.
I guess this probably means I'll never get to use it since I don't have a facebook account
The Future of Virtual Reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One

Brought to you by Facebook.

Just wait till you see the new Farmville.
If you buy stuff you are taxed. If you buy 1 coin for 10$ and buy a $100 tv you owe 90$ in taxes.
OcculusVR is dead. Can someone make a new Oculus VR that focuses on video games and not enabling Facebook to control everything you see. Get on it.
"I'm done for a while" my ass.

This is really really smart. I'd guess it's a play for a talented team, and a bet that they can become a leader in an industry that will be revolutionary sooner rather than later.
Lawmakers Said to Reach Deal on NSA's Phone-Data Program
Hypothetically, if a person still had Bitcoin drawn from a btc faucet (by that person), would that count as a gift, treasure trove [+], or something else?

[+] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesarini_v._United_States
I don't really feel like playing some vr game and then turning around to be confronted by an ad tailored to the quest I just finished.
wtf...^2
http://i.imgur.com/v841Qjy.jpg
What FPGA? Do you mean GPU? If so, then - it's improved a bit over the years, but it's still much different than CPU programming, and branching remains relatively expensive.
Author goes on to say this issue rises above normal political disagreement. Its not taxes or zoning laws at issue; its who's fully human, with full rights. Its easy for those not involved to give a pass to coworkers that donate to restrict somebody else's life.
It seems like it would be an odd play against glass, because of the differences of VR vs AR. With VR you're in another world, and that doesn't seem like facebook's goal, which would be to add facebook information with the rest of the world. So it seems unlikely unless they're planning to completely overhaul the project and make it AR instead of VR.
I read it as facebook wanting to leapfrog google hangouts and skype and become the first next gen video chat client/platform. Games is now a side secondary thing.
Ensemble Learning Meets Graph Partitioning
Smart move by FB, honestly. I think its safe to say that VR will be a large part of the way we consume content in a couple years. Acquiring Occulus puts them ahead of the competition...for now.
No! Please, please, please no!!! I've actively avoided Facebook for several years and now Oculus is making me choose between awesome tech and not having a facebook account?! REALLY?! What.. why!? What could Facebook be doing with this that they want it. I just. Why? No. No no no no no.
I hope this doesn't kill the Rift's potential.
Be glad this is not reddit.
They have some of the best engineers and VPs in their space, huge hype, mindshare, and by all accounts a kick-ass product.

Forget why Facebook is interested, I don't get why Oculus would even consider selling for 10% of a WhatsApp. Their star was rising if anyone's ever was.
It's an excellent idea if you can do it - but sometimes you can't - e.g. If you are in the 6 month lockup period following an IPO or grant or other SEC rule 144 event. It runs afoul of said law to even hedge with options or on the open market.

It is crazy, but it is that way.
TechCrunch are reporting $2 billion, of which $400 million was cash:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/25/facebook-to-buy-oculus-vr-m...
Well it only got posted 8 minutes ago. Still, there's no shortage of garbage comments in the thread here already.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo :'(
Facebook Acquires Virtual Relativity Startup Oculus VR for $2 billion
What I learned as a techie in my time away from globo firms
Wow, I never saw Jon Carmack working for Zuck. To be honest, they aren't even in the same league. This makes me a sad panda.
iPrint
The argument for Oculus to push forward and usher in new forms of communication certainly isn't new, but with a company like Facebook behind it definitely legitimizes it...

And also makes it suddenly incredibly scary...
Guess this is now the most successful kickstarter ever.
No part of this acquisition makes sense. I just hope that the product doesn't disappear without a trace after a write-down in a couple of years.
Double checking its not April 1...
Really wonder what vision FB sold them.
That's really interesting, thank you for mentioning that. That's totally in my "just about", for sure--but this isn't 2008 (even the 3DS has 128MB of RAM) and this doesn't exactly strike me as the sort of book that somebody who already has a console devkit is going to be reading. "A bytecode interpreter" seems to me to be something that that guy (i.e., you) is going to have sussed out entirely, whereas somebody who actually needs a book like this is in just about every case going to be getting off in the weeds building something instead of going off the rack.

(That said, no-GC AngelScript uses under a megabyte of RAM on ARM; before I switched to libgdx and decided that I could do without supporting the Galaxy Nexus I'd spent a lot of time examining it. It certainly might be tight on the DS, but on any modern system, I think you're probably cool.)
More details at http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-to-acquire-...

"... for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones."
What's with the negativity? What exactly do you think will happen that's so bad?
Well, if Google's going to be a robotics and AI company, it's not irrational for Facebook to go into telepresence as a kind of next-gen communications property. They've got the cash to go big, and their dependence on a single, easily-substituted service as their source of revenue is about as big an Achilles' heel as any company can have.
Damn! I don't like this.

I had hoped they jump in bed with valve.

Yes, I just really dislike facebook, so I hate to see them aquiring something i was really excited about.

Also from the article:

> After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home.

Nah, I'd rather not, thank you. I prefer to actually visit my doctor where facebook doesn't get all the data about it.
"... for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones."

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/facebook-to-acquire-...
I hear you -- and trust me, this kind of stuff is awful because even when you're actually trying hard to not screw anyone, you still accidentally screw someone. In terms of this in particular: we did really try to roll this out without abrupt notice or unpleasant surprises, so I'm sorry to hear that we missed the mark with you. If it was more than just annoyance, feel free to reach out to me directly (my first name -- spelled correctly -- at joyent.com) and I'll try to right the ship.

Again, my apologies -- and to my point, trust is very hard to earn, and very easy (too easy) to piss away. :(
Really though, wasn't most of DOS just thin abstractions on BIOS interfaces? What hardware abstractions did it provide other than the filesystem, and what services other than an ABI allowing you to quit a program without rebooting?
From Facebook investor relations, looks like the price was $2B, $400MM cash, $1.6 stock, with options on $300MM more.

> Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Oculus VR, Inc., the leader in immersive virtual reality technology, for a total of approximately $2 billion. This includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $1.6 billion based on the average closing price of the 20 trading days preceding March 21, 2014 of $69.35 per share). The agreement also provides for an additional $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on the achievement of certain milestones.
$2 billion in total value [1].

$400 million in cash.

$1.6 billion in facebook stock.

Plus "$300 million earn-out in cash/stock based on the achievement of certain milestones."

1. http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140325-912577.html
Eh, angry birds runs on Lua. Your point was?
Oculus Joins Facebook
Facebook knows that Facebook.com is toping off. It wants to spread its reach. I really don't think there will be any crossover between Oculus and Facebook, just like there isen't any crossover between Windows and XBox.
I'm pretty certain you won't ever need a Facebook account to use Oculus Rift.
i thought mark's shopping spree stopped at whatsapp...
That's a part that also stuck out to me. With that kind of price, "online" storage is approaching what was previously only available in Amazon Glacier "cold storage" pricing. When Glacier launched, it was about a 10x difference between online object stores ($0.10/GB) and Glacier ($0.01/GB). Since last year it's been down to a 7-8x difference, and now it's down all the way to a 2x difference. Imo, that makes the number of use-cases where it's worth dealing with Glacier's retrieval model smaller than previously (effectively only those where you have a truly huge amount of data, such that the remaining $0.01/GB price differential adds up to meaningful money).
Installing Oculus VR USB drivers...

Please login using your Facebook account to continue.

Email: ________

Password: ________
this is very cool. It operates in the "sub-10 watt space", had pretty decent io options for a device of that size, no apparent moving parts, decent graphics capabilities, and a reasonable price point. Seems like a great little device for a media machine or a graphics installation; somewhere between a raspberry pi and a mac mini.
Got mine. I'm out.
(I'm a Google employee, so take what I say with a grain of salt.)

I just took ownership of the godoc.org documentation service, and am running it on Compute Engine. It's been a great experience so far.

I've noticed a few benefits that Compute Engine has over EC2 (the other virtual machine service that I have used). The "gcutil" command line tool is more intuitive, Google's Cloud Console is more responsive than the AWS console, the general performance is better (especially disk and startup time), Compute supports live migration of running VMs (avoid downtime), and finally Compute bills by the minute, not the hour, so you can spin up a bunch of high-spec VMs for a quick test without running up big charges (I got a little burned by this with EC2, in the past).
> But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home.

> This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.

This seems like the money quote. Basically they want to have everyone share virtual experiences together within your network.
But do see my other comments on SEC rule 144 - sometimes you are forbidden from selling in a way that exposes you to loss risk that cannot be mitigated without running afoul of security laws.
The difference is that a phone has to be taken out of one's pocket or bag and quite visibly pointed at something, whereas Glass is always looking wherever the wearer is.
It's maybe irrational, but I don't trust Facebook and I certainly don't want to use Oculus VR for my private life.
Big Data Enters the Classroom: Technological Advances and Privacy Concerns Clash
From the people who brought you Doom and Facebook...

This could go either way, Facebook could leave it on the path it was on and just act as a parent company and the Oculus will be as awesome as we had hoped it would be.

Or

Facebook brands itself all over the Oculus, closes it down to Facebook's proprietary software and opens it up to ads, killing what some view as the catalyst of the VR bump recently, then Sony takes over as our best hope. I love Sony but I want to see VR on more than just the Playstation Brand.

Here is to hoping that Facebook stays as uninvolved as possible with the Oculus.
This is a very smart move. The big tech houses now are basically just curators of the next awesome technology. This is no different from Google buying Nest or Deepmind or Boston Dynamics. Who cares if there is a direct link to their current business? Also, imagine how much more they can do with all the resources of Facebook at their disposal. This will surely accelerate the adoption of next gen VR hardware.
Manuals were just so awesome in those days. Here's my favorite from when I was a kid.

http://imgur.com/aTn6wVh,ry3LXlb
Fascinating. Now THIS is a museum.

There was obviously scope for personality in the commenting...

arena_free_next:
CMP BYTE PTR DS:[DI],arena_signature_end
; end of road, Jack?
retz ; never come back no more
CALL arena_next ; next item in ES/AX carry set if tras

And a nice reminder of the other big players of the day:

IF WANG ;Are we assembling for WANG?
This is the first indication, to me at least, that Facebook is going to be pursuing the "Bell Labs" style strategy that Google has been. For example, self-driving cars and robots are great new technologies and industries but have less than obvious connections to Googles core business. Facebook now would seem to be doing the same.
Why on earth would Oculus sell at all, least of all to Facebook? What possible reason could Facebook have to purchase a company so far removed from its core competency?

People in the /r/oculus reddit are already expressing strong feelings of betrayal - eighty comments in under ten minutes, none positive.

What a bizarre move.
There should be an app or something where we list 1) problems, and 2) startup ideas. We also vote on them.
* There's value in discovering good startup ideas via the wisdom of the crowd.

* There's value in just seeing a list of ideas to help with brainstorming.

I think that this will lead to more startups being started, which is a good thing. It'll help people who don't start one because they don't have an idea. And it'll lead to some pretty good ones being started because the wisdom of the crowd will produce some good ideas.

Whether or not this succeeds depends on the community of users. HN has the perfect community for this. Thus, I propose that an "ideas section" be added to HN where you could add and vote on problems and startup ideas.
Facebook webcast about Oculus acquisition - starts 3:15PDT
See full comparison of GCE instance types vs on-demand, RI 1 year and RI 3 year here:
http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-sl...
When it comes to digital advertising, can we have it both ways?
Carmack now works for Facebook? Damn.
Best early random guess is this is defensive against Google Glass. Basically the world is going to stay mobile but the form factor will move from phones to glasses. FB won't be caught lagging this time (like they did from Web to Mobile).
I am really disappointed. Don't know why exactly, but it just doesn't feel right. I have had really great hopes for the product.

Have you noticed that the giants work relentlessly to prevent any small player of growing with golden handcuffs - thermostat guys, whatsapp, now OVR ...
One gets the sense that FB has the market capitalization capability (and inclination?) to buy a large fraction of the remaining "independent" tech sector.
well, fuck.
Facebook + Oculus
There's no light on Glass, just the display
This seems odd to me, but after some thought I think they could become something like Second Life, powered by VR.

Otherwise I don't see how facebook could take advantage of the device.
People are getting pissed because they don't want Facebook to take over their lives. I'm pretty disappointed.