skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't see how it won't end up looking like a massive cut in entitlement spending, probably along the lines of Paul Ryan's most recent doomed proposal:

http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/

This isn't to cheerlead Republican strategies (after all, I think the heart of Ryan's proposal is decidedly anti-Republican, since Republicans and Democrats alike seem to have based their party orthodoxy on not cutting spending, be that in the form of tax cuts or increased entitlements, respectively), merely to offer an example of the kind of cutting that will, but necessity, have to happen.

Of course, there's always the "collapse of the US" scenario.

Optimists, therefore, will prepare for the painful years of budget-cutting by refusing to rely on entitlements in their later years.

Pessimists? Well, I suppose joining a survivalist encampment doesn't sound that bad...
It would be interesting to give members a trust rating and weight voting according to that trust rating, like Google does for link juice from trusted domains.
Believe me, there are enough people hoarding old computers. I could find all of those in my dad's basement. There is an official computer museum, we have our bases covered.
Indeed. Startups are great because it's a chance to stand on merits, on what you can do and have done. Why waste time dissing eachother?

Just make your city the best.
It wasn't the Montessori system that put men on the moon. I'm pretty sure it was bright young men sitting in high school math classes, learning to use their slide rules and practicing integration until they got it perfect, then going on to engineering school where they learned even more complex mathematics and physics. Have you ever looked at a math or physics book from the 50s? They lack the full-color illustrations, story problems, and "extra activities" of a modern high school text, yet somehow generations of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers mastered the techniques.
How Ponzi scheme mastermind Kenneth Starr lured his victims
I've always found that Franklin quote to be a little misleading. The mere act of being a member of a tribe, much less a nation, involves giving up some liberty for security: you're no longer allowed to punch your neighbors in the face for no reason, but now you have some extra spears on your side when some fellow from the next tribe over tries to steal your horse. (Or rather, if you punch a neighbor, you have to deal with whatever consequences the tribe tries to apply to you.)

Join a tribe: can't stab your neighbors anymore. Join a nation: not allowed to bomb buildings 500 miles from your home anymore. I'm all in favor of finding the right balance between liberty and security (usually more towards the liberty side), but the idea that you can get security without giving up liberty just doesn't work.
How Eli Lilly Let a Billion-Dollar Molecule Slip Away
Do not take a "different route" based on the informed assumptions of one blogger. This is one person is too small a sample. Unless they have tried and failed at this exact idea or something very similar to it-chances are they are rehashing data to reinforce their opinion.

If this amazing idea of yours solves and brings value to solving a fundamental problem: then the challenge is in the execution, not your idea. The seed is an investment to get the idea in play against an up and running execution. Make it a best effort given the resources available in fastest possible O(n) to beta.

Absorb the essential and warranted "caution flags" of this naysayer and incorporate into your product's execution.
A lot of your points sounded more like i-banking culture vs startup culture to me, but those are two very separate worlds.

An opinion piece from someone who's actually worked in the NY startup scene would have been a lot more enlightening.

But best of luck either way.
That's what I'm worried about. Not everyone has the resources to make everything accessible to everyone.
With respect to Bob Dylan, the meteorological charm of the Bay Area (and SF in particular) is not in its seasons, but in the often dramatic changes between its microclimates. It's a much different phenomenon than the broad, homogenous and slowly cycling climate of the East Coast.
Wow. I've actually been written up in the newspaper in picture 6. That's kind of a trip.
Yodlee
Darn...then i have to move to ny. ;)
China’s Incredible ‘Car-Straddling’ Bus [Gallery] » INFRASTRUCTURIST
>Unfortunately, it was procured in the pre-Web 2.0 era when "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" looked a lot more solid than it does today -- and now it's out there in the wild, and replacing it would cost millions.)

I don't believe it.

I'm sure you can find lots of software consultants with posh cars and big offices to tell you it would cost millions. But really. The PDF is on a file server, all you need to do is link it for the client, how hard can it be.

A decent web developer could probably do it and test it cross browser in a few days - lets say it's a man-month, that's going to be what, $20k absolute top for the project. Even if you had to start from scratch it wouldn't take $millions.
benjaminlotan,

Haha! I have thought of basically everything you wrote. I'm glad that you get it.

I will be putting a status for every project to denote its stages (e.g. idea, private beta, public, etc). There will be an area where people can browse the apps that are waiting to be reviewed. Very much like the 'Review my startup' threads here on HN.

One of the motivations for me when I started building the site was to find people to collaborate with. I want to know other developers who are coding in android, python, django & appengine and also the ones who are interested in a particular category (like classifieds, mobile). I also decided to add location so you'll be able to see other developers near you.

I have a larger vision for the site (beyond developers/side projects) but it will all depend on what I learn from releasing it just to developers first.
Can someone with both the iphone 4 and an ipad comment on how the screens compare? The iphone 4 screen is so great that I'm worried the ipad screen will seem disappointing by comparison.
The problem I have with her speech is that it is speaking in wishful grand platitudes, as most V/S-torian speeches do. I know several public school teachers and most have as their primary goal teaching students how to learn and to love learning. It's not like they want to create drones.

But here is where the problems begin. How do you teach a 9th grader how to learn to think about math problems? When I first saw my first geometric proof I thought, "Big deal. Why do I need to learn the proof to something everyone knows is true?" It seemed pedantic to me. But it probably deal a great deal for teaching me how to think analytically. But as a 13 year old, given the choice, I think I'd argue that studying NWA lyrics are far more useful and enlightening.

Again, 9th grade is when a lot of my friends dropped out. Not so they could go grap a copy of Apostle, because the current math curriculum wasn't challenging enough. But because sex, Nintendo, beer, and drugs are a lot more fun than just about anything you can teach in class.

And here's the other problem I have with her speech. No one has been able to construct such an environment, even on the smallest of scales. No charter school, no private school, no home school that I've ever seen.

I think her speech is more wishful thinking than anything else. As a child I used to wish that medical science was wrong. Eating chocolate, pizza, soda, and ice cream were actually really good for you. I theorized that they had overlooked some key facts in body chemistry. But my wishful thinking didn't change the fact that some things are the way they are... and maybe even for good reason.
It seems worth pointing out that you can affect the safety of as many or more people by walking into a skyscraper, stadium, festival, &c., or by walking near train tracks when a train or two is due to come by, a major bridge during rush hour, &c. The searches may be easiest to do for air travel, but the same thing could be done nearly as easily for any tall building.
"Breaking news! Android Becomes Top Mobile OS in the US!"

Apple Fan's Hasty Rebuttal, "caveat caveat caveat only if you don't consider caveat caveat caveat and you have to consider caveat caveat caveat in which case I don't even know why news about Android shows up on HN at all".
Re: Children - at least the TSA has some clue about this:
"...arrangements may be made for non-travelers to accompany children. Contact your airline to make arrangements."
Persistence with statistics on your side
Yeah, this is the other thing I don't understand about this story. The old book was not ADA compliant and another solution was provided. Why is the other solution not valid anymore when you do a one-for-one switch from books to kindle? What changed that required the kindle to be an all-in-one solution? Or, was there a push here because it provided an opening to force changes on Amazon?
http://mifos.org
IRC: #mifos

This is a web based, open source banking software designed for microloans - software for ending poverty. It needs and welcomes volunteers! Uses Java, Spring Framework, and has many developers all over the world. They'll help you get up to speed.
In this case, dragging and dropping files out of the browser needs to be supported by the browser. In this case Chrome and a standard needs to be defined to do so.
Growing apples in the traditional way is a laborious, hands-on process in Japan
Surely you, too, were once in high school--are not all of those phrases you quoted the exact sort of thing you would have said at that point? I was like that too, occasionally, and oooh did I feel like a clever fellow for thinking such radical thoughts.
I love it. So much so that I think the next time I upgrade, I'll get a desktop not a laptop as my main machine; the iPad meets all my on-the-move needs.

I use it for media access (movies/tv shows), documents (books/PDFs) and a little web browsing. Email stays on the BlackBerry tho'. Actually even at work I'm using it, as a third screen for reading documentation on.
Hirehive, and the guys starting it, is pretty cool but I'm not sure why this post was upvoted so high. It didn't really make (or attempt to make) a good rebuttal to most of the points in Antonio's post. It's not like Antonio was saying "NY sucks for everything". He was just saying it wasn't the ideal environment for tech start ups, which is true imo.

The only two things I partially disagreed with Antonio on were on food and cost of living. It's not impossible to find a cheap place to live with roommates in NY, and people in NY take food seriously. I knew a lot of people who cooked well; just as good as SF and the Bay Area or better.
Awesome. Thank you. If only it had a Linux server version!
I believe the joke is that he has a negetive net worth due to student loans.
Brainstorm with a group of people I respect. Put the idea to the test to foresee inconvenients and opportunities I may not have considered after a long time thinking about it myself.

Then I just go and code the core of it ugly and fast into simple tests to make sure it'll fly.

Then I go out and start building a first release with minimum functionality, release it to a closed alpha test group, iterate, iterate, iterate, go beta and cross my fingers.
Good points, all. I'm not advocating that they should upgrade. I understand they're in budget slashing mode. Just pointing out that the longview approach would likely be cheaper and that their "more cost effective" statement should probably include a caveat that it's based on short-term cost analysis.
To those who suggest that the pat-down searches are as intrusive or more intrusive than the electronic strip searches: no

I haven't been through an electronic strip search, so I can't speak to that. I can speak to the last time I had a pat-down at the airport: I found it pretty invasive. I've never thought of myself as a big "personal space" guy, but here is this TSA agent, grabbing aggressively at all of my pockets, having me empty them out for him, etc. All the while, I'm angry, but I know that I can't complain or give him a hard time because he's in a position of power to give me a much harder time, make me miss my flight, whatever. It's so frustrating when you know it's just security theatre, and doesn't do anything besides make people feel safer.

When I asked "must we do this?" he gave me the option of doing it in private (no thank you) and told me that I consented to this by entering the checkpoint. It's like click-wrap licensing, only with your feet.

There is no third option for people who don't want their nude photos persisted who also don't like being groped by strangers.
And? Why would anyone other than an art student want a body scan of every person going through Chicago on a busy day? What is the horror that will befall me if someone sees me naked?
IIRC, Resistor has open hack nights every Tuesday or Thursday. If you hang out and make stuff, you won't get turned away. I totally agree though. I wish space wasn't at such a premium in New York. The whole community would do well with a more open Resistor.
> Not sure what to call the iPhone, what category it is, but did they erect any barriers to keep Google out of it?

The "no developing apps with cross-platform toolkits" policy is pretty anti-competitive.

> As long as they control their own platform they're happy.

Then why the patent suit against HTC?
That is a good point, if all the contributions are funneled through individuals anyway, what good does the limit serve?

My guess is that the standard method for contributing, say 240,000 is to hire 100 lobbyists, each of whom contribute the individual max (and take a cut as their lobbyist salary.) Certainly seems like it should be illegal, but I'm not sure it is. Limiting contributions would make that harder, as you'd have to hire 25 times as many lobbyists, but certainly not impossible.

My guess is this is Lessig's compromise, considering the free speech guarantees corporations enjoy. I'm sure he'd rather use more direct methods for blocking corporate influence if he didn't think the court would overrule it.
I do like people, probably far more than I like spending time on computers. Which is part of why I dislike talking about other people, as that tends to focus on the things I find weird/strange/unpleasant/distracting/irritating about people.

I mean, whether you talk about people or not, you still have those thoughts. But I find that if I keep them to myself rather than share them with others, it's easier to not become attached to them. The more you talk about them, the more those thoughts anchor themselves in your memory and then they become the basis for future interaction. If you're always referring to one of your coworkers as irresponsible, you're a lot more likely to assume that they didn't get their work done on time (or whatever).
Sauce have a point though, if there are new sites being made then cost of supporting IE6 is going up and up for the new sites, for sure. Is there anything stopping the use of IE6-tab or a gov modified version of it?
I think calling Blippy the 'darling of silicon valley' is giving them way too much credit. They had a ton of publicity likely due to the huge rounds they were raising, and the controversy of the product - before even the controversy of their security flaw.

At the same time, isn't almost all of the service conducted via mobile apps, so the traffic likely wouldn't show up on Compete anyway (I could be wrong on that, somebody please correct me if I am).
The iPhone 4 screen is, without question, vastly superior to the iPad screen. The difference is so plainly obvious that there is no comparing the two. That said, the iPad screen is still beautiful and is perfectly suitable for reading. My Kindle has been all but abandoned in favor of the iPad so I can read in the dark.
Testing PHP Across OSes, Versions of PHP and Databases
An opt out, I love these guys' verbiage. As a master of personal organization, I've flown without id a few times and yes, I was mostly wondering about the chance of getting an extra search at the gate. Which, really, isn't that big of a deal either and certainly not compared to someone taking digital naked pictures of you.
So you would strongly suggest that I get that case? (At least after waiting a little while and seeing positive reviews)
They just axed all new school building and structural maintenance across the entire country.

Not quite. They axed the Building Schools for the Future programme which is only part of the school building budget.
I've become rather accustomed to my netbook setup actually: http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-netbooks-part-2-asus-ee...
The analogy of iPhone:Android::Mac:PC really holds on this front. Everytime I use my MBP I can't help but feel I get nickle and dimed for little necessary utility apps just to get things done (want to change the acceleration curve on your mouse? That's $20!) -- things that would normally be free in Windows land are $5-$20 in Mac land.

On my Windows XP and 7 PCs I can usually get 95% of what I need at $0. The open ecosystem simply fosters a cheaper price point, which is good in some ways for consumers (but bad in other ways) -- but not so great for entrepreneurs.
While I wasn't a huge fan of the tone here ("They really don’t give a shit, huh?"), it does seem like something that needs to be brought to everyone's attention.
It seems blindingly obvious to me that getting rid of the bingo card would hurt sales. It doesn't matter what you replace it with, nothing is going to communicate "I have bingo cards" better than a picture of a bingo card.

Here's a much more interesting question: Have you found the optimal bingo card? What if you ditched the blue circle, and just made the card bigger? What about the font/colors? Can you get a 1% increase in sales just by iterating your existing logo?
That's why we plan on moving back. A little writing doesn't hurt though. I think a bit of pride and cheerleading can push New York to be better.
I wish this story would have just been a link to the actual decision. This article is just the news story wrapped in a Sauce Labs ad. I love the idea of Sauce Labs but is a tongue-in-cheek response to an actually interesting and controversial news story worthy of its own HN post?
very nice. I wrote a very similar app last year but sold the domain (todomu.com) last week.

May I suggest base32 encoding the ID to produce a short url such as thingler.com/a3d instead of that massive md5 hash?
> New York is the capital of food, fashion, music, finance, diplomacy, culture and news

It's also full of humble and modest people ;-)

I appreciate the fine rantiness of the post (and the one it's responding to, for that matter), but I have one serious criticism:

> The big things (tm) in tech right now are social, mobile, and local. These work best when you have a lot of people and a lot of stuff all mashed together. It’s not a coincidence that Foursquare is happening in New York and not Palo Alto.

The problem here is that you're building stuff that _only_ works in super-dense urban areas like New York. We need local and social and mobile stuff that works for the rest of the world too. If Foursquare's ambitions are limited to NY that's legitimate, but your argument is sort of specious: that Palo Alto is inferior because they aren't building applications that don't actually work well in places like Palo Alto (let alone all the still-less dense parts of the country).

Oh, and New York's food carts have nothing on Portland. So there!
Considering how many people here seem to be using it for simple browsing and book reading, perhaps a better question is, is it a $500-900 value or would a lower price point make more sense considering the typical use-case?
Whoa the refresh is really fast on it. This feels almost like a chat system.
ActiveX controls work in IE8, so they probably wouldn't need to be rewritten or ported. But we'll never know. The UK government is short circuiting the process by asserting just the act of testing would be too burdensome. I call bullshit.

[disclosure: I wrote that blog post, so consider my opinions here highly biased. :-) ]
Patrick, it sounds like you're performing "orthodox" statistics. That's likely to be good enough for this problem, but have you considered Bayesian statistics at all? Your conclusions could be very different.
> His expenses(400K mortgage, insurance, taxes, etc) is 2500 a month.

A different point of view is that his expenses are 12500 a month and FedGov is paying him a 10k/month interest subsidy, and that he is upside down by 150k and accounting for FedGov price supports as an asset. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Theoretically that makes sense, but it doesn't address the real issue. If you cut taxes for the rich, everyone else just pays more, unless you directly address government inefficiency/corruption. Until that's done, no amount of tax cuts or tax hikes will make a smidge of difference.
Flying between Schengen countries, 99% of the time I have my bag X-Rayed and my ID checked by airline staff on check-in, and that's it. At no point do I even have contact with a government official.

Land border crossings are even more of a non-event, you have to pay attention or you might miss them. In some countries you can indeed be IDd on the spot though. Not that it's ever happened to me (except by traffic police checking my license).

Entering or leaving the Schengen area is a slightly different story - you pass through emigration/immigration, plus some countries like the UK are slightly more draconian about air travel "security" and have body scanners. I assume your trip was before Switzerland's entry to the Schengen zone in December 2008?
Yes. And since I lived in the UK my government impounded Icelandic owned assets up to their value[1] to pay me back my money. Yay for international relations!

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businesslatestnews/318519...
Did you read the article?

"[L]ast week [Amazon] announced a new generation of Kindles that are fully accessible to the blind. While the Justice Department was making demands, and Perez was making speeches, the market was working."
Thomas speaks much sense here. Relatedly, that is exactly the attitude you should take with cops who try to ask you questions or seize your papers or effects. "I respectfully decline. If you are not arresting me, I am leaving; if you do not have a search warrant, leave my property expeditiously. Have a nice day."
what I want to know is how come they didn't milk it by releasing a slight upgrade every few years like they did with warcraft?
This hopelessness shows up in the US as well. It's the people who fall off the unemployment stats and have given up looking for work. Another group of people stay on government assistance because they realize that paying for daycare, rent, etc. would add up to more than they make. So, they live off government assistance as long as possible.
I replied that I could make a transmitter, but that I would have problems building the digital interface, since the only ZX Spectrum available to me in the department was occupied day and night by colleagues (more for fun than for work

That will dash the illusions of the youngsters that the pre-Internet age was a hive of distraction-less productivity, eh?

Great tale.