skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Best Startup City - Outside the USA?
I know the recommendation is that your startup should locate in the Bay Area or another startup hub for the best access to resources and networking.

But for many people, the US is not an option. These days you can't necessarily easily get a visa, especially if you're a young startup.

So, the question is, what location is the most like SF in all the ways that are beneficial for starting a startup but outside the USA?

We're a two person team. Founders have been together for a decade. One is engineer with deep experience, other is marketing and design expert. We're already slightly successful with our first product that has pointed the way to the Big Product for us.

We can relocate just about anywhere in the world, except the USA. Our passports will allow us to visit most countries without a visa and we should have little trouble getting work/residency visas in countries that welcome entrepreneurs.

So, where's the silicon valley besides silicon valley?

We've thought about:
Toronto- seems to have a very strong startup scene, but this is just an impression.

Bratislava- Near vienna, but relatively low cost. Seems to be growing in leaps and bounds and has a well educated populace. Environment of low regulation and capitalism, so this could be the startup hub of the next decade. Might not be that now.

Big Cities in Asia- There are a number of candidates here, from Manila to Bangkok. Seems the creation of a middle class has unleashed a wave of creativity and desire to create internet startups amongst the youth in asia. Hong Kong is an obvious possibility.

But these are just impressions. We'd like to find a place where there is the possibility of having relatively low costs, since the access to venture capital will not be the same as it would be if we were in the Bay Area.

But access to talent, and more importantly, a startup culture seems like it would be really valuable.

But where can you find this best outside the US?
Econtalk is my favorite podcast. For those who might be put off by economics, here are a couple of interviews that readers here on HN might find interesting:

Paul Graham on Start-ups, Innovation, and Creativity http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/paul_graham/

Paul Buchheit on Google, Friendfeed, and Start-ups http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/09/buchheit_on_goo.htm...
When I read the loser will "forfeit" their bid I took that to mean the bid is voided or cancelled, so I don't lose anything. But in your scenario it is much harsher and therefore much much much more stupid of a proposition.
No, truly, in this style of auction (sometimes called an entrapment auction), the loser does genuinely have to fork over whatever their last (losing) bid was.
How do you prevent gaming the system with a limit of two bidders? With low user numbers at a given point in time, is anonymity enough?

With an unlimited number of bidders it's not dissimilar to the pay per bid model used by the likes of MadBid and Swapoo and at least as potentially profitable, at least until the point the government realises it's essentially gambing and decides to regulate accordingly.
Webfaction, Rackspace Cloud and Heroku.
When 81% Passing Suddenly Becomes 18%
Rogue San Fran IT admin denied motion for retrial
Free Beautiful Rakhi Wallpapers, Rakhi Festival Pictures, Rakhi Photos
Raksha Bandhan or Rakhi is a Hindu festival, which celebrates the relationship between brothers and sisters. This day is also known as Raksha Bandhan and celebrated on the full moon day of the Hindu month of Shravana in India. Raksha Bandhan is not just about rakhi, roli and mithai... It's also about the unique bond between a brother and a sister. On this auspicious day, sisters prays to God for the safety of her brother and tie the sacred thread on the wrist of their brothers as a symbol of love and affection. Brothers' bless their sister and present them gifts. There are so many rakhis available in market like designer rakhi, fancy rakhis, dori rakhi, crystal rakhi, rudraksh rakhi, raksh bandhan rakhi, and beautiful rakhi. Here is latest Free Beautiful Rakhi Wallpapers, Rakhi Festival Pictures, Rakhi Photos.
While I am an inadvertent bash progammer--an astonishing number of lines of code end up in bash--I view the python challenge as more of an tutorial tool, and don't advocate replacing my shell scripts with python.

I see this as a good way to learn python in the context of small problems to develop basic proficiency.
What planet are you on where 10% returns are easy to get? Interest rates are about 1% right now for fixed-return investments. It seems to me that there's no such thing as a safe investment these days and there hasn't been one for a while. Please advise!
It's really critical to note the comment he made about finding the tech founder first. The most important thing in programming efficiency is previous experience.
> "The viral loop probably lies in encouraging people to sign their existing friends up so that we can better classify the kind of people a user gets along with."

So something like: 'Hey friends, some of you should spend your time to take this online questionnaire, so that I can benefit by having this site find me some other people to hang out with besides you lot. Also, if you think it is a jerk move for me to ask you to help me replace you in my life, then the site might be able to help you find someone similar to me who can fill my slot in the social circle.'
Αρχική σελίδα του Mozilla Firefox
Caltech's Underground History
I think you would be surprised at the number of people who own stocks, either through a retirement account (401k, Roth), or a brokerage account.

They may not own many shares, but they are invested in stocks.
Certainly it's wise to keep some money in reserve through the course of your life. Thanks to my savings I left a boring job last week and have the luxury of taking my time to find or create something genuinely interesting to replace it. In the final arc of your days though it's time to convert potential into actuality.

As for the military, I don't think it's really analogous at all. At least in the modern era a standing army is a constant drain on finances and a constant temptation to extremely expensive mischief. How much healthier would the U.S. economy be now if we had disbanded all conventional forces after WWII and maintained instead a small but sufficient nuclear deterrent?
Well, the more internal links and the less external links you have, the better for pagerank. PR just formalizes the random surfer model: what is the probability that someone who just randomly clicks links is on your page after n clicks.
A lot of real classics: well worth bookmarking and exploring.
Hacker Spoofs Cell Phone Tower to Intercept Calls
Anything on 5by5: http://5by5.tv/
I've also read in many places that the truly wealthy don't invest in the open market at all, but rather in private investment funds with high barriers to entry and much better, on average, returns.
"The skeptical and the secular also need stories of martyrdom..."
For lack of a better, more constructive comment:
This is no good.

This is clearly the framework for those shady penny auction sites like beezid, quibid and whatever the hell other thousand clones have sprung up.

These sites are unethical. I feel like your about page is trying to present banksta as some other more positive purpose when it's really not.
The design is lacking and of course the sample bidding thing consisted of me clicking a button... not sure what I was supposed to get out of that...

I do not support your site.
So what stocks have you been trading since 1410AD?
I listen to podcasts all day while I work. I've consumed hundreds of hours of all types of podcasts. No Agenda is the best show on the internet.

Edit: There is plenty of 'real news' tabloid shit though.

The value in No Agenda is the deconstruction of media and the calling out disguised propaganda. Thanks to No Agenda, I realize why the local news is covering 'Jersey Shore', I can see that a ten minute news segment with no interruption is being secretly paid for, and I know to check the sponsors of every news story and check out the history of the journalist.

Maybe I'm biased, since I've always been extremely skeptical of any entrenched establishment, but I don't lack for intelligence or critical thinking and I think that is the cause of my anti-establishment tendencies.
I'm not an expert in game theory (I just had a half-completed econ degree once upon a time) but your analysis is spot on as far as I can tell. The pareto efficient outcome is for the first agent to bid $1 and for the second agent to quit without bidding. If there is a counter bid, then the first player will have an incentive to bid higher to avoid a loss. The second player would then have to counter bid in order to avoid a loss as well, and so on. At the $20 mark nothing changes: at that point both players are now trying to minimize loss. In any case, any other alternative from the pareto efficient $1 vs $0 bid will cause at least one agent to have a less preferable outcome, and hence that strategy would be chosen by a "logical" player.

Maybe more interesting would be to have each agent pick a bid in advance and reveal the bids simultaneously. Of course, the optimal strategy there would be to just bid as close to $20 as possible and hope for winnings to accumulate over time.

And in all of this it's not clear how the proprietor of this site will make money out of this deal.

Feel free to correct me if someone thinks this is wrong: perhaps there is a reason I never finished that degree. :)
I have a VPS, but I'm wondering what happens when you just pay to "host your site" in some defined infra-structure (Python+MySQL for example) ?
I was going to let the domain expire and figured this would be a good placeholder. So far no takers, but I bet between now and next May I'll make ten bucks. I've already made a few cents off the ads.
Ask HN: How many concurrent projects do you have?
If just one at a time, how do you resist following the tangents which come up in any project?
First, I'll mention what I no longer do: rent servers by the month from places like 1and1 or Rackspace. You probably get good value, but at an admin cost.

What I do use:

1. VPS from a quality hosting company. I use RimuHosting and people I know also like Linode. I like the extra level of managed server support for backup, maintaining RAID devices, etc.

2. AWS - love AWS. Some people have problems with performance of SimpleDB and SQS but these services handle queries in parallel so, for example, for a web app that needs to access a lot of data to render a page, queries can be done all at once. (Same comment on AppEngine's datastore)

3. AppEngine - great if your application is a good fit for the platform. Watch out for long loading request times: I use Java with Objectify, and I can keep loading request times down to about 1 second. (Non-loading requests are obviously a lot faster).

4. Heroku - for Rails apps. Love it.
Here's the best tip I could give you: Hire a designer.

Personally, I don't see a business here. I even tried to bid for fun and it wasn't fun. I guess you're trying to create a new form of gambling?? The thing for me is that it sounds like such a losing proposition I don't know why I would risk my money. There are plenty of other forms of gambling that, at the very least, have better odds, surely..?
I don't think the German soldiers speaking English is a research problem, so it seems to be a rather contrived illustration of your point.

Whereas I can see your point, I don't particularly agree with it. When it comes to domains where I do have special knowledge of a subject, I see the errors on my own. When it comes to domains I don't have that special knowledge, I always find it fascinating to learn that Hollywood are just as incompetent across those fields as well. As well as finding out how those domains differ from the Hollywood rendition of them.
I like Hardcore History. The guy sounds exactly like Glenn Beck in his voice and speaking style, which made it nearly impossible for me to listen to at first. But, now that I'm over that, it's great.
What's a VPS?
OK, I got it. Well, each URL is still a (60,000)-dimensional vector, just that 59990 entries happen to be zero and the 10 that are non-zero have certain values which show how many times that tag was chosen. Problem is that not the same ten are nonzero for each URL. Did I get it right?

So what I was suggesting was to perform some off-the-shelf projection method on this data, for example principal components analysis (PCA) which will project your data from 60,000 into say 20-dimensions (as you choose) and then for each URL you will have just 20 numbers which are directly comparable across URLs. You can then more easily do k-nn on this data.

The advantage is that:
1) you reduce noise and the data will be easier to handle
2) the obtained new "components" can be interpreted as more subtle descriptors of the URLs than the original tags.
For example one component could become the "techiness" of the URL, the other the "personalness" the other the "comediness", etc. All this comes out automatically from the data and you can interpret it by looking at what mixture each component will have of the original features (the tags)..

This is just a suggestion, I mean, the algorithm seems to be great as it is, but still, the technique seems a bit crude: if one page is labeled "tech" the other "technology", I think it will miss the connection. However, PCA could find out that these features are related. etc. etc. etc.
For those inspired to try something like this, posterous is a pretty good tool simply because it's so simple to email a photo to it after taking it with an iPhone or similar device.
In general if you follow the guides available from people like slicehost/linode etc in how to get your VPS secure it is likely to be more secure than some shared hosts seem to be.

You do need to keep on top of keeping the VPS up to date but that isn't much work.
I can understand this if I invest in something like an index fund, which is updated regularly to reflect a particular stock market. But it doesn't help if I invest in companies X, Y and Z. They might go bankrupt, in which I will lose my money completely.
Life is too short to not enjoy it.
Ask HN: What code repository to use?
Ask HN: What code repository to use?

For past few years I've been working on an application which is basically an alternative secure e-mail system and is based on alternative secure domain names (it means that I can generate the domain names for my customers myself). It represents a client and a server which which besides mail handling supports “DNS” functionality. I want to release the code as open source (a LGPL like license), but with a restriction - that nobody can remove or change root certificates in the program, it's both for security reasons – if somebody changes the root certificates then it can send you false public keys and also for economical reasons – I want to be able to sell domain names for my program (it's an alternative domain name space)
The problem is that because of mentioned restriction my license is not fully open source compatible, so it seems that I can't host with major code repositories like SourceForge. What other options I have to use for storing the code of my application?
Dubai and Saudi Arabia to Block BlackBerry Messaging
That would carry unintentional racial overtones.
I guess it depends which one of us has more votes, eh?
"use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism

You can't get around plagiarism by reading something, rephrasing it, and not citing your source. Especially if you really obviously borrowed multiple facts from a single article.
That depends on cost and value. For me, I can be profitable after an average of twelve clicks per page, lifetime. It is virtally impossible to think of a bingo activity too obscure for me.

Anyhow, guess and check. If you write and cannot rank for competiton, go down tail. If you write and cannot profitably exploit traffic trickle, move upwards.

Note that entire portfolio of content gets better over time if you do it right. (Superlinear returns on linear cost.)
SoftLayer, very professional.
At least he managed to inspire >300k people.
Yeah. I'm not a great instrumentalist, but I feel comfortable picking up any instrument and playing - brass, woodwind, whatever. Guitar and keyboard are the only instruments I've actually studied, though.
I cannot speak for you, but I do have my own privatized security force.
I've always liked the GDGT podcast: http://features.gdgt.com/podcast/

Insightful/thoughtful gadget discussion.
Users have a real shot at winning 20 dollar bills for less than face value. The reason for this is whenever a user cannot be paired up with another, he/she is paired up with a bot that chooses a max bid in advance and at random from a specified range. Once the auction hits this max bid, the system will quit and the user wins. The expectancy is in favor of the site, of course, but only marginally so.
NPR's Planet Money grew on me. First few times I heard it I thought it was about a bunch of unsophisticated 20-somethings trying to make finance "cool".

I was very wrong. They brought rigor and a human touch to finance. The format is extremely compelling, and the stories narrated from sharp angles.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/
You're right, they are unethical and they face some problems at the moment.
In germany swoopo is laying of 50% of their staff and dealstreet closed.
The main problem is, that their "customers" never come back once they've been ripped of.
>Getting into the building is a simple matter of putting on a business suit and tailgating after an employee.

Well I've only worked in one "corporate" environment, UK gov. There was no chance to get in without a pass, despite seeing the same security guy every day for 3 years one would still get stopped. All passes were checked, even coming back from the canteen. Temporary passes required a manager to walk to the entrance and sign you in on a day pass. Public access areas were separate areas without connection to the IT network, leaving your computer unlocked when you're away from your desk was not allowed - like I said this was the lowest level security.

I still think that getting computer info via social engineering would be quite easy over the phone (at least when I was there). But we did get new SIP style phones just before I left and I think caller display would rule out a lot of chances for attacks.

There was a 1st level clearance area with a daily-code door, clearance checks for everyone (including the tea-trolley pusher) security cameras in and out and a receptionist/security person on duty opposite the door.

What you're describing appears to be that places without security protocols don't have security.
Good suggestion for dimensionality reduction. Most ready made packages you will find under the name PCA though (principal component analysis). It's almost always good to reduce dimensionality first, depending on the component number you choose, you can remove a lot of the noise from the data.

I'm curious why it didn't work for music recommendation for you. In the netflix challenge for movie recommendation, pretty much everyone ended up using SVD-based methods and variations thereof.

If anyone is interested, this is the most accessible write-up of the idea I know: http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20061211.html
Reporters Roundtable is a professionally produced weekly conversation about a single tech-topic. It's great - http://www.cnet.com/reporters-roundtable-podcast/

If you handle two hours of Jason Calacanis you could try This Week in Startups. http://thisweekin.com/startups

37signals podcast has had a couple of moments but it's not particularly thrilling. - http://37signals.com/podcast
The lexer is the bit that breaks up the string into tokens (words in this case).
FEED THE MACHINE.
The Biggest False Assumption in Sales
For whatever reasons and with few exceptions sales training, education and/or discussions operate from the premise that the prospective buyer has in fact recognized and managed their internal issues. That one (1) false assumption is responsible for an almost unbelievable volume of lost revenue and protracted sales cycles.
Gold.
Silver.
Copper.
Aluminum.
Zynga takes more funding... from Softbank this time
App Engine, for everything.

I've been using Unix for 3 decades and at this point I see any time spent administering or setting up servers as time wasted when I could be adding value to the product. App engine gives me all the administration and half of the scalability solution I need, so I spend my time adding value.

I am amazed that so many of you have root. I'm guessing it comes because you value the control, and don't mind spending time on system administration?
The Venture Voice series of interviews with great tech entrepreneurs - http://www.venturevoice.com/
I think it was meant in jest.
Question: why is Zynga taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from strategic partners such as Google and Softbank? Assuming Zynga is already very profitable, why would it need to raise such large amounts of funding?
To Do List Advice
Opportunities In The Patent-Free Zone
I am currently using 2 Linode 512 MB servers for a simple free application.
One of my Linode got hacked recently.
But for another paid app I am exploring other options like PEER1 for managed Security such as IDS and Managed Firewall / Load balancer.
It would cost significantly more than ($600 - $1200)
Still not sure whether I should be managing my own security using tools such as OSSEC/Snort or outsource it.

What are the solutions everybody is using for Load Balancing and Security.
You seriously don't consider McDonald burgers to be of very poor quality?
Oops, made the joke before actually seeing the site. After reading it I understand the downvotes...
US iPad Users are Overpaying for their Data Plans
18 years of photographs, around 6570. Currently, 16 exposures for the SX-70 (the camera he used) cost $72 on ebay. That puts the cost of 6570 polaroid pictures today at a bit less than $30,000 - and they would have been cheaper 13 years ago, when he died. There's also no evidence from the pictures shown in the article that he died poor.
That stuff is gripping. Really. Every Saturday at around 3PM it has me frozen still, no matter what I am doing.

Ira Glass is a top notch story-teller, in that he doesn't get between his subject and the microphone.
That sounds like an awesome thing. Did you maintain it using an excel document or did you have some sort of other tool to manage that?
thirded
Sniff-detector allows the paralysed to write and navigate
One of my favorites that hasn't yet been mentioned is NPR's "On the Media". They talk about currrent events in the context of how they are being reported, which tends to make me feel more informed than just getting the "straight" reporting.

Also, they do a lot of reporting on old media/new media issues, and they don't get the technology wrong in ways that make me cringe.
Take the iPhone as an example: it has over 1000 patents; yet Apple does not apply for patent protection in countries like Peru, Ghana, or Ecuador, or, for that matter, in most of the developing world. So entrepreneurs could use these patent filings to gain information to make an iPhone-like device that solves the unique problems of these countries. Apple has so far received 3287 U.S.-issued patents and has 1767 applications pending: a total of 5054 (for all of its products). Yet it has filed for only about 300 patents in China and has been issued 19. In India, it has filed only 38 patent applications and has received four patents. In Mexico it has filed for 109 and received 59 patents. So even India, China, and Mexico are wide-open fields
I love the stories they tell, but I can't listen to it. They're constantly interrupting the flow of the podcast with sound effects and pointless frills. I also can't stand how they often talk over interviewees.
Are you pairing only 2 people for an auction?