skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure how to post code on HN but I found the default settings that explain the "half second" lag:

var default_settings = {
brightness: 2.7,
saturation: 1.4,
lamps: 5,
block_size: 40,
update_interval: 500,
fade_time: 400
};
I wouldn't have thought to look for something like this! I found out there's an Android app that tries to do the same thing called 'Gentle Alarm'.
Wholesale Wedding Dresses: DHgate VS. Lightinthebox
What's wrong with just calling it sociopathy? Using people as tools to get your way is the definition of sociopathy, regardless of whether they're being "friendly" or not.

The only reason "friendliness" works is because people think it's genuine, instead of a gimmick to get ahead.

Why do people have to pretend these guys have some kind of great virtue? They're getting what they want, no need to sugar coat their behavior and give them accolades they don't deserve. Call a spade a spade.
http://sivers.org/drama
Looking for good marketing company
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I agree that the internet can really improve education, but I'm wary of taking it too far. Some people envision a totally digital experience, which I would be against. Actually living on campus is a great experience and (I think) a useful one.
That and while a large number of us drive, very few of us fly the plane - we have to entrust that duty to another person. That person may be very well trained, but is normally not someone you know.

Flying is also fairly unnatural for humans - it's at its heart rather dangerous, and it's thanks to the skill and training of the individuals involved that make it a safe way to travel.

Conversely, while we do get a fair amount of training to drive a vehicle, it's nowhere near the amount of checking and cross-checking that a pilot goes for. The nearest I do is "mirror-indicator-headcheck" when crossing lanes, and "if I have to think about whether it's dark enough to turn on my headlights, it's time to turn them on".

While the actual risk involved with flying may be low, that's because it's been reduced in practice a heck of a lot, but that's often not visible to the public.
I was going to say the same thing. That or some kind of fast search variant of something like a geoindex used on geospatial servers.
IBM allows sneak peek at M2 Insight Engine
WHY HOPE ISN’T AS GOOD AS YOU THINK IT IS
I've been avoiding reading Ayn Rand because the whole thing just seems so cultish.

However, this summary echoes a lot of what I've been thinking lately: there are "businessmen" who create value and there are others who try to make a percentage.

I may end up reading Atlas Shrugged yet.
Sword & Sworcery EP for the iPhone (looks unlike anything I've ever seen)
Link C/O http://waxy.org/links/ which you should have bookmarked anyways :)
It humanizes all of the listings. Most web companies don't venture out this far, aside from <Company> hosted/sponsored gatherings.
I think it shows a ton of maturity for a startup.

I hope I'm not too late to list my couch for SXSW next week.
No you don't. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138716

You aren't working on it for a good reason, part of you doesn't want to. Stop describing yourself as lazy and you open up the option of finding which bit(s) of you doesn't want to work on it and why, and addressing that.
The problem I have is the price. HP has already said they are looking to meet or beat the iPad's price. So you have to compare the Joojoo with a full Windows OS and by that standard I think it comes up lacking. Plus it's all customized (the browser is a custom version of webkit). So if Joojoo the company goes out of business tomorrow than there will be no more updates.

IMHO that makes it not worth the risk
I'm not sure how much the wakemate improves on the iphone's accelerometer, but even if it's only a little bit, surely it's worth $48? I make $48 in 3 hours. I have to wake up every day for the rest of my life.
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Sonia Alfano « Ifarabutti's Blog
When I talked to my teammate George, he mentioned off-handedly that he had fixed it. He didn’t feel any of the anguish I felt or assign me the blame I thought I deserved

Quoted for suspicion of harbouring some deep and meaningful information.
$950! It seems the only reason to buy your product is to save money by knowing my consumption patterns. That's ALOT of electricity I'd need to save to make up $950. Plus, are you going to save me at least $10/month?

But when it comes down to it, I don't want to have to think about my energy consumption, I don't want to compare charts and graphs and geek out on it. I just want to know how to use less without having to do more work.

That's from a consumer viewpoint, I have no idea what industry would think or want.

Good luck!
Nope, haven't read it. Can you give me a thumbs up/down on it?

I picked up the utility concept from my financial background.
Don't just read articles (I'm assuming from the internet). Pick up some literature, maybe Dickens or something. That will help expand your vocabulary as well as get you used to different styles and syntactic constructs.

They'd be fun to read too.
:)

On a more serious note, it really does help to pull back from the extremes. I'm guilty of oscillating between thinking of myself as the absolute best or the absolute worst. Both are a struggle to live with. Or demanding absolute clarity about principles before proceeding. It's important to tolerating ambiguity. And trust in yourself to navigate even without perfect knowledge.
Because there are so often things we discover we're fundamentally wrong about. It's really a pretty thin science based on a lot of assumptions and inferences.

It's very safe to say most of what we know about cosmology is wrong, and a large portion of it is probably deeply wrong.
Then that’s how they were drawn. LaTex doesn’t fake Small Caps. No shrinking, no fake boldness, no nothing. They are displayed as is.
> I wonder how many people there are like me who can't engage well with formal education

Well considering nearly 1/10 people have ADHD (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09...), I'd say that's a good starting estimate.

I'm starting to think making it a disorder is just a way to preserve the current education system... What's more likely: 1/10 kids need drugs to succeed, or perhaps there's something wrong with the education system... Let's pull out that Occam's razor and start cutting some of this crap.
Maybe just first bounce? Cast rays out perpendicular from the lense (to handle FOV) and return back any point at the first bounce.
Details directly from Google: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
Wholly agree with nevinera on this. That calculator is there for people who don't know another interface for calculators. Sure, there are better tools, but sometimes simplicity & mimicry are best.

For a brief side-topic, Soulver is interesting. Good in many ways, but lacking in a fair number.

For two examples, from a feature request I sent in a while ago.

1) Matrix calculation is effectively not possible, though you can fake it through massive function hacks. This means an enormous amount of the math I would've used it for simply could not be done.

2) This is a big and simple one: fractions go in, decimals come out. There's an "answers" floating palette you can pop up, but guess what. You can't select the text. Loads of useful information, and all you can do is look at it. I requested this be changed quite over a year ago (I mean, heck, why not?), but it's still the same.

Also, the last update was three years ago. Barely-developed programs frighten me.
Two spaces before a line of code does the trick:

var default_settings = { brightness: 2.7, saturation: 1.4, lamps: 5, block_size: 40, update_interval: 500, fade_time: 400 };
The number we care most about is the number that become really big. It takes years to know that of course, but the number that raise series A rounds from tier 1 VC funds is a reasonable proxy (since they won't invest in a startup unless they think it will become really big).
Sounds like he betrayed you - took your loyalty for granted, or rather something he could use to his advantage. You have to be sensitive to ill-will. I can be nice to you for 2 years, but something then flips for 2 seconds and all those niceties came at a price. (well not me, but that's the line of thinking) Bait-and-switch, fineprint insertions, backoffice fraud can all happen in a moment, have lasting consequences and be basically irreversible within what would otherwise be a solid relationship. On the other hand, a relationship can be rocky but trust-worthy. Smooth-talking, flattery, over-attention: anything that boosts the ego will eventually come at a price, the question is what and when. It happens in families.
That seems like it might point the way to a solution. Lets make it obvious. I'm not sure how, but lets show how much training pilots get, how much rigor goes into making an airplane, how many checks an balances go into it, how many people are involved, the number of man hours, the number of tests, etc...

Of course, this doesn't apply to the kidnapping situation... but maybe some kind of information campaign can do the trick there to.
I read this comment and was nodding along thinking this sounded exactly why I'm happy with my bootstrapped project, then looked at the username and realized you are my co-founder, doh =)
Ok, this is really weird.

I have a friend who works for a company that made a site almost exactly like this. The only difference is that they use a different three word slogan.

Is that pure coincidence or are you guys somehow affiliated? Is someone selling these and rebranding them?

EDIT: Another coincidence (or not): all the posts from both sites have the exact same first "comments" on them. gahh
I would imagine cosmologists know where the boundaries are between what we know, what we don't know, what we "might know" (i.e. the status of various hypotheses and theories with regards to supporting evidence). I think it's safe to say that there is a lot of stuff in each of these categories.

It would be pretty surprising if we're "fundamentally wrong" about cosmology, given that scientists are aware of what goes where, with respect to these categories. Plus, I'd imagine a lot of cosmology is purely observation, anyway, and you can't be "wrong" about observation.

There is a lot of room between "omniscient" (which many people mistakenly demand of science) and "wrong". In other words, science can and must deal with partial knowledge.
I think you're looking in the wrong place. Who cares about what the consumers think who've decided not to sign up? Personally, I don't think users know exactly what they want or how to convey how they feel about something. Dont get me wrong you need their input, but take it with a grain of salt.

Before thinking about why people aren't signing up for your service, think about who SHOULD be signing up for your service. What I mean here is, who exactly is your target customer for the service? Does this person use particular websites, do they only spend a couple of hours on the web every day, do they like to use twitter? (Since I really don't know what your service is I can't make better suggestions) Basically, what are the characteristics of your target customer? If your market is defined too broadly then your service doesn't really stand for anything. If your market is defined too narrowly then you'll be running into the problem where you don't have enough people signing up.

In terms of actionable steps, this is what I've done in the past for a business that's already running:
1. Do some research on your current customer base, mine your current database. Some questions to ask include:
- What websites do they visit before hitting your site?
- What websites do they go to once they've finished using your service?
- How long do they spend on your site?
- In a survey, how many people work at their company or how much revenue their company makes?
- In a survey, ask how people heard of your site (subsequently visit those sites to see what context your site was mentioned)

2. What patterns are emerging from the research you've been doing?
- The goal here is to find a type of user that have grown a strong affinity to your service. Once you've found that strong user, it's on to the next step.

3. What needs to change based on the patterns you've identified to attract more of those "strong users"?
- This is easier said than done, but you need to think about pricing, value proposition for user (what is the user going to get out of using your site), or are advertising in the right places.
- Much like the others have said in this thread, A/B test is a good idea if the value proposition is off.
- You may want to consider advertising, if it resonates with the user. This includes all the typical social media outlets.

I hope this helps. Good Luck!
Yes but there is more nuance here. Only a few dog breeds are potentially dangerous. Look at the CDC stats (link below) over 20 years for fatal dog attacks and there are a relatively few breeds.

In fact, looking at the data, if you lump 'pitbulls and related breeds', rottweilers and german shepherds together you have 75% of the fatalities. A dog advocate would point out irregularities of lumping 'pitbulls and related...' but even allowing for that you have a pretty tiny slice of the overall dog breeds that can be called dangerous. As some breeds become more popular you might see them on the updated list - like rodesian ridgebacks which are sweet but massive enough to cause real damage.

I have an Irish terrier. He has some of the same temperament as a pit bull. That curious, relentless, stubbornness. But if he is about 17 kilos and if he ever lost it - he would not do much more than draw blood and give a nasty cut or two.

The biggest problem with pits/ rottweilers, etc. is that people often dont know what they are getting into. These dogs are generally smart, strong and dominant. It is an open question as to who is in charge. The best pit owners that I have seen know this and are firm, gentle and consistent. Then there are recently graduated fratboys who get a pitbull, call it Mojo or Samson and teach it how to do death locks on car tires...

Over the past 9 years in the 3 local dogruns, my dog and I have come into contact with numerous other dogs and have seen less than ten fights in that time frame (none that he was a participant in). The only human bites were from breaking up fights improperly (always grab the back legs and hold them high...). Dogs even when jammed together in tiny city dogruns (metro NYC) typically get along.

I realize as I write this that it is terribly anecdotal and i could go on about it as hanging out in the dogrun has made me an amateur cultural anthropologist.

http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Dog-Bites/dogbi...
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Sleepcycle: I just placed the Phone under the topsheet, where it doesn't move.

Wakemate: Doesn't the phone have to be close to you to hear the alarm? Or does the wristband have a speaker in it?
Creationists are already formulating their replies...
So does your mom.
Craig Newmark's First Notes on Craigslist
Neat idea in theory, but unfortunately, unlike public school teachers, it can be harder to quantify.
I don't know. Sleep Cycle works well about 94% of the time for me. With an improved wake algorithm, I think you could pull it up to at least 98% of the time in pure software, or at least that's what I got for my sleeping patterns playing around with the data in Mathematica.

Is improving 2% of your wakeups worth $48? Your wakeups would have a "valuation" of $2400 by that logic. Which, I dunno, maybe it should, but it seems a little high.
An excerpt from the article:

When starting a company, probably the last thing any entrepreneur thinks about is his exit strategy. The exit strategy, sometimes referred to as a “liquidity event” or “harvest strategy” is basically the entrepreneur’s way of “cashing out” of their company. This is the part where years of hard work come to fruition and turn into profit. Cashing out is often not as simple as it seems. There are numerous ways of converting the non-liquid asset of equity in a private company to the liquid asset of cash, and each is fraught with it’s own unique pitfalls.
Yes, the cigarette part of his argument was the weakest one. I'm honestly not sure why he included it... unlike his other examples its not a rare event and the cost of the new law is not high.

However, if you exclude that line... what is your complaint about the article?
Glad to hear you are in Venice Beach Joe! We miss you!
What Do Social Media Marketers Know About Tech?
You're definitely not too late. All the hotels are still sold out ;)
Ask HN: What's actually "defendable" about web startups these days?
For example, what's keeps Gowalla from copying Foursquare's features, and vice versa? Unless a startup is working on something truly revolutionary and highly technical, how would a startup answer the question: what's keeping competitor X from copying you?

The lack of an IP warchest for today's startups seems to me like a glaring weakness. And you can't answer with "our team", "the way we execute", etc. I mean something that's truly defendable. (I guess Facebook DID patent the news feed...)

Just something I've been thinking about lately, but have yet to find a satisfying answer for and thought I'd ask the HN crowd. Thanks!
Please link to the rww article instead of to your blog which links to the rww article.
"Beyond the first-impression problem, there’s the productivity hit on those poor people who are now also de facto receptionists. There’s theft and crime, when strangers can roam the halls. And of course there is always the off chance of a troubled laid-off employee returning with revenge in mind . . ."

Ah, yes. Receptionists, our unsung action heroes.
Ignoring lessons of Bhopal & Chernobyl - India's Nuclear Damages Bill
I've also generally found that even the "my first program EVAR" projects are very frequently functional, stable, and integrate with 90% of the apps most people use (built-in ones, and ones compatible with those).

Try saying that about Windows applications.

I've also had far far far fewer headaches, crashes, and general "wtf" moments with my app-testing habits on OSX than I have on Windows, and I'm clocking 2,000-3,000 (or higher) on OSX and well over 5,000 on Windows. Seriously.
Maybe it's that "You're going to lead an uneventful life" bit that people just can't bear to face.

I agree, its why Huxley had the idea of V.P.S Treatment in Brave New World.

http://www.huxley.net/bnw/seventeen.html
No stinking loops (Array programming)
stop spamming, we saw yesterday's post.
There are a few comments about people liking the minimalist design, but for me, i find it a bit too pedestrian.

Also, on the homepage I get a 'welcome to boardlite', but I have to click on the message to find out what it's about.

Why not have a description on the homepage saying what boardlite is about.
Also, why is the 'tracking ID' so prominent? Do you expect that to be something people will use?
Poll: Ask or Leaders in Top Bar?
Recently I replaced the "leaders" link in the top bar with an "ask" link leading to a page with just the "Ask HN" (or more precisely, url-less) posts.

Do you prefer to have "ask" in the top bar, as the site is now, or was it better to have "leaders?" Assume whatever isn't in the top bar will continue to work, and be linked to from "lists."
I prefer ask in the top bar
I prefer leaders in the top bar
Working on finding out newer ways my technology could be used.
Already know and have tested 4 applications. Thought of another silly use while replying to rtm thus sunday.
I actually have been trying to get back to coding, but things are not so good. Hoping to kick off some of the 8-10 hour streaks of coding sometime tomorrow and all over the weekend.

Do you guys know, when we might get emails ??

Also, I am really kinda hoping to get my product out there and get some preliminary customers.

Any good ways to get some university people interested and try out our web app? How does someone contact university people?

Anyone a university department head/ faculty here by any chance?? If yes, do you guys HATE emails as way to introduction to products ??

My first focus (without funding way) is to sell a service to universities.
Thus the additional re-encryption of the master key. If this re-encryption key is secure then you don't need to care who the master key is handed out to as only an authorized party can decrypt it. There are other, more complicated, crypto schemes that can make this process easier or more secure, but something like this has KISS appeal.

An external channel is required here (to transmit the re-encryption key) but that can be as simple as a phone call or email; anything that does not need to pass through the third-party holding the data files.
Since you must go on one then the next: serialscalators?
not much. some stuff is defensible, but generally, success seems to comes from being innovative and having a good team that executes well.
"... I'm probably faster than this guy in the first place, so by the time he reacts he has got $40 guaranteed and I'm at least a football field away. ..."

I've used this technique sans the $40 dollars. One thing to keep in the back of your mind, "do they have a mobile phone?". If they do, a football field might not be enough. You have to move out of sight, then change directions ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3497187984/
This kind of binary, authoritarian view of any subject really gets my goat up. Who are they (the writer you cite) or you to be judging and telling anyone else how they should be living their life? Because face it, that's exactly what they're/you're doing.

There is a default inclination toward drugs and other seriously harmful solutions, but that doesn't make heroin good, does it?

Doesn't make it all bad either. Opiates are used as effective pain killers. The legal status of drugs seems to correlate very loosely with how harmful they are.
Cost for me... I really enjoy our TED (http://www.theenergydetective.com) which aims more at a residential market. ($150 US) The instant feedback has been great for learning. The web interface isn't a big draw.

I imagine that commercial markets would be better for your product...especially in classrooms or companies that want to show off how green they are. (especially if it has really pretty graphics to embed into their website.)
SecondMarket: Facebook And Zynga Dominate Transactions In February
the only way you'll convince me is if you can convince me that by paying for this expensive product and for the monthly subscription, that i will be saving money in the long run.

and of this i'm not convinced, as a residential power user.
Spreadsheets strike me as way too much abstraction, rather than power. Both for most users, however. They're also generally quite poor abstraction, IMO, as relational connections are often very hard to show without being way over the average proficient user's skill level, and spending a lot more time creating a pretty display sheet rather than leaving it all in rows & columns.

That said, a lot of that is because people abuse Excel horribly, to do everything and wash the dishes and walk the dog.