skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As a founder, my observation of seed stage fundraising is that there's a high degree of randomness, or at least most of the factors involved are outside of your immediate or near-term control. Decisions are mostly based on the excitement investors have for the team and idea. Since excitement is emotional, this can really vary. Decisions can be made based on how the investor's day has gone so far.

You would think that success is mostly about your pitch, and if you have great slides, meaningful graphs, and nail the delivery then you get money. It's not like this at all. VC fundraising is not Shark Tank. It's market timing, it's people, it's emotions.

There's a saying that seed funding is easy and the money grows on trees, and things don't get hard until the Series A. I think the more nuanced explanation is that when seed funding is successful it is usually easy (the stars aligned!), otherwise it's impossible. This leads to successful founders telling stories about easy seed rounds, but there are probably fifty times as many founders who have failed to raise that just don't talk about it.

Here's what Aaron Harris of YC said this year:

"Unfortunately, fundraising takes up a lot more time and thought than it should, because it seems like something that should be systematic but is actually chaos, which really confuses people, especially people who are logically brained." (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZXU84_sGXo )

Not terribly actionable information, but good for founders to know.
Node.js
how to learn node.js
Nice! Now we just need approval for use over cell towers.

This is really exciting!

If there is a way for a laymen to help please provide some guidance, I'm comfortable tinkering around with Linux and breaking and fixing things but this looks a bit over my head.

Keep up the great work!
I'd rather say that machine learning is an application of mathematical statistics.
You quoted me before an edit -- what I meant was: Did things actually happen that way historically? That is, did engineers actually accept/design more heterogeneity in the physical network as a result of Shannon's ideas?

I'm talking about networks with heterogeneous physical specifications -- that happened long before the Internet. You have the same problem with just a plain analog circuit-switched phone system. No digital computers involved.

Static content isn't really distributed computing; it's more like networking. The type of breakthroughs I'm thinking of are more along the lines of block chain, homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, zero-knowledge proofs, etc.

In other words, different ways of collaborating over a network.

The thing that jumps out at me is that most of these technologies are fantastically expensive computationally.
Right now, apparently at terrorism. And there is still a line, a court must approve it, might be a kangaroo court, but a judge is signing off on things.
They are getting slammed right now from people downloading music before it shuts down. It's a run!
37900 collected in nine days.

In NLP, words like "the" and "a" are "stop words" that are excluded from word counts.
There are very similar products on AMZ (USA) for $15-$30 USD.
Crowdsourced Translation of Books of Magical Charms
As I understand it, it means banning end to end communication between clients. So you can chat over https, but only if the server in the middle (which can be served warrants) is doing the encryption.
Ask HN: Are Edge computing and Machine learning related?
Hi HN,

I'm currently a software engineering student, but I've read about edge computing a bit, and I'm currently learning about ML. Are this two trends related? Is edge computing the next "big thing" in the industry? How can ML help edge computing?

If I'm missing something or you have any interesting resource to know more about edge computing, please feel free to explain anything and add a link if you want. I'm really interested in learning about this topics.

Thanks HN,
I've built an animated raytracer using this library.

http://raytracer.crypt.sg

The compile-able JavaScript subset is still fairly limited, so vector operations are quite painful. Beyond that, it's a great library to start with for parallel computation in the browser if you have no background in WebGL/GLSL.
Many were holding as well, but as property values plummeted, so did rents. But mortgage payments remained steady and high.
I think the bigger issue not given enough attention to is that the town is dying in general. If young people are leaving in droves and business are closing left and right, that's not the sign of a healthy town at all. From the article I got the impression that the town boomed as a coal town, but we all know that the industry is declining now. The town needs to revitalize itself somehow or accept that once its natural resources are no longer enough, maybe it can't be sustained. (there are plenty of ghost towns in the US that were once sites of gold or oil riches)

Regarding Walmart though, this article demonstrates painfully well the cold soul of a corporation. Lots of megacorps love touting that they are people-first or refer to themselves as a "family", but the truth of the matter is that they have no loyalty: once the profits aren't large enough, they start axing jobs. (note I'm not saying they should run an unprofitable business, but in general it seems they prefer to fire employees and cut salaries rather than paying the CEO less exorbitantly or trying to run leaner and at a cost for a while for the economy to get better; you won't improve it by giving the local populace less money) Walmart especially comes in displacing local businesses, hiring hundreds and creating a strong dependency on themselves. Like a parasite, it enters an area and drains its resources, and once it runs dry it moves elsewhere. The sad truth of it all is that at the end of the day, everyone cares about getting cheap goods rather than studying the local economic effects of allowing such a business to encroach on their town. The suits will just tell you that, at the end of the day, it's just capitalism. And maybe that says more about the soul of America than it does just about Walmart.
> but at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Yahoo/

They are not the majority, most visas go to the Indian Outsourcing companies.
I think you don't understand how Bitcoin works.

It's already possible to fully "track/monitor" (without centralization) because all transactions are recorded permanently in the blockchain.

As to "censor" it would not be possible even if Bitcoin was mostly centralized (I assume you are talking about miners centralization). As long as some miners are honest, even if it's a small fraction, your transactions that others attempt to censor will still eventually be confirmed, whenever these honest miners find a block, because given the P2P nature of the Bitcoin protocol, all transactions can reach all nodes.
Nifty.

I went looking for google translate style audio, and found the Advanced > Audio button, and hit a bug. Page load; for Chinese input, enter "中文 輸入"; Translate; Audio; surprised by English input and Chinese spaced having cat and ffmpeg command lines.

Feature idea: permit repeatedly playing the audio for just a part of the phrase. Often when using ggl translate, I want to rehear just a syllable or word I'm unsure of, or am having trouble with. Google makes you rehear the whole thing, which is simple, but discourages double-checks, and impairs iteration.
My Gripes with WebGL
Your VC friends only claim to use a similar model as this and it is not true. It is also falsifiable empirically - you could verify it experimentally if you really wanted.

You can email me at the email in my profile if you wanted. (I am not affiliated with YC and I'm not a VC, though.)

However a good starting point for how investors actually make decisions is here: http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong... under the "investors" section.

It is a much better summary of how they actually make decisions (as opposed to what they report). I won't try to summarize it, just read those 11 paragraphs - but I will quote "If you remember one piece of advice about investors, it's that you've got to create some type of competitive situation."

This is entirely absent from the article (which is wrong.) "Table 2: Important Factors for Investment Selection" is entirely, laughably wrong.

It is simply not the way VC's actually make their investment decisions. At all. (Certainly at the seed stage.) Completely wrong. Sorry.
Pandas and Koalas have extremely poor diets in terms of nutrition. It's likely there are other examples as well.
Does no one remember Jurassic Park?
Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE)? Lyme also damages your nerve system, according to some newer schollary articles.
This is anecdotal, but I've seen it in my own life. People treat you completely differently if they think you come from a privileged background (or a disadvantaged one), and one of those differences is their willingness to grant you opportunities, and how much they're willing to pay you.

The fact that I come from a broken abusive home and a really messed up difficult childhood is a secret I guard pretty closely. The day I started wearing nice collared shirts and very subtly encouraging/allowing people to assume I come from privilege like they do (like almost everyone reading this does), I experienced an incredible reversal in career momentum. It completely turned my life around.

Not only that, but it totally changes the calculus of what people are willing to pay you. If someone has nothing and is desperate, that means they'll be willing to work for less, and anything higher would be charity. Your expectation is that they will be happier with less, and that they will be thankful for it.

If you think someone's parents own a nice lakefront house and a yacht, and they're young and white and wear nice shirts like you do and live in the bay, well clearly that person wouldn't accept less than $140k base. Your expectation is that not only will they demand fair and competitive pay, but also that dollar figures all seem low to them because they've been around money their whole life, so you better offer them more.

I don't know if it's as simple as "rank-reversal aversion." I think it's much bigger and more complicated than that.

In the broadest possible terms: People as a whole profile and categorize each other, and those categorizations are reflected in nearly every aspect of how people interact with each other. Part of the outcome of that is a tendency to reinforce success in the already-successful, and a tendency to reinforce failure in the already-failing.
Edge computing is just cloud computing but it happens at the "edge" of the network.

Well one application of edge computing would be to use ML/AI to do some task. For example imagine you have your phone and you take a photo with a cancer app. Your phone doesn't have enough compute power to run a very good ML model on it so instead the app would upload the image to the cloud to do the analysis. To take the app run fast you wound want the computation to happen on the edge of the network so you have the smallest latency possible giving a better user experience.
Sad that this didn’t get any traction. A lot of folks here would probably enjoy it. Hopefully it gets resubmitted and upvoted higher sometime.
Well by your reasoning they never should have been allowed inside in the first place, and I agree. However, it's too late for that. We could just nonchalantly observe that the town asked for it, but that would be cruel towards the townspeople who are now struggling in the aftermath. The point of this piece is to highlight the effect it had on the locals, how it just left without any responsibility towards the drain it caused. The point isn't to somehow change Walmart's character as a corporation, but rather show others that maybe they shouldn't welcome a devil in disguise despite what it offers, that maybe they should support local businesses and focus on self-sustainability.
As far as public use goes, it's always been considered legal / ethical to photograph people in public places. One does not know where the "information" in a photograph will end up, but since they are already technically in public view, it's something of a moot point.
Why I’m never signing up for Amazon Prime
Who is talking about getting rid of suburbs or limiting things to walking distance? That would be crazy.

There were suburbs before cars existed and there can be suburbs that don't require cars for every single trip. Before the widespread adoption of cars, suburbs were often served by streetcars that let people travel into the city. They also were walkable for trips within the suburb. Unlike modern suburbs, they also allowed low nuisance commercial properties to be interspersed with residential properties so that many of people's basic errands could be accomplished without traveling large distances.
I'll let others address keyboard heights and such, but here are some body-centric things that helped me:

1. If you are overweight, fix that first.
2. Do yoga 3-4 times per week. 20-min sessions are OK. Even sun salutations will help a lot.
3. Work on strengthening your posterior chain. I don't mean lifting heavy, just getting tone and activation.
4. Learn what it feels like to have good (better) posture. Work with someone (pro or not) to pose you and work with you. Or just use a mirror.
5. EASIEST: Learn simple tricks like rotating your wrists outward (thumbs forward) when standing or walking. And get your eyes up near the horizon, etc.

IME, these things can make your posture visibly better. But habit and genetics are tough to overcome. As in most things, expect modest early success but steel yourself for the long haul.
> Spring is as micro as Java gets.

Dropwizard was created as the minimalist counter point to Spring/EE.
Where do you want to escape?
I quit Windows a few years ago (I'm fine now thanks for asking!). It took me a couple of hours from what is this Linux thing to dual boot, and a few months from everything proprietary to everything open source. Freedom feels awesome.

I long for the day where I can have the same feeling on my phone.
So you think it is unfair that YC could have consequences simply from being accused of abusing their influence without being able to defend themselves?
Thank you so much for this - I've always wondered what that meant, and knowing now I can read all of the normal HN comments _and_ the jokes has made my HN experience 2x better!
I must say his is the most-fitting use of the name, though.
If you are a remixer, producer or musician check out SKIO Music.

You can enter remix contests, find singers and producers to collab with, and even import your originals from Soundcloud to host them on SKIO. Lastly, you can upload your stems and let other people remix your tracks, all in a copyright respected environment.

https://skiomusic.com
It could be even more nuanced than that. I'd be averse to a top marginal tax rate over 100% (which would reverse ranks) but not to a big tax cleanup that would remove silly incentives to engage in certain types of business, even though the latter would surely also reverse ranks.

The study seems to be looking at the former type of social policy to the extent that it's looking at a social policy at all.
I was wondering about this too.. when I got to the part about how the Tibetan herders were even more against rank reversal, it reinforced it for me.

When someone is a herder, the only way to earn wealth is by working long hours, busting your butt day in day out, and being careful about what you have.

I'd wager their mindset is that they know the pain, effort, and time it takes to accumulate wealth so they're loathe to take it from someone else.
Soundcloud is a digital discovery platform mostly. And a centralized free library that artists can release music on. It solves many problems for small-time artists and underground listeners.

Bandcamp found a similar market for physical music collectors and somehow monetized it well. SoundCloud is much more accessible though in terms of UX/UI.

Seems they should try to push for album/track monetization by artists. (Purchases made on SoundCloud / SoundCloud takes 1% fee etc)
Introducing sphinx-js
Hypercomputers:

"Perhaps the best known proposal for a hypercomputer is due to Mark Hogarth (1994, 2004), who developed an idea of Itamar Pitowsky (1990). Relativistic hypercomputers exploit the properties of a special kind of spacetime called Malament-Hogarth spacetime, which is physically possible in the sense of constituting a solution to Einstein's field equations for General Relativity. Malament-Hogarth spacetimes contain regions with an infinite time-like trajectory λ that can be circumvented by a finite time-like trajectory γ. In other words, λ and γ have a common origin, and there is a spacetime point p on γ such that λ, even though it is infinite, lies entirely in p's chronological past. If an observer launches a Turing machine along λ and then travels along γ she may, within finite time, find herself in the future of an infinitely long computation performed by the Turing machine. If the Turing machine is able to send signals to the observer, the observer would be able to know the outcome of a potentially infinitely long computation, thereby having computational means more powerful than (ordinary) Turing machines. For instance, an observer may be able to obtain the results of an arbitrary instance of the halting function for Turing machines.

Constructing and using a relativistic hypercomputer is a nontrivial affair."
> I suppose it was because Redis had insufficient RAM for operation. Redis may be scalable toward large busy systems but seems less so in the other direction.

This is a pretty weak conclusion to draw. Did you try running Redis on its own without Gitlab? If not, I would encourage you to try it out as it takes up much less RAM than you think. The Raspberry Pi is even a supported platform...
GitLab Offline Due to Storage Outage
That article has zero evidence of this.

They are not leaving India.
So, good case study

At the end of the day, it has nothing to do with what's good design or with which generation's philosophy we're going on. It has a bit to do with bragging rights but also any company selling a trivial doo-dad has a lot to gain in the vague importance scale by including including a whole OS with their doo-dad. They don't quite know what, they may not quite be thinking "now at least we're as important as a Russian mafioso running a giant botnet" but inherently the management has some kind of dream that's more likely to be satisfied by a million Ubuntu instances than a million light bulbs.

Just for example, they haven't got the gall or tech to put push ads from your light bulbs YET but I'd guess that's one of the things floating around some board tables somewhere ("but how to offer value with hmm..").

Those urges won't go away. They care more about themselves than the public or their customers? Who'd have thunk.

Welcome to the "everything's adversarial" era...
So if Australia made gravity illegal....nope, too easy.
very interesting, can I schedule tasks to run daily, hourly, weekly, etc. like cron.
"Terrorists are now only allowed to use waterpistols, this will dramatically lessen civilian casualties and help us identify them"
Ask HN: What happens to convertible notes if a startup becomes a lifestyle biz?
Should the company convert the notes to equity, or paid them back with interest over time using profits?

If a company starts paying back some notes, will other investors think about pulling their notes? (I doubt this)
Where, did I, in essence, say that? Those jobs are being replaced and at an increasing rate. Not all of them tomorrow, but probably a lot faster than what you are trying to argue with your strawman.
"Terrorists are now only allowed to use waterpistols, this should dramatically lessen casualties and help with identifying them"
Thanks. will do.
Thanks. Good idea.
No, but I can go a couple of weeks easily and in the past I've gone a couple of months with no real effort. Two months is far past any possible physical addiction and the habit is pretty much gone. I chose to start drinking again because I enjoy it.

As an equivalent challenge, there are significant health benefits to going vegetarian. Have you tried to go completely meat-free for 12 months? Maybe you think you choose to eat meat, but in reality you're so addicted to it that you can't stop. Are you going to quit eating meat for a year just to prove a point to an internet stranger?
A bunch of peeps didn't like the haha but the parent and I laughed a lot in person. It's one of those terrible things you laugh about after the fact. But I'm serious they'd be good to get rid of.

Part of my haha was actually about the idea that there are people you can call to handle that with a brush. I would have never known. The child sat there patiently with an iPad for 3 hours around midnight getting combed by a stranger. Until the expert explained that the lice were feeding off her scalp. :)
Accelerate Deep Learning Inference on Raspberry Pi
Since when is ham and turkey associated with Christmas? I’ve never heard of this.
hyperledger fabric is not a 'coin'.
Isn't that what "until" means?
whispering is next on the ban list...
Are We Sleepwalking to World War III?
Thanks @kmather73 for your example. One of the possible uses I red about was using ML to decide when to do the computation in the cloud and when to do it in the device. Do you know a bit about this? Thanks again for your explanation! The concept seems clearer now
Thank you for doing the excerpt! I'd not have read the OP otherwise. And it turned out to provide additional perspective on describing a current project in science and engineering education transformation.

Like Rome, the physical world has science and engineering stories that are highly connected, richly interwoven, and best taught that way. By exploring in conversation with one who is familiar with them. Like the "hydrology" example, hydrodynamics is best taught by swimming (in VR/AR) - sure there's a Reynolds number order-of-magnitude scale and slider on the side, and length and time, and a live Navier-Stokes on the wall, but that's all in service to playfully messing around in/with fluids. In K-4. Like Latin, the way science is taught doesn't work, doesn't inspire, and leaves out lots of accessible engaging stories. Like Latin, perhaps there's hope for change. Unlike the instruction, you really need an conversation system with eye tracking, to notice your interests, answer questions, and mentor understanding. An expert and teacher to walk with. Anyway, my thanks.
In the time since this article was written Chance the Rapper tweeted[0]:

Just had a very fruitful call with Alex Ljung. @SoundCloud is here to stay.

About an hour later SoundCloud tweeted[1]:

*airhorn* Spread the word: your music isn’t going anywhere. Neither are we.

So it seems things have changed? I don't know much about Chance the Rappers financials but perhaps he is buying SoundCloud or investing in it? It will be interesting to see what happens.

[0] https://twitter.com/chancetherapper/status/88592122075935539...

[1] https://twitter.com/SoundCloud/status/885940178292023298
There absolutely is a difference in sound. If you hear a mosquito, it's female. Males are silent.
It's hard to say which implementation will be used but the fabric project from hyperledger seems to have the most momentum.
That font is extremely different from the one Apple is using. Compare the Q and K for the biggest differences that wouldn't be effected by 'monspacifying' it.
Almost a literal god complex there. Sounds about right for Turnbull.
Car2go and ReachNow cars are always clean, at least in Seattle (I think once I saw a wrapper in a side door). When you're paying by the minute there's not much time to make a mess.

This won't be a problem for self-driving cars because they're purely vaporware.