skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why can't I just pay Comcast money and get a set exact pipe size that I can use?

I didn't pay for 16mbits for 15 minutes. This is false advertising.
Tip: Grepping on Whole Words
Frank Wierzbicki (Jython lead) is leaving Sun
I guess it's the citizens owning lots of firearm part.
Because the Founders were concerned that if early drafts were circulated they would be shut down before they got very far- and they wanted to be able to change their minds freely without looking like they were flip flopping. Yes- those same circumstances clearly apply to politics today!
Unless you're in FIOS land, or until real competition steps in, you won't be able to. This is the sad state of broadband here in the US. =(
And happy birthday to Ross from 280 North too :-D
Wonder if he can read input from the microphone and use that to pulse the light in time to music, or display a VU meter onscreen, or...
I wonder at what point a user will ask me to do something technically challenging like this.
Just Curious..How you arrived at that name ramamia
My apologies - I know I kind of man-handled the term here, but I think it conveyed the gist of the article.
2009 and they are using URLs to pass data? I thought there was a push for security at Microsoft?
In most development shops I've worked with who claim to go by an "agile" methodology, this is precisely what it meant.
That's not much more authoritative than some random blogspot entry, but interesting. So who hijacked his twitter account (which I know was his real twitter account)
Well, there are plenty of aspects to the notion of the participants in a society being its owners; that's what I lump together as "democracy", which is a shorthand for what America is supposed to be about - government by, for, and of the people and all that.

Since you can't have government by, for, and of the people without freedom, and you can't be free if you don't have power over the government, I don't feel too bad about conflating the two. Do you have a counterexample? What non-democratic form of government do you consider free?

I guess, in a larger sense, I take it as given that a democratic and free society is a basic requirement for human progress. Do you think you'd get far with a startup in a less egalitarian society? You might, but the fact that your grandfather didn't know the right people's grandfathers is going to really weigh you down. It's only the basic assumption of equality of all people that make it possible for most to start anything new. And I do take it for granted that everyone here believes that starting new things is the way to go.

So, OK, we can posit an egalitarian, "free" society where only an elite have political power. I honestly don't believe that's an actual possibility - what's to stop the political elite from taxing you at 99% of your income as soon as they think your widget would be fun to have?

Nothing.

This probably deserves a lot more thought and space than I can fit in this margin.
Glad to hear that the rumors in this article might be unfounded. I was hoping to get one of these in time for the holidays, guess I'll have to wait till next year..
why would you blame goldman sachs for this stuff?

Because its as though I bet someone $999 trillion that there would not be an earthquake in California tomorrow.

Anyone obviously does not have $999 trillion. But instead of eating the losses like any normal business would have to do, they instead tell their friends in the Fed print the money for AIG which AIG then used to pay 100% of their betting losses to Goldman.
That's a fair point. A lot of people could probably motivate to do an hour of math a day, just like they could to do an hour of exercise for an hour or practice an instrument. OTOH I would never be independently be able to motivate to do 4-6 hours of math a day, which is where I'm at now.

Actually the instrument analogy is apt--the world class concert musicians you see on Youtube are practicing 5 hours a day. The guy down the hall banging out a Chopin prelude practices one. Both are "good" musicians, but only one is great. It's a question of what you're looking for.
They just did.

(Hint: potential users count.)
Using URLs to pass data is fine, if skeevy.

Using a publically visible tracking cookie to pass transaction data, though...

Microsoft spends more on security per line-of-code shipped than any company in the world. I have no idea how something this bad could have shipped. But I don't know the whole story.

One possible explanation: web pest tools like Burp filter out images from the request history, because you usually don't bother fuzzing requests for images.

Of course, you usually don't embed dollar amounts in images either.
Unit Tests and the PrivateObject, Part 1
Slow down tiger. I'm just trying to clarify the original point as to why people are pissy at GS and the other dealers.

Obviously there are nuances to this issue, but my point still stands. The masses aren't pissy because GS turns a profit (as implied by the OP). They're pissy because they believe firms carry out unfair practices that allow them to game the system. This is true. To a degree.

One example: most dealers act as brokers for smaller institutional investors (hedge funds, mutual funds, etc.) and have visibility into their trading volume, including particularly large position movements. Firms leverage this info for their own house positions and have a slight lead time against the market. Intraday the gains may be slight, but over a year they amount to hundreds of millions in profit.

Given the size of their positions, firms can, and often do use their weight to manipulate market prices.

Then theres the issue with the govt bailout and TARP funds...

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/225427-michael-j-golde/323...
One thing that no company should do when selling a product, is show me an ad for some movie before a video that explains the product. I was interested in the CRM product for work but the ad before the sales pitch is poor form for a company trying to sell me something.
Ask HN: Twitter Lists to Follow?
What twitter lists do you recommend following?
ChatCHENNAI - Chennai Meets Here
That is actually the worst news I've heard about it. :(

Waiting for Chome OS? A risk if the rumors of the Apple Tablet are true.

$1M+TC money.. but how MUCH TC money - and still no product; that's a worry.

Essentially he's saying I've spent more than $1M on technology that I don't want to use anymore and I am waiting for Google "vapour ware" to materialise to use on the new one.
so the link take me to Gaia GPS not A Flashlight

??
I'm really curious as to how search startups like this get funding. The search market is so polarized right now that only a couple sites (read Google and Microsoft) actually have any share. So you're either Google or Microsoft, or you get no revenue at all.

Are they showing the investors something radically new behind the scenes? Or are the investors simply ignorant of the market? Of the new search engines gone public so far (e.g. Cuil), it's pretty much been the same old "text box entry leading to a list of links" story, and invariably a flop.
Obama's view on schools
Well, I have a story about that, from 2005. We were in Hungary (oddly enough) and were watching a show in which you could SMS in stuff from your phone and it would scroll across the screen, and some of it was political in nature.

My then-12-year-old daughter said, "So I could say, 'Bush is an idiot' and it would show up on the screen?" (Yeah, my politics is always pretty obvious.)

I laughed and said, "Sure could!"

She thought it over and said, "But would my name be on it? Maybe that wouldn't be a good idea."

I realized at that point that it was safer to express political dissent at that time in freaking Hungary than in the United States of America, and that my daughter knew that. Talk about a blow-your-mind situation.

My wife will talk anybody's ear off about politics face-to-face, and she has entirely radical opinions for our venue of Indiana. But if it's on the record? No way. She says we just don't need that kind of trouble.
Definitely unprofessional for both companies involved :-/. Zoho could have taken the high ground here, but instead just sank to the same kind petty name calling.
I'm told it was the only viable way to save the building. It was going to be torn down. It's a beautiful place - I'd rather see it turned into a classy brew house than razed.

Now, if they turned it into a strip club - THAT would be creepy.
I agree that you have to clear about "connecting" the customer to the business, not providing the direct number. In some ways this is better than a regular phone number because if the business' number does change, the proxied number could stay the same.

The gross exaggeration you're referring to is something that's easily overcome though by tracking total calls vs unique calls. Also you get great stats like how long the customer was on the phone for, and I imagine if they hung up or were hung up on.

Turns out many businesses want this kind of data to better improve their customer service. You would not believe how many leads are purchased, and never acted upon, just because the salespeople are lazy.
Rich Skrenta has written some interesting stuff on his blog (http://www.skrenta.com - nothing recent though) but I have to admit Cuil made me nervous about a "stealth search engine". I haven no idea how blekko compares, but I like the DuckDuckGo approach much better. Best of luck to them both, they've got their work cut out for them.
At least you get it for that long. I pay Qwest for 20Mbps, and get 5Mbps. (and an insulting 180kbits up!)
It all depends on what they do with the proxied number. If they're just watching traffic, that's no less unethical than proxying a URL like Google does to see how many people click on an item in their SERP.
Apple’s New Remote Is A Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery, Inside An Enigma
With it in your lap, flat, your head tilts down, bending the neck. This puts strain on the muscles at the base of the neck, which tires them. The muscles under the shoulder blades will then step in to try and compensate, tiring them, etc., etc. This is why it's uncomfortable to to read, sitting up, with a book lying flat on your lap. With a laptop the screen juts up at an angle from the lap (~45 degrees) which allows you to look at the screen longer without becoming tired (less neck strain). Of course if you're just half propped up on the couch this might not be the case.
Admittedly it's probably harder to accidentally knock this off your lap while reaching for your coffee/beer/whatever.

I could see it on the wall, but if it's for mounting, why worry about making it light? You can save on material costs by going heavier.
Japan and Virtual Worlds
This was actually Microsoft's first company wide layoff so it's hard to predict what kind of cuts they would make.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2008661458_m...
http://writer.zoho.com/editor.im for trying with no sign-in.
OK, this is a pretty good point. What worries me - probably groundlessly - is that iffy point where the political and the commercial overlap.

What if my political speech is about health care reform? It's not commercial, but it offends some pretty deep pockets - in that case, given enough lawyers (and there are always enough lawyers!), I worry that this kind of law could and would be used to shut me up. No burden of proof.

The DMCA has some fraud provisions that allow this kind of thing to be whacked, but I don't know the actual whack statistics.

Geeks don't like the government (right now) because there has been a successful couple of decades of anti-government propaganda. Would opposing Anthem be as good for your PR as that? I don't believe it would be. Yet Anthem is arguably a pretty dangerous actor in our current political sphere.
Facebook and Brand Engagement through Fan Pages
"Quick create."
Build a Web spider on Linux
Contrast this "guard your wi-fi" warning with Schneier's 2008 "open your wi-fi" invitation.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirele...

Schneier basically lists a bunch of reasons why you should NOT allow open access to your wi-fi, but says that he leaves his open anyway, to be neighborly.

When I read that, I remember feeling impressed at his civic-mindedness, while simultaneously deciding "nope." I also do not want to run afoul of Comcast, as I am much farther than 5,000 DSL feet from QWest's nearest central office.

At this moment, the comments on his post continue from the date of publication, Jan 15 2008, to Oct 17 2009.
This is an analysis of risk that ignores cost.

(P=0.000001 * $10,000) !=
(P=0.000001 * "Death")

It also, predictably, ignores a key externality: if you stay in your hotel room and there's actually a serious fire, there's a decent chance you'll kill a firefighter or two as well.
I think the more conscionable peaceful protest would be to wardrive around your town and download various torrents through any and all wifi APs that you can access.

This wouldn't require violating anyone else's machines, but would have much the same effect. (presenting the ISP with the prospect of cutting off a huge percentage of their customers, i.e. revenue)
This is news? If I leave my wireless open, within minutes it's being used to torrent stuff.
If you want to be neighborly, send your key to your neighbors on a postcard.

Added bonus: you probably get to meet some new neighbors.
You're right. I wasn't condemning all consumption, but overconsumption (what has made is so that if everyone in the world lived like Americans we'd need 5 planets to support us).
In the past couple of years, I've started to think more about how most consumption means some sort of depletion of resources and most often they're resources we don't have enough of. I also learned the term "embodied energy" and started taking about what it takes just to make/transport stuff. Add to that thinking about CO2 emissions (also a relatively new concept for me.. past few years) and it all makes me want to try to do what I can to preserve the planet (and its resources) for kids/grandkids.
The value added over a "dumb" directory is that you can use ratings to inform your decision instead of taking the service provider's word of being "the best in town".

I'm not making this stuff up, tons of people use Yelp, Zaggats, GetSatisfaction, etc so obviously they're seeing value somewhere.
Although it's been flagged dead, there are also some comments here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=922538
I think he was talking about how he has to carry water up to the loft in order to use his shower. It's a gravity system with just a jug of water above the shower which falls when he opens the tap (or it looks like just a PVC tube in his case). Though since he's in a trailer I'd guess he's not hooked up to the sewage system.. would guess it's similar to an RV in that sense. But he never discussed that in the interview.
To me, unless the phone number is clearly marked that it's from HelpHive as opposed to the business, it's similar to a phishing site; it could really get delisted by google which would be the kiss of death for this company's business.

I use google all the time to quickly get contact info; I'll have to check the source a lot more carefully if this becomes a commonplace.
double is better, etc., is a relatively new social push

Here's the thing, though. While it may be relatively new at the "everyday person" level, I think it's normal human behavior to consume more at least until a certain level of happiness is reached. In the past that level of consumption was only affordable to the wealthy, but it's now trickling down to everyone. There's a reason that WalMart is as popular as it is, and that's related to the reasons that most cloth is made in mills and not woven by hand anymore, and why I'm paid to write software and not to shape red hot iron on an anvil.

What that means is that it's pretty much going to be a force that you can't train or educate people out of. They simply want to live better, for their self-defined values of "better."

IOW: the solution won't be found in consuming less, it will be found in making it easier & cheaper to extract resources from the environment. I suspect a lot of the "anti-overconsumption" people realize this, but don't want to admit it.

As far as being defensive: I'm not. I enjoy having a large house, more vehicles than I really need and luxuries that would make a 19th century king envious. I wouldn't have all that if I wasn't producing more value than I was consuming, and in the end that's what matters.
Thanks Tom. I appreciate it.

If I owe you anything for the plug? Just bill me. I won't pay it, but it might make you feel better sending the bill. :)

Be great if the crowd were smaller, but perhaps I have "leveled up" as another thread put it.
Synchronizing all the iphones in a room wouldn't be technically challenging assuming their clocks are all set at least approximately correctly, and you just make them flash colors/patterns that are generated deterministically using the system clock.

Actually this could look really cool!
Zoho's response is cagy, but a bit off base. Zoho Sheet looks and feels a LOT like Excel (I haven't used the other Zoho products). I'd actually say "fake office" is pretty accurate (and a compliment).
Targeting a niche doesn't preclude you from later targeting another niche and ultimately "general (and bigger) audiences." It intensifies word of mouth effects because people in a niche are more likely to reference each other's buy decisions than in a general market (e.g. if you reach out to military families saying that other military families use it--provided, obviously that this is true--you are more likely to get signup than telling a general population that "families use it."). If you can't target a niche, at least initially, you may need to raise a lot of money to cover your customer acquisition costs.

The two press clippings you cite actually address two distinct niches: global families (families with members widely geographically separated who want to stay in touch), and scrap bookers, people who want to commemorate family events and milestones and pass them along. You don't have general press coverage, you have two distinct use cases.

Pay attention to what you early customers do, in particular the words that they use to describe the benefits of your offering. It will often give you a recipe for a niche. I note that neither "stay in touch with overseas relatives" or "on-line scrapbook to keep in touch" appear on your home page. You might spin it to incorporate one or both and reduce the generic language you are currently using.
Don was a champion of startups, really enjoyed getting to know him.

Wherever he lands, he will land running.
To be fair, this actually sounds like a reasonable throttling method. If the article is correct, throttling depends only on the volume profile of the user and not the content.

Granted, there are issues of whether they are actually delivering the pipe they promised you (as raised by dcurtis), but at least the network is neutral.
I wonder when Facebook is going to follow suit. They probably won't, considering that they have too much to lose if they did implement such as strict policy. Money vs Morals, which one will Facebook choose?
"For one thing, Obama called for the abolition of 'firewall' rules, which presently prevent many schools from judging teacher performance based on student performance."

I suppose in most cases those rules are consequences of contract provisions insisted upon by teacher union representatives.

http://www.amazon.com/Teacher-Unions-Sabotage-Educational-Re...
An LLC is normally not prohibited from having stock options. It is an entity just like you the person.

However, most likely the company giving you the job will not be able to hire you through your LLC for a period more than a year. This is usually the time period the IRS would rule that you are an employee of the hiring company. This isn't a hard rule however, but a general interpretation. You would of course need cooperation from the company's owners as they may not like having you as an LLC. Even so, there are many people acting and working like employees that are being paid through their own companies.

It will probably be easiest for you to join the new startup as an employee and keep your LLC group coverage. Be careful that you are not eligible on two group policies as in some cases they could cancel each other out. Also try to maintain some income to the LLC to show it is actually trying to make some money and is not a shelter for your hobbies. At least enough to cover expenses.

Also, there is always hope you can again get insurance. Try posting your specifics on this agent forum and see what your options are:

www.insurance-forums.net
Bah! Ballmer does fine running Microsoft, you just don't like Microsoft. But I agree, he'd be a bad fit at most other F500 companies.
I'd be pissed right now if I was Malia. What the hell, Dad?
I edited the title of this post to reflect that the app is now up to 74th place in utilities. With just a little twittering, a blog post, and a post to HN, A Flashlight! is off to the races.

Hopefully, I will hear from users soon. If not, I guess I'll have to make it a rave toy as suggested by the people on this forum.

EDIT: Maybe it's not up that high. The rankings in the App Store all seem to have shifted all of a sudden, and the top 20 apps all look wrong.
I have to agree with that second to last paragraph. The number of fans means almost nothing when it comes to measuring “real fans”. I for one ignore all fan page requests, while others on the other hand accept every request thrown their way, whether they know what it is or not.

However, there is some value in creating a space for “fans” on sites such as Facebook. It’s a cheap easy way to put your name in front of potential customers. We have a fan page for two of our ventures and we’ve gotten sales and LOTS of traffic from our fan pages. Facebook is one of our top referrers, specifically our fan pages.
The "capitalism at work" part is the manipulation of copyright to prevent works from entering the public domain. The motive is corporate profit: ensuring those with property retain it and any worth it can generate despite a socialist contract agreeing to give up that property after a certain period.
Linux: still better for coding
Kiersten Hollars Never Actually Joined Digg.
I think it's supposed to be tounge-in-cheek.
Glad I sold my Notre Dame ticket. See everyone there.
There is a difference between "have good outgoing access control" and "don't offer open wifi". Something like http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/authpf.html can even be used to increase the priviliges of authenticated users.

Of course, proper outgoing access controls are a lot harder than just not offering open wifi...
The Comcast two-tier traffic throttling system enforces different quality-of-service levels. Internet packets to and from a specific subscriber are assigned 'Priority Best Effort' (PBE) queueing by default, and the traffic rate is throttled by switching packets to lower priority 'Best Effort' (BE) queueing.

So the throttled queue is called "Best Effort." The sweet irony.
http://www.fakesearch.com
Complete Online Anonymity to the Max
A new website that's being developed and currently tested. Users have complete anonymity on the site and can post and respond in complete privacy.
So this is the exact opposite of no child left behind? Sweet!
Second for HostGator. We've had a couple of issues over the years, but they've been handled quickly and professionally.

If you want to have a support ticket escalated to Brent (President of the company) you just ask, and it actually happens. He spent a week emailing with me when we were having some downtime issues this August.

No host is perfect, but HostGator customer support is awesome, the QoS is good, and the pricing is fair. That's all I can ask for.
some things that have been significant turnoffs for me:

- unable to explain what the product is/does with any sort of clarity

- founder or founders currently a student (esp an MBA student)

- no technical founder

- no working prototype

- might have a working prototype, but won't let me actually touch it