skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm using a 20GB account that costs $6.99/mo. - It's perfect for me, but I don't think it's available anymore. I believe it was just a paid tier they put in to test if people would use it.
I don't need any more domains or side projects, but I've always thought that large-scale online conversations (Slashdot, Huff Po, etc) are still yet to be done that well. MassiveDebate.com could be a suitable domain for someone tackling the problem.

As a reader, one problem is in getting an overall feel for the 'lean' of the conversation. There must be a way to incorporate this in large discussions, or to categorise posts by theme ('Thinks murder sentence given was too short', 'Thinks sentence given too long', 'Discussing increased police attention for bikie gangs', etc).

Or identify key contributors by post volume or karma within a thread.

Or provide ways for a reader to seek out arguments with people they disagree with, or to mostly see like-minded commentors (confirmation bias).

Another problem for readers is knowing where to start. Oldest topics first or newest? Randomised order? I've wondered (half-baked idea) about topics along a horizontal axis with responses hanging down the vertical axis from each parent topic. Might be something in that, or could just be a usability disaster. Or maybe the viewport is fixed (no horiz scrollbar) but you hit arrows to each side to browse top-level topics? Each sub-topic could have a header that included info about the originator, key contributors within, general lean of the contents ('Strongly favours those that think the sentence was too light.').

Another issue is in finding the most worthwhile comments (Slashdot has moderation and so on that can be helpful but I've only ever used it as a set-and-forget thing to browse at +2 with Funny discounted heavily). The biggest news network in Australia doesn't even have this (or threading, or anything useful) in its commenting system. It's flat, no notifications, no ownership of an alias, no prevention of people impersonating others, no up/down vote - and it's been like that for years!

As a contributor, a big problem is the perception and reality that a lot of comments are drive-bys. Forcing, encouraging or using a default setting of email notification could help there, but in a way that doesn't leave you diving for the off-switch once the replies start getting heavy. I think the PHP BB (or maybe it's a competing forum I'm thinking of) system of sending one alert only until you return to view the thread has merit. Providing quality tools/experience for regular contributors could encourage people to hang around and build up their karma within the system, etc.

How do you tackle a 500+-post conversation? Is it even possible?
I thought the comment at http://www.bigstartups.com/wac6/blog/1273/Will-the-Last-Star... by "heretic" was someone merely trolling the comments.

However using the equation and data sets from this blog post (http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html) results in:

* Ireland: 34.0% × 39,441 = 13,409.9
* New Zealand: 36.5% × 26,625 = 9,718.1

Add to the above data that both countries score better than the United States in the Economist Intelligence Unit's "Democracy Index" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), the Reporters Without Borders "Press Freedom Index" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index), and the Transparency International "Corruption Perceptions Index" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index). The only bright spot for the United States are the two indices of economic freedom: the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom) and the Fraser Institute's "Economic Freedom of the World" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Freedom_of_the_World); wherein Ireland and New Zealand alternate in bracketing the United States.

I'm beginning to think "heretic" wasn't trolling the comments.
I'm not discussing the success of PHP. It has done well. However, if you are suggesting that PHP has been successful _because_ of its lack of a leader, I think you would need to justify that.
I was so skeptical of this title and after reading the article, it actually makes a lot of sense. I'm still skeptical of the solution. I wonder about just picking a timezone and storing all timestamps relative to that timezone - doing the conversion at input. It seems that X seconds since 1970 in place Y should be unique.
In my experience, this seems to hit its mark. However, among those I would consider "good" teachers, there existed an extra layer of subtlety.

Teacher and student might know their respective places, but without explicit discussion, they would together to subvert the system (in minor ways). This taught the meta-lesson of "know how to play the system against itself."
I recently downloaded MS Office 10 Beta and there's an option to save files directly to Skydrive which has 25GB free.

I started having second thoughts about using Dropbox after this, the only advantage in using Dropbox (for me) is the iphone app. Although I haven't used either Skydrive or Dropbox to share files, which may be where Dropbox comes into its own.
I need a software solution to model best legal outcomes and other options for people to help become aware of their options:
(i) If law is based on Acts of Parliament which are written in a tree structure;
(ii) Then Information can be placed into software complying with the tree structure in (i), so we can dynamically model the outcomes possible? Else
(iii) Information is missing to complete the modelling of outcomes. What information is missing?

This would aid with the understanding of the law and clients/individuals would be more knowledgeable and prepared for the options available.

My preference would be in the area of IP law such as copyright, patents, trademarks etc since we can model these areas of law more easily with yes/know answers.

I place this need on my blog recently: http://1place.com.au/wptest.php
Related, I've repeatedly seen companies try virtual office services, and abandon them for being awful.

A reasonably priced non-awful option therefore sounds good.
How can you change someone's fundamental attitude if fear doesn't work? I'm not sure you can and I'm not even sure fear is all that effective in the long term. Either they want to develop themselves, or they don't.
A professor of economics ought to know that if your equation is x/y * y/z, then it doesn't matter at all what Y is. He could use anything he wants for GDP and it won't make a difference in the result.

A more interesting point, which I think he was trying to get at, is the idea that US citizens pay around the same taxes per person as other countries, but we produce a much higher GDP per person. We're more productive. Is that good or bad? Is it cause or effect? Discuss.
Thanks for the feedback - I'll get it added. Any more you genres you could suggest?
I wanted to see the results of this calculation for more countries. Using the data available on the Wikipedia entries Mankiw used I have created a Google spreadsheet: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ApvbK1Yd5hPzdFhSZVZ...

It has the information for all the countries listed.

OECD average for tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is 36.0 -- I have not calculated the OECD average for GDP per capita.
Building an iphone app with JQtouch in two hours
I'd say one of the worst things a start-up (or any company for that matter) could do is tie their core business to a proprietary hosted technology -- free or not. The nice thing about most cloud hosting is incremental scaling for open and free technologies. So, it's not a complete nightmare to move elsewhere. What is someone to do when they realize that WebShere isn't a perfect match, or costs too much?
I think the issue is not only inflation, but the price fluctuations that happen all the time, that are much bigger. If one day, at the supermarket, you see toilet paper in a two for one offer, and you buy a whole year of supply, you'll be saving 50% over the year. I think the goal is not playing against inflation but to play against the stock issues of supermarkets (if you have a way to have the stock locally).
In some ways, I still found it hard to believe.

I taught myself computer programming, learn economics and political theory, read a little bit of history, science, and other intersting subjects pretty religiously, in addition to learning a whole lot about entrepeneurship(which I have applied poorly or not yet tested or taken it).

As far as school goes? I hate mathematics and english. I didn't learn or retain much of anything in physics and chemistry because I was struggling to solve the equation and just survive.

Intellectually, I knew that the school system is "not working". But there were some standout teachers that I genuinely like and respect, such as my Latin teacher, and my government teacher.

I alway have a disdain for public schooling and thought that they were inefficent and sucks soul dry.

But being outright sinister? It may be true, but I don't know what to think.
Done! In a mere twelve hours. I can feel myself already getting soft.
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Wow. I can remember from something under 20 years ago, Seton Hill was listed among the most financially troubled schools in the US. Guess admitting men might have helped.
I really meant in addition to HN type problems.

But to respond to your 'advantages':

a) I probably agree with this, although people can be evangelists offline too you know. It's just called word of mouth.

b) This is almost certainly wrong. You think people who aren't tech-savvy are unqualified to define what they consider to be useful?

c) Back this up, taking into consideration the fact that you might be competing with open source / a pool of equally or more talented developers who could undercut you or do your product better.
After reading this article I googled Plancast at work (UK) and one of the results was a video of breastfeeding :/
This exists because there's a subculture that does that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiptune
"Please don't sign comments, especially with your url. They're already signed with your username. If other users want to learn more about you, they can click on it to see your profile."
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's worse still. Even on a Linux system with GNU tools, the slightest deviation from the author's system causes "interesting" failures. One recent one I encountered was glibc refusing to build with GNU binutils 2.20. The configure script was looking for a version of 2.1[3-9] and complained about it being too old otherwise. Then there is the whole cross-compiling issue.

The above notwithstanding, BSD people ought really think twice before opening their mouths. They have one of the most broken systems I know of, missing a huge number of standard (as in POSIX/SUS) features. Some of their system headers even refuse to compile without extra compiler flags.
I have the product you need sitting in version control. We never released it to market because when we went to start marketing it, it seemed too difficult to go up against the big guys so we scrapped it and integrated it into a product where it's in use to this day.

How would you market a product like this?
Fusion Garage's Joojoo pad still struggling to launch
Seriously? E-books are going to make everyone stop reading because now we can't use our book covers to passively brag to people on the subway how cool/smart/alternative we are?

On the other hand, maybe someone can make a quick buck by selling rewritable/removable "Hi, my book is ________" stickers for the back of kindles.
hi petercooper - sorry to hear that the great domain giveway I sparked (referenced elsewhere in these comments) didn't pan out for you.

Failed for me too, as it happens - no one wanted anything I had to give away, and I had such specific target markets in mind that I just couldn't find one that I could use -- basically the same issue that meant I couldn't find a good unregistered domain in the first place
Interesting... makes some sense.

another view might be that an exponential distribution on distances would lend (a lot of) support to zero distance

Well, I think that would be a case of sticking a bit too closely to the model. Its likely that, even if the distribution is generally exponential, at very short distances the decision process changes.

In fact, one would probably argue that the distribution would always change based on how dense the traffic is.
Thanks for posting this great article.

I'm learning first hand that babying a startup while starting up a baby is an awesome challenge. Actually the two don't differ much in mindset - total dedication is the key.

So I try to do one thing at a time - and do it wholeheartedly. It's trickier then it sounds, requires constant tweaking, but pays off in dividends.

(I find that this related HN post deals with some of the practicalities mentioned above - "Self-control is a limited resource, use it sparingly" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1207136)
Well sure, machines might not detect your face, but everybody around you is going to be able to describe the weirdo who had on camouflage makeup.
Short answer: no. But the Nation does seem to long for the days of the Popular Front.
Wow, all of the sudden I feel very grateful: I'm a few years into running my first startup and I hired my wife (who has a PhD in my startup's field) as the 3rd employee.

Felt risky at the time, but it has definitely made life easier working those 12+ hour days together.

Now just gotta have some kids and hire them too..."Finish your code or no desert for you!"
As in, if you email him, he always gets back to you, no matter how busy he is.

Please note that this is my aspiration but not my SLA. If you want an SLA, I'm happy to entertain offers for consulting engagements, or in the alternative you can pretend you're preparing for class tomorrow and can't download the Internet to your printer.
Don't be silly, it's not a marketing stint.

I'm genuinely trying to find a better alternative to Google Reader and my6sense happens to be the only thing that tries to do what I want ... but it only works on iPhones so it's a bit useless ;)
pretty sincere. That, and the fact that he would probably take over my city unless McClane stopped him gives them a free pass from me.
I think it's just IBM technology in general. So if you need DB/2 or MQSeries or whatever. No reason not to use commercial technology if it does what you need for less than you would need to cobble it together from MySQL and DBus...
I'll agree with nickpp to a point: that happiness is transient, and that one cannot appreciate happiness without having suffered (however much or little - it's all relative, it's all in your head).

Having dabbled in Zen Buddhism, I don't like the thesis that life is suffering and to escape it we need to do away with want. If you want to be an emotionless zombie, sure, to each their own. But I now think that this tendency to deign "happiness = good; sadness = bad" and MINIMAX our lives is a huge disservice to our humanity. Hey, we're humans trying to make sense of a senseless world, and we're all on this crazy ride together. I'd rather collect experiences - happy AND sad - to remind myself that I'm alive, that I'm an emotional being, and so that I can appreciate others' experiences as well.

I'm much more fond of this take on happiness:

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?" -Kahlil Gibran
"Better the devil you know... " or so the aphorism goes.

We've a burger kiosk very close to and far better than McDonalds (IMO) but everyone still goes to McDonalds. Brand loyalty, advertising, etc..
In this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-mak...

I remember reading this about a teacher using Patrick's product in his class:

Next, Mr. Taylor announces it’s time for Multiplication Bingo. As Mr. Taylor reads off a problem ("20 divided by 5"), the kids scour their boards, chips in hand, looking for 4's. One girl is literally shaking with excitement. Another has her hands clasped in a prayer position. I find myself wanting to play. You know you're in a good classroom if you have to stop yourself from raising your hand.

I have written tons of code for many users, but I don't think I've ever had a user "shaking with excitement" to use my software. That is my new goal. Thank you, Patrick. Keep 'em shaking!
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I don't have an 802.11n router at home, so I can't say what its range is. My 802.11g does pretty well inside my 3-story house, but drops off a lot into my backyard. Maybe an 802.11n would be better, but that means upgrading my router and possibly other wireless devices.

There's going to be a world of difference between the 3G and non-3G iPads. I can say this from experience having gotten used to my Blackberry with its internet browser (crappy as it is) and my laptop with a Verizon Wireless WWAN card. Having real full internet access wherever you go, without having to search for WiFi access points, changes the way you behave. That's part of the revolution Jobs is talking about with the iPad, but you've got to get one of the 3G models to experience it.

Regarding storage, like I said I really don't know how much I need. I know how much space a movie could take up, which is probably the biggest single thing I would store, but I'm likely to want a few of them. The real question is the applications; how much space do they need? I know that a laptop with 16GB free after installing the OS would be very cramped, but 64GB free is fairly typical (given 80-112GB laptop harddrives.)

The $1000 price point is for the 64GB 3G iPad with a full set of accessories (not the vanilla dock though.) There's no rounding; it adds up to $1000.
This may not be very useful for most startups who don't develop for IBM ecosystem. Similar program by Microsoft, called BizSpark, is very useful. If you haven't already check that out.
>It's just called word of mouth.

Agreed, I've had some success with this in the past. However if you fix a specific problem common to many people here (as opposed, say, specific to Doctors) you can reach them instantly with one post. Your entire seed market is one click away :)

> You think people who aren't tech-savvy are unqualified to define what they consider to be usefu

No, but there is a pre-established forum for feedback (i.e. here). If you post an app here your going to get great feedback - if people are using your app I argue the feeback will be better/more specific

The only difference with other types of users is not that they don't know what they want but that a) they sometimes dont get what is possible/impossible and more importantly b) have trouble communicating their needs to you (that's not an unfixable problem Im sure)

> Back this up

This was probably something of a leap. However we often see people saying "I would pay X if you gave me Y" - usually from the already successful entrepreneur types. Im suggesting that people here are perhaps more likely to see value/not begrudge payment for a useful service.
Now is The Moment for you.

Congrats.
Ask HN: How to make the switch
Currently I work in a completely non-software field. I studied mechanical engineering in college. I've become proficient in PHP and Javascript in the last year, and am learning Python. I really enjoy coding (and I think I'm at least decent at it), and want to join a startup. Any suggestions on where to start?
I think the point is that x/y and y/z is the readily available input data.
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I don't know anyone in their right mind who would start building a new system around WebSphere in the first place, free or not. Is it even running on Java 1.5 yet?
Im testing, and Im really liking. It is easy, and fun to do things.. sure it has some things to improve, but as a first public version, it simply rocks!
I'm sorry? Which BSD system is that you are describing?
The government has been using existing powers to try and block political opposition and the current ban list does ban sites on issues like euthanasia and gay rights. On top of that I am told that the technology, depending on how it is implemented, may compromise SSL. These seems significant impediments to freedom of speech and potentially trade.
Zero sum doesn't mean that the two terms literally sum to zero, just that one trades off directly against the other.

Family + Career = K

would be the algebraic expression of it.
That is such a true statement.
same sh*t with n900 running maemo 5, in my experience.
i think you would agree i was saying a little more than i actually wrote.

similarly, i suspect the original poster was saying something along the lines of "every organisation has to deal with finite resources, so spending on one item means less for an another. instead of spending money on ipads they could have reduced fees, or reduced their increase... etc etc".
I wonder if it's tail call optimized or you get to DOS Google by clicking one too many times on it...
Here's the link to the source data:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-IN-monthly-200807-201003
Better online take-away service, I used justeat at the moment but it leaves a lot to be desired (have to enter credit card everytime, lack of details, poor search, food reviews, etc.)

Instant online quotes/price comparison for taxi services
Hmm, well you do talk in tangents sometimes ;)

I don't think you've interpreted his comment correctly - it sounded the poster was making an uncertified direct claim that tuition fees have risen to pay for this. It was getting upvotes so I queried it. :) Apparently this is conjecture - which is cool I just wanted to know.
Yes, I see your point, and it's a significant and important one (but I'm not in position to comment well on it, knowing only MIT and Harvard students, the latter through various friends of mine from Up Chuck River :-).

It's significant based on what I've heard of India's famed IITs. They don't have top of the line equipment, their professors aren't always the best; it's their student bodies that make them more than anything else. When you get the very best (in their areas) out of 1 billion people....

As for MIT numbers, you might find these interesting/useful: current yearly applications are something like 13,000, a bit more than 3,000 are judged as being able to do the work (that's the number one thing that's important to MIT; while mistakes are inevitable, it accepts no one who they don't fully believe can make it).

10% of those are "obvious admits" and the admissions staff, augmented by anyone on the staff with a clue who volunteers (especially to make absolutely sure every application gets at least two readings) then agonize over who amongst the rest to offer a slot to. (It's hard and not really fun; I have a very good friend who does this on a time available basis and I helped her a bit one year when I was on the staff.)

MIT shoots for a yield of around 1080 the last time I checked (that figure is old, but is tightly constrained by available student housing, all freshman must spend their first year in it; one year the the admissions office made a big enough mistake they had to turn a graduate dorm's basement into makeshift housing, which perhaps not surprisingly worked out very well (they bonded into a tight and self-supporting group)).

The self-selection in applications is tremendous. Nobody attends MIT who doesn't think they wanted to (that can of course change once they arrive ^_^, but I didn't see much of that in the '80s).

Thanks for the intelligent discussion and observations.
Wasn't there someone on here a while back working on a system that can extract topics from text - he was wondering what to do with it.

Perhaps a site with some kind of personal Bayesian filtering to categorize posts - the sort of thing I do in my head when reading comments on the BBC site (where most posts fall into my "Foaming at mouth Daily Mail reader" and "Naive Socialist" categories).