skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I'd be interested to know if there has ever been a period in history where the size of the federal government has gotten smaller in terms of total employees.

I think right at the end of a major war would be a good place to look.
"Genuinely interested here in what you'd propose as an alternative."

Honestly? Read the motivations for MVC. Read carefully about the reason why some people think it's a good idea, because I think the ideas are valuable.

Then... just write your code, and focus on keeping it well-factored, not MVC. MVC is really about keeping your code well-factored, but it only applies literally in a handful of circumstances. The ideas apply everywhere, but you're better off understanding how to keep things well-factored than how to jam things into MVC.

MVC is giving a man a fish, understanding factoring is teaching them how to fish, but the metaphor breaks down here in that it's actually easier to learn how to fish here.

Replying to this with an elaborate explanation of when MVC applies would be missing the point. If it is the best-factored organization, then go for it. But it is the best solution fairly rarely, where the best may be MMVC, or MVCC, or MVC+tree, or, frankly, endless variations on the theme. There's so many valid variations of such diversity that viewing everything through the lens of MVC just isn't that helpful.
This guy has been around for a while ...

This business strategy has been around a long time. Here are some other large modern examples:

Amway was founded in 1959.

[The FTC ordered] Amway to stop retail price fixing and allocating customers among distributors and prohibited the company from misrepresenting the amount of profit, earnings or sales its distributors are likely to achieve with the business. Amway was ordered to accompany any such statements with the actual averages per distributor, pointing out that more than half of the distributors do not make any money, with the average distributor making less than $100 per month. The order was violated with a 1986 ad campaign, resulting in a $100,000 fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway#FTC_Investigation

Herbalife was founded in 1980.

A 2004 settlement resolved a class action suit on behalf of 8700 former and current distributors that accused the company and distributors of "essentially running a pyramid scheme." A total of $6 million was to be paid out, with defendants not admitting guilt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalife#Controversies
Photobooth isn't a terribly bad name, but this service deserve something shorter and funnier.

Youtube? That I think is a great name, instantly rememberable and fitting to the service.
My first guess would be that the admins are using their desktop boxes mostly as dumb terminals to the unix servers, and chose Windows because of easy integration with email and calendaring.

As to why Windows 7 instead of XP, maybe it's getting good word of mouth? Or maybe getting a fresh install of XP is more of a pain than going with Windows 7, and they just can't be bothered?
The Buyback Boondoggle
And both offer extremely informative insight on how to create a successful and profitable business.

Let's just say both of those examples are much better businesses than 90% of the tech that's been released on the web to date.

I'm concerned about the psychology of monetizing a product - because it's the same regardless - not the fact that their particular product isn't appealing to you. If you want to discount an entire examination of how people are convinced to give money to companies so be it. Given that I'm trying to accomplish that exact thing however, I'd like to understand as much about it as I can.
I do agree with your thoughts.. Infact I m working on such kind of web model.
Blacklight Power "Hydrino" energy claim gains independent confirmation
IE6 Offenders: report companies that still require the browser.
After each "reason" he gives I want to ask, "so what?"

So the site uses a bunch of buzzword technologies. What makes using of any (much less all) of these technologies "the future of startups"?

Some other article could be written about another startup wich uses a bunch of other buzzword technologies (or even some less trendy technologies) and likewise claim to be "the future of startups" with just as little justification (that is to say, absolutely no justificaton).
And both offer extremely informative insight on how to create a successful and profitable business.

Only if the business you're building is swindling individuals trying to build their own business.
Will Rosetta Stone’s Stumble Kill that IPO Momentum?
While Jing is cool, it requires an install, while screenr doesn't. Does that matter for most folks? I dunno.

It's Java, so it might work on Linux, I dunno. I haven't tried. I don't have the Java plugin installed, and don't consider it worth bothering with at the moment. But, if it did work on Linux, that'd be enough for me to use it occasionally. Big projects would still make me reboot into Windows to use Camtasia, but it would definitely take the place of Jing (since I wouldn't have to reboot).
Is This The Cure for the Common CRM?
Protobufs are actually pretty fast to encode and decode (in the neighborhood of 200-300MB/s on my core2 desktop, when using the C++ bindings).

It's just the Python implementation that is slow. I'm working on a Python implementation that will be much faster. It's really unfortunately that Protocol Buffers are getting a bad rap due to the current Python implementation.
On those "Entitled" Twenty-Somethings
Ask Three Questions to Clarify Expectations
In Search of Moon Trees
Survey: Average gamer is 35, fat and depressed - Games - msnbc.com
Before everybody starts complaining, yes, I know that this is, on the surface, about the health care debate. However, before complaining that this isn't HN-material, consider for a moment the prevailing expectation college graduates have: "I need to get a job, which I can now do because I have a college degree." The author doesn't even consider entrepreneurship.

Can we as a society do better, so more people realize that that no one owes them anything, and any promises that were made to them were probably made by the well-meaning, but ultimately un- or misinformed?
Yet both business still exist and are extremely profitable. Like I said, if you choose to discount the entire industry as unethical, believing it can teach you nothing, so be it.

I however would like to examine what and how they continue to be successful, with the thinking that these people - ethical or not - have clearly captured a way to monetize their customers that has been very effective. These principles can no doubt be applied in much broader strokes to varying degrees.
One question the ATA aims to answer is a mystery of missing gas. Star-forming regions don't seem to have enough molecular gas to keep up the star-formation rates we observe.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=763661

It's the jellyfish.
if you're lucky
Microsoft fights Word injunction, warns of 'massive disruption'
Tesla to Open Power Train Facility in Palo Alto
I'll give an counter-example. A local company here in Vancouver, Canada that services real-estate market. Not a very big one, but probably not a start-up either. Basically an office suite for a real-estate agents with the hook-up into MLS. Excellent management, astounding sales, absolutely and utterly fucked up development. I know several people who worked for them in different capacities, and all of them were basically ashamed of the quality of the product, but always said the goal was to produce something that sales could sell.

So, yeah, there was a founder who can get the shit done. But he didn't see quality product development as a priority :)
the textbook/education industry is probably the largest on the "change the world" scale. It would take a really adventurous and patient VC and/or Angel group. You would also have to have a good group of advisors and/or team members that knew the space. It's a long long term company, but at the end of the day it would probably have the largest impact. If I were a VC, I would fund the right team to do this without hesitation.
Ask YC: How do payment gateway users collect VAT?
How do SaaS or software providers using payment gateways such as Braintree, TrustCommerce, or Authorize.net collect VAT from EU consumers?

Because they're acting as resellers, Ecommerce vendors like Plimus and Avangate are responsible for collecting VAT for EU consumers who don't have a valid VAT ID for electronically delivered products. Per http://www.avangate.com/articles/software-vat-123.htm : "Private customers (consumers) in EU countries must be charged VAT for electronically supplied services and products, both by EU and non-EU providers."

Collecting VAT yourself would be quite a headache: "...non-EU sellers have to ... pay the specific member state tax authorities (all 27 of them) their respective VAT..." (http://tinyurl.com/pgnvpb). The revenue threshold for being required to collect VAT can be quite low: "Denmark, for example, taxes all traders with an annual turnover of $1,600" (annual revenue of $1,600 from Denmark I assume). (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/encyclopedia/VAT.cfm)
Photo Booth is also the name of the built-in Mac OS X webcam demo app, which is probably known to a lot of their users. I would think of a ticket booth, too, but frankly I think the "daily" part is the weak link here. It's not engaging like the You in YouTube.
It's quite normal that one HN user submits something from another HN users blog. Some of my blogposts have been submitted by other users, I don't think that's unethical or wrong. If the community likes it they'll vote it up, if they don't they won't.
Yeah, she was kind of weird. (She totally misunderstood Jamie when he was talking about being "bought off".)

She should have just let Adam and Jamie talk, they are a lot more interesting :)
Guess who registered http://expert-s**-change.com
2009 Young Innovators Under 35
Yet both business still exist and are extremely profitable. Like I said, if you choose to discount the entire industry as unethical, believing it can teach you nothing, so be it.

I'm curious what you think people who sell other people on selling people on selling people have to actually teach someone that owns a company that survives by creating?

Other than how to sell the Brooklyn Bridge, that is.
Ask HN: Learn math faster w/ computers
I've learned a fair bit of python, c, and elisp. I don't know as much math as I'd like to. It's been my experience learning math in school that a lot of the time is occupied by paper and pencil. To avoid wasting time writing stuff out I'd like to use a computer to learn math.
So here's my question:
1. Is it feasible; am I likely to learn faster by using a computer to try and explore the problem domains without having to use a pencil?
2. If it'll work, how should I go about it? Latex, mathematica, any textbooks oriented towards working with math w/o pencil & paper, anybody who's learned math in the way I suggest?
http://www.johnchow.com/

That is the most annoying blog I've come across, in the 'internet marketing' niche.

Problogger on the other hand, seems trustworthy, of course its good to be skeptical with such posts.
French teenager hurt by shattering iPhone
I can't vote down. I'm not a fan of the zero-substance "look at me" approach. Other people are (which is why the "look at me" approach exists), but it's unfair to say the community decides on whether the submission is worthwhile.
Visualizing up to 10 dimensions
I think the writer was talking about communication skills instead of country of origin.

At least I would think twice before applying again to a company, that hasn't previously answered my job applications in due time, so I definitely agree with the writer on that one.
Redundancy in Y Combinator's Startup Portfolio
My friends and I have been thinking about a startup for about 6 months now, but we just noticed that Y-Com has funded a company trying to build out a similar technology. Our idea is different way of approaching the functionality we want to achieve than what this other company had done. We think we know a better way to organize users around the functionality that will lead to easier fluency with the technology and consequently a much more scalable product.

Does anyone know anything about Y-Combinator dealing with redundancy in its portfolio? Is it averse to redundancy? To be fair its not exactly redundancy, but a fraction our target market certainly overlaps with this other startup's target market

Any advice or commentary is most appreciated
Important correction. Incredibly I've managed to miss that one.
Interactive data visualisation heaven
Yes. You only say it's crazy because it doesn't work. Like all effective techniques, I don't see why it wouldn't be quite commonplace & eventually well understood.
Seconded. I wrote a basic blog/portfolio on Django for a designer friend of mine, and Webfaction has served his needs extremely well. If you do not wish to administer a VPS from Slicehost or Linode, Webfaction is an excellent alternative -- it gives you most of the same power (with the ability to run Rails, Django, or just about any environment you please) but without the administrative overhead. Though their control panel is not as powerful as Dreamhost's, it doesn't really want for it. For anything that will be used in production, Webfaction is a better choice than Dreamhost, as Webfaction's servers are much more responsive due to a substantially lesser load.
I'm loving that woot for dating bit. I think that's a huge winner. Needs to be local though.

It would work better as a "auction" though, like you see at those charity fund-raisers. People apply to be "auctioned" off - submit detailed profiles - one girl one guy every day. People bid. Highest bid wins (make it fixed bids), depending on money raised, site sends them on a free date.

You might need to give the auctioned some influence in picking the bidder, but man what a cash cow.
RIP Remembering Rose Friedman
In Firefox, you get a different interface if you use 3.0 compared to 3.5
That's because there are powerful interests that aren't interested in innovating here: they like the industry just the way it is.
Facebook 3.0 May Be The Most Useful App On The iPhone Yet
This isn't any more a waste of money than when scientists study "real" problems, but between lobbyists and the uneducated Fox-News-watching masses, policy does not follow the scientific results. Might as well study zombies, at least it's more fun.
Agreed. A better pitch may be, "the easiest way to get screencasts on the web". This is like Skitch, but for screencasts.

For Twitter buzz, throw some stupid badge in there that says, "works with Twitter!"

Jing looks like some kind of Tonka Truck toy. Design matters, Screenr has that down. Now for revenue... not sure, I just know that Twitter wins big time w/ the way Screenr is setup.
Ask HN: Yahoo Buzz as Traffic Supplier
I have a question for this community since I can't seem to figure it out on my own. I was interested in leveraging the promise of Yahoo! Buzz, and in looking at their "Business" section, it would appear that you didn't need too many votes to get onto their section page.

Upon further review, the bulk of the links are to Yahoo! News stories. There's an odd TC or GigaOm article, but for the most part, it's big name news sites.

Has anyone had any luck using Yahoo! Buzz, and their buzz chicklets, to successfully drive traffic from Yahoo!?
How many times is this going to appear on the front page of social bookmarking sites?

Old.
I hope that 'someone' is the original creator, and not a someone who nabs a really cool idea for themselves. I didn't DL it for exactly the reason you commented on. If it was a web version, I'd use it all the time.
I would start it in one city. Miami or SF Bay area were my first gut instinct thoughts.

The auction idea was one thought I had, but then it would be dependent upon whoever spent the most, and not the girl's tastes.
Sorry, I wasn't referencing the self promotion. I just like the fact that principals at both companies looked around, saw the sort of company they wanted to work at, and built that company. Lots of people seem to focus on making as much money as possible instead of making a small to medium amount of money and then focusing on being happy.
Done & done.

http://www.hiphopgoblin.com/top.php
"the study helps illuminate the health consequences of video-game playing"

No, not really. It shows overweight depressed men like video games a lot. Perhaps some of them were overweight and depressed when they started playing video games. It's almost certain that, in the absence of video games, they wouldn't suddenly decide to change their lifestyles. They'd probably just watch TV instead. Seems like another one of these "being a mediocre artist will turn you into Hitler" type of studies. (and I'm not even a video game player. I think they're boring and a waste of time.)
I really enjoyed this new movie on ID --

http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/objectified-trailer/
I would gladly retweet your praises, after you show me the new coolness.
Read the link. The poster suggested that Perl 5 subroutines take as an invisible argument the remaining source code (presumably from the end of the declaration of that sub to the end of the file) of the program so that they could reparse the remaining code when the subs evaluate to a known value.

In Perl 5 parlance, "compile time" is when parsing happens. "Runtime" is when execution happens.
Well, how about the fact that you the value of said creation is determined by the customer, not the creator?

I'm curious as to why you're so emotional about the whole thing. It's really not worth such a long discussion.
I wouldn't be surprised if some Windows users prefer Scribd over the bloated Acrobat Reader. Scribd is pretty useless on the Mac, though.

Honestly the Scribd whining on HN is really old. Auto-Scribd-ization has been in HN for a long time, people have been complaining about it the whole time, and pg probably isn't going to change it.
My very favourite website design - what's yours?
This breaks just about all the rules, gets up some peoples noses and some people find it really interesting, I'm one of the latter:

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

What's your favourite site design?
The definition of a hash table is independent of the hash function. You should separately consider the complexity of your hash function.
This was what I wrote in my post-PhD failure write-up:

"It is important to understand, from the outset of the PhD, who your target audience is: it’s you. I remember hearing that, on average, 1.6 people will read your PhD thesis. I’m pretty sure that includes yourself, your spouse, your supervisor, your second supervisor and your examiner (yeah, that’s technically 5 people. If someone says they’ve read your thesis, they’re probably lying -- they read page 9). You have to accept, that no one in the world will want to wade through this document. Ever."

http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2008/07/things-i-learnt-during-...
That's the thing that might kill it though.

Unless you're talking big money (which you may eventually) you're not likely to find many women/men who are attractive wanting to blind date for a free dinner or whatever.

What you could do actually, is get the person's friends to pick from the top 5, or have bidding levels that you can match to be considered "in", instead of auction style bidding.
Vector graphics software demo from 1963, with narration from Alan Kay
Please stop spamming HN.

But while you're here, I might as well ask: Does this actually stream games (so you can play before the game finishes downloading)? Watching Steam download multi-GB games bores me.
This sounds like a great facebook app to me - Have their friends decide who they go on a blind date with.
Track record?

I'm not sure that has any basis, surely Jason is a nice guy, but the only track record I am aware of is:

Some random company - Social startup which never went anywhere long term, but had decent buzz at some point (iirc).

Publictivity - Which the towel was thrown in on (& may go open source)

Ramamia - Started with Mark Bao which seems to be barely lingering (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ramamia.com/)

I'm not sure if that is a track record.

[EDIT: Downvoted for disagreeing with someone & backing it up - anybody care to explain why?]
Hell Yes, You Should Raise VC Funding
Hucksters?

Cocky, maybe. But huckster? No.

Darren Rowse is one of the most successful bloggers out there when it comes to monetizing his sites and he discloses the details of how and why he earns money on his problogger.net site.

In addition to several of his own successful blogs, he's also one of the co-founders of b5media which has gotten (approximately) 8 million in funding since it's launch in 2005. Darren's expertise in blogging and their monetization was a crucial factor in getting that funding.

This reply will probably be downmodded but I don't really care about that. Before shoving him into the 'huckster' category, do a little more open-minded research next time.

By the way, that huckster is also the minister of a small youth oriented church in his city.

Apologies for seeming harsh, but your comment was blatent and unfair.
Well, how about the fact that you the value of said creation is determined by the customer, not the creator?

If that's they way you want to look at it. I don't do business with that kind of person, since they usually try to sell me on the idea that something is worth far more than it actually is.

I'm curious as to why you're so emotional about the whole thing. It's really not worth such a long discussion.

I'd prefer to not see more SEO/MLM/MakeMoneyOnline posts on Hacker News, so I stated my disagrement with your comment.
"VC money" post-investment is now your company's money. Assuming you own a percentage of your company, it is your money.
Apple allegedly offered a refund for the girl's iPod on condition that the family sign a confidentiality agreement.

Now I don't know all of the details of what happened, but this appears to be the wrong action by Apple. The replacement is without condition. The settlement is in return for confidentiality.
You don't have to bowdlerize your headlines.
Better add some quick so it's monetizable ;)
You would definitely have to do some leg work to find women who want in. They especially may not want the attention.

That was my thought of using virtual gifts. If you send a virtual flower or teddy bear to woo the girl, it helps indicate you're serious.

I also thought about letting the girl post her top choices along the way and let the audience comment and add their thoughts in. Another option would be letting the girl pick a "wingwoman" who helps and comments on the guys who apply.
Eh? If the stalk is mounted radially from the centerline of the steering wheel, you move the it in the same direction (clockwise or counter-) as the steering wheel.

e.g. To turn left, you turn the steering wheel counter-clockwise and likewise with the turn indicator. The 'top' or 'bottom' of the wheel is irrelevant.
I thought this was going to be spam - thats pretty good.
Except by developing it on that dreadful site, you'll never make any money. :-)
Twitter XSS vulnerability - had fake tweet posted from my account
I just had a fake tweet posted from my account with a link to cari-weightloss.net. Searching Twitter shows that tons of people are suddenly posting links to that site too. I've never given out my Twitter password to any other site and it is quite strong as well. Any idea as to how this is happening? Another Twitter 0-day?
What? As soon as I blog anything interesting (or that I think MIGHT be interesting), I should rush over to hacker news and submit it? I always feel weird submitting my own stuff and (honestly) submitting it to social news sites is not the first thing that pops into my head when I blog.
Yeah, I surely wouldn't say track record as if I've done something special or overly successful. I've built products and done things, but I have an insane amount to learn. I'm just a guy looking to build something that people want to use.