skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
oh, and it just occurred to me that i might not be clear on describing the bridge that's joining the gaps you're talking about.

the reason i bring up the promotion parts (ltv! k-factor! arppu!) is that i have stanford friends who were knee-deep in that business (you should see the multi-variant testing we could do) and spoke very much like you do with the "marketing is everything, just measure, adjust the product for fit, promote!"

it was very, very objective.

they were frustrated with the creatives telling them "no!", so they left and started their own gigs (more than one person, not singling anyone out here) where they could launch and iterated -- all of them were abject, bankrupting failures.

marketing (promotion, as everyone reading this is thinking) is important, yes, but having the right creative is more important to an astounding and unbelievable extent.
This story is fictional, I know the real one: the guy described really does exist (and he probably exists in just about every country). He was a dentist that taught himself how to program (domain expertise really counts for something in almost every profession) and built the ultimate dentist software (dogfooding it) in visual basic. He then marketed this software to his colleagues and it spread like wildfire, capturing a very large portion of the market in a surprisingly short time without spending a single cent in marketing, because it was exactly what the dentists needed.

Because our dentist/programmer was a smart fellow (he'd have to be, given that he's active in two different complex fields) he foresaw that selling the software once was a nice proposition, but selling it repeatedly would be even better.

Hence the annual 'maintenance fee', of about 1,000 euros per dentist using his software. Do you know how many dentists there are in nl?

So, instead of going for venture capital this dentist-wannabe-programmer built himself a money printing press that printed more money than he and his extended family will ever be able to spend. At the end of every year the maintenance payments roll in and he's laughing all the way to the bank. This money machine has been printing since the early 90's and does not look like it will stop printing any day soon. And no VC made a single cent on any of that. He's so solidly entrenched that trying to attack his position is a losing proposition.

I like the avc blog, but it would be nice if stories like this were grounded in reality rather than fiction.
Agreed, they own some of the most well known typefaces in the world. Sadly, their pricing is absurd.

For example, I run a forum with a million daily page views. If I wanted to use Gotham, I need to pay $150 for the font, and then subscribe to their cloud service and pay $450 per month for that amount of page views.

I might be willing to pay a one-time $100 fee to use one of their fonts, or a $100 per year subscription to use any of their fonts. However, $5,500 a year for my site? That's almost as much as my servers. It's a laugh, I'll stick with the well respected free web fonts.
Unless you're working outside all night, please install a light switch. I find a simple headlamp is more convenient when I have to see small details, and it's not pointing at my eye so I retain some night vision.

The idea that lighting contributes to security is questionable. Well-lit areas are easier to observe and navigate without calling attention to oneself. If it's your yard and you've lived there more than a month you should be able to walk around it blind-folded. Potential miscreants don't have that home-field advantage, and they appreciate your leaving the lights on. While they're out there you won't see them because you're inside watching TV. However if it were dark and they were shining flashlights or vehicle headlights around you might notice that. I'll allow that if there is an actual guard on attentive duty all night, lighting will be helpful.

I know that lights make you feel more secure, but that's just a reason to have them on while you're awake.

When you're walking outside at night "all the time", even though you don't have "any good reason to", you probably only see the ground in front of your feet. With all that artificial light, there's no way you're seeing any wildlife that isn't standing in the road, more than a few dozen stars, the landscape, etc.

Cities could certainly pollute less with light. Also, those who like bright outdoor lights on all night should move there.

Save your taxpayer angst for some other issue. The reason these lights exist is that power is really cheap when few people are using any power, which is generally true from bedtime to daylight. Of course the power company could be overcharging in any particular situation, but they wouldn't have popularized "security lights" in the first place if they hadn't had a bunch of generating capacity to dump.
First Data agrees to acquire Gyft
Show HN: Terranova. Local Discoveries. Publicly Shared
> and software isn't the same thing as a design pattern

And GOF-style design patterns -- which are heavily implementation-recipe-centered -- aren't the same thing as design patterns more generally.

> The pattern describes the /concept/ and allows the builders to call an arc "an arc" instead of describing the tedious 100 steps required to actually build one and the explanation of why it works.

GOF-style design patterns actually describe the tedious 100 steps required to actually build them, and are in particular selected not by their general applicability but by the fact that they are specifically things that cannot be abstracted in the languages of the time that the book drew from, e.g., they are largely implementation recipes for things for which implementation recipes rather than reusable libraries are required in the common OO languages of the time the book was assembled.

> I can implement 200 singletons and have no need to re-use them.

Yes, but the reusability I'm talking about isn't the individual implementation but the common infrastructure -- with a language that is more flexible than, you can build the infrastructure for a singleton once, and the next time you don't have to build a whole singleton implementation, just the bits that are unique. With physical architecture, you have to build the whole thing each time, so implementation recipes are, to an extent, an unavoidable accompaniment to design patterns, rather than a sign of a problem with the implementation medium (in the case of programming, the particular language.)
I can't shake the feeling that only one of the examples needs VC investment to function and succeed, and all of the others could be bootstrapped or take minimal investment.

Investing in and promoting startups that can only exist with VC funds sounds like a fair enough strategy for a VC.

I'm not convinced that the interests of founders and VC are always the same.
How frequently does the site update after new data is added? A few more cities have reached 100% but haven't appeared on the index page yet.
A better way to look at it is... If you put your users first, and create a site with enough utility and value to bring in a massive network of people..You'll be worth much more even if you have to start by monetizing with ads...but don't worry, eventually you can sell products and services between dentists and patients, dentist and vendors, and patients and retailers.

TL;DR put people first, your users are your defense. Monetization will fall into place if you have a network effect.
Ask HN: What's your secret for creating network effects?
We wanted to scratch our own itch, and the itch of every tech entrepreneur and developer out there: Connecting to the best employees/employers. Why get stuck with just your personal network?

So, we quit our jobs and built RightJoin.io, a SaaS for "peer-to-peer" recruiting. It lets engineers learn about other companies directly from the engineers who are already there. An enjoyable recruiter-free experience for everyone!

Two weeks into the pilot, it's going well -- employers are interested. But the puzzle isn't solved until a critical mass of engineers comes in.

So here is the question, how do you build network effects? It's everyone's million-dollar question, so any thoughts, ideas, tips, sarcasm, and condescending smiles are very welcome.
I actually started by writing it in TS and later moved to just a TS declaration file and a raw JS source. This means it can be used smoothly in both environments (similar to using a definitelytyped resource).
There is no boat to miss
Definitely. Even in larger versions in the map, are there any that clearly distinguish state lines and major cities? Omitting this information makes it hard to examine these regions from a cultural perspective.
I wasn't lucky. I would have preferred not to see this.
It should have a youtube video of some kind.
i increasingly feel that we are not in a bubble, but we are in THE bubble
> And you obviously missed the thinly veiled Star Wars reference. Perhaps next time I'll put it in quotes.

Your statement "You certainly can built Quark/Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device" was supposed to counter an argument I never made. Yeah, it's petty, but I felt the need to point that out. Obviously, this is not in any shape or form about your Star Wars reference.

> I'm not sure how you read hostility, but okay.

It's my impression. It may well be wrong, but here's how I read it:

You come across as hostile in a number of ways. The issue above is a good example. I perceive your comment as passive aggressive, but more importantly you drag the discussion to areas that are beside the point. It feels like you corrected me about positions I never expressed, and when I criticized this you switched yet again to something unrelated and attacked that.

What I dislike about these maneuvers is that they work. If done right, this combination of abrasiveness and well-executed straw men can get you pretty far in most forums, including this one.
Anyone who enjoyed this article, or at least the subject of it, should check out the book itself ("Command & Control" by Eric Schlosser). It's a great read.

The book's chapters alternate between two narratives. The first is a real-time account of a bomb-gone-haywire scare in Arkansas, and the people called in to deal with it. The second is a history of nuclear arms, escalation, and near-misses during the Cold War.

I could have done without the first narrative. It is awkwardly written, repetitive, and slow. (No doubt Schlosser does this to draw out the scenario across N chapters. The tactic actually makes things worse, sapping the story of its immediacy and urgency). But the main, historical narrative is fantastic.
Also relevant (and not included in this collection) is the following functional red-black tree implementation:

https://github.com/mikolalysenko/functional-red-black-tree
That's the point of deterrence. It didn't start. The moral thing to do if it started would have been to not fire the missiles. But any leak or hint of such an intent would have had disastrous effect on the deterrent, and is thus an extremely dangerous idea for any leader to actually entertain. One can hope that leaders would have privately decided against and that the letters of last resort were sealed and destroyed for that reason.
Announcing: One Month Stripe Payments
I think fraud rate didn't go up at all, but EMV (Chip and PIN) had a fraud reducing effect. Of course other factors changed. You'll find references at http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/plastic_fraud_figure... and old news at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4779314.stm
neither of which require Log in to Read the Full Article.
I've always thought that living my entire life "having others pay for mine" would be ideal. Rent out property, the margin pays for my own residence. Operate restaurants, the margins provide (at a minimum) my own meals. Get into the car rental business, it provides my transportation as needed...

Can't quite get myself to bootstrap this idea...
Don't forget the Gadgeteer stuff MS has had for quite a while. It's pretty cool for rapidly prototyping "things".

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gadgeteer/
Since a few people are mentioning that this is not news:

>We’re rolling out this feature over the coming months to all U.S. Gmail users over 18 years old, so keep an eye out for the $ icon in the attachment options.

I don't have the dollar icon when I compose in Gmail, but I haven't used Google Wallet before.
Except how could anyone tell? It wants you to sign up before anything? Or at least that's what it looks like, I'm not punching an e-mail address into a form just to see what's behind door number 1 when there's no information for a shopper and very little for a seller.
Except that I have a full time job, so I end up at 44-hour workweek. Not that I do not enjoy it :-)

If you look at other themes on TF you will notice how many features they have. Building your first theme with the same amount of features would be very time consuming. I went with "Getting Real" approach and focused on doing the fundamentals right. At the time I launched there were no customisable fonts, colors or sidebars (something that most of other themes had). But it still sold well, because people liked the way it showcased their portfolios.

Do a Wordpress theme. It sells much better than HTML only and selling price is 4 times higher.
The risks of having an uncoordinated attack were known pretty early on - e.g. having bombers blowing each other up, bombers destroyed by missile attacks etc. That's why there was the SIOP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Integrated_Operational_P...
Junk. Like waffle. Sorry it is localised speech. Although I'm surprised there is no Urban Dictionary definition.
To be fair, he is explaining the USV investing model. He is not saying that this the only type of business to build...he is saying this is the type of business we can comfortably invest in.
VC investing isn't right for every business and every business isn't right for VC's. That's just fine.
Show HN: Scraping the NYT Most Emailed list with Kimono
I know on build me a pc (forget exact URL), they have a standardized format they paste in. I wonder if you outputted that format, maybe they would take it up?
For a relatively accurate guess to go from miles->kilometres you can use the fibonacci series. If the current number is in miles, the next one will be the same distance in kilometres. Works from 2 onwards.

So from 2 3 5 8 13 21 ... you can see that 3 miles is 5 kilometres, 8 miles is 13 kilometres etc.
The blog post is over a year old...
My site made it several times to HN main page. Rule of thump is, that every upvote equals about 100 visitors, while the site is on HN, and that about same number of visitors come during the next days by tweets and facebooks.
Interisting idea but how can this help the developers if your app is not known?
Have the employers do your work. They want engineers, let them reach out to engineers. Once the ball gets rolling, the engineers will also do your work for you
I read it as Dutch Oven Hackathon. LOL
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but how does Snapchat make money?
Ack! I'm blaming the whiskey. Yes 16 MPH is quite respectable on a bike, and I note that OP didn't mention hills either. Although bicycles are often capable of more straight-line travel than autos, so the distance might be closer to eight miles than twelve.
Data, Omnichannel And Engagement: 3 Terms That Work Together To Drive Loyalty
Oh, I totally agree with you; I just walked away with the impression that the VC-funded option was the "most right" startup model.

As an explanation of why they invest the way they do, it's very good.
I have some bots placing bets for me 24/7 on betfair. They provide a nice API for that (https://developer.betfair.com/default/api-s-and-services/spo...).

The bots written in JS running on a node.js server. The strategy (bet pattern) I use is actually pretty simple. But it's not betting on low odds only, tryed that and failed :)
A few comments.

You're applying to companies that are going to receive thousands of technical resumes. If you look at yours from their point of view what do you see? Why would they want to hire you rather than another person?

You have java and javascript. Great. So do thousands of others. What did you do with them that would make you stand out? Did you deploy an innovative use of rule-based tech on Google/Amazon cloud to launch a new product/increase revenue by $X?

Formatting aside (I presume you cut and paste from Word or whatever), your resume is primarily a set of general statements and a list of technologies (I'm also assuming the elided pieces are a list of companies/promotions you've had). These tell me some things about you but I don't know anything about what you've actually done with those technologies nor do I get an appreciation of the passion that you state.

For a resume, although you need to include some basic fact (college, employers etc), a laundry list of things, be it technologies or employment history or whatever, makes for dry reading and doesn't paint the picture of a passionate technological achiever that I assume you want.

My suggestion is to take each stage in your career and give an example of how you used technology to solve a problem/create an opportunity. Be specific and keep each one down to a few short sentences but try to ensure that you've captured at least some of the key moments that you've been proud of. BTW if you have contributions in the public domain, these can work just as well (or better).

One final point. People don't just use the resume when they recruit. They'll Google you. Is your online profile, esp the first few entries, what you want to project? If you blog, are they rants or thoughtful discussions on the subjects that you've said you are passionate about? Are your public tweets/posts libelous?

Good luck
Although there are some 'straw man' aspects to any story like this, I think it's pretty clear that in today's startup economy the USV thesis about network effects is pretty valid. That said, I think the more interesting question is when we will evolve a good way of monetizing networks.

Advertising is OK for now, but clearly it doesn't work for all scenarios. For instance, a dental application would be a terrible place for advertising as people don't want ads anywhere near medical records.

I once went to a talk by USV and heard something along the lines of this: the first big layer of the internet was the infrastructure layer. The best companies to invest in were Cisco and those who were ahead in that field. Then the infrastructure enabled the provider layer, and AOL and other providers were the big ticket. Then came the application layer, when people like Google started to build interesting applications over the internet. The newest layer is the network layer, which has some overlap with the app layer but is where players like Facebook and Twitter come in.

The question is: what's next? What layer will leverage the networks to useful economic extent like all of those other layers have in the past? Whoever has an answer for this will be very, very rich and famous.
It's been a while since I shared my S3stat [1] numbers. I prefer to talk in vague handwavy terms rather than concrete numbers, but this should give a picture of the trajectory:

6 months: Regularly covering server expenses (which were ~$50-100/month at that point).

18 months: Would have paid for me to live nicely on the beach in Thailand.

30 months: Would cover my rent (and nothing else) at a nice apartment in a major city.

40 months: Passed the monthly take-home pay from my first (non-software) Engineering job out of college.

60 months: About what I'd have been making had I stuck with that first job out of college for 10 years.

80 months: Roughly a Senior Dev salary anywhere but the Bay Area.

As I noted a few years back for the first version of this list, this is for a SaaS subscription product that I built with the explicit goal of having a low-level income stream that I didn't have to put much time into. Early on, there were periods where I worked 80 hours or more per month to get the infrastructure ticking away to my satisfaction. These days, it requires maybe six hours of my attention each month.

This year, though, I've been back to full speed (meaning high single digit hours per week) building out and releasing a bunch of new features.

[1] https://www.s3stat.com/
How to issue a cryptosecurity
It is still different. Comcast got to where it is by buying out competitors and with a monopoly in providing cable within a city. There is no choice to shop for alternatives in many cities. With Amazon, there are multiple competitors. It is just that Amazon is willing to take little or no profit on an item.
I get that this is made for short-term stays, and being truly nomadic. But I think many of us who work remotely do it to allow us to leave the cities. Building permanent roots in a small town is way cheaper and simpler, but that isn't really covered here.

Also, one's own goals and personality have a lot more to do with the "best" place to work from than the crunchable data does.

So I like the idea of compiling a list of great places to work remotely, but I'm not sure this particular execution of that idea has a ton of value for me.
New Signal App Brings Encrypted Calling to iPhone
We prioritize local apps, so that is our main goal. Let tourist and local people know your app.
Yes it is a terrible name. First thing they need to change.
Thanks—this looks pretty exciting! I've been using Mori, but this appears to have a more JS-ish API. Can you give some other comparisons to Mori (i.e. feature set, performance, etc.)?
Eh, I think it makes sense for any service/app setup where every server with docker containers has an identical quantity of services running on it, when the server is healthy.

At that point, you aren't really doing anything different than you were before with managing servers & load balancing. I don't care if I have 1 app server or 10,000 app servers as long as they are functionally identical and interchangeable. One of them loses a container? Restart the container. That fails? Kill the instance and rebuild.
How you should write living documentation. (Part Two in a Series)
Seconded -- Square Cash is so seamless and perfect. But almost no one seems to have heard of it!

I think the name actually might be a problem; it's really hard for me to explain to people that I want to pay them in "square cash".
Canada research agency has turned off its computer to contain Chinese intrusion
Gold is a store of value, it's not very likely to beat inflation.

A dividend stock is likely to beat inflation, (but not with as much growth as a growth stock.) Theoretically, if you're only using the dividends, it's just as good in downturns (as long as it's not GE/GM/BAC with huge non core financing arms).

My risk adverse holding is a major, regulated, electricity provider. If it goes out of business, it's likely that I also don't have electricity.
Dive into the classics.

John Cowper Powys may help you to plan a great journey :

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12914/pg12914.html

(Despite a few bizarre choices. Paul Bourget, seriously ?)

If I had to choose myself : Homer (The Iliad and the Odyssey), the Bible (David's psalms and Job's book), Augustine, Dante, Saint Simon, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Dostoievsky, Proust, Céline.

Aparté :

If you like ambitious history with economic insights, I would strongly suggest to read Fernand Braudel works. He wrote three fantastic triptychs :

- The Mediterranean: And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (his thesis)

- Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century (the best history books I've ever read)

- The Identity of France