skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You know, I was going to point out how amazingly brain dead that comparison was, and how inappropriate it was to try to guess my skill level in various languages based on my claim that a language that requires 1/20 the LOC is 50x faster.

I will however finish with, there's a reason C applications don't have features or agile development cycles, and it's not because the coders are absurdly productive. Also, please don't ever try to be a manager.
Honest question: what problem does this solve for you?
Dnum - Type-safe .NET Enum class replacement
hey, that's a billion dollar question
They're saying something about standards compliance. Keep talking, please.
Coming to terms with the effort required.
(Briefly, it's an essay on someone who disparaged Shakespeare, but was ignored and forgotten.)

Why did you link this?
Didn't xkcd have a perl based hack that mirrored a keyboard so you only needed to type on one side and it guessed when you meant the actual key or the mirror one.

http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-key...

Reading it now, the mirror shift is manually activated, probably a good job for a foot pedal, he only suggests automating the switching.
Ever heard of spam? :)
Here is a one-hour interview (audio) Paul Graham did with EconTalk on Startups: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/graham_on_start.htm...
> In short, private schools have better students.

You overstate the admissions argument.

However, even if we accept it, you're concluding too much.

Public schools insist on letting bad students drag everyone else down with them. Private schools don't.

Neither one seems capable of reaching bad students. However, it's unclear why letting them ruin things for everyone else, as public schools do, is a good thing.
Fixing Congress would be the ultimate social hack.
How do you gauge how well founders gel/get along/chemistry/rapport?

Is there hope for non-technical founders?

How do you redefine failure?
TPM crytography cracked
Is it possible to pitch to the YC team any time during the year, not just during the application seasons?

What's the reasoning behind having the twice a year rounds, as opposed to open for investing at any time?

EDIT to clarify: I understand why they have startups move to California for three months. I've simply never heard why that has to be done seasonally.
My question:
Consulting treadmill - how do I get off it without a killer app idea?
I'm taking the intro to Criminal Justice course this semester at my local community college at night, I've had 2 classes so far, so take this with a grain of salt. But in our last class we were told that the majority of wrongful convictions have been due to incorrect eye witness identification. Whether this was due to a actual mistake on behalf of the witness, or due to mistakes in how the photo selection or lineup was conducted by the law enforcement officer.
I'd try to do all the things I've wanted to do, and bring as many people with me as I can.
Isn't it true that using Bayesian inference one should conclude that given a positive DNA match that it is more likely you have a false positive than an actual match? That isn't there are greater likelihood that there was a mistake in the DNA testing result than you actually find a match? :/
> Knowing human nature, this is understandable - there's a tendency to think that once a "fight" has been won, it should stay won. But it's also disturbing: does this tendency cause people to actively want to imprison innocent people?

It's not that they want to imprison innocents; it's a prosecutor's job to get the defendant convicted no matter what, whether or not they personally believe the defendant is guilty. They are simply acting as their job calls for (the conflicting prosecution and defense attorneys in theory bringing about the truth), because until now you could never be 100% sure. '100% sure' and 'our legal system' do not go well together.

P.S. Don't invoke the argument over the ethically wrong claiming 'oh I was just doing my job'- this is different; we WANT the prosecutor to behave like that, even if he feels or even knows the defendant is innocent. It's what (in theory anyway) makes the system work.
An Entrepreneur at 14, After Five Successful companies, Meet Brett Klasko
Feeds available as XML.
Jobs was seen coming into the restaurant wearing what was described as "a very funny hat - a big top hat kind of thing."

Photo? Obviously, Jobs sees himself as a tycoon. Or perhaps, Willy Wonka.
Google used to limit the number of links they looked at. Now they don't explicitly limit it, but they'll stop if the links seem boring.
My questions:

- What advice would pg (2010 instance) give to pg (2004 instance)?

- What property of the 4 yc partners, if removed, would do the most damage?

- What has surprised you the most?

- What is the biggest mistake people have made?

- What is the biggest thing that will have to be different (about yc) in the future?

- What kind of yc startup is most likely to hit a grand slam home run?
The point is: you buy more phone numbers at $1/month to increase your capacity.
Only my eyebrows; we once sold our stock in one; we talk quite frequently to the Reddit and Loopt founders; I'm not sure, maybe 1/3; we only make money if there's an exit; it depends whether the new idea is the same company-- bluefrog is; some crappy old Motorola flip phone; you would have to reach deep into the Arc libraries to do that.
I've personally always wanted a phone with a 5-6 inch screen. I really, really wouldn't mind carrying it and would use it all the time.

As it is now, I use my phone's 3inch screen so often, just becaues I'm too lazy to pull out my laptop. I think previous articles have hit this one home pretty well - most users simply don't need a computer. I know that when all I want to do is check email quickly and catch up on reading (blogs, hn, etc.), I certainly don't.
Well if your service is sending out 100 messages in one second then you can probably afford the $1-$2/month charge to add more numbers.
So, you can post automatically-geotagged status updates or links from within GMail, the Google mobile web site, and the Google Maps application for Symbian/WinMo/Android. The updates can have rich text, embedded images, threaded replies - closer to FriendFeed or Facebook than Twitter.

You automatically "follow" your Google Chat/GMail contacts, and you can make each post public or friends-only. You can also browse "nearby" buzz from strangers, by location.

They're saying that it will have open data / open APIs, and can aggregate your data from external services like Twitter and Flickr. They mention related standards that Google is promoting like PubSubHubbub, WebFinger, and Salmon.
Wow, these are good questions. But it's 10:58 so I'll try to answer them afterward.

Edit: Answers:

1. Not to be influenced by credentials. Where people went to school in particular.

2. Our own determination, probably. We need it too, not just the founders.

3. How many people just give up.

4. That founders have made? Building stuff users don't really care about.

5. Doing everything on a larger scale.

6. The kind with the right founders.
You've had quite a few guests on Mixergy that started their own businesses solo, without partners. PG has repeated that most of the companies he's looked at have at least 2 founders.

Has he changed his views on this any or is this still the main advice?

Either way, what would he look for in a single-founder startup (besides being Relentlessly Resourceful).
> The problem being that the appearance of being tough on crime seems to come from killing someone, rather than actually ensuring justice is done.

Innocent people die in prison every day, typically in the infirmary.

If you're innocent, you're better off being given the death penalty because that's your best chance for decent review.
Ever heard of filters?

Oh, wait, I can't filter bulk commercial mail - their fees are the USPS's bread and butter. I have to take it out of my mailbox, flip through the flyers, the envelopes that are faked out to look like some sort of official notice, the credit card offers, etc. etc. etc. and dig for the one or two items that are actually for me...and then throw the rest away.
Eek yes, 1 msg per second per number... I think it's time for me to go to bed.

danielle (@twilio)
Why sending (valentines) e-cards is rather rude
rfghjhbg said it best. They did attract a few big businesses. Microsoft Canada has their headquarters (I believe that's what it is) in Mississauga. But they did so with the lure of unsustainably low taxes on these businesses. What's worse is that for the most part, there's not enough work in Mississauga itself to sustain its population. So a huge percentage of its population works in Toronto and surrounding cities.

Fundamentally, Mississauga depends heavily on Toronto for the jobs of its population as the manufacturing businesses it attracted are hurting right now and never could sustain the huge population.

I don't want to make it sound like I'm bashing Mississauga. Toronto created this phenomenon of commuter ghettos by ignoring the living needs of middle class families through most of the 1980s and 1990s. Toronto also let just enough businesses escape to these outer suburbs through high taxes, to make it seem like a feasible option to move out there. So people did, but most of the jobs that a professional who lives in these communities works at are still in Toronto itself.

For the most part the only thing keeping downtown Toronto itself from being a mess is that it's the financial hub for Canada. This sphere of influence is not necessarily permanent though and I worry about this city a lot. Alberta is where a lot of the resources are and it would make sense for the financial sector to be there. We like to poke fun of Albertans because they have all their eggs in the oil basket. But right now Toronto has all its eggs in the banking basket. It's a very fragile proposition.
It was funny that the reporters can report the same event from different angle. This website goojjie was setup to support Google and hoping it would stay in China, but this reporter makes it sounds like a rip-off.
to any subject matter? No just the subject matter they claim rights to made explicit in The Company will own (a) any inventions...

To the extent any of the foregoing is not deemed to be a work made for hire, Employee hereby irrevocably assigns all copyrights, This part just says that if what you do in your free time doesn't already transfer to them by work for hire laws that you will explicitly grant it to them.

Note: I am not a lawyer.
But whereas AOL had paid subscriptions (and some adverts), Facebook appears to only be able to serve adverts. Would Facebook survive if they charged $30 a month?

Also, AOL made money from dial-up - now, everyone's on 'the Internet' which various phone companies provide - not AOL.
I used to work at iRobot. Neato doesn't understand the problem.

Consumers don't care how the robot works. They just care that it does. The whole point of robotics is to not care about the problem. Who cares if there is a map?

I also don't think people can say a roomba is dumb. It is designed with few sensors, but the software under the hood is actually why it is good. It uses lisp in a subsumption architecture, compiled down to run on a dirt cheap processor. Most companies couldn't compete with this on a cost basis if they tried. Here we see more CPU and sensors thrown at the problem, which is much more expensive.
I don't trust the rest of humanity enough to make this worthwhile for me.
Before I left I was asked to work on several Facebook app competitors using OpenSocial -- supposedly because of "executive pressure" that was, then, based on the positive buzz around Facebook apps. I was disappointed to be so directly experiencing the Silicon Valley echo chamber.

But, they've been wanting to use Gmail as the center of everyone's social network for awhile. I guess this is the first step.
When I was 5 I knew that I was going to die - maybe I had 80 more years. The difference between a cancer patient who knows they have 1 year to live and a 5 year-old who knows they have 80 years to live is really only a matter of perspective. Time is a funny thing.

I've spent my entire life trying to figure out how to make the most of life with the inevitability of death on my mind. It is still hard for me to imagine that most others really only consider their life within the context of death when death is 1, 5, maybe 10 years away.

I am moved by this video poem. I am in awe of the the beauty of Borges's words - it stopped my day in its tracks. However, on a discussion board amongst doers, builders and rationalist, I feel motivated to encourage more.

We live in a unique time in humanity - a time where our rationalization about death can extend beyond feel-good sentiments like 'make the most of your life'. We live in a time where we can extend our lives; we can use motivations like this to encourage our culture and society to put a greater emphasis on technologies that enable drastic life extension. Make the most of your life and others by working or influencing to extend our lifespans. Use this motivation to adopt the mindset that you can preserve all that is wonderful about life for hundreds, possibly thousands of years - influence your peers and hack longevity.
Why is this better than using Google's "filetype:pdf" filter on your queries?
I like the idea and the UI pattern quite a bit - are you thinking of this as an open source project or as something people will pay for? I think it's a great open source product but I would be surprised to see someone pay for it.
- What qualities make a strong leader when taking the business from the garage to the next level.
Far too often, but it could be prevented by requiring that conviction can only happen if DNA evidence tides the subject to the scene.
Google Buzz
Have you considered approaching the company over this? Unless you're certain enough in your idea to quit, I don't see the harm. You can either push it as a project that the company should partake in or get them to provide you a waiver to pursue it on your own.
This article is very much in sync with what 37 signals preaches.In fact in their book also they suggested this thing, to work on features that are important and can make the product successful, and to cut the rest.
In short the product is designed for something specific and it does that brilliantly so it doesnot need any add ons for marketing gimmicks.
Nowadays, apart from a few web-based 'try it out' pages, learning a language usually requires installing it and several other packages and getting everything to work together and with your OS.

Counterpoint: Linux and Python.

Which makes the strong intersection between Mac-weenie-ism and Ruby-weenie-ism all the more idiosyncratic. Python is a much more Apple-y language: it works right out of the box; and the way you'd expect to do something is usually the way it is in fact done in Python.
Maybe. I'm not sure you're wrong by any means. There could be people who don't have a smartphone or a laptop who would drop $500 on this. And, to be honest, it's not useful to focus on price. The original iPhone was priced out of popularity but it rapidly dropped.

But the point is still valid, which is that it has to create a market. Apple is 0 for 1 at this in recent years. I consider the Apple TV the only real attempt at creating a market rather than launching a more compelling product in an existing one, and it's been a failure.
This is a long-standing argument of mine. Some of our users maintain that they are only interested in the functionality rather than the quality of the code/design/integration etc.

Then, six months later, when they need an enhancement and find that it is going to take twice as long/cost twice as much to build something on top of the quick & hacky solution that they originally insisted on, they still make unhappy noises.

- I love them really, like pets...
they have no incentive to give him a waiver.
A touching moment in this years Superbowl (pic)
I think it's even hard for Apple to see. They didn't get what the iPhone or iPod touch really were at first either. Their party line of "all apps should be webpages" turned out to be clearly wrong, and now they realize that those devices are mainly mobile app platforms. The iPod touch, which, though you rarely hear anything about it, has outsold the iPhone by 2:1 and is arguably the most successful product in their lineup currently and maybe of all time, is viewed by them now as the cheapest route to the App Store they thought was unnecessary when they launched.

The iPad platform does ensure that if there's a market for the form factor, someone will find it. Assuming it doesn't get rejected by an App Store intern :)
You're speaking of "sex," not "gender" -- the former is biological and there are two of them; the latter is cultural or social and there could be arbitrarily many.

I say this while being a conservative; the semantic distinction is a useful one, although attempting to blur the distinction between a (biological) sex and a (cultural) gender never does any good.
I think that it's a great move. GMAIL has 150MM users a month, you can bootstrap anything with that userbase.

and Wave?
This is very cool ... hope to see some Rails stackscripts soon ... that would save me a few hours here and there
It's 57% sure http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman, too.
Both Parents’ Ages Linked to Autism Risk
that's not totally true. If you are a good contributing employee, your employer has every reason to keep you happy for as long as you are an employee. If your management is mature enough, they would be happy to extend a waiver. (I know people like to bash their management a-la Dilbert, but there are some good managers out there)
It would be bigger news if Apple hand't been meeting with people regarding the iPad. WSJ / NYTimes will have the first reviews like they always do. Furthermore, all the big publishers will be having similar meetings to get their content shipping.

He didn't disclose anything unknown about the device. Jobs is known to hugely overreact, this seems solidly in that department.
Google aims to take on Facebook with new social feature called 'Buzz'
Google takes on Facebook and Twitter
Google Buzz API
Schneier on Security: All Subversive Organizations Now Must Register
>Be multicultural and try to have at least one girl in your team ;)

I wish. I only know one girl taking a computer science course at my university, and she isn't fit to be in a start-up (she has just started, so this will properly change) there are a few more but sadly it is very difficult to find technically minded girls.

That leaves the possibility of hiring them for some non-technical purposes, but to me it would feel as if I was just trying to perpetuate the "women aren't smart enough to work in technical fields problem".
Going for a trot on the Django pony
IANAL

I recently went through similar debates myself. Let's say you're working on a dating app. If they have one meeting about how their current infra could be used for dating and record the minutes of the meeting, then that is demonstrably anticipated development. These laws are really a pain in the ass. You really need to spend a few hundred bucks on a qualified lawyer. Here's a link that may be helpful : www.calbar.ca.gov/ipsection
That's pretty much my concern. I have thought about approaching them, but we're talking about a huge amount of bureaucracy. I'm sure my managers would be totally cool with it, but my manager's manager's manager wouldn't even have the authority to approve it.

So I'm left debating whether I have anything to worry about in the first place, or whether I should start working through all that bureaucracy.

Thanks guys! Looking forward to any more insight or if anyone else has been through this situation before.
Don't Break the Bank: A Mom's Trick to Whiter Teeth - Consumer Daily News
I have to get one for my grandparents. They are the type that will vacuum a room and walk out backwards while vacuuming just to get the straight lines in the carpet. The Roomba doesn't leave the straight lines, and it bothers them, so they don't use it.

So yes, while they won't care how it works, they will like that it vacuums like they do. And that means something.
The Rackspace Cloud Announces Cloud Servers for Windows Beta
IANAL but AFAIK in EVERY state with the exception of Nevada, this is true. I used to work there and one of my colleagues, a brilliant engineer, had moved there just so he could work at a job he enjoyed AND invent and patent devices. Ask a lawyer. You should be able to get an initial consultation for free.
"Ask HN: Who here actually trys to market unmarketable products?" lol
The critics of the iPad seem unfocused because they are in two contradictory camps.

One side say "the ipad is a DRM platform, it's threatening to become the dominant consumer platform and that would be a nightmare. It may be super great but it will take away our freedom"

The other side says "It's just a big iPhone, If a consumer was going to bother carrying something as big and expensive as an iPad, they'd expect to do extended data entry on it and that's just not possible, so it's not threatening to take over very much all. It's the computer for people who never use their computer".

I think I've decided the second camp is right so there's less reasons for the first camp's worries.
Well, they already have Google profiles. This Buzz thing just sounds like extra features on top of Google profiles. In fact, I posted on Facebook yesterday about how I was sick of it and did anyone want to join me on Google profiles. No one did, and mostly people hadn't heard of it. But I definitely see the appeal of attaching everything to my e-mail address.

Also, a great deal of the appeal of Facebook, for me, is as an address book. But all the people I contact are in my GMail contacts list, and it's annoying to manually enter in things like their phone number or address. Now with Google profiles I won't have to look that stuff up on Facebook, because it should be in their Google profile.
- now I know why they wanted to buy Yelp

- the three big issues of twitter - noise, spam, and who to follow may be solved

- I wonder if it overcomes the problem of FB - one way follows - you want to follow someone you've never sent an email
Ask HN: Will there be trademark dispute between Google & Yahoo over buzz?
Millimeter-scale, energy-harvesting sensor system developed
This comment made me think of the recent submission on geek behaviors in conversation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078529.

I liked that submission because I could easily identify with most of the behaviors in that list. I too often have the urge to correct someone over something arguably unimportant. It's so strange.
I know "ask a lawyer" is the safest choice, and I REALLY appreciate all your comments. I'm curious if anyone here has actually been in this situation, or better yet, further down the line where they were trying to get funding and the VC or Angel saw it as a problem.

All comments are certainly appreciated!
It's not that they want to imprison innocents; it's a prosecutor's job to get the defendant convicted no matter what, whether or not they personally believe the defendant is guilty.

I think that in some cases, they want to imprison someone, and show that they are doing their job, even if they have serious doubts about the guilt of the person they are imprisoning.

In any case, refusing to allow DNA testing that can categorically establish the guilt or innocence of someone seems to me to be unethical.
Doesn't add a Buzz option to my gmail. Working for anyone else?
The "follow" model is the most broken of Google's social stuff. Most of the people I have sent or received email from are not people I want social updates from.
I used to do this at IBM on a regular basis. "Hey manager, I'm working on a Twitter mashup for the Super Bowl. Pretty sure you guys aren't interested. Can I get that in writing?" It was never a problem in that respect. (in California and IANAL)