skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I live in Beijing, and the article is accurate. For anyone with even minimal technical expertise it's trivial to circumvent censorship. I use tor for blocked sites, and get my email over secure IMAP.

The government doesn't care about what any individual reads here, but I'm sure they log everything, and if you attract too much attention, you'd be in real trouble. Mainly, they seem to be concerned (read: paranoid) about (large) groups of people organizing in a way that could threaten the government's power to such an extent that they would have to suppress them in a PR-damaging way.

Chinese culture values "face" to a ridiculous extent, and the government is learning fast that crude suppression is inferior to "acknowledge, downplay, spin and lie by omission" - they are, in a way, just catching up with their Western counterparts, making their propaganda more sophisticated.

Getting back to Internet censorship, I have two interesting observations:

1. Not a single major US newspaper is blocked here - this could mean that the US has a lot of influence on Chinese censorship, or that US newspaper reporting is not considered threatening. cbc.ca and news.bbc.co.uk are blocked. Non-english sites are not blocked, probably because too few people speak those languages to make them a threat.

2. I encounter what I call the reverse firewall almost as often as the firewall. It appears that a lot of sites blacklist Chinese IP address ranges (probably because of attacks/spam), but it can get kind of annoying.

Internet access here is definitely frustrating for power users, because of high latency, internal and external blocking, and additional slowdowns through proxy use to do things like blogging.
Wow, I never realized that, but it seems you're correct. I wonder why in the world more laptops don't support DVI?
Wired Feature on Deep Sea Cowboys Using 3D Models to Save Giant Ships
I think that collaborative filtering need a niche market to grow. Digg it's on the Technology news market. Reddit too, but there are many political news too. But Yahoo Buzz?

If you don't have a niche market, it's very dificult to focus and grow the community. Nobody is going to vote, only because they can.
totally agree.
How have you integrated it with your SCM?

That was the major stopper for us in using FogBugz. We're using git and trac now, but would love something that tracks burndown.
You could try Orange: http://www.ailab.si/orange

It is written in combination of Python and C. It can be used as a python module.
I suppose that "MySpace" was meant as a good thing, contrary to what I initially thought, ad-filled with black text on a black background and sparkly animated gifs.
From The Burning Bush: How to Choose Board Members
What fundamental laws of economics have changed? ebay is still ebay and is still a winner take all market, just to cite one example.

I'm not going to say that technology hasn't changed anything - it's doubtless opened some things up. But where there are big network effects, it is still going to lead to a dominant player in a given market. Where there aren't, there is room for more competition. That's always going to be true, whatever technology you're talking about.
This advice would be more convincing if it was from the google founders. "We never slept because we were simultaneously going to stanford and making google. Our success is due to coffee."

Instead it is always from someone working on something lame and going to some random 2nd rate school. Most people who are good at what they are doing have time to sleep.
Interesting... I find that sometimes, I am relieved when my choices shrink, or put another way, some choices are made for me.
You're right that fundamentally their products aren't affected that much by network effects. That doesn't mean that "everything has changed" though, which was my point.
Drop out, if its what you really really want to do. I spent three years trying to do startup stuff and school. Eventually i realized that i was really happy only when i had time to focus on my projects, and that school work got in the way of actually completing something to a really high level. Its a great way to train, but if you feel that now its time to do something serious - drop out.
This is the most amazing Wired article I have ever read.
From what I've heard, a very successful "casual" game makes tens of thousands of dollars.
Yeah, it's 'free' to comment here, but there is a 'cost' associated with using that site, as cstejerean nicely explains:-)
One Pot
Coding food!
Most days, I eat whatever my parents cook.

Living in my parents' basement while I get tarsnap up and running is the best business decision I've ever made.
That is the problem that plagues Lisp and to a lesser degree other powerful languages, because you can develop things so quickly and express yourself easily, a lot of code is single use, throwaway code. No one bothers with developing a library, complete and properly documented, for something that only took you a couple of hours to write.

Thus everyone reinvents the wheel.
Load test and optimize user experience. You have one crack at attracting users. If your site is down, or the user experience is sluggish,that's bad news. Make sure you have some external monitoring in place.
As I said, I started working on the product in 2001. It's been seven years. I think I'm passionate enough. :) Most people I talk to about accounting do think it's boring. You are the exception, which I of course appreciate.

Thanks to everyone for your feedback. It's been very helpful.
pray ;)
Everytime I fail, I redefine success ;)
Use CRF for classifying/labeling.

http://crf.sourceforge.net/

Its extremely well written, easy to define features etc. Reasonably good support too.
Digg is too techie!!
I like Yahoo's offbeat stories on their homepage.
Top 5 Sub-$300 Laptops Compared
Whether you’re looking for a child’s laptop, or just want a cheap piece of hardware to play with, the sub-$300 laptop category has a lot to offer. With a field full of open source plaforms and rugged designs, you’re sure to find something you’ll like. Take a look at 5 of the best.
WaSP IE8 Round Table Discussion
I'm amazed when professors do work that amounts to little more than link bait.

Prediction:
Robot militants will have sex with humans in nanotech super-AI gray goo.
That is very optimistic.
"I'll have a double-double animal-style launch burger."
Why digital radio is doomed
i think the issue with 'free' revolves around marginal cost as well as competition. gmail is something that has substantial value to google as a company internally (hence you sink money into it) and it is trivial given their resources to give it away. use email as a beachhead to a suite of products and presto - you get people aware of and already used to google's business apps which i definitely pay for. a 'free' service is equivalent to advertising - the only difference is that it is borrowing your eyeballs by providing a benefit rather than a bikini-clad model.
This has been extremely obvious to anyone working on DIY drones. This was discussed last year on the DIY Drones web site: http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844:BlogPost:2...
For smaller projects: ΤΙΜΙΟΣ Gantt Designer @ http://timios.net/Gantt/

For bigger projects: MS Project
An excellent article that raises my pulse, reads like a Tom Clancy foray into engineering. Thank you.

How many engineers do you know have a mini-fleet of high-end German automobile engineering? And deserve it?

These guys do.
I wouldn't trust that graph :)

Also, Gmail makes money multiple ways, including ads (direct and indirect) and paid customers of Google Apps.
i hope so. digital cameras let me take tons of photographs without worrying about cost. it would be cool if i could turn out 100 Web apps every day, just to see what works and what doesn't.
It's not just me saying this folks:

“Ignore basic economic principles at your own risk. Technology changes. Economic laws do not.” -- Hal Varian (who is now Google's Chief Economist)

http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information-rules-a...
Does anyone believe social media company valuations?
Really bad luck would have been, if the one who suffered the stroke had not quit but gone into hospital while you still had to pay him.

In the office near to mine is also a collegue who brings her baby every day. While she is there in principle, she does not work a lot, but starts to develop a strong sense to control everything. If these people stay, thats really bad luck.
Yeah, I like this approach :)
Ask YC: Does Caffeine Work For You?
Exactly, you are wasting your money.

The main reason for me to use macs is mac os. While the features of the apple hardware are nice, and they look good and all that, the most important thing to have is a commandline and a set of decent apps like photoshop, bbedit etc, on one machine. Most linux applications are crap compared to os x apps!!!!

If you want to run linux and are not on a tight budget, I recommend Thinkpads. Although not all features are perfectly easy to activate (power management, bluetooth, wireless :o|), the hardware is superior to macs.

I paid the price for Powerbooks since ever. But now I have decided to go with a MacBook (as soon as they come with LED backlit screens). I think the value for the money is much better. I'd rather pump them up with the largest and fastest drive and memory.
I gave up on caffeine a few years ago. I don't miss it, and find I have more energy and sleep better than before. I'm tempted to restart every time I read the 'caffeine is good for your health'-type reports, but so far I've stuck with H2O.
Ask YC: applications of bots/spiders/crawlers
other than search engine indexing
My productivity enhancing stimulant of choice is kratom.
bottled water is really convenient
Foundry Group Raises $225 Million Early Stage VC Fund
The last thing you need to do before launching is the first thing you remember to do after launching ;-)
Vulnerability scanning would be one potential example. An intelligent bot can better probe and respond to services running based on OS/Version returned.
MLN - Manage Large Networks of Xen and UML virtual machines
An algorithm to find and resolve data differences between MySQL tables
Reiser Prosecution Jolt: Victim's Ex-Lover Confesses to Eight Killings
InnoDB vs MyISAM vs Falcon benchmarks - part 1 | MySQL Performance Blog
Let’s award our European technology heroes
Dude, that article is nearly a year old...
Bunch of cool stuff out there -- Basecamp seems to be a fave.

I'm writing an Agile PM tool as a side project right now. Let me know if you'd like to beta it.
Walking Away from VC
This is a story about:

--Why a startup founder walked away from $100,000 in venture capital and took a regular job.

--What hidden dangers lurked in this seemingly safe job with a large organization.

--How, through negotiating these dangers, he learned how to be a much better entrepreneur.
Good job, Darren.

I did the same thing with a much more complicated tool suite a couple of years ago. Took a lot longer than a weekend! I'm glad to see the tooling is coming along so well. Good luck -- looks like a winner.
"... want to know, what do you guys eat for dinner?! How do you buy food when you have no income? When I was an earning man, I managed to get by with meals at the office, lean cuisines, and hummus. Now that I'm on my own I have to figure out everything for myself ..."

Food is somewhat like hacking. You have to have access to the raw ingredients, the right recipes & kit. Most important is practice. One of the things I've noticed that differs from hacking is cooking is very time sensitive. Timing is everything.

So here's a couple of hints:

- REFERENCE: find a good food reference ~ http://www.jamieoliver.com Jamie Oliver may not be to everyone's taste but he covers a good variety of tastes and communicates well.

- BUDGET: set a budget, stick to it.

- LISTS: create a shop list, don't deviate: fruit, vegetables, meat, rice, pasta, bread, nuts, oils then cheese should be at the top list.

- PURCHASING: shop at markets and look for fruit/veg in season, shop at supermarkets also but be aware of specials. Limit purchases of non-essentials and learn to spot in-season consumables. For meats & fish wait till the later part of the day when the prices go down.

- MEAT CUTS: learn how to make do with cheap meat cuts (but be inventive). In the restaurant trade the difference b/w mediocre and great chefs is the ability to make something good out of cheap meat cuts. Do the same.

- BREADS: make your own bread (flour + water + yeast + oil) Unless of course you can find a cheap baker. My baker bakes bread 30% under supermarket price ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/543460411/ then http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/1005146072/

- NO WASTE: don't overcook, portion out servings to avoid waste

The most important thing is to get as close to raw ingredients as possible. Then cook yourself. Cook when you need, don't freeze. If you go for processed stuff you are going to pay. The pay-off is better food, cheaper food ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195801193/

Peasants always eat better. They just have to work harder at it :)
Just put on the "Mighty Draughts of the World" sensory playlist.
Wed, 27 Feb 2008

Uniquely-decodable codes
What's the point of debating if $0 is good or not? There's the demand, there's the supply.

Zero cost for customer means he will choose the better provider, and here the world evolves again.
Caffeine has never seemed to do much for me. Even if it did, I am fine without it.
I do find caffeine use to be effective, driving force. Instead of just sitting around at home doing nothing, I feel compelled to take my laptop and be unproductive at local cafes. It also enhances my attention/focus deficiencies, leading me to read many more books, magazines, and blogs than I normally would were I to remain enmeshed in whatever I'm working on.
and it has pictures of springs on the label
Network Security Books
Lots of books on protecting your data on http://www.Hitflip.co.uk
Network Security Introduction:
http://www.hitflip.co.uk/books/title/Network_Security_For_Dummies_sup_sup_For_Dummies_407215/

and on German Hitflip:
http://www.hitflip.de
http://www.hitflip.de/books/title/Network_Press._SQL_Server_7._Planung_Installation_Konfiguration_Optimierung_42986/

Or buy new books to learn more about protecting your computer:
http://www.hitmeister.de
Network Intrusion Detector: http://buecher.hitmeister.de/network-intrusion-detection-912587/
Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about it. It a market with low barriers to entry, incentives tend to get played out to the extreme. In the web industry, marginal costs are low enough that zero is a possible price point, with advertising, so most of the industry has adopted it.

This is not a new phenomena. Most local daily newspapers charge $0.25 or $0.50 even though the price doesn't cover their production cost. However, it ensures a wide distribution so they can make it up on advertising.
>He has a point about making a loss on something to kill the competition, but that doesn't exactly work the same way with information products.

Actually, I have never seen a good example of this phenomena in the real world. People say it is true about Wal-Mart, but they don't raise their prices after they kill the competition, which defeats the thesis.
True, but what if they cut back only on the really awful movies?

Very few movies are even worth watching, just like even fewer albums are worth buying.

The re-use value of music is extremely high, but how many times will you watch a movie you buy?

Downloading movies in Blu-ray format is still more or less infeasible though, and it's not like RIAA & MPAA would be expected to start a torrent site of their own :)
I'm not familiar with CRM114, but upon cursory inspection it seems to be written in C and targeted mainly at document classification.

Weka is written in Java and implements all kinds of machine learning/data mining tools.
PHP Caching Techniques
Google is being sued for hiring an ex-official.
Distributed Mass Customization: Is Etsy the Next eBay?
Intellectual property’s social value may trump copyright law
How it’s less about deliverables, and more about design
<sarcasm to infinity plus plus plus>

Currently in the NYC metro area, although my experience with "Any day now my social network for ABBA lovers / fantasy soccer league / Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Myspace/Veoh/Youtube mashup will be worth millions" programmers has in the bast encompassed people from the Boston area (Harvard & MIT), Romania, Russia, and Denmark.

SIGH as much as I am reluctant to admit it, I'm starting to realize that what people say about S.V. is true - it is THE startup hub.

But IMHO, not because of the "infrastructure" but rather because of the more open, willing, "let's see if we can work together and if not, we fail - so what? Let's try something different" attitude.

Everywhere else nobody seems to understand that it takes a BALANCED team to create anything good. Programmer's think they're God's gift ... investment bankers think they're God's gift ... VCs think they're God's gift ... MBAs think they're God's gift ...

Only in S.V. is everyone seemingly willing to put ego aside and explore new possibilities with people different from them.

I would think based on the financial success they've achieve more people would be inclined to follow ... but ... apparently not.

</sarcasm to infinity plus plus plus>
San Diego?
What do you all think of San Diego as a location for a startup? I just got into grad school there (I'm waiting on Stanford, but that's a long shot). I know it's far from Silicon Valley.

Are there any VCs there? Any cofounders? Other startups? Would it be too much of a PITA to fly to the Valley all the time for living in San Diego to be worth it?
Neat. That's the first 'real' use of seen of the code that I posted a while back. Very cool.

http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-my...
Caffeine is bad for night work.
It gives physical stimulation, but it suppress cerebral cortex.

Also : you’re not more energetic, but unambiguously you’re more nervous on caffeine

(Forgive me my bad English, it’s not my native)
The no sleep is tough for me. Historically, I've required about eight solid hours. Lately, I've found that with a morning exercise routine I can cut about two hours out of my night's sleep and still function fine. Anything less than six hours and I start to require a power nap during the day.
What about the Vista tax?
No, it doesn't. It gives me a rush for less than five minutes and then I am back to the lower levels. Sleep works much better, but not the night one. Sleeping midday for less than an hour works way way better than caffeine. Shame my boss would never agree to it, but I do on weekends.
gearsAJAXHelper: Using Gears as an optional speed boost
EU fines Microsoft a record $1.3 billion
Google JavaScript developer hackathon at Mountain View
Facebook’s new face: What does it needs to accomplish?
How to beat the competition (Steve Pavlina)
The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know
If the red army hadn't retreated initially it would have been annihilated. Again, an essential strategy.
'Grand Theft' maker: $2 billion is not enough
TED Conference to Tackle Origins of Evil, Theories of Everything
Works for me, in fact, I'm going for my daily Red Bull.
(it's too early for an Espresso, maybe later).
Thanks a lot, not it's time to start learning.
I'll let you know how is it going. :)
How a beautiful software system becomes Frankenstein
Venture Voice podcast explores how entrepreneurs build their businesses and live their lives
I'd be more concerned about the beautiful weather than the start-up environment.

Will it energize you or distract you? 95% of your time will be heads down hacking no matter where you live.

When I lived in Southern California, it energized me. Wrote some of my best code with the windows open and the ocean breeze blowing through. Will it be the same for you?
I enjoy a cup of coffee most mornings, but I don't think it does a lot of good for long-term productivity.

A B-complex vitamin supplement (B-100) plus extra folate (to a total of 200% RDA of folic acid) definitely seems to help, though. And there's research to suggest that it reduces or prevents long-term cognitive decline.
"Most people I talk to about accounting do think it's boring."

Talk to different people.
Kogbox.com: Social Coding
Here's a better overview of password authentication: http://www.matasano.com/log/958/enough-with-the-rainbow-tabl...

It explains why using fast hash algorithms such as MD5 or SHA1 is a bad idea for the purpose of password authentication.
Also people have been flying remote controlled aircraft since the 50's. You don't need a super-duper autonomous gps guided drone when you can just stand on the roof with the remote. Just look at how they use IED's and cell phones.

All of this raises the inevitable question: If a robot does the killin', does it get 72 virgin sexbots?
Thanks, I'm aware that logic is an absolutely must. I do program but I'm not familiar with server side programming.

For me programming is all about Logic.
pg has spoken, and it is good...

Seriously though this is exactly what I need to accomplish my tasks (which is not SPAM filtering). I briefly looked at all of the other alternatives before diving deeper into the "CRM114 Revealed" book. I really wish I knew about this a few years earlier!!
There is a very large biotech scene in San Diego, so I imagine there will plenty of VC's. Not sure about the computer tech scene, though.
I don´t know what everybody uses. I survive with a Moleskine, a pencil, a rubber and a set of pens of different colors.
I doubt it, though I haven't tried in a while. I use either sleep or adrenaline.
Then substitute ham/spam for whatever those types of content are.
1000% Growth Frenzy in Social Media
So do I.

Also, I want to stay so focused on the top 2 or 3 items that I never need anything more complex.
Web 2.0: Browse And Interact With Your Friends On-line
Imagine you just know where your friends & like-minded people are. You can see what they see & discuss the same things. You visit a web page and instantly hear what a group of your friends, experts and other web users say about this site, page or topic. As you browse you discover new sites, ask questions, get help & recommendations, read & rate reviews and ideas. You might even help others and speak-up your own mind.
Most laptops don't have a good video card.

Macbooks have the small connector because the large connector is too large in form factor for a laptop (well maybe not that huge HP :P). So other laptops would have to do something similar, but perhaps apple patented the mini-dvi port?
Well, Etsy ( http://www.etsy.com/ ) is a drop-in replacement and you can search by colour. Factor in media coverage and EBay's lack of goodwill and Etsy could have a winner.
Thank you all, today is my first anniversary at News.YC
Today I read on my profile

user:	edu
created: 365 days ago

A full year here! Mostly lurking, and seldom commenting and submitting news. One year and it is as good as ever.

I wanted to thank you all guys, and specially PG, for making news.YC possible and for keeping it up fresh, clean and smart.

Thank you very much!
Ask YC:  How can I fix poor adsense targeting on my site?
I'm getting poor targeting on http://numbrosia.com.

One way to work around it is to use url parameters such as "?cmd=puzzle_lb" instead of "?cmd=leaderboard". This helps sometimes (e.g., the leaderboard page may still show golf ads but it also shows puzzle ads now).

However, what can I do for the main page?
A friend works at an unnamed newswire and he's shocked by the lack of safeguards.

It would be possible for Yahoo to trust a reputable newpaper which trusts a reputable newswire which trusts a third party affiliate which inadvertantly gets goatse.
a) Scrolling to the bottom means you read it. Or do you comment without reading?

b) c) No account is needed and no approval is needed

I see why you'd rather comment here - it is more interactive and individual centric. That make sense.

Alex