skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to pitch a platform?
For a while, I have been involved with two different startups which face a similar problem. They have each developed an interesting and innovative software platform, which can be used in a number of useful ways and in various computing fields, but both platforms are still a bit rough at the edges and need further development before they could be used standalone.

For one of these startups we have defined the first product which will take advantage of the underlying platform; it will be using only a portion of the platform's capabilities, but is a) easy to build and b) covers a currently trendy area. Since one of my duties is to pitch to investors (let's say that we're past the "friends and family" phase and are looking for more professional investors), I'm wondering what to give greater accent to: the platform of the product. I'm afraid that if we stress the platform, the pitch might end up being too vague as there are numerous potential uses of that technology; on the other hand, if we go with the product it might seem overly simplistic and its greatest strength -- the platform -- might end up unnoticed. It's sorta kinda like inventing a new type of car engine in early 1900's: if you just show the engine people would be asking what it is good for; but if you built the vehicle to showcase the engine people might get lost in the details of the vehicle and miss the specific advantages of the new engine. Any suggestions/ideas/opinions?
Is torture ever justified? How much is one human life worth?
I appreciate your analogy, however, I believe the author is saying that discontinuing the use of the antibiotic at anytime in the next year, will lead to a detrimental relapse.

I don't necessarily agree, but the argument is predicated on, amongst other things, the Fed not being able to raise interest rates and maintain steady 3% growth.
What I meant to imply is that the article is incomprehensible, at least to me, and I was wondering if a technical CS article would be of interest to finance people.
Two big reasons this article is wrong:

1) The more sophisticated a technology, the poorer a job that government is going to do picking winners. The US Interstate Highway was an unvarnished success - it is used, well, rather often. The National Information Infrastructure? That was a failure.

2) Paying to create good jobs is worthwhile and concrete infrastructure generates jobs of some reasonable social value. A massive biological program simply couldn't hire enough biologists to put a dent in unemployment. Even concrete infrastructure programs need sophisticated tech too, so it wouldn't all be shovels.

Now, I'd mention that rebuilding the school system would also qualify as basic infrastructure. And that's beyond over-do. Of course, the problem is most reform has gutted actual learning a la no child left behind. Hard to know what to do...
It's not politicians. It's people. And, it is people who are paranoid and irrational. Politicians just have to cater to the majority opinion to get anything done.
For Windows there is Clojure Box (http://clojure.bighugh.com/), which is Emacs+clojure+slime+installer.
I flew yesterday and had an interesting encounter. I accidentally had a small set of lockpicks in my jacket pocket. I'm always VERY careful to completely empty my bag after I accidentally brought a knife into the security area once a few years ago in my camera bag (which they found of course, but didn't give me much trouble about. I always keep one in my camera bag for cutting tape, wires, tree branches in photo shoots, opening packages, etc)- however I didn't check my coat this time as I was rushed. Opps.

Anyway, I took lockpicks through. Of course they noticed them in the x-ray machine. The guy was super nice about it. He was like, "What are these?" and I responded, "Lockpicks. I just have them for practice on stuff and learning, I didn't mean to travel with them. I'm sorry if they are something that is contraband from carrying on airplanes and I totally understand if you have to keep them."

The guy looked a little puzzled. "Like you use to start or open a car?". Now honestly I've never tried picking a car. I've tried picking my motorcycle when the key fell out once, but never a car. I say, "I guess you could, but I've never tried it." I was worried that he thought I was a car thief or something. He then said, "Oh, well I've been having this trouble with my car ignition. Its really lose. I've always carried heavy keys and I think its broken. Do you know anything about fixing it?" He was intrigued and just was curious. Not accusatory at all. I was kinda shocked. He looked at them and said, "They don't look sharp or anything. They should be fine. We let people carry through small scissors which are more dangerous than these because if you break them in two they are two small knives if they are sharp"

He scanned them through the x-ray once more, and handed them to me and was asking a few other questions about good locksmiths in the area to fix his car. I apologized again for the trouble, but he said and this is the important part:

"Look, I used to work for a prison. The security here is a joke compared to real security at prisons. These wouldn't get through there, but we let all sorts of stuff through that would probably get someone killed in prison fights or would be instantly contraband there."

I'd thought about this before, but the bluntness and understanding that he had behind this was a real shock to me. I'd never thought that the airports were secure- but compare them to an actual 'secure' environment like a prison and they seem wide open.

It is truly unfortunate that the higher ups at the TSA don't promote this guy to the top and have the same understanding as him. You're not making a secure place with these practices- you're making placebo.

If we wanted real security EVERYONE would probably need cavity searches and no one could take anything at all onboard. I'm glad we aren't trying for that obviously.
AniWeather - Animated Weather + Any Weather [aniweather.com]
I'm also wondering if the TSA will allow airlines to start selling "clean" electronic devices for high prices- just like they did with water and other "fluids". No water through security- but you can buy it for a special price inside!
The implication is that "instinct" knows better than you do.

But my instinct sucks. I have no usable skills, and yet I'm not nervous at all- I'm fairly fearless in general. It's reason that's telling me that this is probably a bad idea, not instinct.
Amazon sold more Kindle books than paper this Xmas
Morality and the Free Market (Video)
Yeah, I don't mean to bash Gladwell himself either. At times he indulges in glib bullshitting[0] but his infectious enthusiasm for exploring neat-sounding ideas is charming, and refreshing compared to some of the utter tripe that's out there. And he really is an excellent writer.

The downside is his books ending up in the hands of people whose capacity for entertaining novel ideas far exceeds their capacity for rational critical thinking.

[0] "Bullshit" in the sense of H. Frankfurt's technical term for assertions intended neither to inform nor deceive.
I think this post brings up a great point that programmer types tend to overlook: relationship management.

I had a professor in college who taught business ethics, and also an entrepreneurship elective. He would always call everyone in his address book on their birthday and wish them well. It didn't even matter if he hadn't seen them the entire year.

I can't say for sure if it helped him succeed, but for such a small investment of time, imagine the goodwill generated by giving someone a quick 'happy birthday' call.
Nigerian Charged in Northwest Bomb Attempt
History indicates that running at a deficit did indeed become the new normal.

"There is nothing so normal as a temporary government program."
Isn't the IPv4 internet --- the product of DARPA, run with federal money for decades --- kind of a stark counterexample to that?
Embracing Minimalism as a Web Designer
Appendng "yet" to the title would, imo, align it more closley to the article.
But every hour spent on patents (and babysitting patent lawyers takes many, many hours) is an hour not spent executing on the core business. So you have to ask yourself, what's going to improve my positioning more: the same freeze-dried reconstituted IP PowerPoint strategy used by every other VC-backed company, or N x $50,000 more revenue?

Just to be devil's advocate.
Does anyone know if charters are exempt from TSA rules?

What about private jets?

I just wonder when it starts being profitable to start trying to find the TSA loopholes.
I also found this article to be pretty much incomprehensible. It lacks conciseness and clarity. What are they suggesting will happen to the US economy in 2010?
That's not contradictory. Or else, you find that being able to blow on your soup to cool it or on your hands to warm them is contradictory.

Context is everything.
That's some quality snark there, but as the Fed does in fact routinely increase interest rates, I think your comment is basically content-free.
Does Netflix want to get bought out? The article doesn't really address that.
I've seen similar concepts before, but they never actually make it into production. There's too many things wrong with this, not least of which the costs to manufacture and install.
Also remember that tightly coiled power cables carrying significant load will heat up and could cause a fire.
HN stops at 210, why 210?
All I can think of is LCM of the first four primes. Any other possibilities?
I don't understand - in what sense does HN stop at 210? Am I missing something?
The Pmarca Guide to Startups: product/market fit
I got started with BASICA on a Tandy 1000. My dad had a newer computer at the time but he certainly wouldn't let me use it. He was afraid that I would get stuck in an endless loop while writing to the hard drive and wipe it (which he had apparently done before in his own early programming experiments).

After a few years of playing around with BASIC as a ten year old I got my own computer and from there it was BASIC -> Euphoria -> C++ -> HTML and JavaScript -> PHP and MySQL -> and now my latest undertaking, nearly ten years later: JSP.

Now I am more interested in web development, though I still have strong skills in application development. It is a learning process, and a fun one at that.
It'd be nice and refreshing if the media, and governments spent as much time as possible educating people on the comparative risks.

The chance of dying from terrorism is far far lower than most other causes of death. It's a rounding error.

The other one that gets me is the painting by the media that pedophiles are going to snatch your child off the street, whilst the risk is miniscule, and most sexual abuse is by family members. It makes people afraid to live their lives.

If newspapers actually ranked news by how much it actually matters, we'd have a massively different view of the world.
The woman in the example given had a DRRS...

It's cruel to pick on a poor unemployed entrepreneur. On the other hand, it's no crueler than life itself has been, and it might save some others, so let me apologize in advance and then say that:

Karma Kids Yoga — a yoga practice focused on young children and pregnant women.

... may be a Replacement Revenue Strategy, but I am not convinced it is Decent. It sounds like a terrible business idea. By definition your target market is constantly turning over -- mothers these days have one or two kids, maybe three at the outside, and those kids don't stay young for long. You build a clientele, and then that clientele graduates and you need a whole new clientele. And the plan doesn't scale -- you're limited to recruiting from a very specific demographic in one very specific location.

And it's not as if you're selling baby food, or strollers, or something that every mother actually needs -- you probably can't even net 100% of the mothers who live in your neighborhood and practice yoga [1], since anyone can practice yoga on their own, and the economy is in the dumps.
I other words what the article is suggesting is forget about your dreams, your personal goals and the ideas that along with percisentence could have a chance to make you feel good about yourself, your life and maybe even help you actually enjoy the limited amount of seconds that you have to live and instead be thankful for the opportunities you have been "given" and shut up because things could actually be worse. Look at that 90% of the world that wish they had half of what life have given you.

It's incredibly sad how what the article suggest is exactly what the majority of the world does when what we really are supposed to do with our life is so simple.

Life is short, try to enjoy it no matter what, never give up on you. If you have to spend all of your life trying to make work whatever it's you want to do and that you think it will make you happy, do it. Because if you don't, if you give up and do what you are "supposed" to do, what is safe, what society, your education, your family and your religious "beliefs" have tried to imposed on you will never be happy. That is guaranteed. But, hey! worse nothing than what you already have! right..
MIT has a mailing list devoted to CS-related job opportunities. In the last few years I've gotten over 6500 joblist emails. I recently graduated and I'm working hard on my first startup, but not a day goes by without a few emails that catch my eye. The author writes:

much better jobs are out there, but they’re only available to people with much better skills than most of their peers

There's a lot of truth to this statement. It almost seems unfair that my inbox is filled with jobs, while people like my mother and some of my friends spend hours sending out their resumes.
I have a pretty good contact with the old-skool OVH community and their administrators. And I can say that they don't throttle any traffic at all! (I'm sure of that)

And their support may be pretty bad if you have a non-pro offer. That means that if you get a 200€/month box you'll have a pretty awesome, first-class support. But if you have a 20€/month box and your hard drive dies, you'll have to wait one day or two. That seems fair to me.
The difference is small enough that if you wouldn't know about it you probably wouldn't even notice.

It would probably take placing another cpu piggy-back on top of the one on the circuit board to clearly see it.

Now I'm really curious :)
The posts are numbered.
Admin set max-number-of-pages to 7 :-/.
No -- he says being nervous about a switch suggests you aren't yet qualified to make the leap. And while you should not quit your job if this is the case, there is an upside because your current nervousness gives you a metric about how qualified you are and a goal of improving until you are no longer nervous (at which point you switch jobs).
Charter flights fall under FAA Part 135 rules; scheduled flights are Part 121. With charter flights you don't have to put up with all of the passenger screening stuff. It's also surprisingly affordable if you are traveling with a group, e.g. a Gulfstream IV carries around 14 passengers and rents for about $6k/hour. A King Air 200 carries 6 or 7 about half as fast for around $1.5k/hour.
Ah - you're talking about the list of new posts and the list of "news" posts. I see.

Sorry - can't help, but thanks for explaining a little more.
What an amazing story, I'm really very much impressed by your ability to overcome all the obstacles thrown in your way.

Congratulations, thank you so much for putting that out here, I'm sure it will be an inspiration to many, and not just limited to programming.
Note: I do research in explosives detection

With the exception of the last one, banning box cutters, requiring people to take off their shoes, and limiting explosives are actually quite reasonable for security. Current detection technologies can't really detect explosive substances, except for the X-ray machine, but the best it can do is tell you the density of the materials in question, not necessarily what type of explosive it is. So running your shoes through the machine makes sense, as enough dangerous solid explosive can be packed into the sole of a shoe.

Liquid explosives are extremely unstable. The explosive power is probably not enough to blow up a plane, but it can definitely injure or kill many people or set fire to the plane. Plus, no machine exists to distinguish explosive liquids from non-explosive liquids at the scale that an airport requires.

For the curious, I'll just briefly list some of the detection systems that are out on the market, and what their capabilities are:

- Metal detector

- X-ray machine - Densities of materials

- Ion Mobility Scanner (eg. Puffers or Swipers) - Trace explosives detection, but easily confused by other nitro compounds such as hand cremes, fertilizer, and uh..jet fuel.

- Millimeter Wave Scanner (eg. Whole Body Scanner) - Anomaly detection (eg. can penetrate clothing), but cannot identify explosives.

- Terahertz Imaging - Can penetrate clothing and can identify materials, including explosives, but can be blocked by water and hasn't reached commercialization.

- Other wavelength imaging - Our group uses UV light and can detect trace amounts of explosives, but does not penetrate clothing. It's only a surface technique.
Will my insurance cover Fashion Eyewear?
Prosaic but probably right. Just projecting number theory I guess, oh well.
I don't know, maybe something accurate? Like "server header not understood by beowulf.com"?
You can't will your rent payment into existence, and you won't fully enjoy your admittedly short life while deciding between another week of spaghetti or tuna.

He is saying you should work on developing your skills until you are good enough to be able to succeed in pursuing your dreams. You know, learn to skydive before jumping. It sounds as if you're suggesting everyone just throw themselves off the cliff.
They are suggesting that the US Government needs to borrow a very large amount of money in 2010. To do this, one of three things needs to occur.

1) Another round of quantitative easing (Fed increases the money supply) This will lead to a dollar collapse, or at the very least, a severe dollar devaluation, which is generally not good for the economy.

2) Fed raises interest rates. With higher interest rates, more people are willing to buy treasuries, and so, there's more money coming in to pay the bills coming due in 2010. Higher interest rates are generally not good for the economy, particularly if it's already sick.

3) US Government engineers a stock market collapse, to send people scurrying to the safety of treasuries (and thereby allowing government to borrow what they need to). Of course, stock market collapses are generally bad for the economy.

So, in summary, I'd say they are predicting that the U.S. economy will have a rough 2010.
what do you mean by "really agressive"? I saw google analytics by quick skim..
Why not have a low-power electric winch pull the cord back?
Yes, the IPv4 internet is a good example of a technology project managed by the federal government that went well. But I think that it is worth pointing out that it was not created and managed by congress (of which I have a very low opinion, I have always had trouble seeing a group of 500 people ever being able to reach a worthwhile decision, especially if they all are also trying to keep thousands of other people happy with their decisions). But was created and managed by the military due to their fear of nuclear war.
I started off messing around in HTML when I was 10. A few months later I decided that I wanted to have a dynamic websites so I moved to PHP & did a whole lot of DB-related stuff - 'because it was cool'. Kept working on my PHP skills and general tech skills until I was comfortable enough to do Desktop coding and made some cool applications with VB6. Then later I moved into Java and C/C++, LUA, Python, etc..

Low level programming being my main interest, but I love reading and working in pretty much every language. Except for ActionScript!)

If you're interested in doing programming, I think the key element to having the learning drive is to work on stuff that you like.

As for, what are some things that I wish I knew before I started. Well - primarily being the fact that you can't learn everything there is to programming.
This is the third article in last 24 hours in the top list where the author uses straw man to shove his own view forward by attacking an incorrectly interpreted opposing view. I hope it doesn't become a trend.

Using your nervousness level to gauge if you should go forward is as flawed as you can get. Some of the best achievers in their field--Tyson, Kobe etc.--admit to getting nervous.
That's pretty interesting... Tony Hsieh made a funny joke about starting a "Zappos Airlines" at Startup School this year. Airlines are already notorious for terrible customer service, and if you add on all the ridiculousness of these new TSA rules (if true) then maybe there's some room for a little disruption. Of course, this assumes there are loopholes that can be taken advantage of.

I know I'll be flying a lot less if I can't use electronics internationally; and I'd certainly be willing to pay more money to make those flights if I could continue to use my gear when traveling.
It depends on how you define the word startup.

I was also trying to regurgitate what I saw as the summed wisdom of the writings of PG, namely http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html and the advice to iterate quickly.

I suppose in many cases it is possible and desirable to prove your startup completely infeasible during the time between YC Application rounds. It's better to figure out something won't work than to go with something doomed to failure. But it's even better to iterate that initial idea to something that people actually want. I do think that if you are trying to tackle news/journalism that 6 months is not a long time at all to declare failure; there are so many different possibilities for applications and companies.
Why don't you like working in ActionScript?
Ask HN: Would you work for a company just out of Chapter 11?
I have a question about my new Job offer: Should I accept an offer from a large company which just emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy ? or accept one from well established company with large cash reserves?
right. follow up is something most people underestimate/fail to do well
Ask HN: Review Bitme.me - rank urls with Bitly
Does your history include the Clinton Administration, which ran a surplus?
> If we wanted real security EVERYONE would probably need cavity searches and no one could take anything at all onboard. I'm glad we aren't trying for that obviously.

I almost wish we would - without gradual phase in. Then at least people would stop crying for security, and pressure the government out of it. Well, I guess I can dream.
Why Does Facebook Want to Suck the Fun Out of Unfriending?
Actually there's a fairly good case to be made for the fact that Al Qaeda is winning the war on terror.

If you look at the amount of money the US government is spending on the war on terror proportionally to how much money Osama Bin Laden has at his disposal he is by far the best financed. The argument is made stronger if you look at the current state of US economics. The country is going broke, partly because of the war on terror which has been tremendously expensive. Particularly if you include effects on business, travel, etc.

Furthermore Al Qaeda isn't a military construction as we are used to, it's a series of loosely connected cells that share the same ideology and goals, namely terror carried out in the Western world. This makes it hard to fight in a traditional sense since you can't kill the soldiers or kill the people in command. When a terrorist is killed a new one will spring up to take the dead ones place. The US government doesn't seem to grasp this, and the fact that the best way to fight the war on terror is to give people in Afghanistan, Saudui Arabia, etc. a decent life so they have something to live for instead of running around blowing everybody up.