skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Since they seem to only have a couple problems up, you can keep trying until you get it, and try to be quicker on the next problems. Or just do it for fun, like problems on Project Euler (www.projecteuler.net for those that don't know).
PDF: http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf
CrowdSound Makes Suggestions a Popularity Contest
Peter Thiel is awesome
China: http://www.cwrblog.net/ - China Web 2.0 Review

Japan: http://www.tokyotronic.com/ - Tokyotronic
Volume of the n-ball?

Generally, what I would consider the defining equation for pi. Has no factor of 2?

V_n = pi^(n/2)R^n / Gamma(n/2+1) = C_n R^n

C_n = pi^k/k! for even n=2k

C_n = 2^(k+1)k!pi^k / (2k+1)! for odd n=2k+1

Of course we could just change the definition of gamma, but I prefer gamma as an extension of factorial.
Almost as bad as negatively charged electrons.
Jakob Nielsen said precisely the same thing nine years ago, in an article called "Metcalfe's Law in Reverse".

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990725.html
Seconded. Moving from San Jose to Mountain View had been an enormous increase in quality of life. I'd leave Castro Street second only to Shattuck Avenue (in Berkeley) in terms of affordable, excellent ethnic cuisine. There's even a used book store on Castro (though it pales in comparison to Moe's on telegraph).
I don't see why this is such a big deal. Scaling by a factor of 2 doesn't make any of the math lose it's beauty. The underlying math is still the same. Calling 30 minutes "an hour" doesn't make time go faster. It's all semantics, really.

Anyway, pi is so engrained in our mathematics that the costs of switching would surely be higher than any superficial, aesthetic benefits.
Let m and n be x-1 and y-1. Then the answer is simply (m+n)!/(m!n!).
They should pay the government of Nauru to rent their sovereignty. They can keep the "island" above sea level by building a mooring tower and tie seasteads to it. Their territory can be the 200 mile economic zone of Nauru.

Also, there's lots of healthy stuff that can be kept in dry form. (Fruits, Legumes, and grains.) They will also have the ability to keep things frozen. Chest freezers can be highly efficient. Especially if they are not opened very often.
Indiana once tried to pass a law saying pi actually equals 3.2

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_341.html
Both accounts are working fine for me.
Want success? Tell a good story(Seth Godin).
Turn a mobile phone into a microscope that diagnoses a disease
Designing for the Social Web: The Usage Lifecycle
Good, substantive point that anyone cheering on the glibness of the grandparent post should consider.
I like how he moves to microphone between and perpendicular to the water bottle and the coke can so it can't roll off the table.
is perfection a dichotomy paradox?
That's interesting.

I'm not trying to hijack the thread here, but the non-standard scrolling in Scribd bugs me. When I use two-finger drag on the macbook pro to scroll, scribd just doesn't move like a normal page.
5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People
That's what I entered, but it came out on Scribd!
http://thenextweb.org/

Good coverage of European companies
Yes! Bothered me as well.
This submission will probably never see the light of day now that it is buried at least 160 days deep, but I really enjoyed reading it
Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too
Good to know. Do you use their socket based api or the web services SOAP interface?
Facebook: Not going Microsoft way
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=179721
why aren't they repeating "don't be evil" more often?

i can't see it anywhere on press releases, ghealth's privacy policy, developer policy, faq or help pages.

"evil site:http://www.google.com/health/" - did not match any documents.

i was about to sign up and fill up some forms, age, sex, etc. anyway i guess they might already be able to take a good guess at those, but giving this info to google made me think twice about it, a little "don't be evil" would've perhaps helped give me a little encouragement
I'm sure the pirates will listen to "reason". Ultima Ratio Regum and all that.
Money doesn't buy happiness but it eliminates 90% of the problems that are caused by lack of it
This list is just silly. Herbie Hancock??
Why does anyone care what Scoble thinks? His prediction record is somewhat less than stunning.

Isn't it obvious by now that Scoble & A-list bloggers are just as clueless and hype-prone as mainstream media? Or are we still waiting for Silverlight to reboot the Web?
Facebook In Real Life
Also http://europeanstartups.com/
I've been to 7 other countries so far, and counting. I've seen architecture from Paris to Mexico.

Santana Row is not meant to be a town center. It's not the Champs Elysees. It's a high-end shopping area in San Jose. I mean, what do you want it to look like?

Your comment on the attitude of the people who shop there is just plain ignorant. How do you know what attitude they have? Did you stop and survey them all? It's incredibly small-minded to assume that of so many people.
Anytime I see someone try to use "ethics" to make an argument I instantly stop reading. Ethics and morality are human constructs and inefficient ones at that. The question isn't "Did I succeed at X by cheating/being unethical?" its "Did I succeed at X?" Everything else is superfluous. There are countless real-world "hacks" that require one to bend the rules or forgo being "nice" to accomplish a goal.
Scoble faces some of the same pressures and and incentives as the mainstream media; a need to be relevant, timely and first. It is what defines the 'A-list'; they are the bloggers who most resemble the establishment media.

That said, on this issue I think I agree with him, but my response is different; as a facebook refusenik and Crotchety Old Guy (Tm) I'm all for Microsoft borging Facebook and sinking into a giant quagmire of Suck; I just hope they don't take Flickr and the better parts of Yahoo! with them.
You really can't find a music scene like Austin's. They're perpetually in the top 3 by most people's standards.

I found SFs to be kinda lame, but then I'm not that into electronica. Guess it depends on your tastes.

What breed of dog?
Thanks for the constructive feedback. Both your wit and your insight serve as examples for all.
Living computer created with DNA and genetically altered bacteria
Argentina: http://palermovalley.com/ (but more related to a local event for startups, held about once a month, with many local web 2.0 developers and entrepreneurs).
I mostly feel my soul endangered, rather than enriched, when I walk down the street there. Someone assaulted my wife the first time we visited (long before I joined YC). I wasn't around, but thankfully a passerby helped out.

That's undoubtedly atypical though. I think it's relatively safe for a city its size.
After living near SJ, I'm not surprised at that. It's incredibly wealthy for a city that large.
I've wondered that too. Why doesn't Mexico set up a bunch of low-tax, corporate run, special economic zones to attract high tech businesses from the US? With low taxes, low cost of living, and a proper regulatory environment, many businesses would set up shop. Mexico could make an enormous amount of money.
Yes, but what's the clock rate. Give me gigahertz man!
I dislike the current system because it attributes a violation of copyright to the submitter that they're not actually responsible for. In practice it's not a real issue, it's just kind of tacky.

It would be better if all submitted PDFs were turned into Scribd documents, but each user had a profile option for whether to change their PDF links to point to the Scribd doc or to leave it pointing to the original download.
Who needs demographics when you've got fluffy stats like the article uses? Just spout of vague generalized assumptions about the feelings and supposed actions of multiple demographic groups. Stop when you've reach your 1000 word retainer.
Self Funded ImageShack Rumored To Raise Money From Sequoia
Ask YC: How do you discover niche content?
We are working on learning more about a niche domain. We would also like to leverage our exposure to new content in this niche domain to develop a Niche Social News feature for our niche market.

How do you go about discovering new niche content?

I have tried Google, Google Reader, Yahoo pipes and the other Social bookmarking websites, but not with much success. I suspect something is flawed in how I organize what I discover.

How do you guys do it?
I seriously question the economics of Zappos. I mean, I've ordered shoes there 4 times, and I've probably got a record of something like 6 returns total and 2 shoes purchased. They had to eat a ton on that.

I don't really see their ratio being high enough. I'm rooting for them, but I really feel like any day their prices are going to go up to MSRP and they're going straight out of business.

And I'd love to know what % of people take them up on the $1k.
Zappos CEO:  Top 10 lessons learned in e-commerce.
Evolutionary algorithms now surpass human designers
Safest City in US < Most violent anywhere else.

Johannesburg? Rio? Manila? Bogota? London? Honiara?
Article says 10% take the money and run.
Are you trying to find a new niche market, or get more information about a specific niche market?

If it's the former, you need to get interested in a niche market. I'm sure there's something semi-rare or different that you're interested in that isn't quite main-stream.

If it's the second, then that depends entirely on the market.
You are surprised that a webpage from 1996 has dead links? I am more surprised that any of the off-site ones work.
Atlanta has some very nice places. Little Five Points, Virginia Highlands, and West End all have lots of character. I had a friend who was a trapeze hobbyist stay at a cheap and huge repurposed warehouse (I wouldn't quite say "refurbished") on the west side. She had her trapeze rope strung up in a cavernous main room with brick walls decorated with her friends' art. She had bitchin' parties at which she would get a little drunk and perform (not the smartest idea, but entertaining).

Sure, you have to drive places in Atlanta. We just had more people crash at our place after going out, or we would crash at theirs. The music scene is healthy, if you care about that sort of thing. People are friendly. And I paid $340/month in rent in 2005 (that is not a typo).

The food is great. I have yet to experience anything quite like it outside of New York, and NY can't match the prices. The Vortex serves the best burgers this side of the grave, and Highland Bakery has a shrimp and grits with a spicy cheddar sauce that cannot be described in any earthly tongue.

Add in a very international flavor, 2 of the 10 gayest counties in America (Sorry to stereotype, but any city without a gay population probably sucks. They sense backwards boring closed-minded people and stay away.), and you have one cool city.

I can't speak for Atlanta's start-up scene, but gawd, what a city. I hear Austin is better, but Atlanta is like a mini-Austin from what I can tell.
The author knows this, and was making a merely aesthetic point which you seem to have sucked all the fun out of.
you should ask tony...he'll probably answer you
Links from other niche-content websites, usually forums. Google to start the hunt.

Here's how I found the HP fandom: I was browsing Salon TableTalk at work because I had nothing to do. Stumbled upon the Books section, then Harry Potter. Found that somebody had posted a some fanfiction they'd written (which at the time I thought was the leaked Book 4, because I had no idea what fanfiction was) along with a link to FanFiction.net. Started reading FanFiction.net. A few months later, found a review on FF.net that asked where all the good Harry Potter fanfiction had gone, and a reply that said "A lot of folks have migrated to SugarQuill or FictionAlley." That's how I ended up at FictionAlley.

I have a similar strategy with music, where I also have very niche tastes. Heard a Transsiberian Orchestra song on the radio that I absolutely had to find. Found it on a ratio FTP site, where it was filed in with a bunch of Savatage songs. Googled Savatage, found out they had the same producer and most of the same musicians. Checked out the official Savatage fan site, its forum has a section for "other bands", kept hearing repeated mentions of Dream Theater. Downloaded a couple of their songs, bought a couple of their albums. Checked out their fansite. There were mentions of a couple upcoming rock operas - Avantasia and Nikolo Kotzev's Nostradamus - that I ended up buying. My screen name actually came from this period of my life: I was looking for a fandom pen name that I could be reasonably sure would not be in use at any site I registered at, and had just bought the Nostradamus rock opera.
Think its a great idea it separates the employees that have already thought about quitting. It also gives an easy exit without any anxiety...
Sounds awesome and GREEN! Kudos!
Edge Economy Strategy in Action - Microsoft vs. Google
Google Health launches; Read the terms of service
Look out, Apple TV: The $100 Netflix Player has arrived
Facebook Users Just Want Entertainment
And the Winner of the Game Console Wars Is...
Web monitoring for ads? It may be illegal
So do you think we are closer to getting to AI than we were in the past or closer? Certainly, we have better understanding of cognition today. Modern understanding of the mind like we have now didn't really exists in decades previous along with better imaging technologies. Is there some reason why we can't build a general learning machine?
We need to discover more content about a specific niche market.
Lists like this are no fun unless there is at least one WTF item.

(Though I do think an argument could be made for Hancock.)
Microsoft should buy Yahoo, Facebook for what?
Firefox 3 On Track To Be Speediest Browser
Or even just installing Google Desktop and searching that when you are offline since it seems to index most HTML files you look at or are on your machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain
Erlang: "Let It Crash" Programming
Agreed. But touring bands do make it to SF at almost the same clip as they made it to Austin...the local scene is significantly less interesting, however, as far as I can tell. But I might be missing something because I, also, mostly lack the electronica appreciation gene. I give SF the benefit of the doubt on the music issue since many people do seem to feel it has a good music scene. I will merely accept that it's not "my" music scene, and remain pining for Emo's.

And my dog is a rescue mutt of dubious heritage...probably quite a bit of English Pointer descent in her genes, though. Not huge, but too big to be acceptable to most apartment complexes in the entire bay area--but we found a nice little house near downtown, so it worked out well.
Definitely, but I think someone like Wendy Carlos or Kraftwerk would make more sense.
you get the boot even before you start :-)
Using Compete.com to ‘Understand’ Techmeme and Its Audience
http://www.watblog.com/
http://www.alootechie.net/
http://www.desistartups.in/
http://www.thesmarttechie.com/
How about bribing employees to quit so they don't vest?
It wasn't me who wrote the "never felt bias" thing.

Of course not every women is the same, but I have heard many woman who were frustrated with their job say "maybe I'll just get pregnant". Among other things. Sure it is a bias. I am not ashamed to believe that men and women ARE different. I also did not say that every woman would be indifferent to financial prospects of her career, just that many would be.

Also I did not say "isn't it equally true", I was merely trying to make the point that bias is sometimes correct. Of course it doesn't prove my suggestion that women worry less about their career path. If I had a proof, I would not be writing here, I would publish a scientific paper.
Back in 2001 or so, a researcher called Leonard Adleman published a solution to the traveling salesman problem computed with strings of DNA and a PCR machine (a sort of DNA sequence copy multiplier).

Very slow beginnings. I am a biologist myself and curious to find out how far can we go.
A cell of E. coli divides in about 20 minutes, but DNA replication happens a lot faster.

The metaphor says: the DNA polymerase enzyme travels at the speed of a truck over the DNA highway.

See this link for some wild speculation of 'Teraflops' (they obviously don't count analysis time):

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v4/n1/full/embor719.html
Developers, Developers, Developers! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/ballmer_eggs/
You missed my point.

It's all relative.
Microsoft: don't get me started about (South) Africans
Quantcast #1
Compete #2
Alexa #99
I used to get a lot of this crap then I did the following:

1. I did a "reply all" (Everyone address is always in the To or Cc with these things) and asked very nicely that people stop sending me "chain mails and other jokes".

2. I wrote a giant email about how chain mails are basically for idiots and sat and waited for the first person to ignore my nice email. When that happened in a day or two, I did another "reply all" and emailed my dissertation out 50 times.

3. I did that once more to a different chainmail.

I've never received a chainmail or other retarded email since. :-)
Don’t Look For BFFs When Pitching For VC Dollars
Whoops, what I meant to say was how many regret not.
They probably did eat a bit on that, however:

1) Most customer's don't return stuff anywhere close to the rate you do (they usually get it right the first time. It's also a hassle to return stuff, even if it's free).

2) I can imagine with your atrocious rate ratio of returns, you'd be far more inclined to pay a few more dollars to make that experience better via Zappos then stinge out and deal with paying for the return shipping and poor customer service issues elsewhere. (i.e. if they raise their prices, who cares? Everyone knows Zappos was built on their excellent customer service and selection, not their prices)

(Note: I personally haven't used Zappos myself, but I've heard Tony talk about his customer service oriented culture in person and they sure seem to be doing just fine with it).
SF has a fantastic comedy scene at least.
There are startups in other countries?
I can see this being more efficient if it's a surprise.

Now that the tactic is public, some may apply and go through the training just for the buyout, making the filter much more expensive.
It's a very interesting company to say the least. I saw a SXSW presentation by their CEO and how much he emphasized on their culture. You can email him and ask for Zappos Culture book, it has nuggets from a lot of their employees; it's a good way to understand the company.

http://www.slideshare.net/zappos/zappos-sxsw-presentation-to...
Last time I've been to Silicon Valley it was 2003 and I hated it: the place had no soul compared to our beloved Austin. Then I got hired by a kick-ass Austin startup staffed by some ex-SV (and ex-Seattle) residents who acted like moving to Austin was the best move they ever did.

Fast forward to 08 and I have started to think about moving to SV again due to supposedly better "startup climate" and my recent trip to the startup school cured me again: no way in hell I'll ever live there, despite their 200+ VCs and "energy" that PS was writing about: that's not enough to compensate for the overall dullness. Silicon Valley simply isn't inspiring: one of the reasons I want to work for myself is because I despise the corporate environment (walls of cubicles). Guess what - the entire SV feels like a wall of cubicles, even when you're not at work.
Major reason to use TextMate is that it's got a good file tree overview, like eclipse. I find that working with rails and constantly looking around and inspecting the file tree is very pleasant in textmate. I like emacs, but not for jumping around between files, and the speedbar is horrible. On textmate if something happens in the file system it's instantly reflected when you switch back into textmate. I wish the speedbar would recieve a good rewrite in emacs.

Otoh, development on textmate seems to be pretty slow or nonexistent, it would be nice if split view would have been implemented by now.
If you can't find it on Google, you might be looking at too small a niche to be of use. You can type in "Dachshund Lovers" and find ten pages of search results about them. If a group is any smaller than that, there just might not be any content to find, or at least not enough for a social news site.

I assume you've used Google Blog Search and Technorati, then followed links from the blogs you did find? Social bookmarking sites aren't very great for highly non-technical niches. Your Average Joe has never heard of delicious.
Ulteo Virtual Desktop: your Linux applications on Windows
Ask YC: What tools do you use for performance testing your web-application?
I would like to do some performance tests on my application before getting beta. Do you know any good tools, preferably open-source, to measure response times during concurrent access? I tried out openSTA, but find it unstable and rather akward to use.
Jon Kleinberg... he's the guy who wrote my graduate algorithms course textbook. And reportedly did the research that eventually inspired PageRank.
How many programmers own a half share in their own business at 25?

How about the whole thing at 19?
What a horribly mangled headline. Why not say, "Girl's don't want to become engineers?"
The ones that require the recipient to forward the letter for one reason or another drive me nuts. Like this totally useless one I got recently (hint: there's nothing wrong).

What's wrong here

AAA
BBB
CCC
DDD

<snip>

XXX
YYY
ZZZ

Did you know that 80% of UCSD students could not find
the error above? Repost this with the title "what's
wrong here", and when you click "Forward ", the answer
will be really obvious.

The worst thing is we're seeing the EXACT SAME THING in disguise as social-viral-loop-Facebook-app nonsense. "Your friend rated you! To see the results, rate 10 friends first!"

And I wonder why I stopped using Facebook soon after they launched the app platform...
Seconded. We forgot Seymour Cray, but remembered... Arianna Huffington? Burn on the rag for doing a "Top <N> List", and burn on me for reading it.
There's already a good Firefox extension for just this: Leechblock
Agreed in spirit though I disagree completely with your actual list. What's with all the mediocre mega-chains? How about Paxti's, gyros gyros, Homma's Brown Rice Sushi, the Counter, Vino Locale? A bit of a walk north will take you to Cafe Borrone and Jan's Deli, the latter of which happens to have one of the greatest turkey sandwiches ever. If you have a car and you venture away from trendy downtown PA you can find some pretty good authentic taquerias as well as any variety of Asian you would want....

...Damn, I need to move back to the Bay Area.