skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
i don't think so, no, as long as money isn't exchanging hands until a product is actually available for sale/use.

the letter of intent isn't legally binding, so its just a way to gauge business interest.

i mean, i'd be willing to sign a non-binding LOI if it meant someone would make use of it to independently develop an application that i would find beneficial.
At the end of the video you can see the multitouch device integrated with a keyboard. :)
5-10% plus pay!? And you're already profitable? Sounds like a kick ass deal to me. Give him a nice title and the deal sounds amazing and nearly too good. Especially at 10% equity. Just make sure to have vesting on his shares over 2 to 3 years.
I thought "sexism" referred to using sex as a factor in a decision in a domain where it ought not to be used (such as most employment situations).

This is just bad taste.

And I have no idea what it has to do with Pepsi branding.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
fwiw we (uservoice) also allow anonymous feedback and have a 50% off coupon for any startup.
Very good example of the minimum viable product. It's the right approach (minus the lying). VentureHacks had a really good coverage of the topic at http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product
I've taken a few approaches over the past few years.

First approach: I had no health insurance at all. Most people will tell you this is a bad idea, and it probably is. I got a check up right before I quit my job. This was the first time I had been to a doctor since I was a little kid, so I wasn't too worried at the time.

Second: I finally decided to get an HSA (Health Savings Account). This covers you in case of a disaster. It's a high deductible plan where you save money to pay for health expenses. For a non-smoker in 20's, the cost was roughly $60 a month, and you could sock away a few thousand a year (forget the exact number) for health expenses. I think the exact maximum has changed somewhat. You aren't taxed on that money for the year, and if nothing happens, you just get to withdraw it when you are in your 60's. I thought it was a pretty good deal in that I was willing to cover smaller medical bills out of pocket, rarely go to the doctor, and it seems to have the benefits of a retirement account (like a Roth IRA + Traditional IRA).

Third: Last year I got married. This is ideal in that I'm fully covered at a low price and no longer have to worry about it.

There are many threads on this very topic - do a few searches on searchyc.com because this comes up a lot.
Too true. It's the commitment to the process from people that can actually effect change that's often times the hard part.
I wonder how is sewage handled?
UserVoice doesn't require signup to submit an idea by default (it's admin selectable).
That doesn't necessarily imply the people asking are sexist. They might simply be Bayesians.
Is selling any unrealized concept unethical?

Of course not, if you disclose that it's unrealized.

Is pitching you an idea for a company in trade for your money wrong?

Of course not, if you disclose that it's an idea.

I think it becomes unethical when you begin lying

Which they were doing. They have your example of what would cross the line almost verbatim: "Each time we would come back with a few more 'screenshots' and tell them that development was progressing nicely and ask them for more input."

How do you position this so you don't have to lie to a potential customer, but have them assume it exists?

You don't. Creating the impression it exists when it doesn't is the unethical part. Why not just be up front with your customer and win them over with your design, insight, and ability to turn around real prototypes?
Sprint HTC Hero now on sale
FTFA: Once we secured a meeting, we told our potential customers that we were
actively developing our web app (implying that code was being written)

Sounds like lying to me.

edit: removed HTML.
What's unsaid here is that uTP is an undocumented protocol that isn't available to other BitTorrent implementations like Azureus/Vuze, potentially making them second-class citizens.
Latency based congestion control already exists for TCP[1].

So my question is, why wouldn't you get the same effect by running BT on top of a network stack using Vegas?

Someone flash the tptacek signal!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_Vegas
"they just imply I'm going to be unhappy for the rest of my life if I keep doing this."

Keep doing what? Finishing high school? That's going to make you unhappy for the rest of your life?

The fact of the matter is that you lack discipline. Life will always have mundane or unpleasant tasks that need doing. It's called responsibility and most of the time it takes discipline to buckle down and get things done.
That's pretty much sexism (or racism or ...ism) in a nutshell. Evaluating people by the statistical generalizations of a group they belong to, rather than evaluating them as individuals.
I'm not saying that the problem is only a power users problem. Just that the proposed solution is. A simple toggle switch somewhere in Settings.app would work just fine. Or some other solution. Just not this particular solution, a multifinger rotating gesture to rotate the device.
> Most cities won't ticket an an out of order meter.

"Most"? I haven't seen a parking meter in years that without "tickets issued at broken meters" on the label.
Jailbreaking made my iPhone twice as useful. I wouldn't be as enthousiastic about it as I am now if I wasn't able to install a lot of useful software that's only available outside of the Appstore.

I buy most of my software in the Appstore but I've also paid for software on Cydia.

Lookup SBSettings (has a button for quickly toggling WiFi on and off, awesome for battery life and my initial reason to jailbreak), RotationInhibitor, Lock Calendar and iDitDahText (brilliant!).
A blog on using pahole to find holes/padding the compiler adds to your structs

http://zecke.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-is-size-of-qlistdata-...
New ThinkPad desktop keyboard features crowdsourced design, lower price
Coffee, if you need to power through a few hours of boring and tedious stuff. Works better if you are not a regular coffee drinker.
why wouldn't you get the same effect by running BT on top of a network stack using Vegas?

You probably would, but Windows doesn't support Vegas.

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/p2pi/current/msg00052.h...
"BUT it definitely does NOT have the super-duper-hyper-ultra-cool Web 2.0 spit and polish about it because we haven't been able to find a good, dependable designer who works at
reasonable rates."

Couldn't he have just said: "But it doesn't look good because we can't afford a good designer."
While we're rethinking the human interface, could we please stop staggering typing keys and put frequently used keys like carriage return and backspace under strong fingers? [1]

I was disappointed to see at the end of the 10gui video a concept keyboard with staggered keys and with backspace way over in the corner. If we can't move keyboards past the constraints imposed by mechanical typewriters, what hope do we have at changing the mouse paradigm?

[1] Typematrix is the only keyboard maker I know of that currently does this while still building a relatively standard keyboard (and something that could be integrated into a laptop).
I listen to Voodoo People by Prodigy on repeat. That was the only way I was able to write my papers in high school.
Its easier to trust someone with your data, if they have triple redundancy built into their architecture. S3 has that built in; a single MS SAN box does not. That's why its an important distinction.

You trust people with the right, next generation trust worthy architecture.
50% discount if a startup asks?
from the bittorrent.com comments, a quote from a high-up at BT:

Simon Morris

Posted October 8, 2009 at 5:52 pm

As a matter of fact µTP is indeed a replacement for TCP, so we think the name is appropriate. You can check out standardization work which we’re chairing at the IETF called the LEDBAT working group
whoa... that's definitely disruptive technology. Thanks for giving me the idea. I'm going to be rich after writing this... RICH I tell you.
Ask HN on Health Insurance: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...
I have started working on something similar. I have 3-4 ideas of apps I would like to do. I figure it would be far easier and way cheaper to launch landing pages for each, with mocked up "screenshots" of the apps. I plan to include on each of the apps a form to provide your email address in exchange for an invite. Then, I would do some simple SEO and word-of-mouth marketing and see what kind of response rates I would get back through this form. I figure in the end, this would help identify which application has the lowest barrier to adoption (e.g. easier discoverability, more user interest).
My point is that not only is it possible for atheists to behave in a moral way, but statistics suggests that atheists tend to act in a more moral way than average.

The question of solid philosophical grounds for morality does not concern me. I happen to believe that there are none. However I also am painfully aware that I am personally wired to be a moral being, and if I act against my own morality, I am very unhappy. However I have no basis for trying to convince anyone else that my morality is the correct one.

I could go on at length about this, but the short version is that after much thought I am a moral relativist. And moral relativism is not an easy position to take.
So much good stuff in this article:

1. You're not your customer/user

2. Identify the minimum viable product

3. Incur technical debt wisely

4. Get feedback early and often

Pursuing angel financing with those signed LOIs is a completely different ballgame from showing up with an idea, or even working code.
No, sexism would be treating it as a rule ("women miss work to care for their children") rather than a prior ("women have a higher probability of missing work to care for children").

If they are asking the question, they are attempting to evaluate the person based on their individual characteristics (i.e. their answer).
I remember watching an episode of Myth Busters where they put a block of ballistic gel into a swimming pool and shot at it from everything between a Civil War pistol to a .50cal

Very cool to learn that the slow the FPS of the round, the further into the water it will penetrate.
I'm a solo founder, and think 5% is way too much. Your classmate has already decided that earning less is acceptable to him. If you're offering him more than he currently earns, you're already paying more than market rates. And you want to add ownership in the company?

You (and him) seem more concerned about issues of face than issues of compensation. This is dangerous. Quantify the value of your business and the value he brings. If you're not sure how much value he brings (emotional support? you're kidding me!), don't give equity. Come up with a plan to evaluate things in six months, or make a commitment that require hitting aggressive performance targets that are linked explicitly to his work. And make sure things vest.

One approach might be giving him the option to purchase up to a certain percentage of the company at a set value. Then figure out the value by asking yourself a simple question: if you had to sell the whole company, how much would you want for it? If he really cares about ownership he can purchase equity out of his salary over time. If he doesn't want to invest that is a warning sign he won't be contributing to growth.

And ultimately, remember that friendship and business is hard to mix. You will have a working relationship with him. He could easily come to resent working for you for "so little" at the same time you may come to resent giving him "such a good deal". People's relationships change when money is involved. At least by focusing on the numbers you won't toss away your business for nothing, and can be dispassionate with him when discussing what you can offer.
Because it's none of their damn business. The children in question are not under their care, so they have no reason to pay the matter any heed whatsoever. Ensuring that children are properly cared for while they are absent is the parents' responsibility, not their employers'. Perhaps you feel that businesses should be monitoring other aspects of their employees' private lives as well?
Wise words handed down to me: SUCK IT UP and take care of it.

Yea HS busy work can be idiotic. Yea, you could be using the time for something more interesting/better/cooler/profitable. The simple fact is that the work needs to be done.

If you must find motivation, use the fact that if it's not done, you won't be able to work on the other more interesting things. There are some tasks that you must do but will never feel motivated to do. Find a way to do finish these things as fast as is viable, then go work on the interesting stuff.
Music for me as well. For years at work I put on the headphones & Frontline Assembly and channeled the hate into productive work. Although lately it has been a Masters of Flamenco Guitar CD.

I seem to have the same personality as the OP but I've found it to be less of a problem as I get older.
Between people who don't get insurance through work and people who do but want better service, this has a definite niche.
Its just hard because I have to do 2 years of general education classes.

You get results out of everything in proportion to what you put in. Take the general education classes and make them as interesting as you can. Learn as much as you can. Not everything must be specialization in your major.

Anecdote: when I was an Undergraduate EE one of my classmates complained to my English lit professor about all the "stupid humanities classes" we were required to take. Prof thought for a second and then said, "there are two good reasons for this. First, most of you are engineering students and you need to learn that not all problems can be solved through technology or at all. Studying literature is an excellent way to understand this. Second, when you're an engineer in industry and you walk up to that cute young lady at a cocktail party, you probably want to have something more interesting to talk to her about than circuitry and electronics."

Twenty years or so since graduation and I still agree with him on both counts!
Tell HN: 50% discount on uservoice with code "startup101"
The code is clearly written by someone who knows C first. If I was given that to review I would reject it.

Using NULL, inconsistent indenting, putting int i outside the for loop, struct's that should be a class and a class that has no reason being a class. Not to mention variables like 'o'* and a class named Obj (woo saved 3 letters and named it the most generic thing I could think of). one struct starts with a _ the other does not... using printf rather then cout. Bad variable naming in general.

And this is all before even reporting the real issues which from the looks of it are more with the c code then the c++ code.

* o does not stand for object, but objects making it an even worse sin
If he's such a great engineer, go through the sums with him. Get him to sign an NDA, then talk about the value of the company. If he wants shares, he should pay for them.

Rough order of magnitude - Supposing your company has a turnover of 100Kpa and is 20% profitable. Finger in the air, the company is worth around 700K, and 10% is worth 70K cash (ignoring the details of pre-money/post-money investment).

Is he willing to put in 70K for 10% shares, and then work for dividends? Probably not. However, that's what you're doing (in effect) so why should he get a better deal?

Do the sums. They are more convincing than woolly ideas. Better yet, get him to do the sums. Then you can see what he thinks things are worth.

If he's so good, don't alienate him, get him on side. Work through the issue with him. Negotiations can be win/win and don't have to be zero-sum games.
In my opinion those tabs on the side of the screen look really tacky too.
Don't most industries work with prototypes? As long as no lying is involved it seems okay.

Besides, most of the projects I've worked on don't actually begin until after the first delivery (when the customer finally looks at the software and starts deciding what they _really_ want!).
You know how the original article talked about how people that didn't believe there were being sexist ("just Bayesian!") are incapable of detecting sexism? Case in point.

Whatever you think about the question, apart from the fact that it's unlawful to ask, it's incredibly douchey. It's none of your business, and implies that you think the woman is going to be a complicated hire because she's got kids.

In case it wasn't clear enough, the idea isn't that the interviewers are concerned for the kids. They're not. They just think they can predict the absentee rate for people by their chromosomes. Women with kids have to stay home when the kids get sick, right?
I agree with you, but when I was in high school I was able to slack off and do things an hour before they were due and got a good GPA simply because I was intelligent enough to pull it off. I had no reason to believe anything might be wrong with me. Now, 5 years later, I'm struggling to keep myself focused and can look back and realize that this might have been manifesting a lot longer than I thought.

Like I said, it's not the end all solution but it is worth exploring.
There's a coupon code in the sidebar here: http://uservoice.com/for/startup
In my opinion, don't hire your friends unless they complement perfectly. Even then, have a backup ready in case that person wants to move on.
T-Mobile Lets Furious Sidekick Users Ditch Their Contracts for Free
Not necessarily a tutorial. However in response to a specific question I would hope for a specific pointer on how you might do that specific thing. The link you gave me the second time was far more helpful for re-evaluating aspect-oriented programming's capabilities in this regard than the manual.

In particular I am now convinced that it can do things that I had not previously realized were possible.
I obviously can't promise this isn't my own bias, but the Joplin-eque piece just doesn't flow the same as any of the actual Joplin rags I'm familiar with. Same with the Bach. There's something compelling in the originals that seems to be missing from the ersatz version.
There's a similar device I read about with a hardware prototype that actually works. It doesn't have the software support of 10gui but it's basically a resistive touchscreen mapped to keypress macros (copy/paste, app switching, etc).

Here's some pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauric/sets/72157616093748066/w...
neat. thanks for doing that.
I think they would be better off to have tried to charge something , rather than give it away.

It's important to validate the pricing and business model -- and you can only do that by selling it (charging for it).

But, a good read.
Indeed, double Indeed, what about the keyboard?

Funny how much of the video seems act as if the mouse was the ONLY way that users actually input information into computers in the last twenty years. But even the newest user is going to be using the keyboard and the more experienced a user gets, the more they use the keyboard. And even more, as computers become a normal part of human society, interfaces pandering to novices will become less important, not more important. The question will change, is changing now, from "how do I use this thing?" to "How can I be more productive with this thing"?

Conside that MOST of the data that users input is going to be text, which a form of discreet digital data. A mouse or manipulative multitouch interface, no matter how well designed, is useless for this because it inherently produces analog input which is then translated to a digit action - dragging a file to the trash versus just pressing the delete key.

Photo editing or moving windows are exceptional cases but UI designers are constantly developing clever ways to do them specifically because they allow all sorts of kinesthetic analogs. Yet none of this solves the problem that this isn't the interface a user wants to do most their tasks.
I have several Yahoo Pipes running which take various RSS feeds and replace the blurbs with the full article text (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=b26addb2e01415dbf... ). As a programmer I found it quite frustrating to use; very limiting (as with all "visual programming" interfaces) and somewhat buggy. However, it does get the job done and it's free.

I actually much preferred AppJet for this sort of work, as it could execute arbitrary Javascript and make arbitrary HTTP requests with cookies, etc. I wrote an RSS feed munger that logged into my WSJ account to download full articles with AppJet. I was really disappointed when AppJet was discontinued.
Talk about multi-touch reminds me of a friend's perennial complaint, "The future of interfaces seems designed to screw me over."

He has a congenital deformity of the arms, but he can type (and is one of those clacky-IBM keyboard fetishists). With his feet, he can use mice and controllers. But multi-touch systems are beyond his ability - while he can pivot and shift to type remarkably quickly, he can't get more than one hand on something at the same time. Worse, each hand is effectively only one digit for him.

And then, there are the folks who don't even have his degree of dexterity.

I can't help thinking that it might be a good thing for general interface designers to consider the implications of disabilities for users of these designs, instead of shrugging that off onto providers of interfaces specifically for the disabled.
If you do decide to work together, be sure to have a strong legal agreement between you two. Especially, if you bring them on as a co-founder.

Key points:
- Stock vesting
- Dispute resolution
- Out clause
- the usual boiler plate

Otherwise, if things don't work out (and if they are a friend, it can get nasty) you want to have a clear plan that everyone has agreed to.
Back in the 90s, when I worked in consulting, it was business as usual to have a meeting with the client and the next day be back with a mock-up of the application features or interface discussed the day previously. It might have been VB, just GUI with nothing behind it, but clickable. It might be a few flat HTML pages (that would be connected to a database if it were real). There would be no graphics or "polish", it might be literally just black and white and maybe a little line drawing or clip art. The user could play with it and say yes, build this for real and make it look pretty, or let's change this bit, and we would and be back the next day. We even had a fancy name for it, which I can't remember offhand, like Rapid Prototyping Workshop or something. Competitors of ours did this by sending it offshore and having it worked on overnight but we never did 'cos it was as much work specifying it in enough detail to do that that we might as well just hack it up on laptops ourselves in a hotel room.

Anyway, not only is this approach nothing new, but at no point was it ever claimed that anything existed that didn't, and clients were very happy with this approach (esp. if they'd been used to "business analysts" drawing "data flow diagrams" on paper then coming back a year later with a steaming pile of crap that did nothing anyone actually wanted).
Arrington co-founded Achex a epayment system prior to techcrunch with a technical co-founder.

Kawasaki co-founded (and sold) Fog City Software with programmer cofounders.

Godin has founded a number of startups including with programmers I believe.
Motorcycle Saddlebags, Motorcycle Luggage, Leather Saddle Bags
I'd like to see it with the pad acting as the keyboard, too. though, that's more software implementation, while the video is talking hardware interface.

Although, the problem with that kind of implementation is that it doesn't have the tactile feel of a keyboard. however, iPhone users seem to have acclimated after first bitching about it.
What is storage virtualization?