skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wonder what you mean by "is". Nothing really "is" anything but itself. The only other "is", the one that real people actually use, is "is represented by" or "is a representation of", or "is an instance of", etc.

For example, this --> A <-- looks like the letter A. But it isn't the letter A. It "is" only a representation, a bit-pattern with decimal notation 65, a glyph drawn from a font, a set of pixel elements on a graphics surface, a pattern of light on a display, a bunch of photons traveling through space, a group of excited photoreceptor cells, a set of signals traveling through neurons, etc. And it is none of these things, because none of them capture the essence of the pattern, repeated over human experiences.

So it seems to me that if you're trying to win an argument by drawing a distinction between "is" and "is represented by", you are not going to convince anyone who's put much thought into it. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"; but a representation of a pipe is a (more or less faithful) representation of a pipe, whether you are blind or not, and so a number is a digital image, and vice versa.
Piano.

My workspace is u-shaped, internet on the right, dev in the center, and small electric piano on the left.

When I'm having trouble drawing inspiration from my customers, myself, or you guys, I turn to Chopin. Seems to fit right in.
If you cannot self-organize then you likely would not make a very good co-founder either. I do not want to be the co-founder who needs watching over nor would I want to have a co-founder that needed me to watch over them. It's all external motivation and that's the worst kind.
Doomsday Clock Announcement
DX seconded. I have the regular Kindle and while it still reads PDFs, having to constantly press buttons to go back and forth on the same page and to rotate the display to be able to read the text is a big pain. I tried the DX and the larger size is definitely better for PDF viewing.
Not but I have been dying to learn to play the piano..
Okay - the heartbeat of a non-human, non-cyborg machine.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between numbers and their doubles, {0..n} and {0..2n}. Does that mean that numbers are their doubles?
I’m in. We have to meet at a scotch bar in NYC, though ;)
It seems from the article that they only tested local disks on EC2, not EBS. It would be nice to get a comparison with EBS included.
Unless you're filming a day-long movie in one take using your laptop, why does it matter if you disrupt your work for 5 minutes? During an all day work marathon, I reckon you could use that time profitably.
What a lot of single founders are out there! I am pleasantly supprised. I would dare predict that the first company to successfully compete with Ycombinator will be the one that does (truly) accept single founders.
I'm a sole founder and I'd love to have a smart, hardworking cofounder. I'm a nights and weekends coder and will likely remain so until it makes sense to go full time.

I'm currently developing (with Rails) a timeline app called Preceden, which will compete with more established timeline sites like Dipity and Lifeblob. I'm in the Philly area, but I'm shooting for the Bay Area in a few years. If you're interested in talking, you can find details in my profile.

P.S. We really need a central place for this.
totally agree,that is why I love guys like Linus.That guy is as "hacker" as "hacker" gets but never talks on all the BS grand theories on what you should do to be a great hacker.He always sticks to his core area of expertise
I believe he started working with Munger 20 years after he started his own fund.
I've taken a screenwriting class that taught a few formulas as well.
Am I the only one who (1) doesn't see much wrong with the early examples other than weird/dumb whitespace and the lack of a comment explaining %tree, and (2) thinks that the latter examples really don't bring much to the table? I guess the Moose stuff is supposed to make it all clearer, but I just don't see it.

The complaints about the early examples are mostly straw men about variable naming and whitespace. The (comparatively) hard part here is the understanding of how the data structure works, and that's something you could stick in a 6-7 line comment...
But, you'll burn more methane than gasoline to get the same energy. I wonder how close it ends up in reality.
He's married and I'm pretty sure his wife plays at least a peripheral role in the company... So, sort of(?)
Agreed. EBS is really where the rubber meets the road in scaling web apps for EC2--esp. a de-normalized datastore.
Isn't "single founder" just a result of not being able to get others to join your effort?
Why Most Tech Entrepreneurs Should Talk to VCs
Facebook, Zuckerberg, and the privacy ecosystem
I can't read them. What's the point to putting them there if I can't read them? Just include a link saying "Graph...". Why format a graph to be 1200 pixels wide, with small fonts even at that size, and then shrink it by a factor of two?

I mean, the inline images might as well be pictures of puppies for all the value they provide to the page.

Edit: I should add that if the size of the images is dictated by the site, then some attention might have been provided to including inline images designed to be used at that size. It's not like it's impossible to display this information in an 600-pixel-wide format...
Maemo is a Debian based linux.
What's unclear in the submitted article is whether the slugs have genes evolved by mutation for producing chlorophyll from earlier slug genes or whether the slugs have incorporated algal genes into their own genome--which would be be a bigger deal. Of course the article notes that some scientists don't think that the chlorophyll production is being done by slug genes at all, but by algal genes contaminating the slugs. Interesting research, well worth more follow-up.

How many human beings would like to be able to photosynthesize?
What is a convertible bridge note with a price cap?
The Facebook employee:

- checked a guest named "Phil Wong" into the new Facebook office in the recent past (after the move)

- is a woman

Holy shit guys, "anonymity"? Protecting her job? I think not.
There was a thread called "What are you working on?" here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032699 and someone suggested the topic come up periodically, which I thought was a great idea. Even better, I think, would be if pg would add a 'Projects' link up top and the projects of members could be listed. The list might be sorted by vote, or perhaps randomly, and refreshed daily.
I know you mentioned long-format, but if you are able to serialize your work you can go for the "release often" format.

Shows like 24 actually do not map out the entire upcoming season from head to tail before shooting - and in fact the back half of the season is entirely un-shot when the season begins airing. This allows show runners to tweak the show based on fan response - serializing fiction may have a similar advantage.
Learning a language that's closely related to one you already speak isn't that hard if you are totally immersed. Grammar books, vocabulary lists, dictionaries, helpful native speakers all help tremendously.

Yes, being quite fluent in a language is just a matter of effort. But really speaking like a native -- this is exceptionally hard. My dad's English is incredibly good for someone born in Korea. His grammar is impeccable, and he's completely fluent. But I still catch that he still has to think a little bit about L and R sometimes. (And he's been at it for 60 years!)
Nexus One plagued with 3G connectivity and support issues
Ask HN: buying your own time.
I've reached the point where I've realized that I need some time to myself to start working on my 'side projects' with the intention that said projects will eventually generate enough income to support me.

To this end I have realized that I need to 'buy' a bunch of my own time. Preferably I would like to buy about 6-12 months of my time which, at my current living standard, would cost about $12-24k to cover my basic living costs.

What I'm wondering is: does anybody have any good suggestions for ways to fund this? I can sell my non-essential possesions etc, but I don't have much in the way of savings. I am very hesitant to go into debt as that will really reduce my future flexibility.

All suggestions welcomed!
"Possible explanations:

". . . .

"2. US elites have over-played their hand, asking too much.

". . . ."

Explanation 2 sounds about right to me.
There are strong parallels in the programming world as well (with the exception that many of the big stacks are open source).

One of my favorite classes in school (CS major) was a microcontrollers lab class, wiring up simple processors and microcontrollers and then programming them in assembly. At that level, everything is transparent, there's no hazily-understood stack of abstracted layers written by others.

I think the reason I found it so refreshing was that transparency. The entire system could be viewed and understood at once.

On the other end of the spectrum you have something like Rails, where things happen seemingly by magic, and when they break, it's impossible to know why as a novice.
This is a brilliant idea.
Yes, there are several lists. The most complete one was done in 2009 in a Google Docs spreadsheet. I have a hard time finding it again, thanks to Google not allowing you to download these docs...
No, not really. There are a couple but none of them look like they belong on OS X.

I think the reason hg doesn't have any decent GUIs while git has several has to do with their command line interfaces.

git is like the ugly girl/guy that's really good in bed. Some pretty lingerie or a nice suit can go a long way toward covering up flaws and letting you focus on their strengths.

hg is the gorgeous girl/guy next door who's also great in bed. Sure, they might look even better with some fancy clothes but we're all too busy staring at their naked body to bother going to a store to buy some.
Maybe there needs to be an eHarmony.com for finding co-founders.
MusicFS - FUSE-based Filesystem based on Metadata from Audiofiles
You have to have the source of what you are trying to learn. If it's a web framework - sure, you can download the source and work on a Windows machine. But you need to realize you are learning about a different system, and one you have the source to. If you want to figure out how operating systems work - you need to see how one works.

Learning how to use a system or code in a framework is possible with closed-source. You can even get some work done. But it can't be called hacking, because the aim of a hacker is to understand.

Say what you will about esr, but the body cast thing is more true than not.
The primary difference (IMHO) is that no one wants to pay overseas contractors anything reasonable, so its a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As the submission's title says, "you get what you pay for." In my experience, this is the case no matter where the contractor is based.
Regardless his singing abilities, that's a beautiful song IMO. He seems to have taste at least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadi_Moma
Compiling the linux kernel seems like a poor choice of test, since it is not a pure CPU activity and will perform a significant amount of I/O.

In addition, it doesn't seem like compiling the linux kernel requires very much RAM, so you get the most bang for your buck using a CS VM with only 256MB and the cost only goes up from there as you add more RAM that the test cannot benefit from.

(Edit: I would love whoever downmodded me to explain why I am wrong.)
Could just as easily be a disgruntled employee too.

Have all devs commit work to an SCCS, and keep offline backups. Pretty much protects you from this scenario.
Do you have savings you can live off of? Normally, people would save up what they need to live off of or just contract or freelance on the side.

edit: i (and i'm sure many others here) have similar aspirations.
Facebook Fights Social Spam with Mark You Don’t Know Response to Friend Requests
In order of proficiency:
Drums, Acoustic, Electric, Saxophone, Piano, Voice.
If anybody can find it, please post the link here and then someone should email pg jeromec's suggestion of having a project page. At the end of the day HN is all about collaboration and inspiration so that would help a lot, I think.
I've actually been looking at music with a hacker mentality for some time. In high school I did a big research project into what made music sound good, and aside from a detailed study on cultural and emotional ties, ended up learning a lot about the mathematical structures that are always found in something that we says sounds "good". Fascinating stuff..
Easy DNS BIND Sinkhole Setup
I am a single founder, though my wife helps on occasion.

I do try to get as much advice and input from friends and colleagues as I can, so in all honesty I'd have to say it's a team effort.
Not as long as the data on computers is worth something. A Fortune 500 laptop might be worth $100 in parts, but $5,000 (or $50,000) in data ransom.
I'll bite.

From the bottom of the summary here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian#integrated_Symbian_plat...

We get:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/08/21/canalys_iphone...

Symbian OS had 50% of the smartphone market as of August 2009. And 50% of the market in that dataset is a majority - probably a good enough a citation for "C++ was the mobile world" when you consider what that would have looked like before the iPhone.
Windows Mobile 6.5.3 finally does away with "ancient, lower-level UIs"
Ask HN: How to go about modelling/simulating prototypes for products
I have several ideas and want to design some physical products ? How can I go about creating or modeling these without spending money on costly software such as AutoDesk/AutoCad etc ?
Here is basically what I want :

1) Draw the object in 3D - physical design

2) Model and simulate it. Example aerodynamic modelling

3) I need the design software to be flexible since many changes may be necessary before finalization.

I am familiar with circuit design and simulation but not with physical things.

Also, any advice from people who've been involved with product prototyping, design and development ?

Thanks!

Update: Ok, I found FreeCAD and freeCAD, thats a start. My further question is, is there anything available for aerodynamic modelling ?
Drop.io Makes Press Easier To Release
Use mint.com... kidding. Get an extra job freelancing, night shift, whatever - trade your free time now for your 'side projects' time later.
I was about to raise the point that "release early, release often" is a phrase from free software, and wonder at its appropriation by commerce, but it turns out it's from ESR. Perhaps it is appropriate, then.

(The majority of my hack is not for customers.)
Very nice! I experimented with it as well, and found that it wasn't quite worth the cost compared to other methods (though my commercial wasn't as nice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyFzZPhgMTQ )

Did you go for repeat showings to the same people, or did you try to show to as many people as possible once?
Orange: ‘No, We Didn’t Just Confirm Apple’s Tablet’
In theory this should be no worse than a game at a brick and mortar casino, but more of a problem than current online poker sites, who have access to everyone's hand history and can analyze data after the fact.

If you look at the number one concern among online poker players though, it isn't whether or not players are colluding -- it's whether or not the dealer is crooked.
Free Technical Books with Creative Commons Licences
You must be fairly young; there was a lot of Leftist crap being spouted in the seventies about Vietnam really being about American access to Vietnamese tin. One problem was that Vietnam didn't really have more tin than many other places.
I've wanted to learn an instrument forever, but with school, internships and side projects it has been an after thought.
I agree. What I said is that I do something similar to it, not exactly the same.. I have a little shell script that I run:

./pass-site.sh http://facebook.com

"
#!/bin/sh

SITE=$1
stty -echo
read UPASS
stty echo
PASS=`sha1 "$SITE $UPASS"`
echo "PASS: $PASS"
"
Here is Palo Alto. ;)
Logging is useful for debugging issues that crop up in production, conducting A/B tests, and generally making things work, and work well. There is a fairly nuanced judgement here in terms of how much information one should collect weighed against the privacy woes that legislation can impose.

I am not sure you realize the ramifications of what you are suggesting, or, we simply have differing systems of values.
"What you are calling "awareness" sounds like what I mean by pattern matching"

Perhaps pattern matching is involved. What I'm thinking of are occasions when one is listening to a very good musician and one is very taken by a particular phrase or lick. The pleasure in that moment is intense, but it's often hard to put the cause of that pleasure into words or even to replicate it musically. I often find that I have to go back and analyze what happened, sometimes by playing back a recording at half speed. Even then, I can fail to replicate the essence of what was good in that moment. There's a certain discipline of awareness one has to practice. Even though I'm able to produce a resemblance of what I've heard, this often lacks the essence of what gave me the pleasure. I have to be aware that I'm reproducing the right thing sonically, and not just taking pleasure from mastering a new sequence of movements. (And it's quite common to meet musicians who just stop at doing the latter.)

Pattern matching might be involved, but it's only part of it. There's a kind of introspection involved in figuring out what made it work. I have to think about how I'm feeling and connect that causally to some particular nuance or combination of things.
its a decent enough test, mostly because most geeks out there have done it themselves, so you can get a good 'feel' for a machine by knowing how long it takes to compile the kernel.

its not perfect, and yeah, its kinda a geeky-benchmark, but it doesn't make it an invalid benchmark, as long as it was conducted correctly.
I don't think Codility checks whether one knows how to write clever algorithm. Look at tasks from ACM Collegiate Programming Competitions, they require clever algorithms. Codility deliberately focuses on very fundamental tasks. Also it does not pretend to be a final sign-off, it merely tells you which candidates to reject due to lack of rudimentary programming skills. It's not that surgeons make injections that often in their daily practice, yet I would not trust a surgeon who doesn't know how to make an injection.
You are underestimating the mental and actual friction caused by open-source. Paid services bring a peace of mind that your server won't crash, some setting won't mess up etc. To a technical guy, those things may seem super small. But (1) little maintenance things add up (2) they are worth not having to deal with especially if you can pay just a few bucks for the peace of mind.
Actually to me one of the things I miss is being able to show what I've done. It is engergizing to show your work and if you don't have anyone as exited is harder. Same thing happens when you work on a company that doesn't understand what you are doing.
This, compared with the way the "conclusions" are worded makes me put this in the "astroturf" category.
Nope! Also a trombonist (played in a Symphony throughout college).

Sometimes a little Mahler goes a long way towards getting the creative juices flowing.
Not very much, I'd imagine. They get their money by selling content, not ads on the web site.
When the thread about new types of flagging (e.g. for incivility) came up recently, and people were saying that HN was getting nastier, my first reaction was "what? really?" Guess I was late to the party: I'm noticing it everywhere now. :(

Come on henning. You can make a point better than this - you have for a long time.
The awareness you're talking about, in my view, is way of emotionally visualizing the reaction. In a similar way we try to visualize something before actually building it.

That is emphatically not it! Well, maybe it's involved but only in the latter part. I'm not just talking about conceptualization. I'm talking about getting aware that there's something to conceptualize in the first place. Pattern matching is involved, but I'm not sure there's all there is to the sort of introspection I'm thinking about.
> MasterCard PayPass is an EMV compatible, "contactless" payment feature based on the ISO/IEC 14443 standard that provides cardholders with a simpler way to pay by tapping a payment card or other payment device, such as a PHONE or key fob, on a point-of-sale terminal reader rather than swiping or inserting a card. [Emphasis mine]

MasterCard is already ahead on the game with this. I believe there's been a trial in the US with this, on a Nokia handset I believe. There's currently a trial being launched with BlackBerry and the Bank of Montreal for a test in Montreal (although in reality it will work with all PayPass enabled machines in Canada, including all Tim Hortons, McDonalds, etc). I believe this test is slightly different in that the system auto-emails a receipt to the BlackBerry user's email.
With paid account it is possible to reopen a task after one solution has been submitted, so the recruiter can "give another chance" to the candidate (although we generally suggest not to), which supports the workflow you describe.
Ask HN: Monetizing a mailing list
Hi HN,

I run a few popular mailing lists (in their respective areas) and I was thinking on adding small ads at the bottom of every post (related to the topic of the list).

Is there such a service anywhere? Something like adsense for emails? ( not necessarily mailing lists) Maybe another ideas on how to monetize it?
Google pays the AP for their content--that's what they are debating about.
And if you want the value of pi, why not just use the same method invoked by bc in that code snippet: 4*atan(1)

http://www.newlisp.org/downloads/newlisp_manual.html#atan
I am a single founder. Still keep my day job (tenure is a beautiful thing!).
It is a controversial statement but it would make sense if he elaborated further. One of my first memorable experiences starting out at college was walking into a computer cluster and finding that every machine ran a variant of Red Hat's Linux. I was taken aback by the freedom the OS provide (the ability to customize every bit of your experience using the workstation). I was also positively taken aback by the community that had adopted this system. Right next door to the main cluster was a room occupied by a group of hackers. Their attitude was like nothing I had seen before. Their doors were always open to anyone who had questions about Linux. They wrote software to make using Linux easier at school. You get that same sense of community from Linux users on the web.

The statement doesn't just apply to software. Think about the Arduino. The project has gained a massive following and created a whole new legion of hardware hackers because it is easy to obtain (designs are open source and collaborative in nature) and there is a strong community behind it (probably as a result of it being open source).
Aye.
As with last time, amazing feedback.
I LOVE the new mission statement - I was just too close to the entire project to come up with something so brief and clear (and believe me, I slaved over what is there for a while).
And the GUI edits - I'm already talking to my GD about implementing some of them.
Thanks Ycombinators - you all are an inspiration!
Peace...James