skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They could have concentric circles of increasingly deadly threats: start with tripwires, end with landmines. If every time you get closer to the nuclear waste, you're more likely to die, you will probably get the idea.
Cash for Caulkers: Home Weatherization as Economic Stimulus
Considering the politics of such a large company, they're lucky if they only have two.
https://www.revolutionmoneyexchange.com/

Payments to you from your customers are free, and it's free to transfer money to and from a bank account.

Apparently AmEx is buying Revolution Money... hopefully they aren't planning to kill it off: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=948464
Samsung sponsors the development of Enlightenment
What vendor has not had similar problems in 2009? What's the vendor that says negative things about their own security?
Check out Greenhornconnect.com (still in beta), but they do a good job listing out all the events in the Boston area.

I am a part of the Boston entrepreneurial, so feel free to get in touch.
I think part of the problem is that they don't seem to view building good products as a 'compelling business reason.'
That's what I thought when I signed up for Pago - an identical service which launced in New Zealand three years ago:

https://www.pago.co.nz/section261.aspx

It was launched by one of the major banks in co-operation with one of the major wireless providers. Still, it never took off. I certainly never found myself using it. I would've thought New Zealand was a prime test market, because we are incredibly reliant on txt messaging down here; around 85% of the population regularly use txt messaging.

I should note that when I say 'identical', it was identical. They have since shifted more toward online payments. It used to be solely for one-to-one payments. In fact one of the use cases on their original marketing website was the ability to 'split a restaurant bill'. Which is similar to the use case from the venmo website.
The screeners weren't reasonable, and it's unreasonable that these surly, unprofessional employees have the power to detain you and ruin your vacation. Their power should be sharply circumscribed to detecting threats to the physical security of the airport and the flights leaving it. They shouldn't have a generic law enforcement mandate that lets them detain and intimidate people they take a dislike to.
Me too. Not that they have much choice. Even the non-geeks in my office have noticed that they can work faster with Firefox.

As more things move to the web, built on web standards, they can't afford to continue having the worst browser by far.
The problem with this is that in a lot of areas Google enters then wipes out the competition by offering the service for free. It's extremely hard for competitors to gain a foothold in a market when a huge competitor is giving the product away for free.

Except it's not free; they earn a profit by having you use their services or else they wouldn't do it. They push competitors out of the market, then either start charging or make money off filling the service with ads (have you taken a look at google search results lately? about 1/3 of it is now ads). It's the equivalent of selling a physical product at a loss until you run competitors out of business (or discourage them from ever entering the market in the first place).

What happens when there are no viable alternatives to "go elsewhere"? As others have said, network effects have already turned a lot of internet companies into monopolies. If I don't like using Adwords, do I really have an alternative at this point?
Ask HN: Any hackers from the UK (or Europe)?
I've been wondering what the startup scene is like in the UK, or Europe in general. I'm a college student in Seattle and was thinking of moving to the Valley after I finish (for grad school possibly). But now I'm thinking about going to Europe, mainly the UK.

This is to anyone outside of the US really. What is it like as a hacker outside of the US? How is the startup scene or tech scene like where you live? What are the advantages and disadvantages of starting a startup, from your experience, in your area? And if you had the choice, would you move to the Valley?

Also, this is my firs post, so I apologies in advance if something is not right.
RE-Google: Proactive Search for IDA Pro
Nvm... their calendar has not been created yet.

http://boston.garysguide.org/
Actually despite my earlier comment, this practice is also very common in New Zealand, and I too was surprised when I spent a year in Washington, DC. However, the idea of doing it via SMS has never taken off here (as per previous post).
ING Direct debits the money from your account when they cut the check, and then re-deposits it (without interest) if it hasn't been cashed in 90 days or has payment stopped. They also don't issue manual checks, so that isn't an issue. Anecdotally, it seems to work well.

In regards to maintaining your own ledger instead of just using the bank's, the primary purpose is to help catch any errors that the bank makes with your account. Personally, I have few enough transactions that I can generally keep track of them in my head, but I could easily see how you might need some help with that if your finances were even a little more complicated than mine.
Describing what the Word engine does with HTML as "rendering" is probably being charitable.
I get the sarcasm, but I don't get the point. Does the fact that GoDaddy has a horrible site/shopping experience from a usability standpoint somehow translate into a security stamp of approval that is "watered down"? Has GD has some major security breach? (maybe they have, I don't know).

Are everyday users of this service going to care?
Since this is using mini DisplayPort connectors, it will have the same problem that the RadeonHD 5000 series have for 3-way Eyefinity setups: if your monitors don't have DisplayPort connectors, you'll need an active adapter to convert to a DVI port, and those run about $100 each.

I really doubt that the market for this card will be very big, given that ATI's Eyefinity is capable of driving 6 displays with more advanced drivers, and at a much lower cost.
I'm looking for the trickery, and I haven't spotted it yet. Can you elaborate?
I applaud you efforts helping each other; just a few concerns...

...but most do not do so and lack the motivation or ability to learn by themselves.

Anyone who lacks the motivation or ability to learn by themselves should probably consider another line of work. This character trait is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a good programmer.

It becomes a group activity.

Having community support is great, but let's not fool ourselves: programming is rarely a group activity; great work requires lots of time alone, just you and your terminal.

You have someone to push you when you start slacking. Kind of the same as getting a workout buddy.
When you get stuck, there is someone who can help you out.

Getting stuck is natural and it's always nice to have someone to turn to, but we must be careful not to develop too many crutches. The best learning almost always comes from struggling and figuring it out on your own. Let's not deprive anyone of this "joy".

With a large enough group and a couple months, you will be able to pick up not 1 or 2 but quite a few languages.

Being able to claim limited proficiency in multiple languages is not an advantage. Better to concentrate on one or two core technologies and become very, very good at them. It really doesn't matter which.

Another problem this will fix for those of the entrepreneurial mindset will be a larger pool of good developers looking for a job/project to work on.

That should be your focus. Projects. The best way to learn is by doing. Classes and discussions are good starting points, but you should be moving on to actually doing it as quickly as you can. You should be concentrating on the results of your work, not on the length of your resumes. I'd prefer someone who could deliver an app with only 20% of the syntax of any language over someone who learned lots of stuff but struggled to use it.

Please share your experiences with this as you proceed. I for one would be interested in learning what works best for you guys. Good luck!
Not even close to secure.

I haven't worked with US phones, but in Europe I can send you a SMS message that appears to be from any MSISDN (phone number). Violates all kinds of terms of service and contracts, but there's absolutely no technical verification of origin of standard SMS.
They got around this with Pago in NZ (https://www.pago.co.nz/section261.aspx) by working with the banks. The money doesn't get transferred from your primary chequing account - you have a separate account which is your Pago 'wallet'. Only that money is accessible to the service, and you have to use internet banking to transfer money from your chequing account into your wallet.
I recently went through LAX screening. I accidentally left my Leatherman pocket knife in my carry-on bag. It's a stainless steel knife with a 3 inch blade.

Of course, I didn't know this until I arrived at my destination and unpacked my bag. The TSA screening completely missed it, even though it wasn't even remotely hidden.

I think it is time to take a review of the TSA procedures and start to dissassemble the security theatre they produce on a daily basis. Apart from the money and time wasted, it's also completely ineffective.
It'll be people dressed up in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome costumes. "One day, I had the idea that browsers should follow web standards. And guess what? 10 years later Microsoft started following them! I'm an open source web rendering engine, and IE 9 was my idea."
Thanks for the comments. I'll surely focus on the projects aspect of it. Will keep hacker news posted as to our experiences with this.
Ask HN: Rate this Start Up - half2you.com
Hello HN,

Recently we launched a new project called half2you.com.
half2you.com is an online marketplace which redistributes half of its income back to its shareholders. i.e. it's users! When you register, you become a shareholder to the site and at the end of each month, half of the site's net income is paid back to the registered users, according to how much they have used it.

The site generates income when the users buy online something they find interesting from the site's featured affiliates. We currently try to expand our reach of most commonly used brands and provide the latest offers.

It started as an idea of generating some extra cash and we thought, why not, let's get it out there.

You can have a glimpse at www.half2you.com

We would very much appreciate any suggestions, feeback or questions you might have.
It is still in beta, and a lot of things to improve, but looking forward to your comments.

Thanks! :)
A very cool and useful tool though I hope the irony of a testing tool without tests isn't lost on Eric ;)

Will definitely keep an eye on this one.
I absolutely tired of this crap.

Newspapers never made money from content. Never.

Circulation revenue was created to subsidize the cost of the print medium--the online medium is now basically free so revenue should scale according.

Where did this fantasy of "content sells" come from? And why do Murdoch-types seem so keen on bashing Google? It's like he forgets 75% of his web traffic comes from Google.

Personally I'd like to see the search giant pull links to News Corp's web properties and watch Murdoch slip from the Forbes 400.
and we use advanced encrypting algorithms to protect the financial information stored in our system.

encryption algorithms
Zynga To Launch Smash Hit FarmVille On FarmVille.com
But having 5k in cash isn't evidence of wrong doing, in plain sight or not.
We also rock the 3-partner model - No problems yet. Easy to mediate decisions. We each have our core focus and can make game time decisions ad hoc, but if strategy is involved or a big decision needs to be made, the third person usually has very valuable insight, especially when two partners are butting heads.
You'd be right about that. There's another one in the Media Center division, and it happens to be much more strict with respect to standards, although perhaps not as full-featured.
> After paying taxes, commission to my agent and covering my expenses, my net profit on the book currently stands at $24,517.36

> ...the publisher’s portion of sales on this book has grossed them around $453,839.68. ... If I had to make a guess, I’d say they probably netted around $250K on this one.

Wow.
Check21 should have alleviated this but I think ACH and Check21 are separate rules systems. A bank I use (USAA) lets me scan checks and upload the image to deposit the check. Funds are available instantly (I do not know if they are lending me the funds interest free during the window, or if it is actually cleared instantly).
this is very much dependent on which country you live in. I moved from South Africa to the UK and was very surprised by how long online transfers take to clear. Back home they can clear instantly most of the time, even across different banks. The max time for any online transfer I ever experienced was 24 hours. Here in the UK it seems the minimum is 48 hours, really not sure why.
OK, good point. I always think of AmEx as "expensive", but not "not evil". But they are definitely not evil, which is why they are the only credit card I actually use. (I had a card from my bank, but I didn't use it enough and they charged me a $30 "you didn't use it enough" fee. That is pretty evil, especially as they had never sent me a statement until then.)
It seems to me that the qualifiers "negative right" and "postive right" do a decent job at this. Of course, there are some 18th century thinkers who don't believe that positive rights are legitimate, but that hasn't stopped the rest of the industrialized world from recognizing the intrinsic value of universal education, health care, public infrastructure and so on.

Whether broadband qualifies, and whether Spain's chosen method of implementing it makes sense, are of course open to discussion.
There's at least 4 independent codebases — modern IE (which includes 3+ renderers), MS Word, archaic Mobile IE, and the new IE6-based Mobile IE they have in development.
{hushed voice} how awful...
The point is that GoDaddy has destroyed their brand to the point where their security guarantee inspires nothing but a visceral "ugh" reaction from everyone who's ever used them.
If you can make tripwires and landmines that still work in 10,000 years, you can probably do better things with nuclear waste than just put it in a cave.

Remember: the earliest known writings are less than 6,000 years old. We're talking about planning for almost twice that. This is an incredibly long period of time, in human terms (though not in geological terms, which is what created the problem in the first place).
Thanks for the clarification. I guarded my original past by only speaking of memory management. I have programmed in Java and C++, but not enough to say which one is better. I tend to avoid both in favor of Haskell, Python, Ocaml, Scheme and the like. D also looks promising.
I like the notion of expanding from a narrow cost/benefit analysis to a broader "opportunities lost cost" - the set of potential new things you can't do because you decided not to reduce friction in your current set of activities.
I am not sure why you would want to do this. If it is interesting, then please discuss it here. Don't spam for another website to discuss it there.
Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Launches
Apple doesn't allow daemons which should slow down worms quite a bit.
this is sad :(. How can this be improved?
Not sure I agree - most fonts are cached (as pixels) at a few offsets, so the ability to place a character is constrained by 1-pixel increments (or 1/3-pixel increments in the case of ClearType).

A true vector placement of each character gives you the ability to show type at any subpixel offset and then anti-alias, and I think there's a good chance they're doing this.

See this Loop/Blinn paper for more details:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cloop/loopblin...
Ars Technica responds to Big Cable (Selectable Output Control debate)
Aww.. You're so predictable!

Do I get more denial-groupthink downvotes with this one?
"The retailer has essentially no power to avoid this, as long as the card issuer's take remains below the point at which it would be unprofitable to service their pool of customers."

AMEX is really on the brink of this point currently in the US. A lot of places simply do not accept AMEX and a lot of AMEX customers carry different cards because of that. Since merchants know that the average AMEX customer usually carries another card as well they are often ok with not accepting AMEX.

Currently the main selling point of AMEX are rich people that swear by their black amex card and are really annoyed when somebody makes them take out their lowly visa. So places that cater to rich people or hope to cater to rich people usually try to take the hit and accept AMEX.
Allowing refunds might relieve some of the downward pressure on prices. No one really cares enough to get 99 cents back for an app that sucked, but conversely, no one's willing to pay more than 99 cents for an app that might suck without any possibility of refund.
I say let them worry about the cost/benefit ratio. If they can afford it, another engine with completely separate codebase is a good thing for the market.

Just think how hard it would push webkit/mozilla/chrome if they did manage to beat them on speed. It would push them to get even better. Compeition is always good as long as 2 or more projects stay alive.
I know the whole MatzLisp was a joke, but where are you getting the idea that he never grokked Lisp?

I'm pretty sure writing an interpreter is pretty complicated as well.
If ingdirect.com had paper checks (even for a fee) and a branch I could visit (if I really wanted to talk to a person) it would basically be perfect.
I think what AMEX is doing here is just making sure that Revolution does not cannibalise the AMEX business. They can sort of control which merchants revolution is accepted at, by carefully aiming their marketing efforts and offering different businesses different deals. Thus, they can target revolution only at those stores that do not accept AMEX because of their high fees. So they can have revolution undercutting visa/mc but not undercutting AMEX.
The outcome was indeed good, but it took a heroic act to bring it about.

Jobs like TSA screeners often attract a certain type of person who revels in the chance to exert authority over others. It probably delighted this Bardmass fellow to no end to put this stuck up traveler going on about his "rights" in his place.

How many people were bullied into ceding their rights before Mr. Bierfeldt took his stand? A system that simply waits for TSA employees to overstep their bounds and then corrects them may be better than just letting them set up their own little fiefdoms, but lets make sure to remember that it could be much, much better by simply educating TSA employees about the rights of the passengers and proactively making sure that those rights are protected.
I think they will way the possibility of maintaining control through developers choosing their implementation over one the other engines choose to user. If they see a chance for developers to pick their standard they'll push it, if not they'll back off and adopt the other one. It can be seen in the history of the engines, and will continue that way. Like evolution of standards, the most awesome ones according to developers live, the others die.
No, it's not. Embrace and extend is designed to take over a market entirely and push out the competition. Example: ActiveX only works in IE, and the code is closed so no one else can implement it.

Here is what Google seems to be doing: Inventing a new, more efficient HTTP, supporting it on their servers and browsers, and opening the spec to anyone who chooses to implement it, while, at the same time, continuing to support the venerable HTTP protocol in all its apps, with no loss in functionality.

Apache, Firefox, Safari, and [gasp] IE could freely implement SPDY at any time, or not. In this manner the market gets to determine which protocol should succeed, and it determines it in a way that does not harm the consumer or limit his choices.

Show me another company with the ability or the will to do something this comprehensively helpful.
it is not just .net tech anymore. now with php, ruby and most weird JAVA! but i have two reserves how is library support for dynamic languages and how does overall performance compare to the ec2+s3.
Tune in, Start up, Drop out (our team on NYTimes)
mind elaborating on this? I'd love to hear about it.
Atakama Labs to launch social games for the social good
If it's a service that holds any large amount of money, I'd want to make sure it's associated with or somehow endorsed by a major, trusted organization. The site looks nice and all, but still like a small business.

Also, doesn't Paypal offer this?
The Uncanny Valley of Behavior
It probably depends on who is accepting the fraud risk, and how much risk they are willing to accept.
Saying "lololol M$ i hope they die" is frowned upon. Post something with content, support your whining, talk about it.

Microsoft have opened their internal development to the world over the past few years - this blog entry is an example - from all kinds of development teams, we have enormous amounts of insight into many of Microsoft's major products and access to give feedback to people who care.

Don't just focus on the 'evil bullshit' (much of which is probably not 'evil', just the inertia of a huge company).

You can't just drop "Islam is a very real problem" into the middle of a rant about a software company and expect people to think you're not a nutter.
They're surprisingly good about answering the phone. No menu bullshit, just call and someone picks up.

If ING Direct interoperated with Mint, it would basically be perfect.
This looks like another case of those controlling the means of production and distribution primed for disruption. There's no shortage of "iTunes for Books" ideas out there, but imagine giving authors a means to distribute their work without a middleman taking quite so large a cut. Similar to what's happening in the music industry.

It wouldn't have to rely solely on digital distribution either… well-known authors or books that meritoriously rise above the rank and file could then be picked up by the remaining smart book publishers and given real print distribution for those who still like to show off their bookshelves. Sort of like people still buying vinyl even though they have the MP3s.
The site looks ... shady. It doesn't inspire trust.

The text logo, the generic dinosaurs, the post-it telling my to register. A block of text in the middle instead of a clear, simple explanation and a call to action. The site layout looks generic, and the list of categories looks like every other list of shopping links on domain squatting sites.
That's the only reason we have to imagine IE9 will be released soon.

Had it been a "minor improvement" over IE8 and were it aimed squarely as a competitor to Chrome or Firefox, I would doubt it would ever launch. Just preventing companies from rewriting internal web apps to be more cross-browser-friendly would be sufficient accomplishment.
Why We Dropped Ideal Hours
ING Direct and US Bank both have no-fee overdraft lines of credit.
that's a bug in their implementation of opacity, not of png. they don't support existing alpha in their opacity calculations.
The thing that shocked me the most was reading that Direct2D which can be used in place of GDI+. IMO, Microsoft should have made available a hardware-accelerated 2D library a LONG time ago ... before this, you had to use Direct3D to attain hardware acceleration, which was always far too much of a hassle just to render some 2D graphics.