skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've got a contract for a web project right now where, if possible, I'd really like to integrate some fairly sophisticated e-commerce. The two big challenges:

1) The project deals with separate businesses that all have their own bank accounts. The money from transactions processed by the app has to be deposited into the bank accounts that belong to individual businesses. I believe this means that PCI requirements are substantially more onerous for an app like this because my client is classed as a payment service provider, rather than just a user.

2) The app must also be able to process card-present transactions, both credit- and debit-card based. Customers of the businesses (who are the customers of my client) that use the app will often be present to swipe their cards for their payments to be processed.

Are you aware of any services or technologies that would make this easier? So far I think my preference may be for partnership with a vendor who is already PCI-certified and has the pin pads for card-present transactions, whose software has a good API that I can interact with via this web application.

I'll be building this in Rails. I've got lots of experience with traditional e-commerce models, and I'm comfortable with the technical aspects of dealing with multiple bank accounts, but the certification requirements appear to be the major obstacle so far (costing approx $100k, according to my research, for hiring an independent security assessor and working with them to achieve compliance).
The article states:
"We were also able to add other information, like where to find water left by the Border Angels, where to find Quaker help centers that will wrap your feet, how far you are from the highway—things to make the application really benefit individuals who are crossing the border."

So it sounds to me like they are giving out information which could potentially lead you to the whereabouts of such helpful sorts of people.
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
ISBN-10: 0140157352
ISBN-13: 978-0140157352
It seems like Gizmodo's folks shot the video... OTOH, they wouldn't mind if the video got viral and that gave them a couple zillion more pageviews.
How far off is support for native iPhone apps written in Ruby? Is this on the roadmap?
Format a Hard Drive on Windows XP
I believe the roadblock here is the lack of support for automatic garbage collection for applications developed using the iPhone SDK in the mobile OS.

I'm a Ruby developer, not iPhone/Cocoa so this could be way off base, but I believe this is what it came down to in a previous discussion.
Estoril, Portugal — The Future, the Past, the Present and…
Should I switch to Python?
New study claims Transcendental Meditation 'cuts risk of heart attack by half'
Saw a link to the article on Dan Benjamin's Hivelogic and was wondering what you guys think.

The allegedly biased Wikipedia-cited scientific research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation#Scien...

The article from Skeptic's Dictionary:

http://skepdic.com/tm.html

MetaFilter thread on whether or not it's worth the $2500:

http://ask.metafilter.com/22579/Is-it-worth-2500-to-learn-Tr...
Fantastic, I will join. Server seems to be down at the moment however.
For every "Border Angel" trying to help illegal immigrants cross the border, there's a "Minuteman" trying to prevent it from happening.

I wonder if this app will do more harm than good for this guys' cause. It's only a matter of time before the people in the "Minuteman Project" figure out that they can go raid/camp out/etc. near these water sources/help centers and do ... well, whatever it is they do when they spot an illegal immigrant crossing the border.
Bioinformatics is cool, but it's basically less sexy than you might think. There are various directions to work on, but the kind of work is essentially statistics and pattern matching. If you want to figure out what genes do or how proteins fold in general, go read a textbook. Spending a year on a single gene processing gigabytes of dirty data may not be as sexy as you might think. Or it might be if that's your cup of tea, but as I said, in the end, it's mostly statistics.
The ultimate problem are the lenders to the PE firms: someone is always on the other side of leverage. The big banks make bets on the PE firms' investments by lending them money with little collateral. If these lenders did their HW, the price of such defaults or shocks to cash flow streams would be reflected in interest rates.
Ask HN: How do you go about spreading the word about your product or service?
How do you go about spreading the word about your product or service? I am more specifically interested in website or desktop application?

Also what are the usual mechanisms for you to get contacts of sites/bloggers who can review you app?
I dont think so, or at least after a lot of searching, I've yet to see anything similar.
Study: Most Fortune 100 Companies Don't Get Twitter
This is quite interesting. If Goldman can borrow at 00.50%, what will it lend to small businesses at?
Majority of stock, but not board control
Say a company has 1000 shares outstanding, with 600 common stock (vested) owned by a founder, and 400 preferred shares owned by two investors (200 each). There are three board members (founder, vc1, vc2). The company is doing well and is profitable.

In case of a disagreement, can the VCs recapitalize the company and reduce the founder's stake to 0%. What recourse does a founder have in this situation ?
Anonymous networks doesn't really help if you are liable for traffic passing through you, like with recent actions against ISPs. I think the future is trust-based networks like friend-to-friend. When broadband speed averages increases, it will become feasible to relay traffic through trusted peers.
SVG a graphics format for 21st century
Literature on Real-Time Data Analysis
exact repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=947376
I appreciate this recommendation.

"Thank you, you love me, you really love me!"
- The Mask
The Attack Against Ogg Theora
"Work might not necessarily make you happy but it may give you the means to do the stuff that makes you happy"
Penguins Evolving Faster Than Thought
80% Won't Pay for Online Content
The E-Myth (the E stands for Entrepreneur): http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou...

Derek Sivers has a good collection of his notes (and many other biz-centric books) here: http://sivers.org/book/EMythRevisited

His opening line nails it: "Everything needs to be a system. Think of your business as a franchise prototype. You should be able to hand the "how-to" manual to just anyone, to do it as good as you."
I don't have an answer but I am hoping this will lead to links or discussion of things like building website traffic and SEO. I have been pondering starting such a discussion myself but a) I suck out loud at starting discussions and b)I just haven't gotten around to it.

Not trying to high jack your discussion. I would be perfectly happy to be given the link to some previous discussion about the topics I listed, as I imagine it's been so very done before.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming (with apologies, if that is appropriate).
Act as if your product or service is free
I have RSI and I have found swimming to be helpful. Zero-impact and it really relaxes muscles after a bout of coding.

Check out Terry Laughlin's http://totalimmersion.net program for how you can learn to swim freestyle without struggle.
Made to Stick
http://www.madetostick.com/
Be careful about distributions; not everything's a bell curve.

Consider: 99% of Americans own a below-average number of houseboats.
Eugene Jarvis left Midway about eight years ago and started Raw Thrills (http://www.rawthrills.com).

Eugene wasn't the host mentioned in the story, since he didn't work on design for Black Knight or High Speed (he does have a sound credit on HS, though). You're thinking of the other Vid Kid, Larry DeMar.
What kind of business are you interested in?

If internet/tech... read TechCrunch and Mashable.
Watch "This Week in Startups" by Jason Calacanis.

Watch some picthes from TC50. (Click the logos to see their pitch): http://www.techcrunch50.com/2009/

Business Week and Money magazines are decent, but less tech related.

That said, you'll still learn the most by experience. That is, trying things, making mistakes, and learning from them. There is a learning curve involved, but if you have the determination you'll be fine.

Good Luck
Wow. Not only might that have solved the economic problem, it would also have been WAY COOL.
Knowing John Resig, we'll get a blog post in 6 weeks showing a 30% speedup in jQuery in ie6 and 7. This man is a machine.
MicroISV

Anything by Eric Sink
I actually like this guy's thinking. For example:

"I would imagine they won’t be too happy with us, but again we’re not trying to hide. It’s a safety tool. It’s not trying to resolve the political anxieties of these communities or resolve the inadequacies of a fictional border for a so-called free-trade community. Again, our position is that it’s not a political resolution; it’s a safety tool. That, at the core, is what we’re attempting to do."

In Meyers-Briggs terms, I'm a Perceiver, not a Judger. A big part of what I do in life is rethink and reclassify and question current mental models, assumptions, and classifications. I look for that "third option" (a la http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TakeAThirdOption) on a regular basis.

So thanks for the link.
Oh, I see. That wasn't exactly a secret prior to this, though - I thought you meant some novel way of finding crossers by tracking the phone, as opposed to exploiting existing information available on paper maps or suchlike.
What's wrong with reposts within reason -- especially when earlier post(s) have failed to get traction but the current one is succeeding?
http://www.amazon.com/Buffett-American-Capitalist-Roger-Lowe...

This is the best business book I've ever read. Buffett is methodical, implacable, and brilliant -- but too smart to overthink anything.

The nice thing about Buffett is that being a little more like him will make you a little more money (unlike emulating, e.g., Gates -- if you want to be like Gates, you have to be completely ruthless and smart; 90% won't do.)
Illegal immigration has always been a touchy subject. I applaud Ricardo Dominguez for his effort and for standing up to save human lives.

In regards to the app, it would certainly be a double-edged sword. If I were an illegal immigrant, I would only rely on this app if I were lost and had no other resort to survive. In such case it would be valuable.
And when you are ready for something more in depth but also research-based, go with The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator:
http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Heart-Negotiator-Leigh-Thompson/d...

Getting to Yes and Mind and Heart were the two required texts for a class I had on negotiation. Both are excellent books.
Sorry. Usually HN catches them automatically...maybe it's getting swamped by the copious spam on the new page :-/ I've left this up because your original post seems to have vanished, even though I just voted for it.

If it's any comfort, >75% of my submissions sink without trace and get reposted later by someone else. I suppose some people tweet theirs but I can't stand Twitter. Or perhaps I just suck :)
You Hardly Ever Fail Because of Your CTO
Speaking from personal experience, understanding the concept of much of anything is, alas, not really required to pass the GED. So I fear that anyone who can comprehend an advanced concept such as "percentiles" would be wasting their talents on anything involving the GED.
Primarily because it is a link to TechCrunch.
Free Mobile Wallpapers, Cell Phone Pictures
When It’s Crunch Time at College, Students Turn to Adderall
Like rdj said, that really depends on what you mean by small, focused, and successful.

I've had moderate success with Facebook apps (~1 million users total), but I haven't touched the platform in about a year, so I might be a bit out of the loop. Still, I'd be happy to answer questions.
"Founders At Work" by Jessica Livingston

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/d...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Livingston
The End of the Broadband Buffet Is Nigh
No. You cannot rely on a dynamic memory manager inside sections of the kernel. The kernel provides the memory architecture to the operating system and therefore must implement the memory manager.
Linux desktop with Enlightenment (e17) by top-tier electronics maker
Moving to the virtual layer (and taking advantage of the cloud)
Realization of a programmable two-qubit quantum processor [pdf]
A Brave New Web Will Be Here Soon, But Browsers Must Improve
Filme do Lula
Assista o Trailer oficial de “Lula – O filho do Brasil“, a Cinebiografia é de Fábio Barreto. Com Rui....
I hadn't thought of that, but if people actually make phone calls, their location can be approximated based on the cell towers that picked up the call (or so I understand -- I imagine there are folks here who know way more about that process than I do).
Verizon’s Ad Campaign Against AT&T
I am in an undergraduate-level bioinformatics course right now, and can echo what was said about statistics. The biology isn't too tough to pick up, but I am weak in stats and that is my greatest difficulty with this class. That said, I am enjoying it immensely. The book we use is a good overview of the subject - http://www.amazon.com/Bioinformatics-Molecular-Evolution-Pau... -Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution.
Most of the tools that bioinformaticians use are buggy, horribly designed and very unfriendly to the average user. One way to get involved is just improving the usability and stability of the tools. There are plenty of command line tools that you can add a GUI to if that is your thing:

http://bio-bwa.sourceforge.net/

http://abacus.gene.ucl.ac.uk/software/paml.html

http://samtools.sourceforge.net/

You don't need to know too much to contribute. If you are in Utah and interested I could get you some contacts with professors.
I'd recommend "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore. It almost perfectly describes the lifecycle and challenges faced by the two software-product-based startups that I've worked for.
I think article this may be too sparse in details for a subject that so important.

For better resources, please see:

http://www.bokardo.com - for design of social interfaces (please read everything you can, it's not that much)

and

http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php?id=bryce (for reputation systems. Bryce is the man here.)
Bear in mind we're talking about the Telegraph here...they're just as likely to publish an op-ed tomorrow dismissing yoga as an effete liberal pursuit and bemoaning the difficulty of obtaining a traditional English steak and kidney pie or Yorkshire pudding, an edible form of kryptonite.
I think he meant that it's harder to figure out if a given video is a deliberate attempt at viral marketing vs. just a video that some guy posted.
PHP and the demand for frameworks from businesses
There are 3 different measures of "average", just choose average = median and you're set.
New York City is the Future of the Web
Hey, you should check out my app! http://looklookbuy.com
Using any of these "web 2.0" services is a bad idea. You should use whatever these use as their backend, where you can buy phone numbers for 10 cents a year or whatever.
Mind-fired weapons and war crimes
I would go for 4 steps to the epiphany, it gives you practical steps to follow to avoid that process of sitting down as a programmer and deciding magically what everyone wants. (then being dissapointed when you spend x time coding it and finding out they dont)
Thanks for the reply. The airforcetimes article is really very good. I wish you had originally posted it instead of the strategy page article. The usatoday link seems to be MIA.
This got posted earlier and flagged, presumably by someone who didn't realise it was meant as humour (come on - "data.map.reduce" and you took it seriously?).

This is actually quite clever satire (although tagging it as such makes it slightly less subtle :)). It spoofs the "Hadoop is trivial in R" article it links to (previously discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=945196) and gently knocks the breathless tone of some Ruby articles at the same time. There's even a dig at Guido in there. The following is on the money:

"As a rule of thumb: a continuation is a block that has been captured inside a scope where a do is in effect, and cannot be passed to a proc, only to a lambda. It's really quite simple."
Almost every innovation that I came up with, Google has put into Google Scholar.

You're remarkably sanguine about it! Too bad, as I do like yyour site and think you did an excellent job (and the direct NL/Westlaw link doesn't hurt).

I agree we're seeing a major shift in ho law firms employ IT. Mrs Browl works at an electronic discovery firm and it's a very competitive space now. they wound down most of their paper copy/printing operations a few months ago because demand for hard copy has gone through the floor, exacerbated by the recession. The old cinema cliche of digging through boxes of documents or dusty law libraries in the dead of night is being replaced with browser-hosted searches at Starbucks.

IANAL and just enjoy reading legal opinions for fun, but I too am very impressed at the consistency and accessibility of Google's offering.
whatever it is they do when they spot an illegal immigrant crossing the border

They call the border patrol. Can you believe such wickedness exists?
C's not dead, but I agree with the article's author: its use will slowly erode, but never get to zero. It'll bottom out at a fairly steady, low rate, rather like COBOL.
I had a ridiculous video of myself that ended up being so good people thought it was viral as well... kind of annoying actually.
Pick up a copy of the tried and true, "How To Win Friends & Influence People". The rest of the fad business books come and go, but this one is a great start to learn how to interact with people when you're trying to sell them on "something".
Addons.mozilla.org to move from CakePHP to Django in 2010
> The E-Myth (the E stands for Entrepreneur): http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-Abou....

A thousand times yes. I make everyone I'm going to work with read it before working with them. It really gets to the heart of what businesses do right and wrong, and how to build an organization correctly based on systems instead of based on personality. Very important.
What about the phishing attacks that don't download executable software, like the ones that convince users to give up account information to a bogus web site? Are they not platform agnostic?
Financial Cryptography: better than freedom?
Is it possible that the dupe-checking gets tricked by a trailing slash?
New generation of rugged gadgets hits
NSA Is Giving Microsoft (and possibly others) Some Help On Security
seconded. it's interesting how it forces you to build for scale right away.
Now if we can just wikify the US Code, then we can do away with those irritating legislature things and techno-utopia shall be ours.

Seriously, I can see some great possibilities for integrating this with the Google visualization APIs for statistical purposes, or for business intelligence (eg try searching for cases to which Google is a party).
I still think it's noise.
Indeed. I always just copy the whole URL (in chrome), maybe other browsers don't include that? This isn't the first duplicate I've seen that just had slightly mismatching URLs.

In a desperate bid to stay relevant, if Chrome OS turns out to be awesome maybe it will bing more consistency to HN posts...er...
I think he's talking about people using Rails worrying too much, not the people writing the Rails framework.

Just as an aside, I totally agree that we spend too much time worrying about this sort of thing. I'm definitely guilty of this myself. I think it's probably born out of the heavy use of "convention over configuration" in Rails; whenever I try to do something, I always think "Am I following convention here?". My instinct now usually tells me "probably not, but just get it done and worry about that later".
I like David Foster Wallace's commencement speech, but it might be a little too heavy for kids that age.
End of pirate bay
Microsoft's Ray Ozzie: "Apps Don’t Make Your Phone Special"
The Chrome logo looks like a futuristic, robotic, eye. And I find it a little haunting.
Date A Whore tonight
The WP article is a completely whitewashed history of the organization, clearly edited by TM people. The organization has a loooooooong history of making dubious claims based mostly on research performed by its own people. http://www.aaskolnick.com/naswmav.htm Even when their research has been refuted by numerous other studies, they'll continue to quote it, as if it were still valid. What's worse is that they've gone to great pains to hide the serious side effects of TM. http://www.suggestibility.org/
Microsoft Boosts Support For Startups As Dodge Joins Google
Some people who claim to have been at the talk said that Ozzie's opinions were more nuanced than what's been reported on Gizmodo and VentureBeat. Check the comments at the bottom of Scoble's blog post:

http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/17/ray-ozzie-is-wrong-about-sm...

Wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft or Ozzie issues a clarification about this.
Great read indeed. I agree with the fact that foundraising is a huge investment in time, causing lots of distraction. If an entrepreneur is in a position to bootstrap, this is obviously the best way to go.