skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've actually done a tiny bit in the advocacy space and would like to do more, but I'm trying to move the casual cyclist, the once a month crowd, rather than the existing advocates.

Bike lanes themselves are a bit of mixed blessing: Studies suggest street-side, dedicated bike lanes may be less safe than simply treating bikes as traffic, e.g. http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/helsinki.htm. (Whether that's good or bad for actually promoting cycling is a different question.)

If you're interested, I've aggregated some bike advocacy folks on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WeLoveBikes/bike-advocacy.
Hi Zackattack,

It's bi-directional... ie, cookie state for the conversation. But in the quickstart, if you think about it... you only increment the counter once for the received message and the reply that the script is going to send, so the counter works out correctly. You had us thinking for a few minutes there :)

-jeff
@twilio
That reasoning would only hold if you surveyed the DNA of everyone in that city, which is never the case.
Today Is Your Golden Ticket
This avoids some of the issue by carefully defining a virus. Which is fair enough for a home user. But it does miss the point somewhat.
Oh I had no idea! It turns out they have a black-list: you can create a group and then hide any post you make form that group! This is so awesome. I take back what I said above.
Thanks for this. Sowell's intentions are much clearer - and equality of outcome separated from equality of opportunity - when the four essays are read together.
Surprised that HN likes this. I wrote a post on this topic too:

http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/today-is-your-gold...

Since people enjoyed this video, here's the HN link - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112797
I am impressed with what Twilio is doing here. However, if you'd like to send via a short code (no setup fees, delays, etc - using a shared shortcode), you can check out our developer center @ http://www.eztexting.com/developers

We also allow your customers/clients/whoever to interact via keywords on the shared shortcode (313131 in the US / 393939 in Canada)
I have a laptop, a smartphone and a Kindle. The smartphone screen is terrible for hours of reading. The laptop is too heavy and the battery doesn't last long enough.

On the other hand, the Kindle's battery is as good as it gets. I hope to never be away from a power outlet long enough for it to run out of juice. It's very light and the screen size is perfect for reading. There will be many similar applications for the iPad that people don't even think about right now.
Now the event is focusing on 'noise' over social networks, and they say they managed to some how, "solve it".

Update: They named it "Google Buzz", "A google aproach to sharing"
I'm pretty sure that Apple and Jobs were pretty clear that the meeting should stay secret. I'm not sure if they had signed NDAs, or if they simply gave their word, but this isn't about "freedom of the press to report a public event".

This is about a business relationship between two private parties, and I think Jobs has a right to be angry that whoever he's doing business with isn't playing by the agreed rules.
Does my company really own every idea I come up with?
I am a long-time lurker here on HN, and have never submitted a story before, but I really need your opinions/advice.

I work for a large company that owns a website with a couple million members that allows them to get answers to their technical questions, read blogs, network with their peers, etc from that website. I am a salaried mid-level .NET developer at work during the day.

I came up with an idea for a web app that could really take off. I've been working on it at home, on my own machine, on my own time. Its written in Python using the Google App Engine SDK (super awesome, BTW). I can see needing Angel or VC funding at some point, or selling it if it really does take off (that would be my ultimate
goal, of course -- selling it to a larger company and cashing out).

My concern is, since I work for this larger company and signed an "Employer Protection Agreement" when I was hired, do they own my "invention" (web app), even though it was developed on my own time, with my own resources? Where is the line between whether a web app relates to my current employer's site or not. Without going into too many details at this point, it would essentially be an aggregator of my user's personal contacts.

The exact wording in the agreement I signed says:

"The Company will own (a) any inventions, trade secrets, ideas, original works of authorship or confidential information that Employee conceives, develops, discovers or makes in whole or in part during Employee's employment by the Company that relate to the Company's business or the Company's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development"...

That part I think is fine, because my idea does not really directly relate to their website. What worries me is this blanket catch-all statement at the end:

"...To the extent any of the foregoing is not deemed to be a work made for hire, Employee hereby irrevocably assigns all copyrights, patent rights, and other ownership to the Company...and Employee will not at any time contest the validity of such rights".

Does that mean they own ANYTHING I invent that relates to any subject matter? Do I need to quit my job just to be able to work on this idea? I have three kids and a wife at home and work full time just to make ends meet. I work on my ideas for as long as I can at night, until I'm about to collapse. I'm making progress, but is it worth it?
Keep in mind that you can only send one message every second. That is a pretty low throttle. If your service were to take off you would probably need to switch to a bigger aggregator.
From what I've seen, the scripts looks like shell script, so they can be used elsewhere, or am I missing something?
Space program is a stellar waste of money, so end it
You're saying we can't judge people's work. I'm saying we can, should, and do all the time. If someone is spamming viagra ads, or polluting the web with scraped YouTube videos, we can safely call that bad behavior.
IANAL either, but I think you're misunderstanding. Ignorance of the law is not generally an excuse for breaking the law. But if you're not copying the original copyrighted source, you're not breaking the law in the first place. Copyright only protects against copying, and unlike patents, does not protect against independently creating the same or similar work (operative word "independently").

Relevant quotes from wikipedia:

> "... two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that the duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other."

> "Infringement requires... that the defendant copied the protected work... if two individuals both create a story that by pure coincidence is nearly identical, but each without knowledge of the other, there is no infringement since there is no copying."

So in the example the poster above gave, you can't just own the copyrights. You also have to get your work distributed widely enough to claim that the author was aware of your work, from which you can build a troll-ish infringement claim.
This sounds exactly like Google Wave but better..

Update: they brilliantly integrated the product into another product millions of people are already using.
Cool, thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

To clarify, the API/platform supports the following two scenarios:

1) You make an HTTP POST to the SMS resource
2) Twilio automatically sends out a text message, and simultaneously does a GET/POST of your script, and $_REQUEST contains "From", "To", and "Body" keys

AND

1) Your Twilio phone # receives a text message
2) Twilio automatically pings your script, and inside the ping, $_REQUEST contains "From", "To", and "Body" keys. The value of the "To" key is always your Twilio phone number. (Unless you have multiple Twilio #s, I suppose).
Setting up UFW on ubuntu is so simple that I really don't see why not use a firewall.
Morning Buzz: Live From Google’s Major Step Into The Social Spotlight
Debug Your PHP with Firebug and FirePHP
And, in turn, this comment bothers me, but I do know why. Your parent's comment wasn't irrelevant. Truth matters. Whenever I read a comment like yours, I think of the last part of Richard Lovelace's To Lucasta, Going to Wars:

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
UK Citizens Petition For Government IE6 Upgrade
Sadly you may well be right. I was just looking through Berkshire Hathaway's Annual Report 2008 the other night, and here's a crisp bit (page 18):
"...only companies having problems that can infect
the entire neighborhood – I won’t mention names – are certain to become a concern of the state (an outcome, I’m
sad to say, that is proper). From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious
CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply
won’t do; it’s mindboggling screw-ups that are required."
Deep inside millions of computers is a digital Fort Knox, a special chip with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans.

How can someone write this without chuckling? A "digital Fort Knox"? Seriously, this style is getting far too popular recently. Reminds me of "Hackers Can Blow Your Family to Smithereens!" http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7YnlMQU1TNI/Sw6SxbYzoLI/AAAAAAAADL...
Chris Tarnovsky is amazing, a true prodigy. Unfortunately, he gets bad advice on how to present his work. TPMs are what the media latched onto but are almost irrelevant to his advances.

What Chris presented is a full break of the Infineon SLE66PE secure microcontroller, used in smart cards for applications such as pay TV. This is one of the best of the current generation of smart cards. All of them have a layer of metal mesh that allows the chip to detect probing attempts. This processor also has optical sensors below that mesh (defense in depth?) It has many other countermeasures to prevent invasive attacks.

Chris's work in this area is astounding. He's now using a FIB whereas before he was just using microscopes and chemicals. This allows him to burn holes or deposit metal in the low tens of nanometers range. Combined with his old skills, this makes for a formiddable platform for defeating chip security measures.

His work on this chip is not easy, nor is it easily replicated. However, once someone with the resources and skills performs this kind of attack, it can enable much cheaper attacks later. For example, using this method to dump the ROM and then finding a software flaw in it would allow for attacks using ordinary PCs, no more physical manipulation needed. Or, you can build a jig ("drill here") that lets it be replicated by less skilled people using microprobing needles and ordinary microscopes. This reduces the cost of subsequent attacks.

TPMs have a poor security model to begin with. The exposed wires on the LPC bus (4 x 16 mhz) can be used to MITM it. The entire design is not meant to resist even board-level attacks, let alone invasive chip work. Claiming his talk is about TPMs is like saying cryptanalysis of SHA-1 is about breaking Django authentication. Sure it does, but there are much more important affected applications.

I actually think this validates the SLE66PE design. The fact that it required this much work gives me much more confidence about using it. Hopefully Infineon uses the information from Chris's talk to improve the next generations.
Ahhh, so this is why I couldn't make a 'buzz' label.
file_lines = File.readlines(filename)

Not that it matters hugely :-)
You are speaking about monomorphic specialization, in the JVM benchmarks they are at 80% of specialized code (correctly guessed concrete type), moreover, the JVM keeps the code for various specializations if it needs too. And the good part is that they don't do all this stuff if it's useless.

The entry into JIT is stiff, but you already spent 4years on your static compiler, so basically you had this time to make/reuse/spacialize a JIT interpreter that would just be a drop in replacement.
To be clear, the throttle is 1 message per minute per phone number (which is $1/month), not per account.

-danielle (@twilio)
blocked by my workplace too.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/tolstoy/english/e_tas
Really? One per minute per number? That's a pretty big limitation.

Edit: I think Danielle just mistyped. From the FAQ: "Each of your Twilio SMS-enabled phone numbers can send SMS messages at a rate of 1 message per second. You can make requests to Twilio as fast as you like, and Twilio will queue the messages, releasing them at a rate of 1 message per second. It is not possible to adjust this rate."
Congrats to Twilio! (I'm an investor)
//on throwing his tantrums because he knows he can get away with it, but for how long?

As long as he can keep making great products.
I just hope it's a lengthy interview. I don't think I've ever seen an in-depth interview with PG.
In light of your comment, I find the name very amusing. ;-)
Google Gives us some Reasons to Believe for its Nexus One Phone
I'd be pissed too. Apple understandably takes product information releases very seriously, and partners in those products (including those whose media may be in negotiations to carry like the WSJ) are under non-disclosure agreements.

What Alan did was inappropriate.

And to interpret news items about Apple as being negative is blowing things out of proportion. Most of it is FUD thrown around by competitors or their fans.

Some may decide the iPad isn't for them because it doesn't run traditional OS X, but it's a new class of product that by design needed an incompatible CPU. It's better that it do something different well, than act as a marginal chopped down laptop.

Judge things AFTER they ship. Apple does listen to customers. (some may remember changes to the OS X Finder in its early days due to customer feedback)

Burning bridges? Naw, you're being overly dramatic. It's companies like MS that have really burned their customers and developers. Apple's customers, developers, and shareholders are all generally very happy.
I value the information.
But is that such a big secret to get all hyped up about?
Empirical data on TDD: What went wrong?
I'm aiming for about an hour. I haven't seen lengthy interviews with pg either, which made my research harder.
If you have any questions, add them here. I'll check these comments about 10 minutes before we go live.

The focus is the biography of Y Combinator.

Along the way I'd like to learn how pg gives the kind of insight that past Mixergy guests said turned their businesses around.
> Are the ultimate free market advocates on Wall Street secretly non-believers in free markets?

What makes you think that the Wall Street folks are free market advocates? (Goldman Sachs, in particular, is a huge believer in govt intervention, perhaps because almost all of the folks in govt making such decisions have Goldman ties.)

In other news, big biz isn't a free market advocate either. GE is lobbying for govt mandates for its products. Walmart is lobbying to increase the health insurance costs of its competitors.

If you don't want big biz running something via govt, you can't let govt run said something. Regulatory capture is how things work.
It's not no scoping - it's specifically scoped to where the call to f() was made, rather than where it was defined. It basically makes everything in scope in g() available to f() as a hidden parameter.

Pre-CL Lisps had this by default. defvar is, as far as I can tell (still learning!) how you get at it now.
Compression with the Burrows-Wheeler Transform
facebook and twitter had a baby in gmail's bed.
>"This chip is mean, man — it's like a ticking time bomb if you don't do something right," Tarnovsky said.

I'd be interested in hearing more about this.
He is arguing that policies that promote fairness should accept that equality of opportunity will not result in equality of outcome. He often writes about ways we can further equalize opportunity, such as giving parents vouchers that can be redeemed at public or private schools. The essays are about two different definitions of fairness not about whether or not the world is fair enough.
It's like Wave, but comprehendible.
it's a joyless wasteland of big box stores and cookie cutter urban development

Fair enough. But one man's joyless wasteland is another man's cheerful paradise.

There's no accounting for taste. At least, I hope not.
I'd like to know who the first company that YC wanted to invest in was - whether or not they were able to and if it worked out (in case it's a company we don't know the name of).

I'd also like to know if there are parallels in running an venture firm to running a startup. Does it take the same kind of guts? Do you get discouraged from a lot of failures? etc
No, you don't need to survey everyone in the city. Assume you instituted a DNA search, whereby you went from district to district and tested DNA until you got a match, the chance would still be only 1 in three, under the same assumptions.

And government policy here in the UK seems to be to retain the DNA of everyone that comes into contact with the state, so I expect it's only a matter of time until there will be chance collisions resulting in incorrect convictions.
> I don't mean to downplay the amount of work that goes in to writing a song, but this seems a bit over the top. Short little melodies like this are trivial to write. My pre-school age children come up with these all the time.

> The tune of Happy Birthday doesn't seem particularly catchy to me. We've just heard it repeated so many times.

Read the story. The authors actually did a lot of work on Happy Birthday. (They had a couple of conflicting goals and did a lot of testing.)

While short little melodies are trivial to write, HB isn't just any short little melody. Disagree? Come up with a few that work as well. Riches await.
Also, by all accounts I've read, forensic science isn't exactly held to scientific standards--they use so many tests that have never been experimentally evaluated, it could more accurately be called forensic folklore. Since judges and lawyers are seldom clueful about the natural sciences, often very strong evidence is ignored in favor of the word of an "expert."
Yes, merging would be great!
You can, but I don't see a reason unless you feel you are a superior being. I am glad there is a free place called Internet where people can load whatever videos they want, publish their half backed projects, or even try to make a buck or two writing posts about Viagra. -- Great things also happen there from time to time.
New Apple product is ... Aperture 3
That's nice rhetoric, but the fact is that there's no us and them, there's only us. We've had a monetary union for about a decade now - we opted-in on sharing each others pains.

Krugman thinks the euro was a bad idea to begin with, you might find that interesting to read: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/the-spanish-trag...
Either way, imagine you need to send out 100 messages. That would be 100 seconds (or even worse 100 minutes.) Imagine if you needed to send out 1,000 or a million. Its going to be hard to build a solely SMS service around this based on that limitation. I think this is awesome if you want to add SMS alerts to your existing website or build a proof of concept, but I don't think your going to build an SMS app on top of this API.
Ask HN: Review my startup: buriedTV
I'm not; most of it is spam, just the sort that can't be automatically filtered, that takes much more energy to make and move around, and that eventually goes into landfills.
How much time should be invested in an idea before approaching YC for seed funding (or more importantly the mentorship) and if rejected once does it hurt your chance at being accepted a second, third of fourth try with different ideas?
So they want to duplicate what Facebook does? Great for them, I suppose, but why would I as a user go to it? Any feature they add, FB can add. And FB already has the graph I want.
And if the DNA was every hint you had.
This is something I've been working on for a week or so. There is very little content. Any feedback would be appreciated.

It was somewhat inspired by YCRFS 4.
My questions:

- Is he always calm? Does he ever get angry and throw things around?

- Has he ever 'cut off' a YC company from access to YC?

- What is the current relationship between YC and the early successful companies like reddit and loopt. Is there any? Do they call ever now and then?

- What proportion of YC applicants come from name-brand universities?

- If a YC company becomes a lifestyle company, does YC still profit? Or does YC only profit on a big sale?

- If a YC company folds and significantly changes, like DraftMix, is YC still involved in the new company, or do they lose their 6% when the company changes?

- What mobile phone does he use?

- Would he accept a patch to get rid of the tables on news.ycombinator and change to css?
Useful PDF Search Engine For Programmers and Designers (about 7.500.000 Manuals)
I have a cron job set up to mail me if there are packages to upgrade. Avoids potential breakage with automated updates while still letting me act reasonably fast.
Or witnesses.
And most of it is the bulk commercial mail that goes straight into the trash can.
There were 8 simultaneously in the first cycle. Some definitely worked out: Reddit (which was a merger of 2 from that batch), Loopt, Textpayme (the first YC funded startup to be acquired), and Kiko (which was not itself a big success, but afterward the founders started Justin.TV).
As a programmer with a decent design ability... what talents should be sought after in a co-founder when building a web application. My gut feeling is a UEX/Design expert would provide the most benefit.
I've found that pretty much any conceivable tax curve can be considered "fair" for some definition of the word. The disturbing thing is, most of those definitions are really not that ridiculous if you make the case for them well enough.

IMO the flat tax has such great appeal because it's pretty idiot proof to explain, not because people really think it's fair - under most money -> utility mappings it's extremely regressive, and I think even its proponents realize this, but it doesn't bother them because of the idea that regressive tax structure is a net win even for the poor by keeping money in the hands of the people that can do the most efficient things with it.

But even getting into that debate involves thinking, which people do precious little of when it comes to politics...the notion that "fair" can be achieved with a simple one-sentence statement is so appealing that it's hard to make headway in the argument.
Is TDD Language Neutral?
You should talk to us when you're ready to go fulltime on the startup; it doesn't matter how much time you've spent thinking about the idea.

We often fund people on the second or third try.
Lt. Dan Choi becomes first openly gay man to serve in U.S. Army
With that many users, Facebook can also make tons of money if they choose to do so. They are simply focused on other priorities at the moment.
One example I'm interested in exploring: eigenvector centrality analysis on the social graph. It would be like a PageRank algorithm for people, quantifying how influential individuals are. This necessitates a full social graph. Having only a subset of it would be like Google only looking at the first 10 links on a page for its search algorithm.
Additionally:

- What is his opinion of the risk/reward trade-off in attempting to do lots of co-marketing between early stage companies?

- Is any publicity good publicity when you're small?
What's usually the biggest mental hurdle for hackers to transition into entrepreneurs? An understanding of their market? An empathy for users? How to tell a compelling story about their product?

Were past YC alumni who were more hacker-ish molded into entrepreneurs through YC, or did they already come in with such a mindset?
Determination.