skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How unique does a company name need to be?
Let's say I want to start a company named "Panacea" (this is not the actual name I want, just using it as an example). Say I want to form an LLC and leave open the possibility of switching to a Corporation down the road.

From a quick google search, there already exists: "Panacea Pharmaceuticals"
"Panacea-BOCAF" education focused non-profit
"Panacea University"
"Panacea Clinical Research"
"Panacea Consulting Inc"
... probably some others.

Assuming that there are not specifically any "Panacea Software LLC"s out there, would I be able to register that name and legally do business with it?

What are the rules regarding picking a company name? Is it legit to append "Software" or "Technologies" to the end of a name if there is already a corporation with that name in some other field?
Wouldn't this be similar to what Google does, large amounts of average CPU's?
This was one of the most thorough Apple articles I've read in a long, long time. It demonstrated a really strong grasp of the way Apple runs their business and how they decide what information to share and how they share it. The advice was sound and analysts would do well to pay attention to it. Sure, some of it is catering to the types of questions Apple wants to be asked, but the suggestions of asking about security measures and the App Store review system are both within bounds and highly relevant.
Hope for Haiti now
You're probably right, but that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the US Navy that patrols international waters to ensure smooth flows of oil tanks, and I was referring to the money that goes to protect the Saudi government and their oil fields, etc.

It doesn't really matter where we import our oil from. The world market is interconnected. If supplies drop in Venezuela, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, then the demand for oil from Canada will go up worldwide. So it's in our interest to keep the oil flowing from countries other than Canada.
More details coming tomorrow, that I can say.
Can you provide references that would allow a researcher to educate himself? I'm genuinely interested, and there seem to be lots of fields that use software in experimentation and simulation but where there isn't much emphasis or education on doing it properly.
Our deprecation and support policy changed dramatically in the 1.0 release, from a monthly cycle to a six-month cycle. We changed to a three month cycle in 2.0 because of direct feedback from HLL developers that three months was way too long.

I don't know what you mean by "change the toolchain".
Let's work with an actual example, the expansion of Interstate 10 in Katy, TX.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5450155.htm...

Estimated cost: $2.8 billion

Traffic: 207,000 per day (http://www.katyfreeway.org/background.html)

Length: 22 miles

Cost per mile per daily trip: $614.84

If we're paying it off over 20 years, that's 8.4 cents per mile driven. This doesn't include any necessary maintenance over those 20 years. I doubt the 20-30 cents figure is wrong. The person who was quoted was an elected official who dealt with a lot of transportation issues.
You need to weigh both sides, if there was something great on the other side, then I would agree with you. In this case, I don't gain all that much for going public with it.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
Tell HN: San Diego Meetup
Hello Hacker News!

For the purpose of developing a hacker community in southern California, I am hosting a Hacker News meetup at Filter Coffee House on January 29th @6PM. This is a chance to meet other San Diegans interested in technology, science, and startups and share the projects that you are working on. This will be an informal meeting without any agenda, but if there is enough interest we will try to secure speakers in the future.

If you are coming, please RSVP by sending an email to the address in my profile. Please be sure to include the words "HN meetup" in the subject line. Or if you prefer you may leave a message below. If there are too few RSVPs to book a meeting space at Filter, then I will cancel the event and let the people know who left me a contact email address.

The address is 4096 30th St.

I look forward to meeting you!

-Jacob
App Sales Machine also scrapes your app's rankings, so that config file is used to generate the URLs to scrape. From there, I relied on it to help organise the way the data is persisted in the data store. I suppose it could be modified to parse everything it needed from the sales reports, but you would still need to configure every app's category info for the rankings scraper. I'm sure there are other ways of doing it, but this is the method I settled on.
Most bootstrapped entrepreneurs don't get to blog about their progress "on the homepage of Australian entrepreneurship magazine Anthill." and they don't get a feature in RWW.

So to say..."all it takes is some will and dedication" is a little too much, when you are getting all that extra exposure.
There really are only a few great conductors in the world. There is a very real danger that people (like me, presently) would rather stay home and listen to Carlos Kleiber conduct Beethoven 7 rather than head to Avery Fisher to watch an uninspired performance of Maazel conducting the New York Philharmonic. There is no danger that a significant number of people would rather stay home than attend a performance of Firebird with Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic.
cool, I'm in
It's not a business until you hit that phase where you realize no one cares about the toy you built in a week's time. Then you pivot and put in a lot more effort than you ever bargained for - that's when you have a startup.
It just depends how much you value your freedom.
The implications are much wider how about someone invested via mutual funds or a retirement annuity, this choice might not be possible. It is fine for a Corporation to have a specific agenda even the Vatican owns businesses but supporting Politicians via this avenue just doesn't sound right.
The "art" design of the invitation may be a red herring. Remember the "in the air" posters before the MacBook Air announcement?
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/01/macworld-theres/

They sparked all sorts of speculation about WiMax devices and wireless streaming.
Methinks he has some problems with units and is drifting out to sea. http://xkcd.com/687/
> Did you try doing one O(n) pass to dump the
> list into a secondary format?

In this case it wasn't a list, and there was the problem of knowing if I'd already walked the entire structure, because there may have been loops, and it's the entire loop detection problem all over again. That was one problem with trying to build the subsidiary structure. We had to do it lazily, and, oh, it's too complex to try to obfuscate what we were doing, and I can't tell you the details because it's commercial in confidence. Sorry.

I should add that a lot of my contexts are semi-embedded systems, so limitations in memory, disk, CPU and bandwidths are all unsual.

> Could you give some more insights into the scenarios
> where you don't know the size of the data?

Sadly, no, sorry. In some sense the original problem really encapsulates the essence. Your ideas are valid in many, perhaps virtually all cases, but sometimes you need to solve the problem as given without finding tricks to get around them. I come across problems like that, which is why I like to have a wide range of techniques.

> I guess my thinking was colored by the start of the
> article - "It's a classic interview question: Given
> a (singly-)linked list, determine whether or not it
> has a cycle."

Noted - I'll look at putting a side note to put it into the more general context to help avoid putting people's thoughts into a smaller box.

Thank you.
Potential problems with your approach are that he may not respond (worth a shot, though), and that it lets the owner know someone is interested. If he's an asshole, he might renew it unless you pay a high price.
Glad to hear it worked out for you.
I understand the issue, but in practice I worry about the patents that cover H.264 about as much as I do those that cover the PDF spec...which is to say: not at all.
I think it is a completely personality issue. Just like their desk, some people like to keep things tidy and organized and know whats next all the time, while some people seem to thrive in a bit of messiness, creativity and improvisation and getting things done first.

When it comes to jobs that require originality and creativity, a checklist is not going to be productive. In a job that is more operational, predictive and repetitive, then a checklist would help.

When it comes to software engineering, the job is semi-structural (you are bound by certain conventions, languages, computer science principles), and semi-creative (you can use your imagination in a lot of places).

For QA types, a checklist is a must.
For pure new feature programing, a step by step checklist is basically a creativity killer. Crap in, crap out.

I personally distaste checklist, and try to avoid artificial constrains as much as I can.
The skeptic inside of me says that this could have happened anyway. It seems reasonable to expect that telcos would heavily invest in their 3G infrastructure right now, iPhone or not. I have no actual data, but I would guess it’s a 2:1 split. Two parts normal infrastructure investments, one part Apple (that one part seems a bit high to me, though, don’t know).
TechStars Founder Dating Meetup is Feb 10th
There's a relatively simple solution to this that another heavy hitter in the FOSS world has been using for years: Prompt for a "restricted package" install when the user first encounters an h.264 video, similar to how Ubuntu deals with non-FOSS drivers, plugins, and codecs.

It's the best of both worlds; you stay free and you get to be compatible.
AeroTransport Data Bank - Search for transport aircrafts, airlines and more
Alpha alpha alpha. We're going to be letting people in within the next few weeks and the start tuning!
Dropbox guys only need you to visit the site once though
How are these comprable? Adobe has a patent agreement that says it won't sue you if you are implementing PDF or PostScript. Sure, it's maybe not absolute freedom, but it is markedly better than the situation with any of the encumbered audio codecs.

I'm not an adobe defender by any means, but the practical consequence of this is that there exists a lot of Free Software that supports PDF and PostScript (like Ghostscript) and ships with all distros. The situation for H.264 is hardly similar.
Optional peripherals are a chicken-and-egg problem. Consumers won't buy it if there are no compelling games for it, and publishers aren't willing to commit to the peripheral (e.g., controllers not allowed) if there are not enough consumers that own the peripheral.

Microsoft can address this by stepping up and making Natal a required accessory for some hit game. The trick then is finding Natal's "killer app", which we have yet to really see.

It's going to be tough - see Microsoft's FF Steering wheel and the 360 webcam as evidence. The wheel is confined to racing games and isn't useful for much more, and the webcam is fun for a few nights but doesn't have a lasting appeal. The only webcam game I'm aware of was the one shipped by MS, and it's not very fun (and very tiring on the arms). Both devices are successful in their own scenarios, but are still niche products (how many games have you seen that use the camera?).
From the comments:
Nicole Glaros: Agree with David, I'm attempting to find a way to let people video conference in, so you can attend remotely. Founder Dating shouldn't be geographically limited!
If the MVP won't attract any more than some feedback, it's not really an MVP, is it? Doesn't seem particularly viable
I do not doubt that sooner than later Apple will offer filtering for internet, and will package it in an appealing way (security).

It does seem foolish now, and "just wait" is not a compelling argument. What makes you not doubt this? Where is the money in it?
RedHat did this, and I was very happy about it at the time, being involved with the Xiph.org projects. The users hated it, but I don't see how to educate users about this any other way.
Interactive 360 degree experience
Ah so if YOU don't worry about, I guess everything is going to be fine :)
To answer your first question: Yes. I mean, both. (And no, I'm not offended by your choice of words.)

Since you've restated the discussion on more neutral terms, allow me to rephrase my position in your terms: The article is about how people have trouble swallowing Cantor's argument. Yet clearly Cantor's argument is correct within a framework that includes the reals. And my position is that the existence of Cantor's argument leads me to question the framework itself.

You say that there really isn't anything to agree or disagree with, that we are just talking about definitions. Absolutely, I agree. It's unfortunate that the only words we have to talk about these things also have extra connotations that might be more forceful than what we really mean. We're really just talking about the consequences of manipulating symbols under certain rules.

HOWEVER... Isn't the whole point of math that you expect at some point to analyze the result of the symbol manipulation and "read off" an interpretable meaning from the answer? At that point may you not make a judgement that the combination of the system you choose and your interpretation of it lead to "believable" results? Is it entirely correct to say that there is no such thing as "agreeing" or "disagreeing" with a definition of a mathematical object, if putting it into the system leads to results you don't consider believable?
Not all these sites went "kaput". Grand Central for instance was bought by Google and is the basis of their Voice service.
Reality and measurable reality were separate concepts, until quantum mechanics came along. If the intricacies of the Reals demonstrate the philosophy they come out of, it has as much to do with predating the atom in chemistry and the Heisenberg Principle in quantum mechanics as it does with predating float-point numbers.

I feel that math is intended to appeal to logical intuition rather than physical intuition, so my belief is that adding limits to precision is an unnecessary complication to the number system. By extension, I don't believe that math or numbers reveal 'fundamental truths' of the physical universe, nor are they intended to. I view math as a disembodied exercise in logic, and if we happen to find a physical system that satisfies the hypotheses of a mathematical system, then the results will apply as well. The result of this is that I view the reals as 'purer' math because they have less hypotheses, and numerical approximations as a set of additional hypotheses that are more commonly seen in practice. The natural result is that there's a lot of mathematical ideals with cool properties that are ruled out in practical terms.

I have a few questions for you and your viewpoint (for my own curiosity, not antagonistic).

1. Do you believe that Pi actually does have an infinite number of decimal places, or that it's limited by the precision with which we can measure a circle? I think I read somewhere that 50 decimal places is enough to calculate the radius of the visible universe from the radius to within an atom's width of accuracy.

2. What do you think of the Random Oracle Model in cryptography[1]? I think there's an anology between the ROM vs real hashes, and how I conceive of the reals vs finite-precision mathematics. In particular, simple and (logically) intuitive idealized models have properties that are not held by any possible real approximation. Feel free to ask me more if you're totally confused =P.

3. Do you accept infinite-precision rational numbers? Why or why not? My motivation in asking is that there's a difference between computability and measurability, and you appeal to both as a source of intuition.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_oracle_model
Since all posts are sequentially numbered you can just go to: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 and see who posted.

I can tell you that phyllis is number 2...
IPhone GUI Mockup Template (2009)
I value watching non-crappy video enough to pay $0.20 for an H.264 license.

I value the runtime on my battery operated devices enough to pay $0.20 for an efficiently decoded format.

(Maybe that is more than $0.20. Depending on volume the H.264 is $0.00, $0.20, or $0.10, but I think there is a base license also required that I can't find. In any event, adding H.264 to a computer probably costs less than half a can of beer.)

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsS...

And remember, I am still allowed to do anything I want with the code. I just have to give MPEG-LA half a can of beer do it.
Retlang: message-based concurrency in .NET (based on Erlang)
A second point I forgot to mention is that I do not know of Adobe suing anyone over standard PDF/PostScript features, but there is a long history of Thompson and all the other audio/video patent holders being very litigious and threatening.

Perhaps no one remembers 8hz-enc or why the LAME project doesn't distribute binaries (or at least didn't for a long time; I've not looked lately). The story for MP3 players wasn't a super happy one either at one time.
Mozilla doesn't want to give users the ability to choose proprietary codecs. You're getting "freedom" whether you want it or not.
Tell HN: A Health Care Startup Idea.  And a question to ponder.
I recently acquired idiopathic tinnitus. In other words, I now have ringing in my ears 24/7 and I don't know the cause.

What's even more maddening is that there are no good treatments for this condition. It is one of many "Cinderella Conditions" in healthcare - very little money is spent on what seems to be an eminently treatable and maybe even curable disease. Not to mention a profitable one.

As of right now, "Approximately 40 million Americans have chronic tinnitus. For 10 million of these people, tinnitus can be a severely debilitating condition." according to Oregon University (source: http://www.ohsu.edu/ohrc/tinnitusclinic/factSheet.html#relieving%20tinnitus)

Not only that, but each of those 10 million people would be willing to spend SIGNIFICANT sums of money for viable treatments. Look no further than what one YC user had to say about this condition:

---

"Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?"
A proven cure for tinnitus. I'd clean out my bank account and cash in all my 401Ks, if need be, to pay for the treatment. For those who don't know what tinnitus is, just imagine having a high-pitched ringing sound in your head that never, ever, ever stops. Ever.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=551872

---

The closest viable option comes from a company called "Neuromonics" which basically charges $5000 for an IPod like device that retrains your brain to not hear the sounds. Really? That's the best solution the market can provide for 10 million sufferers with money in their hands?

Not to mention the fact that the number of people needing a solution like this is going to explode given the prevalence of noise induced hearing loss that is going to be present in this and future generations.

So that's my idea - take it and run with it, please. :)

------------

The broader question is: Why Aren't There More HealthCare Startups?

Every one of us probably knows someone suffering from a condition for which there aren't any good treatments? Why aren't WE doing MORE to improve these conditions?

Additionally, every one of us will eventually come down with a disease or chronic condition that will either kill us or make certain aspects of our lives' miserable. Do you really want to trust that other people will solve these problems before we encounter them?

I understand that health care startups are hard. The barriers to entry are high, the success rates are fairly low, and the problems are difficult to solve. But the reward to humanity and quality of life is higher than just about any web app you could build.

Does the world really need another twitter mashup? Or should we be striving to work on more impactful things?

Food for thought, I guess.
This is a great change. After you use Sequel for a while (which operates this way) it's really hard to go back to ActiveRecord and pass hashes all over the place.
Glad we cleared that up, and glad I could provide some insight =).

Also, thanks for being civil in response to my show-off-y reply.
Mutual funds are no different. You contract/agree with a fund that represents your investment criteria and they invest on your behalf and charge you a fee. There are already 'values' driven mutual funds in existence today. ( ex: 'green' mutual funds)

I agree that politics is different, but the different part is not that people are influencing its outcome. The different part is that the people that rise to the top control the institutions of the state.
It does look nice, but that's a lot of very widely used code that's being deprecated.

That's why it's being only deprecated though. Deprecation is a signal to the developer that things are changing. It's the step before terminating support for the code.

I like these changes, personally. I think it makes the code more readable, and lazy loading should help improve performance a bit. I wish ActiveRecord would have declarative attributes à la DataMapper or MongoMapper though.
2nd ave subway is a response to pop growth in the Bronx. If I remember my numbers correctly, the green line carries 1/3 of the daily subway users.

When I rode the red lines, I worried about getting a seat. When I rode the green lines from the express stop at 86 and lex, I worried about getting on the train.

Also, I think you forgot to mention the enormous subsidies to car ownership, from free parking to general tax money used for roads to wars to secure oil supplies. Thus the marginal cost of driving is far under the average cost. While public transit is subsidized, it isn't subsidized anywhere near as much.
Eh. That seems unlikely, assuming you're not writing your own routines. At most you'd get an out of memory error. I can calculate the SHA1 digest of a 1Bn character string without running into that problem.

So let's cap the length at 100k characters and call it a day.
It is trivial to have it send to gTalk too. I have a BI app on AppEngine for a couple of retail stores and get daily sales figures delivered via gTalk nightly.
this may be a side note, but using chromium nightly builds on mac, I see no down vote button anywhere. Just the upvote. anyone know the reason for this.
Thank you for sharing this. Both projects look really cool, but I do a lot of AppEngine development already and need to share the reports with a business partner.

Kudos to both projects though. Definitely fills a need.

Also, have you guys seen the sample reports from ZohoReports for AppStore sales? The missing link is updating the data, which it seems both of these projects do.

http://blogs.zoho.com/general/analyzing-iphone-app-sales-wit...
Excellent comments.

However there are times to build up slowly and approach things slowly, such as when the activity carries a high risk of serious injury.

When I went through Basic Airborne Training we praciced every step possible on the ground over and over before setting foot in a plane, and I wouldn't suggest doing it any other way.

Similarly, I am just now starting to learn to ride a motorcycle. I know I can't stay cautious forever, but I am building up in small steps. I started with a closed course safety class to get my license, then I rode at fairly low speeds in my low-traffic neighborhood a little bit before going out on city streets. Still haven't taken it on a highway yet.

With that said, where the price of failure is relatively low, then be bold, experiment, and accept that you will fail many times before becoming good. It is the fastest and most thorough way to learn.