skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think read an interview with Jobs where said something akin to every product he produced, he produced because he and his team found it super-cool and really wanted to have it - and that they did very little other market research.

IF you can create things like that, that have the wow factor, THEN you're there. But this not the Snuggie OR the Ice Cream Glove, this is the hover board, once you have a real, working copy.

-- There you have a third point the article leaves out. It's not hard to think of Hover Boards, it's very hard to make them. I suspect that Jobs was in the right place at the right time to rise to the level where he could demand that every product be a Hover Board and get that demand often met. That's not always where entrepreneur wind-up and plenty of folks, more folks, make money with Snuggies than with Hover Boards BUT the conditions for Hover Board Success should not be overlooked.
How do you stay motivated? > How do you stay in love?

Wonderful turn of phrase. I'm inspired now to search around for articles about how couples keep stay in love for decades. I'm sure they use some of the same "algorithms" that people who stay in love with their work do.
bath robes are too constricting for laying on a couch, and not that comfortable all things considered. Further, my bath robes at least are short sleeved.
Isn't this an example of a halo effect? Because they made successful companies, we attribute to them traits that support the conclusion.
Importantly, even if effect doesn't necessarily follow cause (also known as "indeterminism"), free will isn't possible. Hence free will is absolutely impossible, alongside any conditions whatsoever.
Link seems to have been edited to point from "Natural News" to Reuters.
I think part of the problem is to use "free will" as a name for thing (like an organ, next to, say, the liver), rather than as a name for a process. If we ask "how do we DO free will", we might start to get somewhere, I think.

I think we "do" free will rarely, with most of our lives running automatically. When we hit trouble -- a turning point, a fork in the road so to speak, where it is no longer obvious what to do -- THAT is when we have to "do" some free will. But most of our lives aren't driven by free will or conscious choosing, but rather by skills we develop when we are enculturated into our society, skills that get trained into us so deeply we don't ever think about them (automatically getting saying thank you, etc). (When we have to consciously choose too much of daily life, we call that autism...)

At those turning points, I think we need language. First, language (words either in our head or in conversation) clarifies the options by giving them names. Second, language enable us to arbitrarily choose one of the options and stick to it. Finally, language enables us to imagine the negation of a situation once we have named it, and thus open us to creativity. Without language, we can only do what we feel like instaneously.

So, while that was an interesting article, the debate is framed subconsciously makes in a way that makes it impossible to get a good answer. Also, none of these ideas are mine -- I am regurgitating the original thoughts of Heidegger, Peirce, and Bourdieu.
I'm British, dear boy, understatement is just our way.
So they fully admit that the iPhone "cannibalized iPod sales" but then said that they "didn't count the iPhone because the product is also a wireless handset." So all this is saying is that among mp3 devices sold that weren't also phones in the week of Aug 23 - 30, Sony had 43% and Apple had 42.1%, with no mention of what the +/- error was in the survey. While this might be an indication of a trend, it is also very likely to be statistically insignificant. But that doesn't make as interesting a news story.
In Praise of the Sci-Fi Corridor
> But you could even imagine -- with a team's permission for promotional purposes -- that players with helmet radios could dictate tweets to someone else.

That would never happen, not in any foreseeable reality.
The talk is ok, he talks about how to sell a product (that may solve a problem that noone knows exists, so people may not know that they want) by integrating marketing into the product (using the product means spreading the word).

I wonder whether the Business of Software conference is worth my 2K.
Yeah we all know everything should look shiny and web 2.0 not corporate.
Nominated for most important article of the day.
Every time I come up with something that seems clever, about 6 minutes later it just seems stupid. Some of my answers:

"I turn data into dollars." (sounds like a bad infomercial)
"I turn data into value." (sounds like bad corporatespeak)
"I move ones and zeros." (sounds like pointless nerdism)
"I shlep ones and zeros." (sounds like pointless New York nerdism)
"I convert chocolate and soda into software." (getting a little closer)
"I'm a computer programmer." (Oh)
I don't have this problem actually - I can always explain well enough what I do and (in most cases) get people a little interested or at least impressed.

For example, when I get asked that, I first say I do web development and tell them what that actually us. Something like "You know how there are some websites that are just text and don't do anything, but some websites are like facebook where there's stuff you can do, like make friends, post comments etc? Well, I just write websites that "do stuff".

Then, if I'm talking about work I would mention I work for a derivatives broker (if they are not interested at least they'll be impressed), while if I'm talking about my hobby work (http://phonalyzr.com) I tell them all the cool stuff your call log can tell them. And everybody understands a history of calls, top callers etc.

Anyway, I don't do this quite on purpose. I guess it helps I genuinely like what I do and get a bit excited about it.
Attendant: Can I get you something?

Jiveman #2: S'mo fo butter layin' to the bone. Jackin' me up. Tightly.

Attendant: I'm sorry I don't understand.

Jiveman #1: Cutty say he cant hang.

Woman: Oh stewardess, I speak jive.

Attendant: Ohhhh, good.
scratches head I don't recall it saying "software" before, but I don't want to throw around acusations of edits. I really wish there was a "history" link next to edited posts.
Is It Ethical To Engineer Delicious Cows That Feel No Pain?
Fake testimonials go to next level with IP locator
Remember the discussion about the Indian fellow posing as an American parrot lover to sell ebooks?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215

Mom's Teeth Story has taken it to the next level: your IP address is used to place the mom ("Cathy Anderson") in or near your very own town! Even more depressingly, they don't even insert the city and state very well; it stands out like a sore thumb in bold with incorrect spacing:

http://www.momsteethstory.com/m4m.php

Does this violate some sort of truth in advertising law? Gimmicks like this are likely to turn customers off to a given product or service immediately (provided they notice).
Interesting idea to get some press.

Although, I believe technically Cockneys wouldn't use both parts of the rhyming slang. For example "Sky Rocket" (pocket) would be "Sky". The point being that it's impossible to guess the rhyming association without the second word.

These cash machines harness the meme by displaying both words, rather being truly authentic.
The nice way would be to have this work complete independently of undo, so an undo and edit would look like further edits to the machine.

But it seem unlikely the edits you did last week between revision 2.3 and revision 2.4 would especially interesting to look at. Perhaps yesterday's edits would useful...

What I would like would be an editor which would go-back only on a given selection (cutting and pasting would make implementing such a feature hard but git because clever things...).
This speaks broadly against the nearly unlimited powers of the corporate veil and personhood. This is not the first time Pfizer committed criminal marketing fraud: see Neurontin, where people suffered lifetime disabilities because they were getting an inappropriate medication. The corporate death penalty was the only appropriate punishment in this case other than holding the individuals responsible accountable.

With some statistics we could calculate how many people likely died unnecessarily because of Bextra. Not to mention all those people that suffered hearing loss because of Neurontin. The unlimited rulebreaking power of corporations is one of the great evils in our society, but I think the corporations have already defeated us. It's amazing how real entities can become once you define them into existence.
What do you actually do? Some kind of data mining? There's far better ways to get that across.
This is actually what I've always wanted in a browser. An intuitive way to do Back/Forward that handles multiple branches. :( I'm really surprised someone hasn't done something good with this in a major browser.
The source code of Scintilla shows a good implementation of undo functionality. The only thing you'd need only you have undo was a way to serialize and unserialize the information.
Persone - Windows Live
Good points. I would take it a bit further by noting that a defense of non-trivial free will cannot rely upon quantum mechanics (or any other engine of unpredictability). By non-trivial free will, I mean a kind of free will that allows for some control over what is being willed.

The thesis describing a wholly causal universe is known as "determinism." The thesis of a less-than-wholly causal universe, no matter the degree to which strong causality governs, is known as "indeterminism." Together, they describe the entire set of possible worlds. Because free will is impossible in either case, free will is thus absolutely impossible, no matter what.
Indeed, you could just put it on forwards. Seems like it would be warmer as it wraps around properly. The main difference is it won't cover your feet - but of course this allows you to walk. And there are these newfangled things called "slippers" that could help. I'm off to make an infomercial about how those snuggies are OK, but a pain every time I need to get up and walk somewhere...
In that case, C has highly restricted first class functions. "restricted first class" is a contradiction, IMO. First class with restrictions is not first class.
I've written extensively about this topic on my blog under title "What Makes Them Entrepreneurial?" - http://adityakothadiya.com/category/what-makes-them-entrepre...

Sorry for the shameless plug, but thought this is a relevant discussion.

I've almost covered 35 different traits of entrepreneurial people. I hope you will find them useful.
Exactly. Being cold is an ongoing problem. Getting ice cream on my hands is something I fix by pulling out a wet nap or running my hands under the nearest source of water.

No one would carry around a bulky glove to avoid 10 seconds of inconvenience. People most certainly will buy a better blanket to avoid freezing their butt off all night.

They're only comparable if you really put absolutely no thought into the problems they "solve".
We talk about incremental development. For the most part, the world develops incrementally. If you think about how many people wear snuggies and how much more comfortable they are, the net change in happiness and well-being is...probably not that great, but in aggregate, deserving of the amount of money you can make from it.

Revolutionizing the world is something that happens by chance when you write a quick-and-dirty operating system for a PDP-7, help breed high-yield wheat strains in Mexico, or hack together a hypertext system with TCP/IP on a NeXT box. So even if you're trying to revolutionize the world, you shouldn't actually try, you should just solve problems here and now that seem ripe for the picking.
Ask HN: If I mod a GPLv3 webapp and host it must I release source?
After an hour or so of reading it's my understanding that this is only required for AGPL. Any insight is appreciated.
That sounds pretty good, actually. It's neither self-deprecating nor self-aggrandizing, and provides just enough information to satisfy the demands of the conversation if the person doesn't care about computer stuff, and enough to start a conversation if they do.
For another perspective on snuggies and slankets,

http://www.infomercial-hell.com/blog/2008/11/25/blanket-with...
Deploying Social Software in Universities: Go Broad then Deep
I tie shoelaces ...

http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm

... fold T-shirts...

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-fold-a-t-shirt-in-2-seco...

... and when I've got their attention, explain to kids why there's useful math in there.
I want to have many different ways to think about problems, all linked up with ways to slide between them. (That's a big theme in SICP, the Feynman lectures, Doug Hofstadter, and Minsky's _Society of Mind_.) The languages that come up the most when I think programming thoughts: Haskell/ML (types, pattern matching), Scheme (procedural code, and my main larval-period language), E (OO: roles and responsibilities, message passing, contracts; event-loop concurrency & distribution; promises; capabilities), Python (actually coding most things), C (closer to the metal). Sketches on paper tend to use a Haskelly syntax with a Schemey meaning.
Well, if CD sound quality is good enough..
>Same for break and continue, and mostly raise

These are all escape continuations.

>which unfortunately I don't have a snappy word on hand for

Abstractions?
This post is sexist. I wish this constant stereotyping would stop.
Agreed. I am currently working on a site to fill a need that my wife, an artist, has. I found that the best way to find great ideas is to ask friends and family.
Be careful that your philosophy does not get caught in the definition of words. I would think an illusion is something that occurs once you are aware, because your awareness is fooled. If the awareness is the illusion, then who's fooled? I wouldn't think you could fool an illusion, but the meaning of words is quite subjective.

If you want to make a point, say something like: "free will is your mind regurgitating sensory information and decisions you took moments before by relating them to current senses and memory creating a feeling of awareness", that takes away some of the thunder, but also part of the ambiguity.
The problem isn't that $format doesn't sound good, the problem is that when you convert $format to $otherformat for playback on $system, you lose far more quality than if you converted from the original audio file.
One of our users had dropped this into their web structure years ago, never updated it, and had their account nicely owned due to a years-old vulnerability.
Be Prepared for Your Pitch (VC Pitch Checklist)
900 new users a day. For a knitting and crochet site. Absolutely amazing.
I actually love having this question at my current job.

"So, what do you do?"

"Well, have you seen 'Terminator'?

"Yeah, of course."

"Well, I'm helping to write SkyNet"

It's actually not too far from accurate since one of my contracts is for AI defense of space assets :-D
Get Cash Back for Holiday Purchases
It's a mystery to me why in a case of clear and substantial wrongdoing such as this, no individual prosecutions occur. I suppose one could argue that responsible parties at Pfizer may get fired or voted off the board, but that seems a mild disincentive at best. This will affect the pay (and to a lesser extent, the professional prospects) of everyone who works at Pfizer, irrespective of their personal integrity or decision power. So honest lab techs or scientists who knew nothing about this will make less money and have to endure reactions like 'oh, you work for that evil company' because no individuals are being fingered as the authors of the illegal behavior.

The other hand the public appetite for some sort of revenge against corporations in general only increases when it appears that nobody is subject to personal fines/ house arrest/ jail time - especially in a case like this, since most people don't understand medicine and have a vague fear of being poisoned (whereas few people would call for Microsoft execs to be jailed as they don't have a sense of being personally injured by the bundling of IE, say).

I'm not sure that joint and several liability effectively serves either the public or shareholders in the way it is intended, and may instead serve as a collective figleaf for personal irresponsibility. An interesting (though somewhat oblique) parallel may be found in laws about serving alcohol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramshop

On a separate point, the guilty plea also seems unusual - usually companies aim to settle without admitting wrongdoing. I wonder if this leaves them open to a class-action lawsuit from customers who experienced adverse effects from off-label uses of these products.

tl;dr good work, but shareholders and employees will pay for the failure of management, which is unfair.

CORRECTION
After further digging: http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/10003184/pfizer-exec-gets-3-... at least one executive is subject to house arrest for 6 months, plus a fine for the massive sum of...$100. This is good IMHO, but seems so mild as to be negligible. I still think stiffer personal penalties in cases like this might actually be better for the interests of shareholders.
Tell HNers in SF: My Muni Arrival Times App is now on the Android Market
Search for "MUNI" on Android market. I'll be adding customization features in the next version.
These principles hold true for pretty much all social software, not just universities.
Sun engineer responds to the Backblaze "Petabytes on a budget" design
"You sir, are a pip-waisted slanket!"

Yes. Yes, it does.
I would like to refer the community to Zawinkski's Law of Software Envelopment[1]

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

And propose a new, modified law for the current generation:

"Every Web 2.0 website attempts to expand until it can chat. Those Web 2.0 websites which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
"I'm a computer guy"

Anything more specific causes eye glaze.
The truth about Wikipedia’s flagged revisions
Jobs' unique ability is the ability to repeat this kind of insight. For many entrepreneurs, there's a large element of chance that aligns what they want with what the market wants.
Try an explanation that doesn't make you sound like a marketing drone.

"social services startup" -> "company"
"end users" -> "people"
"indexes into an easy to find format" -> "helps find"

"I work for a company that helps people find mental health service providers"

Then a couple sentences about how the existing tools fail and how you're trying to improve them.
I haven't tried it, but a quick search turned up this Firefox extension, History Tree: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13316
The downside with friends and family is that they want to help you. Regular people want to help themselves. Find regular people, ask what their problems are, solve them, make money.
total shocker, but I have a sense of pride being a programmer, ESPECIALLY in social circumstances.

When asked what I do, I say "I'm a programmer and do freelance web development on the side" - Most of the time that's followed up with "Oh, so you know computers? Can you fix mine?"

But I've never felt like a social outcast, and to my knowledge have not been treated like one. That part comes when people find out I'm not interested in sports, hunting or nascar.
I've always thought it was a shame that FreeBSD doesn't get more play on the desktop Linux market -- It's such a reliable, well-engineered piece of software.
This is one of the greatest problems of our time and it will become more so the longer we wait to do something about it.
Absolutely. Us building social software into universities are Johnny-come-latelies when it comes to implementing social software. The enterprise and especially consumer space is far far ahead. So my post was an attempt to pull some wisdom from there and apply it to education.
> pitching drugs to patients and doctors for unapproved uses

I dislike the fact that the First Amendment has been basically written out of existence in certain cases.

Why should it be illegal for Pfizer to tell people TRUE statements about the efficacy of a drug?
You know, if you just developed one product and rolled it out in different markets with different names, you could do pretty effective A/B testing on which name is more appealing.
Google Patents Its Home Page
Customers self-organize if you build a good enough community.
A patent is just an idea, and as such, isn't worth anything.

That is factually incorrect. A patent is a detailed description of the implementation of an idea.
"64 bit" Snow Leopard defaults to 32 bit kernel
I was just talking to friends about this the other day. MP3s are convenient, but the fidelity isn't the same as a CD (or the nuisances of a record). Are we lowering our standards as a society, because we don't have time for Xbox, TV, Music, and Family. For the most part music is timeless. Will we get to the point where MP3s will be the only distribution medium and we lose the timelessness of Music? Perhaps we already have.
I agree with your comment about the DP not being a deterrent. People who murder people aren't thinking, "I can handle life without parole, but gee, I can't handle that death penalty!". Thoughts about consequences only begin for them after getting caught.

I'm neutral on your second point. I think there are examples of criminals with crimes that are so sick and heinous in nature to where I could see the argument that taking their life away is a just and proportional penalty.

I do think there's one thing that has to be taken into account when talking about the DP, though: it seems to be a powerful bargaining chip. Here's a paper from earlier this year that finds criminals are significantly more likely to plea to life or long sentences in states where they may face the DP compared to states where they will not: http://www.cjlf.org/papers/wpaper09-01.pdf

There are papers, though, which make arguments that come to different conclusions. This is well outside of my area of knowledge, but my point in bringing it up is to identify it as another thing that bears consideration in the DP discussion.
I love Airplane, though in retrospect that little exchange seems horrifyingly racist.
I think the ridiculous commercial and the goofy look generate the scorn...not simply the idea of a sleeved blanket.
You only know the Snuggie is for watching TV in hindsight - because customers told us. I think it's a tough call when both products are still the idea phase.
Ask HN: I'm about to write a business plan. Where should I start?
Hey guys,

After weeks of brainstorming and discussion with my business partner, friends and colleagues, I have finally decided that it was time to start designing and building my web app.

I've gotten quite a bit of work finished in the last little while, and have naturally started writing down various snippets of information such as monetization strategies, launch plans, competition, etc.

With all of this information coming together on paper, I think it may be a good idea to write a decent business plan. I'm told that having a good business plan can be pivotal in the success of a company, and although it isn't the end-all to success, I feel as though I will have more direction with a proper business plan.

My question is this: Where can I find some excellent documentation in terms of writing a business plan? I'm looking for resources in the form of guidelines, tutorials and examples, blogs, etc. For the record, I've tried some simple Google searches, but most of the results are absolutely bunk and totally outdated.

Thanks for your help.
I came here to say that. When I go back in my browser, I want it to show me the site I was looking at scrolled to where I was scrolled in the tab I was looking at.