skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wouldn't know. Small, grey text over a black background? Forget it. Tab closed.
I was discussing Seedcamp the other night.. the issue is (and here's why I think YC has it spot-on) at the micro-seed-funding stage (which it is, exactly like YC) the most important thing is the idea/product/demo. Whereas YC has teams working flat-out under extreme pressure to actually produce something in so many weeks, Seedcamp was much more "let's cover all the bases..marketing, finance, biz-dev..". At the micro-seed level it should be at least 80% product/polishing the idea - this is what's most important to get to the next stage, after all!
GrandCentral is great, but I frequently have issues with the sound quality when I retrieve voicemails over the phone. There will be frequent segments of garbled sound and I have to replay the messages repeatedly to get all the info.
I found that section confusing too. I think it's just the result of a bit of bad writing though. After rereading it, I'd guess they had subjects list books or commandments and then take the addition test.
It said the dollar bills were placed in the same randomly selected refridgerators as the six packs. If it was independant it would be weird(er), but if I saw money sitting in a fridge it would mean exactly one thing: someone is paying someone back from taking liberties with food. To me it's implicit.

So, I think the experiment was more of an experiment in mind fuckery. Imagine, coke's show up-- sweet I'll have one (assuming I didn't have a ten commandments frig-magnet). I drink a soda, and after an hour or day they're all gone. (Maybe I only drank one.)

The the next day,... oh I guess I would need to know what the timeline was on the experiment... but say I take that leap to finish (I give it under 10% that this happened in the same weak though.) I, having only drank one soda, know someone else might've drank five. And perhaps, they, the 'other(s)' felt guilty when no more cokes showed up.

Basically I wouldn't touch some one's reparations, unless I knew it was me. And with my partial guilt, I wouldn't touch that sin money... I might throw in a buck.
Pancheros tortillas are superior (and fresher), however the rest of their ingredients leave a lot to be desired. And there's no fajita burrito option at Pancheros.
I used Ubuntu at work fulltime for over a year. I kept OS X at home though. What type of development are you doing?

Ubuntu is good but I would say that as far as unix like desktops go it still has a long way to go to match OS X.

edit

Just read through your posts and it looks like you're a webdev in which case except for the lame PHP build OS X comes with by default(just replace it) you shouldn't notice any difference that would make it worth switching over to Ubuntu for except if you just generally perfer Ubuntu. It won't make your work easier though.
You Would Steal a Coke But Not a Dollar Bill? A Commentary
It's not very widely known, but Live Maps is beating Google Maps in many aspects.

They have 3D in the browser - yes, through a plugin, but Google didn't do even that. They have oblique aerial photos of staggering resolution - a lot of US and European cities photographed from four angles. (They use Photosynth tech for that, and have smooth turning between different angles.) And they didn't bet on user-generated 3D city models, using professional models instead, that look better than Google's.

Google is leading with Street View, but it's not hard to clone. I've already seen half a dozen clones, the best is http://mapjack.com .
@madmotive: I’ve got a lot of respect for the main goal of Seedcamp, namely to inspire the next generation of Europe’s serial entrepreneurs. However, I think apexauk’s points above hit the nail on the head — more focus on openly, iteratively and rapidly building a product than worrying too much about perfecting the business model.

I too hope Seedcamp embraces these principles — and if they do, they’ve got a very good chance of achieving their goal.
The Dark Side of Online Charity
Catchers and throwers
You're correct in that the dollars are out of place while the soda cans are not.

A better experiment might be this: Leave the door to a locker open, with a few items of clothing to show that it belongs to someone. In one version leave an open jar of candy. In the other, an open jar of quarters.

I suspect that some of the candy would disappear while far fewer of the quarters would go.

Of course, the reason for that is that the candy is much more tempting than the quarters, though less that 25 cents per piece.
I think we might miss interesting things if ban particular news sources. And so, I might end up visiting them more just to ensure that I don't miss any news.

To the gentle(wo)men iamelgringo, thanks for telling us that valleywag is a bunch of aho* but that has no correlation with reporting.If people find that valleywag reports are made up, lack substance, people will choose to not go there despite it being posted on hacker news. You want to give the choice to the end user (me and you) to see that valleywag article or not. Why restrict choice.
Ajax vs. Silverlight and .NET
Brilliant story. It was easy for me to empathize with the father, and I think I'll eventually die like him.
Martin Fowler: Schools Of Software Development
You did not provide a service by snipping the first fifth off a good article in The Atlantic, just so readers could skip to the part where they start talking about the guy who started Citrix.

This whole story is really interesting; it involves entrepreneurship in one of our least agile, most fucked up industries (air travel). If you've done a lot of business travel, it also (I hope) has some emotional resonance, because business air travel is an abusive experience.

I started following James Fallows after I heard him on NPR talking about "Free Flight", a book I recommend even though it wasn't particularly predictive. "Free Flight" is a book about the Cirrus SR-20 and the Eclipse E500; the former is a short-hop prop plane with advanced navigation and a whole-plane parachute, the second is an ultra-efficient jet the size of an SUV. Both are trying to establish an "air taxi" market for short-hop flights between underused airports.

I love the idea of being able to drive to a tiny airport, walk up to a counter, show my ID, go right out to a small waiting airplane, and being in the air 5 minutes later. That somewhat interesting software is being used to price the legs ($300-$1200 now, 1-2 orders of magnitude below charter, on par with business class or full-fare coach now) seems like a footnote.
i know it for a fact
Mark Pilgrim (of Dive Into Python fame):

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-b...

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/26/essentials-2006

Cory Doctorow (of Mac tattoo on bicep fame):

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/29/mark-pilgrims-list-o.ht...
A company I worked for a long time ago was called TDCI, (http://www.tdci.com) They are big into manufacturers. I can get you in contact directly if you want, e-mail in profile.
Are Pageviews Still Relevant for Bloggers?
Both of them switched for political reasons, for what it's worth. If you use and enjoy commercial Mac software, your politics are already somewhat desync'd from theirs.
I'm running Ubuntu at work and OS X at home. For a workstation Ubuntu is fine, but I'm not going to give up OS X. I develop on both and the experience is similar, but the OS X gui is just what I prefer.
Telepathic magic mirrors.
http://www.compiere.com/

This is pretty mature and open source
I bought the book this week. It's a juicy compelling read if you are interested in psychology and marketing.
I just finished and recommend a very interesting book on this kind of thing. It's called

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. By Robert B. Cialdini
I like this idea. And when NY affiliates complain, Amazon can point them to this story along with the contact information for the bureaucratic tools responsible for passing such a law.
Oh my! That's a pretty stupid slip-up on my part... I accidentally mistook http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200106/fallows for being the first page of this article, found it to be unrelated and submitted page two instead. Could a moderator please change this story to point to http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/dayjet instead?
I think this is pretty expensive. Sometimes, you want to check things as you develop, so there might be needs for longer period of testing. You can easly run over 150 minutes a day, or even 500 minutes in two days.

Paying basocally just for an OS instance 50/in two days is a lot of cash.

# Credits	Total time	Cost	Savings

1	5 minutes	$1	-

6	30 minutes	$5	17%

30	150 minutes	$20	33%

100	500 minutes	$50	50%
(Note - this comment is obsolete, and wrong. Please ignore)
But the problem is still the same. The statement that "people have an irrational sense of logic because they would take food from a roommate, but not money" is still incorrect.

Of the 15 or so roommates I've had in my life, 13 or 14 would have almost always answered "yes" to the question "hey, can I take XXX from the fridge and eat it." Whereas fewer of them would have answered the same if I had asked for money. Therefore, the decision to take something from another person is heavily influenced by the anticipated response of that person (and therefore not as illogical as the researcher is concluding).
I've switched from OS X to Ubuntu, and would never go back. I'm not really a developer, but I do some coding every now and then. Perhaps what I like most about Ubuntu is that I can customize it to fix all those little annoyances that I couldn't do anything about on OS X. It's also trivial to install programs thanks to a real package manager (Fink doesn't count in OS X). GNOME is also the only GUI I've found that lets you type the whole filename to jump to a file/folder rather than jumping to the filenames that start with the last letter you typed.

I suppose my biggest annoyance with OS X is that it doesn't let you actually have control. A perfect example is that I have SAMBA turned on in OS X to share some files to other computers on my network. For security, I have a separate user account for the share. I can't configure the shares and permissions in the GUI because it's not a "simple" setup, so I have to use the config file for samba. Every single OS update I get overwrites this file, so I have to re-create it every time. Furthermore, as of 10.5, permissions seem to just spontaneously change. I can no longer get group permissions to inherit.

Another time, I needed to quickly use TFTP. Trying to get this setup in OS X is a nightmare, and after spending a couple hours on it, I just gave up. It's installed and there, but it for some reason its configuration is just non-standard.

It's just these little things that make me glad I switched to Ubunutu, and I would never even consider using OS X again.
It's especially likely with complacency like that.
You're right, I guess more grandmother than medicine man.

Another quick question, is knowing what a computer is necessary for someone to understand the internet?
Ok, So I read about half way through the article, second idea, and I didn't re-count the paragraphs to type this up.

Here is the thing for me: Blaming it on anything other than the individual and their parents seems like a cop-out.
that's an easy comment to make that very much fits the zeitgeist, but some sort of cynicism is required. If we're wrong on this, and 'build it and the money will come' strategies fail, then we're definitely setting ourselves up for a boom+bust that's going to be painful for all.

The cynicism is that, in addition to suiting startups that haven't got the intellectual capital required to think about a sustainable business strategy as they head into business, it also very much suits YC's approach (see below), which might explain why, as a meme, it's so pervasive!

The YC-like approach could be caricatured as 'shotgun' - throw a load of startups at a wall (boost their launch) and see what sticks (in terms of adoption); but if the rest, which don't show immediate adoption, get neglected by YC-like investors-mentor hybrids too soon, they won't pick up the transferable business skills that would serve them for a lifetime. Putting your hands into a launch-focused incubator is risky, from the startup's perspective.

YC, as first on the scene, has many 'value-added' factors (mainly PR-based) that make this risk worth taking; but copycats don't deliver these (e.g. a great network, great reputation with potential series A investors, media rep, etc). In that light, copycats may actually be more beneficial to the startup scene if they alter their strategy relative to YC to deliver different value-addeds, as Seedcamp does. Probably not worth pooh-pooing them without thinking a bit further, just in case we are letting a damaging meme spread too far without challenge.

The key is to make sure both launch-drive and business training/mentorship are provided in equal amounts - the order in which they come can be debated, and is the nub of the seedcamp vs. YC debate; but let's make sure the complexity of what YC offers comes across - it's not just launch drive and that's not the only important thing in seed stage investment. Long term, that could be very damaging for YC copycats that don't have as clear an idea of what's needed
Cellphones and Developing Nations
I propose a new sport - Google Crawler hunting. Kind of like Snipe hunting, only you lay traps. Object is to see how long you can keep the Google bot there by generating new pages programmatically, and how many unique things you can get the bot to do.
The values are not always equivalent. When you're really thirsty, a can of soda is worth more than a buck.
i think that's because everything that people aren't working on improving is being actively destroyed by everyone else.
The problem, which is really apparent in the article - the shoe's logo (Nike ripoff) and the company's slogan (Adidas ripoff), is that after years of repression Chinese society just lacks creativity. You just cannot have a totalitarian government and a society that is free to innovate and create new things

Another good example is Singapore. Sure you can walk alone at 3am and not even be in the slightest bit of danger... but with all the censorship you have graduate students who do not know how to have sex. This is not a joke - it was prominent problem 8 years ago. They just went around the problem by heavily promoting immigration
I suppose you could explain it in abstract terms without knowledge of a computer (ex. the internet is a wonderful place where people can connect from all around the world in the blink of an eye), but that wouldn't really convey the nature of it.

The question is also open to further interpretation: Is it, what the internet is, what it can do, how it works, what it means to society, or something else? There are many ways to "explain the internet" to someone with no knowledge of computers, but to explain how it is, or how it works, they must understand what a computer is.
Here's a fun simple one by yours truly (in Javascript so you can run it right now):

javascript:(function(){s=x=' ';for($=_=1;$<1000;$+=_+=$)x+=_+s+$+s;alert(x)})()
Source control does matter. If you're thinking about any serious development effort (startup or not), you really need to use it. Unless of course you can honestly say that you always know exactly what your next step is, never make any mistakes, never need to go back to an old version and work with a group of identical equally perfect developers.

What you need to figure out is which tool (git, svn, or something completely different) matches with your style and needs as a developer or group of developers. The best version control is the one that becomes part of your natural workflow so you use it without thinking of it as an extra step that you constantly have to do. Because if that happens, you'll just stop using it.

Git's branching capabilities work well for someone who needs to work on multiple independent features or try out new ideas that may or may not work out. All of which is usually what's going on in a startup. It's something that comes as part of the tool instead of having to be worked up in a series of processes that you don't either have to time or (painful) experience to come up with yourself.
I like to do this sort of thing with Age of Empires II.
Ask YC: Comfortable Monitors
I recently splurged a few hundred bucks on a nice 21" widescreen monitor. The problem is, it hurts my eyes. I can't tell whether the problem occurs because the screen is glossy, the screen is unusually bright, or if it's something inherent in the widescreen itself. I have never had problems with monitors before, even very low-end ones.

My question is: have you discovered that certain monitors are comfortable or uncomfortable for your eyes? What characteristics cause the difference for you? Is there any monitor that you would particularly recommend?
I'd start with a dictionary. A good dictionary has pictures and historical figures, almost encyclopedic. Then, add video. It's easy to imagine moving pictures in a book. Maybe add sound as well.

Next comes news. The book, somehow, can provide the daily news. It's pretty easy to imaigne daily updates to the book.

Once they see that the book can get the news, it's not to hard to extend the communication to other books. so, you could write in one book, and read the words in another.

I'd say that's about it.
I assume you mean over using mod_rewrite to do proxying direct to backend app servers?

If so:
- SwitchPipe controls backend app server processes. If an app isn't being used, it doesn't need to be running.
- If an app is under heavy demand, I want more instances (up to a limit) to be launched to deal with it.
- SwitchPipe deals with all of the port numbers. No port numbers to deal with as a user.

Just some minor points, but with big usability gains.
i agree with your point that it's v. important for the team to have the necessary transferable business skills early on. a group of introvert hackers who lack them could easily fail, even if they've built a relatively good product.

nevertheless, my impression of YC is that even with an 80%+ focus on product, there's still time to pick up some good business knowledge reading blogs and speaking to the YC alumni who most certainly have strong business skills amongst them.

in addition to this, surely the job of the seed investors (which can usually be attracted by a YC company who build a good product) is to give more of a commercial focus, and help the founders hire the right 'biz/marketing guys' later on?

however, my experience of most of the 'hacker' founders on YC is that they've got more business skills than almost all of the young entrepreneurs i know in the UK!
Puppy linux is a wonderful distro. Everything just works. Unfortunately, everything doesn't include tools for developers :(
I think if more people shared exactly these opinions, the Valley would be a much safer place for entrepreneurs and investors than it currently is, and would have been back in the 90's (culminating in the crash). Why the last bubble didn't create more people like Ray, I have no clue, but it's a relatively sad aspect to humans and money.
Don't get me wrong. I too have a great deal of respect for the main goal of Seedcamp and the work that everyone involved is putting into it and other initiatives in Europe. But I also agree that focusing on the product at seed stage should be given a far higher priority than anything else.

I think that Seedcamp not seeming to focus on the product, is a symptom of them suffering from too many cooks. These cooks probably start finding roles for themselves and end up pushing startups to put together all the elements required to build a complete restaurant rather than concentrating on perfecting a single dish.

YC being directed by just a few smart, well connected people is probably better suited in it's structure to focusing on a single dish and bringing in other people only when they are really needed.
The glossy ones are a lot of hype with very little substance. I have a glossy screen for my laptop, but if I had the chance to do it again I would opt for the regular one. The glossy screens reflect a lot of ambient light. If you're in an office environment, near a window, or even in a light area, your eyes might have to strain to make out the information through the reflection. If this is the case then it could certainly explain the hurting eyes.

If your monitor supports this, try dimming the screen's brightness and see if that helps. The reflection/glare will be intensified, but it won't be as bright. This way you can test to see if it's one or the other. If your eyes hurt more, it's probably the glare. If they hurt less, or just the same, it could be the brightness.

In either case, try a non-glossy screen so that you can really compare the differences and see which one is easier on your eyes.

As for the wide screen, I don't think it will bother you any more or less.
I prefer the OS X method of application "installation"... drag and drop to your applications folder. That way (as long as the app isn't sneaky) I know exactly where everything is location: the main application is in /Applications, the preferences are in ~/Library/Preferences, and various data is in ~/Library/Application Support.
It does come down almost entirely to personal preference in the end.

Because of window shading, tabbing together groups of windows, focus on mouse and vastly better terminal support (including Yakuake, a terminal that behaves like the doom console) I am roughly twice as productive on Linux as on OS X.

That is before you add in apt-get, but honestly if I had to put up with Fink on Ubuntu I still wouldn't switch because of the interface limitations.
Would your roommates refuse to lend you 5 dollars? If not, why is it wrong to take the 5 dollars from his desk, or take money he left in a common area? Under your reasoning it would perfectly fine, common, even.

"I'm sure he won't mind if I just take a few dollars," seems more wrong than "I'm sure he won't mind if I drink one of his fancy beers/soymilk smoothies/etc".
Yes. Essentially there's a technical reason why Apple would restrict OS X to only Apple hardware. Microsoft spends (or at least spent, they seemed to have given that up with Vista) lots of money & time ensuring Windows works with weird hardware combinations. Apple saves some money side-stepping the whole issue; if they released OS X for all hardware, they'd get people complaining things along the lines of "OS X sucks! It doesn't work with my e-Machines Craptastic Edition Model". Well the reason it doesn't work is because your e-Machines Craptastic edition sucks, but the customer is going to blame OS X, see?