skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have to say I felt that Memento was only good for a single watching. This may be an oversimplification, but if you reorganized the movie with all the scenes in reverse it would just be a mediocre movie about a guy who can't remember anything and the people he interacts with. I guess I just felt it was gimmicky.

Primer, on the other hand doesn't use a single editing gimmick or plot twist, but rather does a deep drive in the mind bending situations that can occur when time travel becomes possible.
Ask HN: Review my app, ReadMeLater.com
Hi,

http://ReadMeLater.com is my mvp, weekend project. Basically it's an offline Instapaper for those who don't own a iphone/ipad.

I'm a big fan of Instapaper, but don't own a iphone/ipad and wanted the offline functionality. I put this together go I can save some articles for reading on the plane.

Also it gave me an excuse to play around with some HTML5.

Would love some feedback/testing from the HN community. (note: it should work on the iphone/ipad)

Thanks!
Does google consider gmail users to have value? Be it via ad views or good will, etc. If so, then is it in their interest to provide a commensurate level of support to their users? Sure there's no legal binding contract, but at what point does it cross from being benign to being bad business.

The fact is that this is a common complaint that Google seems content to ignore. Which is their right, but is it the best choice from a business perspective? I don't know.
This is such a beautiful slap in the face for the Chrome video. Which was pretty cool by the way :)
I don't see a mention of "A Walk Across America" by Peter Jenkins, who did a similar thing back in the 1970s.
Wait, hipsters drank PBR because they thought it was not popular? I thought they drank it because it was cool to pretend to be a redneck. Also because it's cheap, and it's also cool to pretend you're poor.
It's even smoother with 2.2. I'm in love with my Nexus One all over again.
Metafilter And The Russian Sex Slaves That Never Were
Yeah, so did Larry Ellison.

Iron Man 2 gave me a new motivation for making my startup successful. "I want my startup to be successful so I can be in the movies some day!"
The only thing I hate about Android is the delay these devices hit Europe. Back when the Droid was the hottest thing ever, by the time it was available here Google released the NexusOne. So ok .. I guess I wait for the NexusOne then. Now it happend again, couple weeks ago the NexusOne shipped and we're teased by the Evo 4G. For people like me, who always want the latest greatest thing, this is becoming a real problem :P At least the iPhone is available worldwide in June.
Wow. I had no idea Saddam Hussein was responsible for 2 of the top 5 worst oil spills.
Ask HN: At 34, do I go back to college or not?
I'm an orthopedic surgeon with a PhD in Biomaterials. I have a comfortable financial situation, a beautiful family and basically just work 2 days/week. Besides that, I really miss the challenge of creating something and wish that I had studied CS or engineering (thanks to PG and Woz!).

So here is the deal: I want to build a startup in 2-3 years dealing with custom-made prostheses, and I'd like to hack the technical side myself. My problem is education/background in robotics to pull it off.

From my initial investigations, I'll need a basic knowledge of mechanics and electronics (nothing fancy, it is basically a solved problem) and a more mature grasp of computer science (possibly some LISP to wrap everything). This is quite a stretch from my technical background (basic Calculus, basic FEA and some Python).

Here are my options:
1) Self-study (more targeted and possibly faster; requires self-discipline; no feedback; isolation)
2) Follow a 2-year technical college in mechanics and/or electronics (good practice; requires complementation)
3) Get a 5-year degree in mechanical or computer engineering (nice, but too long; lacks practical side?)
4) Combinations of the above (e.g. drop college after 2 years + self-study)

It certainly looks challenging, but my goal is not only making money in a fixed time frame, titles or jobs, but the journey itself. Can I get some advice?
"Keep in mind that the list excludes adult sites, ad networks, domains that don't have publicly visible content or don't load properly, and certain Google sites."
WebKit Font Smoothing
Compromises. That's the keyword. 90% usability for 20% price - it's a good deal for 90% of the people. The other (upper) 10% get the iPad, they can afford it.
I have a Nokia 6500 with dual sim slots.
I think it's probably too soon to say with certainty. But Ixtoc I was in relatively shallow water and was closer to shore. Deepwater Horizon was in (duh) deep water and much further from shore.

Ixtoc probably released more oil that ended up on coastlines as such; my understanding is that due to the depth, a lot of the products coming out of the Deepwater Horizon hole are getting "cracked" by the water pressure so there is less crude making it to the surface. Whether that is better or worse, I can't say -- it seems like probably better, but it could be worse for fishing and deepwater marine life, perhaps.

The thing that's most disturbing to me about Ixtoc I is how Pemex asserted sovereign immunity to avoid paying anything but the most minimal cleanup costs. BP may be a corrupt bunch of motherfuckers, but at least they don't have that to hide behind.
Not sure why that's not the main link here instead of a useless blog article that removes half the data and adds no insight or extra information whatsoever.. :-)
I thought the exact opposite. I'm in Chicago and the spill covers a 1/3 to 1/2 of Lake Michigan. After zooming out though, it clearly would cover Lake Erie or Lake Ontario. The thing that was put in perspective for me was the shear size of the Atlantic.
I recommend using Gmail (ideally, Google Apps for Your Domain) as your primary, and using an IMAP sync tool to back it up to something not owned by Google.

With some a hundred employee accounts in Gmail for the past several years, I'd say it's been more reliable than the local electric company. We've never needed customer service from Google for Gmail.

We're all engineers, but we have better things to do than run email servers. Email is a problem we can happily consider "solved".
I'm using over 5200MB, over 90,000 messages and 54 labels and haven't noticed any speed problems. Though the majority of my messages are archived, with only ~6000 in my inbox.
Leave the computer. go see the world. walk, hike, swim, get drunk, chase girls, write it all down. enjoy yourself.
What is Marketing?
Note that StackOverflow is listed as being in the "Music" category :-) Wha..?
Italiani pronti a rovinarsi pur di conquistare una donna
My cousin is doing the same thing other direction, Oregon to Boston. He is a very spiritual kid doing it to get closer to god or something like that.

http://mywalkhome.com
Three necessities for start-up success
Does anyone else think they are calling the Chrome videos a 'red herring' or is this reading too much into it?
By the way, the homepage is bit of a mess on Safari + Mac (I know you're not asking for that kind of feedback but yeh...).

Side-scrolling main frame thing is just awkward. Some of the images overlap as well.

I don't think this is something that people will know they need, or at least, not know what to call. So approaching potential customers through forums, reviews on relevant blogs, widgets/partnerships sounds like a reasonable route to take.
However, we programmers must fight egotism and arrogance. The danger is that in forgetting that we are fallible and were new programmers once, we commit a grave error. We're all shortsighted at one time, or another--unless we fall prey to egotism.
And listed as a "Myth and Folklore" site. I wonder who came up with these "categories" - there are some crazy assignments in the list.
You'd be amazed by how little it takes to motivate someone.
I definitely think there is room in the market for a new, online, paid email client. One that can connect to multiple outside accounts like Outlook, "infinite" storage, emphasis on privacy, gmail-style user interface, regular backups, and solid customer support. Email is extremely important to people and they don't want to worry about it. I wouldn't mind paying for a reliable and secure email client in the cloud.
I don't think this product could be legally brought to market in the United States. The Chinese government's trade policies enabled the creation of a $100 Android-running iPad lookalike.
Tetris clones yanked from android store
E-mail support is only for "select administrative issues", and phone support is only for reporting "a service unusable issue caused by a Google server error"[1].

It doesn't sound like the GP's issue would fall into either of those categories.

[1]: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
Yeah, well, if everybody would live forever ... our planet doesn't get any larger, which means overpopulation and NO CHILDREN.

Be careful what you wish for, it might just became true.
It would also require far bigger a developer base for Firebug, they're barely keeping up as is (in fact they really aren't if you'd believe TFA and most commenters)
Gunpowder, paper & printing, magnetic compass... more important than Internet in their times. I wouldn't call their culture lacking innovation.
Upcoming Apple TV to sport iPhone OS, Cloud Storage, and 1080p playback.
What's interesting here is they used a DMCA takedown, but gameplay cannot be copyrighted. Most of the clones did infringe on the "Tetris" trademark, but some did not.
I am sick to death of hearing "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" used as justification for anyone's pet technology subject always winning.

Just because Eric Raymond cast himself as the Gandhi of the OSS movement and used that quote doesn't mean we should copy him.
If you reread, it says he reinvested all of his proceeds, so a sudden lien on illiquid assets could definitely cause a lot of problems.
It's really weird to me that so many people at Kotaku seem so excited about this. How many times has there been some radically cheaper Chinese knockoff with a similar name that turns out to be a piece of absolute shit? Were these people excited about the Vii? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vii

Apple is successful in large part because of attention to detail; this thing can't even seem to decide whether it's an iPed or an APad. And it's not really a clone in any sense: it's only a 7" screen, yet apparently still heavier than the (arguably already too heavy) iPad. Really, what are the chances it's great at $100 when most people were surprised Apple was able to get the iPad (perhaps manufactured at the same factory) down to $500?

Be excited about the future potential of Android tablets using cheap commodity hardware, sure, but I don't see anything exciting about this particular device from what little info is here. What an example of not getting why the iPad is successful.
Why the absence of copyright is good for fashion/innovation
I never have made the connection b/w oil wells replenishing themselves and an abiogenic petroleum origin. Abiogenic formation could take a very long time. It's my understanding that Russians, when extracting oil from under deep rock, formulated the theory that it was more likely that the petroleum came from within the earth, that from above.
Yes, people like appreciation and a crowd of thousands screaming/moving/kissing side by side with your creation is a very rewarding experience. Plus, the sex :)

PS: I only played at small, local bars... so for me it's more like my mom, 5 friends, and some free beers.
Link goes to the second page. Here is the first: http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2008/futu...
How VCs Should (And Should Not) Do Their Due Diligence
The Chrome "speed tests" really were ridiculous. Oh, so when connected to the world's most gigantic internet connection on a computer that isn't doing anything else, your browser can render pages very quickly? Well, gosh. Are you going to show any other browsers in this video for comparison? No? Oh well then. I will remember to definitely browse the web using your browser instead of the giant ear full of paint/tesla coil combination I was using before, since that's the only thing you've shown it to be faster than.
Great screed; two quibbles:

Venture capital in 1957 was necessary for the founding of one of those "mega-companies" that was in fact quite small, scrappy and supported a lot of downstream innovations with their affordable and sane computers through at least the '70s (DEC).

I come from a background that includes working at and around a number of startups that could never have followed the current "micro investment" model and I'm quite unhappy about the ending of conventional VC as we know it.

"We aren't inventing the future anymore", i.e. no new microprocessor macroarchitectures, no new weird fun thinks like FPGAs, just endless variations on today's lowest level and most expensive to establish technical foundations, improved by sustaining innovation but very little disruptive.
500 feet of water vs. 5,000 is a BIG difference.
Go traveling. Use CouchSurfing (or something similar) it would be impossible not to meet people and the people involved are generally unbelievably welcoming.

Or join up with some of the group adventure holiday type things.
The cost of one refresh no, the cost of a dozen refresh and the associated context switches as you swap between your browser and your editor yes.

Usually when you're editing stuff in Firebug it's because you're trying, nudging a pixel here, a shade of gray there, trying to get the "right" values to yield the effect you want. Having to go back to the editor is a pain, just as it was before in-browser debuggers, when you had to go back to the editor and add alert() traces all over it.
I feel like the average viewer is going to take this video at face value since they may not see the subtle reference to the Google Chrome speed tests video. Saying that you're faster than a cooked potato in hot water isn't saying much.

I do like the crack censorship though. It was funny and unexpected.
Their customer service for Premier amounts to "only call us if we're down", and "e-mail us if you have problems administering your domain".

For problems like "mailboxes are slow" or features being buggy, they direct you to the same Google Help forums everybody else uses.
Fair enough. Let's look at the number of employed people in the EU and the US over time. IIRC, the US has a better first derivative. (The US has fewer people, so the total number workers in the EU may be larger.)

Of course, one can have biz that don't require employees. And maybe one or both can't find employees for the biz that they have/want.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Haiti GDP graph:http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mk...

Haiti population graph: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_to...

Haiti Unemployment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haitiunemployment.GIF

Haiti aid: (for relative scale of aid) http://www.devex.com/articles/haiti-aid-facts

USA GDP graph: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mk...
Depressingly, Mahalo is on the list (#946).
I always go to StackOverflow to find out what the kids are listening to these days.
'DIY U' and the 'Romance of the Public Domain'
Well it only really applies if you are ignored, then laughed at, before it becomes an actual fight.

Despite his appearance in their ad campaign I don't see many Apple fans considering themselves ignored or laughed at, nor using that as justification for their assured future
victory if they are. On the other hand it seems to fit the Christensen disruptive model very well: "The reason big new things sneak by incumbents is that the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.”
You bring up two interesting points.

Regarding the first (partnering), I definitely think that's a great way to learn and I'm definitely open to those possibilities if someone is interested. Though the question still stands regarding how to find such a person, and also how to make them want to let you work with them when you're admitting upfront that you're not a superstar? :)

Regarding the second (difficulties of being external), I'm not sure I agree. Say for example I wanted to make a HN-like website. I'd talk to this person about it, and say that I was planning on having one table for posts, and one table for comments, and then I'd scan the comments to rebuild the threaded discussion tree. "Mentor" might respond by saying "that's an OK start, but you're going to hit some bottlenecks pretty quick. Here's another way to do it/think about it/etc".

I think that in reality, when you bring projects down to their architecture and design, they become manageable even for an external person, as long as they've been involved from the beginning. As such, I definitely think they have an opportunity to make an impact.

Regarding your desire to find a strategy/business mentor, maybe this post is helpful: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098994
while avoiding to make this a U.S. vs Europe thing, I'd be more interested in seeing other metrics (such as exit figures) rather than using that as the defining factor.

Clearly the U.S. is a world leader here, and always has been. But Europe is a large market, and a different type of consumer culture which needs to be catered for.

There are some impressive services operating in Europe right now. I was in Berlin recently, where there is a very large startup culture. I visited Europe's largest online gaming company, and was very impressed by their operation, and of course Soundcloud, the world's biggest music sharing service is also based in Berlin. Let's not forget that spotify and last.fm are also europe based, both excellent services. There seems to be a large amount of startups in Germany and Scandinavia as well as the UK. And, on a personal level, the Irish government is offering quite a good deal of aid and support to startups here, with a few success stories emerging.

True, we're not on the same level as the americans, but it is foolish to dismiss Europe.
You are right. I think most people should know this. Rip off happens everywhere. Just that china has more people and the probability of it happening there is higher than other places.
> It was the talking to me, /after/ I made it clear I wasn't interested in talking to him that bothered me.

You should have charged him. Or insisted on a term sheet before you started talking.
You should kill and resubmit this - too good to pass up and it's not getting the attention it deserves.
Clif Bars (in particular) might not be a good pick. Clif Bars (and likely other energy bars) should be eaten along with a lot of water - generally 1-2 liters. Potable liquids as I understand is much harder to come by than food.

OTOH, I've only ever used Clif Bars in high-impact cardio settings, so YMMV.
In a last ditch effort, I bought some extra storage from Google thinking maybe I'd get some kind of premium level service. So far, no.

Ah, to be Google! Your competitors, when frustrated by your poor service and unclear communications, send you more money in the vain hope it might help.
These things could be applied to any situation.
I know it sounds cheezy but when you find someone you love, things like that won't matter, she will only want to help you through it. It sounds like you haven't experienced that yet, which makes it all the better reason not to die.

I think it's a lot of pressure to put on yourself to feel like you wasted your life so young. Give yourself a break.

How about this: take the bag, for now. If life with the bag does end up sucking, you can always find a way out later. But leave your options open and give it a try?
I also noticed that Google Apps (docs, etc.) really spikes my processor load. Anybody else experiencing this?
Yep. They are competing into different categories. One is positioning itself as a utility item and the other as a luxury item.

Apple is happy owning a small market share while obtain a higher price for its items.
FWIW, we used hosted Exchange from MS: http://microsoft.com/online/

Its $5/user/month, 25GB storage, great webmail client, and hands down the best support I've ever gotten.
A few years ago, I was called in and told that my work machine was pulling huge amounts of data from the net. It eventually turned out that the problem was a buggy version of Google Desktop.

After a fairly intensive search, I found the reason in an obscure Google Groups posting[ http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop_Something-Brok... ]. I experienced the bug six months after the issue was discussed there, and that was the only source of information I could find.

I don't know if Google has improved its support recently, but the obscure way in which information on the bug was disseminated certainly made me more wary of using Google products after that.
"Be ready to spent 80% of your time thinking, debugging, testing, in meetings, conversations…"

I always considered thinking, debugging and testing part of coding...
Have you seen George Miller's 'Lorenzo's Oil'?

You are a hacker. Take the bag and hack your away out of it. This your last project (or not) and you are more motivated than any other doctor to solve it. It will maybe require you to go very far from your comfort zone, deep into genetics, tissue engineering or molecular biology. So what?

Your solution may benefit thousands. Maybe this is your mission in life.
>The only weakness compared to the iPhone is the quality of apps, but that is quickly changing.

One of my disappointments when first getting an Android phone was that the apps trended toward being uglier and more buggy than on iPhone, but even in the last three months that's changed big-time. 3.3.1 strikes again?

They had a nice session at I/O where they decomposed the UI design elements behind the new official Twitter app (although if you have an Evo right now you may well have been in that same room with me). I don't use Twitter much at all, but I still found myself spending 20 minutes playing with the app in awe at how well put together it is.

I hope that apps like that provide some sold examples to get developers to think a bit more about design and user experience. The new features in 2.2 hopefully should help as well.
The Best Day to End a Website Auction Listing
Do NOT read this if you haven't seen the movie. Don't learn anything about it. Just watch it.

I guarantee you'll have a better time.
You could say the exact same things about the United States in the 1800s. Part of the US expansion and industrialization came about through stealing British inventions and running with the ideas.
When I tested out Apps Premier I was able to get phone support and was very well assisted by them. While a certain level of support is expected from a 'free' service, I don't think it is viable to offer phone support for it. In much the same way, it is horribly difficult to get phone support for any free email service, yahoo, hotmail, etc.
If you work for any employer that actually cares about you, convince them to keep you on their insurance and take a 6 month sabbatical. If they are not sympathetic to your situation, quit your job immediately since they have no regard for your well being. Try the bag and see how it goes. Make friends, travel, enjoy life. Do the things you always wanted to do. Then reassess in 6 months.

Looking at my own life the things that I feel blessed for, have nothing to do with work. After falling in love and starting a family, being rich and changing the world are no longer important. As long as I can provide for my family and raise my children in a way that would make me proud, nothing else matters.

Unplug and try the bag. There is much more to life than business success and $.
Why Don't More Medical Discoveries Become Cures?