skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
".. While Cook was impressed with the speed of the Polynesian canoes—they could literally sail circles around his ships—he came to question the islanders' ability to make long, intentional sea voyages. He records an account of a group of Tahitians who, helpless in the face of a contrary wind and unable to set a course for home, drifted hundreds of miles off course and were marooned on Aitutaki, in what is now the Cook Islands ..."

This idea is conflicting with skills of Joseph Banks "exotic souvenir", Tupaia. There is no doubt Tupaia played a big part in filling in the gaps of Cooks maps with his innate knowledge of 1000 of so South Pacific Islands. You can't get the kind of cartographic knowledge without someone having observed the island and recorded them. So the question is how? Another thing to remember is Cook was the "master navigator". His idea of a long sustained voyage was to sail in 30m ship from Plymouth to Australia, New Zealand followed by a leisurely stop over in Hawaii. Cook also had access the latest navigational aids like the "Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer" in his second voyage.
Yes, Facebook has taken some big miss-steps lately, but the thing is, too many people depend on it now. It's a very "sticky" product once it get's it's hooks in you.
It does seem like having the time and money to help more than just family and friends is one of the great luxuries wealth brings.
I'd love a poster of one of those. Pretty cool if you ask me.
A man is smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke rings into the air. His girlfriend becomes irritated with the smoke and says, "Can't you see the warning on the cigarette pack? Smoking is hazardous to your health!"

To which the man replies, "I am a programmer. We don't worry about warnings; we only worry about errors."

Haha, it's funny because programmers don't have girlfriends!
Can you play buzzword bingo with your company's mission statement?
I'm curious as well, we've decided to go with php for our project, (although there's been some debate on python, and ruby) So I'm curious about frameworks such as Zend and CakePHP.
Are You in Personal Branding Prison?
Here's a first impression.

Download it. It's Win or Intel Mac at the moment. You have to register at the top right of the page (just username, password, email).
http://www.fold.it/

I found this game very absorbing. Kudos to the team for making biochemistry interactive and interesting to a lay audience.

With a little imagination, you can see kind of how the proteins are supposed to collapse down. I could use a little more information about how hydrophilic and hydrophobic play to raise or lower the energy of the protein. It's been a decade since I took ochem.

One thing that needs a little work is the 2D control of the 3D object. Like doing a Rubik's cube with your mouse, it is a little hard to make it clear whether you are trying to pull to the right or rotate topwise. Adding move/rotate handles when you hover over a piece might be nice, like doing Bezier curves in Illustrator (creature creator in Spore maybe).

The About page mentions that these guys are trying to record human play in order to teach the computer how to search more quickly. "We’re collecting data to find out if humans' pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!" Sure, there's some hype, but analyzing human play and feeding the data to your agent is a time-honored supervised learning tradition.
http://www.fold.it/portal/info/science

One of the current features is to get things mostly correct, then press a couple of buttons that make the computer search for the local minimum in the neighborhood you've set up. That is, it's relatively good at the endgame (probably faster and better than you). But the computer could learn a lot from watching how humans quickly get the protein into shape when things are all jumbled up in the opening.
Oh yeah, highly recommend the book, a lot of his ideas seem controversial, but there are a few points worth taking away from the book. There's also a nice podcast on his website.
Yahoo’s Answer to Google’s Universal Search is Glue (Coming Soon to America)
Debug and tune applications on the fly with Firebug
The mathematics of tackling tax evasion
".. sorry for any offense ..."

There was no offense taken. What I tried (poorly) to point out was that "where there's muck, there is money".
Yeah, I've always felt like a slouch. I sit exactly how they recommended. Any other posture became uncomfortable quickly.
We're working on a new concept idea too (isn't everyone? i'm sure "myspace for left-handed-black-blind-jewish-lesbians" is completely original) --- but a couple observations:

1) Like you said, we constantly work to make our app as intuitive and documentation free as possible. I've done quite a bit of UI design, but I'm still surprised users' obliviousness -- "just launching" is always quite humbling!

2) People usually just click around until they get stuff to work. Create a UI thats a won't punish people if they screw something up.

3) Anything longer than two sentences won't be read anyway -- we've found brief contextual help pretty effective.

4) Don't get discouraged about iterating over and over and over on designs until stuff starts to gel. I'm preaching this to myself right now.

Best luck.
Contextual popup bubbles are the best. If I can't figure out what a button does, I usually hover for a second for an explanation.
Nice to know we were right all along eh? ;)

I slouch just a bit and it never bothers me. I also tend to fidget, get up a lot, switch positions. I don't sit still very well...
"How a huge number of programming statements can be modeled by a generator, a comprehension, and a reducer."

I know, let's call it MapReduce!
"... That was shrill ... the experiment was famously set up to model real instances of authoritarian abuses .."

Yes but for a reason. One of the (nasty) findings of the Milgram experiment was that you don't have to be a "Nazis" in order to obey orders. For me there is nothing "cool" about blind obedience to Authority ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Results
15 Websites / Services I’d Actually Pay For (And the Price)
What websites / services would you pay for? And at what price?
Long live the king of JavaScript.
That's great to hear! All the best to Faviki!
do you mean they pay for sex?
Engineer aims to create plasma-powered micro air vehicle
Good points, only that I would flip sides.
Your roommate had an idea, great, but not worth a dime unless he is able to do something with it. Obviously he isn't. He even screwed up the project before it has started and his attitude doesn't look like this could be a successful and trusty partnership. But trust is a must for a venture. His attorney dad will go on trying to hijack the rights from you. The longer you work with him, the more you increase his chances of success sometime.

I"d take the money you have already earned, find a cheap lawyer and make sure who is the owner of the code. If its you, take it and find another partner. If its him, give it to him and rewrite it on your own with a partner you can trust. Your roommate has to find another programmer or do the work himself. If I understand you right, it is work for his classes.

Doesn't he risk his grades, if it turns out that he has payed someone to do his college work? If that is so, he is in your hands. Ask from him whatever you want.
That's what I thought of too.
"... Processing ported to JavaScript ..."

My project just got a lot more interesting. One of the things I was having trouble with is generating an image from data with severe constraints on modules & processing time.
Processing.js fills the gap of PIL which I couldn't use. I'm finding more and more interesting JS modules. Take this one for instance ~ http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/canvas2image/ Converts the canvas to a binary image.
Avoid anything that requires reading more than a few paragraphs and (heaven forbid) any kind of "wizard".

On first-run, I have an assistant (Mac developer euphemism for wizard) in my app (wonderwarp.com/shovebox) and I haven't quite decided if that's a good idea. On one hand, I introduce a couple concepts, illustrate the fact that it's a menubar app, and let them configure a couple things that really ought to be configured up-front. But I think even at 4 screens, it's far too long and cumbersome.

Your empty/no content screens can have tastefully-inserted instructions on how to get started (e.g. see the arrow thingy that appears in the time-tracking app On The Job).

Brief, to-the-point screencasts and visual guides to specific features are great!
How Advertising Works, and Why It Won’t For Facebook
"All programmers are playwrights, and all computers are lousy actors."

How can they be lousy actors if they do exactly what's in the script? I think the playwrights are to blame actually.
1) Many of them are training for contests, not for real-life tasks
2) They could make startups, but there is a huge bureaucracy.
3) Many have bad habbits (in wide sense) and passive approach to life and pessimism which are trained in early age. This goes back to soviet times when these life perceptions rooted themselves.
Art Lebedev isn't a startup and has nothing to do with skilled programming. He's good at courtshiping rich companies instead.
Wow, I'm very impressed. Looking forward to playing with this.
Google's initiative for Open Source Software Security
Ask YC: Any hackers working on clean(brown)tech?
Ask YC: Any hackers working on clean(brown)tech?
I mentally replaced "computers" with "browsers" in that one, as it definitely fits more.
Sitting still is not a natural human state. Consider that the chair is a recent invention...

You are far from abnormal.
I'm curious... Where does your assertion that "invitations from linkedin work quite effectively" come from? Is this an assumption or something that has been proven?

Subject line most definitely has a lot to getting any email read, regardless of whether it's an invitation to use a service or attend a webinar or an event.

When it comes to users inviting users, LinkedIn keeps the standard template message very short. First time you get this invite, you're not sure if it was a template or hand written by whoever is inviting you.

The relationship with the inviter is also critical. My guess is responding to emails from people you have had a business relationship might seem more urgent/important than responding to a personal email.

Just some thoughts.
Sounds like a straight talk is definite in order. Once your roommate is on-board and you've got a simple contract done, have a sit down talk with his dad. He may be a great asset in the future. Don't burn that bridge.
what's clean(brown)tech?
Why would you consider to be "acceptable" to have adults in need of private charity, but not children? What about teenagers?

If you are going to lecture us, at least don't do it using relative morality.
I have to agree with the point Matt makes, that advertising will continue to work better on Google than on Facebook. We mustn't forget, however, that advertising is a construct of the last two centuries and especially the period 1950-1990, and may already have passed its prime as a way of generating customers.

Moving forward, the value of communities may overtake the value of marketing and of brand - and think here of baby boomer 'retirement' villages as much as MySpace or Facebook. Advertising will continue to work better on Google; but advertising as a means to generate business may be superceded.

For more information, albeit from a functional business perspective rather than directly on topic, see perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_(business) http://www.shirlawsonline.com/downloads/sme-report-summary.z...
(Download a research document) or
http://360degreeview.blogspot.com/2007/09/signs-of-new-distr...

Don't rule out social networks just yet.
How do you raise money for start up?
I am doing reserch on how people get funded. I read techcrunch everyday and see companies that raise millions of dollars. I also wonder how there do it. Anyone go thru this process before? Can anyone list step by step on how to raise 1 million dollar?
The metaphor still works for me even with your example: I think of the people who behave as you describe it as "investors" hoarding cash under their mattresses. The important thing, for them, is to make sure that nobody else can have their money (exclusivity), whereas growth is either not considered or even rejected (since you have to at least partially relinquish control, by giving your money to a bank, fund, whatever).
Studios win $110 million in TorrentSpy suit
But remember that in those "anonymous cash transaction" that occur in shops, the person with the goods can see the cash and the person with the cash can see the goods before the transaction takes place. Further, for most shops, at least, there's the presumption that the shop will still be there when a dissatisfied buyer returns with a problem.
Not if you tell the truth. "$78,000 & 12 months later, I don't have a working product."
"reclining at 135 degrees can make sitting more difficult as there is a tendency to slide off the seat"

Exactly. Being suspended in a fluid tank might be awesome for the back but unfortunately some of us have to work while sitting at our desks.
I think this is not a work made for hire because it was done on contract rather than as an employee. From PubLaw
(http://www.publaw.com/work2.html)

"But if the creator of the work is not an employee, but instead a freelancer, than the "work made for hire" requirements of the independent contractor prong must be satisfied. This means that the work must be specially ordered or commissioned by the publisher, the work must fall into one of the nine enumerated categories of work, and there must be a signed writing between the parties where they agree that the work will be considered a "work made for hire."
costs may not be the biggest problem, but what about the freedom to make changes to the source (to fix a bad exploit, add a feature, ...)? I still remember the telecom, I used to worked for, being burned by them; we had to pay x thousand dollars for a pre-release patch/bug fix for their black box software...

Speed and quality of evolution/innovation is another factor. MS generally doesn't like open source (their sourceforge clone is a start, but really doesn't go far enough.), and it took forever for MS to catch up to open source with LINQ (and polish it). The same goes for their unit testing and ANT-like deployment tool. (Yes, NHibernate and NANT have been there; but MS pretty much snubbed them instead of embracing them.)

At the end of the day the MS copy machine is fast, but not as fast (or good) as the open source movement.
The real problem with a 120-135 degree posture isn't the tendency to slide off, it's the tendency to slack off... and the difficulty of getting things accomplished from that posture.

I don't think the study has factored in the use of a keyboard. It's not as easy to type when you're reclined backwards - it adds extra stress to the wrists and triceps (assuming your still typing on the desk).
i checked out the site, but I can't tell how it solves the credentials issue. Besides having a really tight focus on product niche - how is this different from Ebay in terms of credentials?

The only site selling stuff that I know of, and actually tackles / comes closest to solving the credentials issue is Facebook. The only problem with them is that I don't see that many listings compared to craigslist and ebay
For me the point here is not that he has a lawyer. The point is that he has a free, totally devoted lawyer. And that is scary.
A Solution to Too Much Email (funny comic)
30 inch monitors (because we love pixels)

They should love the font too, it's miserable.
Nice question, impossible answer to provide. I have raised capital for a few companies but have found the process different each time.
Lets just assume you have a product/service/technology that has a viable market potential. My first step is to define the size of the opportunity and my best path to an "exit". These two components will determine if you begin @ Angel funding, VC funding or personal credit card funding (or Y combinator:))
If you have a big enough opportunity and the connection to go straight to VC, congrats. So now lets assume you don't, and you are seeking Angel money. Here's ONE model......

Get your company as far along as possible without funding, take it to alpha, beta or public launch if you can.

Build your advisory board and be very good at tracking your key data points that drive your valuation and prove your business plan.

Identify potential funding resources through every means possible. Every major city has an Angel Group it seems now. Reach out and learn what the group has shown interest in and what company's they've invested in. If you think there is a good mix, use every resource the group offers but avoid the pay to share your company models (in my experience that is).

Get your pitch down to under 10 minutes, and be unbelievably good at it. Angels tend to like ultra passionate, company consumed entrepreneurs, because thats a consistent trait in successful ones.

Pitch, tweak, learn. Repeat process.

If you want to see a good video of Tim Draper discussing how to get funded, try this link - http://www.vator.tv/news/show/tim-draper-sings-fundraising-s...
Needless to say this is very cool.

Could someone explain the technical advantages of having it in javascript rather than as a java applet?

Obviously java applets are a pain, but at least right now they much more widely supported than the canvas element.
I normally wouldn't post this here, but I thought it was funny (and slightly on topic) in light of people saying (they get thousands of emails a day|friendfeed is too noisy|etc).
> "But they’ll never know what you want right now, and Google always does."

Matt, this appears to be your killer point, that search allows advertisers to know what you want right now. The limitation with search however is that there are things I am very likely to want that I don't search for.

Let me use an example. Often when people are about to go on holiday they announce it in Facebook by writing on someone's wall or updating status etc. Now if I said I was going to Cancun for example would't it be great for advertisers of tshirts, shorts and holiday insurance to advertise to me? Only Facebook can do this, Google cannot (I would have to do three separate searches, with FB I do nothing).

I think this goes beyond a friend recommendation because it links exactly to my plans. Its not only targeted but it shows what I want tomorrow. I think overall this is more targeted than google thanks to the demographic targeting placed on top which Google does not have. In Facebook, I could use the persons place of employment and age to work out their salary and offer two different holiday insurance schemes to the wealthy and the less fortunate. If I type in Holiday insurance in Google, advertisers cannot filter like that. And would think this likely to return a better ROI than Google search (as long as people pay attention to the ads! - the assumption being when ads are relevant people actually do).

So what I am saying is that there is a whole lot of data for Facebook to play with, don't rule them out yet. It will be very hard for them to pull this off but someone has to challenge the google monopoly and who are better placed than them.
I prefer standing when computing. For an elegant solution, you might want to look at Anthro carts; specifically the ones that adjust to standing height:

http://www.anthro.com/cpage.aspx?pid=200

Alternatively for the budget-minded, Phil Torrone pointed to this DIY for a stand-up desk a while back:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Stand-up-desk/
yes! what does that mean?
Where do you look for startup cofounders?
Any ideas, websites?
it's tech for getting more energy from fossil fuels

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/technology/16venture.html?...
I don't understand your logic. You type Cancun into Facebook and it hits you with "tshirts, shorts and holiday insurance". Why couldn't Google just do the same when you Googled for Cancun? That's not what Google does hit you with, but that's only because the market has decided that those ad slots should belong to travel agencies, etc. If ads ever took off on Facebook, it would presumably decide the same exact thing there.

I don't know about you, but like 99.9% of the population, when I travel to a new place I type it in Google first. I might type it into Facebook if I want to see if any of my friends will be there or have been there. But generally I'm Googling for what to do. It's gotten me through many new cities.

Also, you're giving Facebook too much credit for being able to parse natural language if you think this can scale for them. They might be able to target ads around specific keywords, but even that is going to be tough.
If you want to raise $1M you need a product people will believe in and see value using. Focus on the product. Build as much of as you can without funding. Then once you have something tangible and working (even in alpha) you can seek out the investors and they may actually be interested.
Interesting point. I think it's wrong, but it's definitely interesting.
I agree with your main point ("don't be a sharecropper" [1]), but as for the VB6 example, I don't think this is particularly convincing. It's not like VB6 users haven't had enough time to move over to VB.NET, and if they don't want to, they can still create applications using VB6. Existing VB6 applications are not suddenly going stop working because Microsoft isn't officially supporting VB6. What does 'support' mean anyway?

[1] http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
I don't think Django was inspired by Rails, but I could be wrong. CakePHP definitely was. In fact, I learned CakePHP by watching Ruby on Rails screencasts because I couldn't get RoR installed on a VPS way back when, while CakePHP installed effortlessly, yet didn't have many good tutorials.
Rails was released a year before Django, I think they win the prize as the most influential modern web framework.
Which means what? I'm pretty sure they didn't know or care about one another when they were used privately. I'm not arguing which one was more influential.
You could make the same argument for why advertising won't work for TV, newspapers, and magazines.

Google's model is nearly optimal in many cases, but I believe many advertisers still spend the majority of their money outside of Google. The reason is that there are two kinds of advertising, roughly: meeting demand, and creating demand. Google is good for the former ("I'm looking for X"), and TV has been great for the latter ("want to be important? You need this expensive car").
microsoft way is not very sportsman like
> "You type Cancun into Facebook and it hits you with "tshirts, shorts and holiday insurance". Why couldn't Google just do the same when you Googled for Cancun?"

That's the thing...with Facebook you don't have to search in order to be presented with relevent advertising. FB could parse natural language from the communications you are having with friends to display ads relevent to what you want now. Using my example above if i posted on my friends wall saying I am going to cancun then I would see the ads described above. However, that doesn't mean I woulnd't search in Google.

I agree, natural language parsing is very difficult but if Facebook could do that they may be on to a winner.