skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I feel that technique and skill are secondary to passion though with the arts. Music or poetry, I don't want to subject myself to it if it lacks passion. Passionate musicians and poets just happen to frequently also have the technique and skill down as well, but that's not always the case. Some of the more interesting artists are often the ones that break the "rules" of their discipline.
>But... this is really getting old. It seems like EVERY SINGLE YC startup is being featured on Techcrunch.

Being a YC funded company is notable in the same way that being funded by any top tier angel or VC would be. It is the same reason why every publicly launched company invested in by Chris Sacca, Jeff Clavier, Ron Conway, Dave McClure, etc is covered on TechCrunch and other tech blogs. TC also routinely covers companies coming out of Techstars and other well known early stage investment programs.

It may seem like YC gets more coverage, but I think it is roughly proportional to the number of companies that YC funds. YC has funded something like 60 companies in 2010.
Wired annihilates human race
How to unlock those password protected PDF file and print or save them
I've added a new check to the code- It'll check the base URL against existing stories, before doing the URL normalization.

This should fix the problem for every URL that isn't a tinyurl.

Thanks for the heads-up. Can you verify if it's nicer for your server now?
That's faintly disappointing to me - a human can turn a sock inside out nearly instantly and without some convenient pole. The image recognition stuff about figuring out where to grasp it seems cleverer but it's still a little offputting to me because it all seems so contrived.

I guess I shouldn't be so down on it - there must be some pretty clever stuff in there. The image recognition problem seems harder to solve to me than the dexterity one.

I'm not sure where it becomes sexy. I guess the pole is faintly phallic, but as far as I'm concerned for a robot to be sexy it would need to look like Cameron out of Sarah Connor Chronicles. If the Berkeley researchers managed that then the future would really be here.
The ultimate collection of all most beautiful themes for windows 7 [Free]
Page seems dead; here's the Google cache:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...

This was interesting. I wonder how much she was reaching to find something positive to say, because I would have though that, but for Dickinson, they all are rough. But then, I don't have any formal training or expertise myself.

I'd like to hear a real expert's comments on modern metal virtuosos, like Warrell Dane or Roy Khan. Anybody with real knowledge care to venture an opinion?
Similar experiences here in the past as well. Plus some painful learning experiences with advertising. Had one product I spent several hundred dollars on Google advertising. Product had zero sales. Then later I released a different product. Spent zero on advertising -- just some self-promotion, social media presence, tweets, and some free entries submitted on niche-relevant sites --- and of course, it made hundreds of dollars in sales! Totally counter-intuitive to my then-arguably-naive thinking. But useful learning experience.
"One size does not fit all." Eventually, we're going to see a heterogenous data centre consisting of machines with different specs, that are suited for different workloads. (minor edit.)
Ask HN: At what point am I a useful developer?
I've got about a year of procedural C under my belt, along with two years of Objective-C in the jolly realm of iPhone/OS X development. (Where else?)

I'm self-taught but I can build things on my own. If we look at the spectrum of developer skill as starting at "Cut-and-Paste Crap Cobbler" and ending in "I can write a filesystem," I'm probably about one quarter of the way in. I've imagined, built and shipped code that users have used.

I like the barn-raising feeling when your code starts to mesh together into a working system. Hacking is definitely fun -- enough that I've been doing it for hours a day for the last couple of years.

So at what threshold do I pass into being a useful developer? Is there a way to approach it faster? What do I do with my career once I am useful? Building someone else's boring stuff seems like it would kill the fun I have building things for myself.
I checked to see if the author of GNU grep left a comment, and was not disappointed:

"I’m here with Mike Haertel, GNU grep author and the author of the performance hack that bedeviled you so. He Googled your article somehow a while ago and was highly amused. [...]"
It seems to me that if you're okay replacing ads on Gmail you'd be okay with replacing ads on Search as well?

Or are you saying you're okay with replacing ads on Gmail - but on Search replacing ads would be wrong? This seems like a slippery slope you're treading.
Ask YC: full-screen keyboard shortcut by browser/OS?
Has anyone wondered how one might get a list of keyboard shortcuts to maximize the browser's page on different browsers and operating systems?
Anyone interested in building a smartphone app for pool players?
I'm working on a startup at the moment and I don't have time for this but I may be throwing away a golden opportunity. My cousin is one of the top ranking pool players, a game which has a following of around 130 million. Pool, as a sport, is looking to inject more money into the game and I thought, hold on...
1. pool application with ranking system
2. every time someone plays v a friend they can add themselves to that ranking on smartphones which is connected to every other player. Cheats can be possibly thwarted via a 'ladder system' where you don't go up unless you play someone of equal ranking outside of friends (this is the tricky bit but you can find a way!)
3. If he, along with the rest of the elite backs this application and we somehow link them in then we have a potential winner right?
4. It can possibly be monetised via small bets (although this possibly clashes with gambling laws)

If anyone is interested then I'll put you in touch. I don't know where it will go but Pool is looking for a winning model since the money went out of the game in 2006 after USA gambling laws changed. Email me on p.kullar@gmail.com if you're looking for startup ideas. I'll certainly make introductions and you never know where these things can go.

Actually, I might be being friggin dumb here but life is short.
these aren't beautiful at all, they're cheesy and tipical.
Sure, but if you already have credit card facilities then that PayPal feature is redundant.
From my perspective as a service provider, I feel major pain whenever our service hiccups. If something goes down, the fear of unhappy customers (or losing customers) looms much larger than the fear of having to issue a service credit. For us at least, the latter is a tiny motivator compared to the former.

But a small startup is probably motivated by different things than a large, vaguely monopolistic company (like an ISP).
Sounds like _A Farewell to Alms_ by Clark. Though as far as I can remember the data showed the "merchant class" crowding out the lower classes, not the nobility. Nobles only had about an average amount of surviving children while rich merchants had an above average one. Makes more sense that way: medieval nobility doesn't sound like a great base for middle-class values...

I'm not totally convinced about the theory, but the book was a surprisingly good read.
Or this is just a different kind of reddit. Just as useless as the previous kind, for humans only make both.
Now there's a take on the authors thesis I missed the first time around. The fact that you can "know too much" and get the question wrong. In my example, I was so sure the Earth had a diameter or 25,000 miles, but I could have been completely wrong about that fact.
It's been deleted or moved, I take it?
Sociala e-commerce website
Hello,
My name is Alis Peraza,I'm from LA,california. I love being a start-up entrepreneur. I have created a few websites,and A application for the iPhone before. Now I have a great Idea for a social e-commerce website. I've been brainstorming it for a while. I have been doing lot's of reacher on this. So far I have not found anything a like. I would like to speak to you guy's to see how I can participate in your entrepreneur program. Thank you.
Exactly, for some reason the people i've talked to try to find even more hidden things that they actually are. Which just says how much they loved it. Awesome movie.
Feedback on Free Testbank
If You Learn Only One New Thing This Year, Make It Rack
all true, but the fact that the advice boils down to "store your spec where people can easily read it later" must qualify for a Captain Obvious award.
All I see is a login page with a password field and no way to see which user I'm logging in as or an option to switch users.
SilenceOfTheLan
We got sick of the old PHP code that ran the site for the last 2 years and rewrote everything in Rails. Just relaunched today, any feedback would be greatly appreciated
Hmm...they are really marrvalous but you have only listed some. You could have built a long list. any way hats off...
He looks exactly like an "olmec" in the cartoon "The Mysterious cities of Gold".

http://thumbnails.hulu.com/18/915/93693_512x288_generated__6...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Cities_of_Gold
Gee, I think you commented about the title. The author is a fool and don't know the science of writing titles :)
Can you tell me how to lock them..... i don't even know about it :<
Useful is a very broad term. My definition would be,once you can take a problem (whether it be your own or anothers) and solve it through code, your useful. Even if it is small, it's still useful
The problem with Rapportive as a business model is that it relies entirely on Google acquiring them. They have one customer. If Google doesn't want it, it's a bomb. Despite the usefulness of the service, that's a pretty risky proposition.
Apple Germany says nein to eiPott
self-plug: http://sr3d.github.com/GithubFinder/?user_id=github&repo...

and click on README.md and you can diff to see how the README.md file changed overtime.

A nice Readme is a good way to help people engage in the project as well. A project with nice README and screenshots will get the attention of users better since it's a good and direct way to explain why this project matters, and why people should use and contribute to the project. Good readme should also include enough details to help a new user get started, e.g. how to compile, how to install, and how to start integrating.

Also, I watched a Google video of Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins, who developed Subversion, on how to defend open source projects from "poisonous". Their number one rule is "When you launch a project, carefully define your mission - and post that mission to a conspicuous web page." (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/30/google_open_source_t...) A readme can serve as a mission statement to define a clear path of the project.

If a project is like a book, the Readme file would be the cover with all the raves and hooks to get people to pick up the book. But as they say, "don't judge a book by its cover", "don't judge a project by its Readme file" either. But good readme will definitely help.
It's surprising that student income put toward their education is the same across the board. Would have thought the wealthier wouldn't work during college. I even know some students whose parents won't let them work.
It's the user who are agreeing to the TOS by visiting a given website. Google cannot define TOS for any other website. They can however do it for their own website. But then, since it's the user who visits the website, why should an extension designer be responsible? And it would be crazy for anyone to go after each user without making a big mess.
Actually, I can scrape the prices, because it was my personal client, only ever run by me, with fresh prices confirmed by faking a run through the booking process.
That's the thing, anyone can create poetry.
But only a group of people of the same taste will appreciate it.
There aren't any rules, if you suck at singing, your cd will probably be dead in sales, but that doesn't make it "not music".
I've seen there's people for everything in the world, and when people start saying he is not singing right it's usually about the context. If you're gonna sing opera of course you need to sing opera-like, but in general you should be able to experiment in any sense. That's how new styles are born.
you think someone visiting Hacker News is their target market? or target market for almost 99%[1] of ads?

[1] out of blue :)
Hmm, okay, that's fair. But what about all the issues of code quality, modular architecture, and anything else that would make you a developer someone else would want to work with?

When I first got started on the iPhone, for example, I could solve certain problems through code, but that code was crap. I cringe to look at it now.
Aren't you concerned that there seems to be a coup every second week blockading the airport and then every other week someone is arrested for accidentally insulting the King? I'd feel a little edgy living their as a foreigner!
For some reason HipHop messed with direct memory locations enough to work only on 64b to start with. If they couldn't make it work cleanly on 32b, ARM is probably also going to be affected.
Yeah, this is an interesting case.

It's all coming from 'defacing', your comment is actually the only one in this corpus of 25k comments that uses that term; probably not a coincidence. Taking a deeper look now, thanks for your help.
I can't imagine needing $200k / year to live comfortably. I'd like to see this analysis performed with a $100k / year income. That is still very comfortable, especially if it means you can afford to live somewhere cheaper and cut a lot of your other expenses.
Alexander Pope disagreed:

"True ease of writing comes through art, not chance,

As he moves best who learns the steps of dance,

'Tis not enough no harshness cause offence,

The sound must seem an echo of the sense"

Learn the rules, then maybe break them.
Come to Switzerland and Save Lives (with Software)
> He asked me to work for the company in exchange for a percentage share, and the agreement states that until the venture receives funding it will be run as a sole proprietorship to save on legal fees. Is this a good idea?

Let's find out what he really thinks about this arrangement.

Ask him to switch roles. In other words, the company is your sole proprietorship and he gets whatever he expected you to take.

If he won't go for that, why should you?

If he will and you decide to go through with this arrangement, make the decision as to roles using a coin flip or some other random process. If he won't agree to that, he was bluffing.
Definitely 'None of the Above' - I ran for student union president on a None of the Above ticket.

The irony was lost (magnified?) when I drew top of the ballot paper, but ultimately my preferences (was a preferential style not first-past-the-post ballot) tipped the victorious president over in a cliffhanger election.
Request For Startup: Solving Consumer Backups
Exactly! The same problem I always had with RSS readers. Think I am going to implement this in a few days.
The site seems to be overloaded though, a HN induced meltdown?
Here are my two cents on the subject. I think the entire movie was Cobb stuck in a dream. Its not just the top at the end, its the ability to fly all over the country, getting chased by nondescript g-men etc. The big things for me though were how did Cobb and Mal get stuck in limbo after only 1 dream. It only ever shows them 1 level deep. I think Mal was right and they needed to go one more level. Another point was he ends up in France(we never know how gets places) and talks to his father in law, a key line was "Come back to reality".

Sure all those could be interpreted a certain way but I like mine the best.
I would suggest reading a book on "meta" programming. Code Complete would be a good starting point.
HipHop is not a JIT, it is an AOT compiler.
Hint: The rest of the world already works like that. See: zOS on Power, Solaris on Sparc, HP/Tandem Nonstops (I think are now on x86), IBM i on whatever it runs on, HPUX on x86 (I think), AIX on Power, Linux on Mainframe, Windows NT4, XP, 2000, 2003, 2008 (all running critical tasks)...

Cheap Linux/x86 servers own most of the web space. But the rest of the world runs much more heterogeneously. (And that list above ignores real legacy stuff.. You can buy all of that currently (with the exception of the older windows stuff))
I was lucky to be hired as department web designer in my freshman year and eventually moved my way up to bigger and richer departments throughout my years at UofT. Essentially paid my tuition with their own money, and got dept. deans on my good side.

For all of you starting school in September, the first 2 weeks are when all the positions fill up. If you want to earn income on campus, go meet with your department secretary/advisor right now to build rapport.
You're right, will implement this.
Generically, the fastest way to go from zero to a useful member of a programming team is to learn and consistently execute classical software engineering practices (e.g. document code, use encapsulation and abstraction, write tests).

Those practices aren't designed to optimize for individual programmer productivity, but to allow programmers of all different skill levels to work together safely and effectively.
Here is a summary of Inception that I read somewhere, but can't recall where right now.

"If you run a VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM, things get really slow."
Like I said, I see the two business models very differently. My personal theory is that there is a LOT more potential revenue for Gmail in the enterprise. (Google tried and largely failed in the internal enterprise search market.)

Each small business of 20 people that pays for Premier service makes Google $1000. (And that's $1000/year recurring revenue.) Those same people would have to click on a LOT, LOT of ads (content/display ads, which earn much less money than search) to make the same amount of money through advertising. And there are hundreds of thousands of businesses world-wide that are potential Google Apps customers.

Fundamentally, I see a LOT more potential revenue for Gmail through enterprise deployment. If they have to sacrifice a small amount of ad revenue in order for users to use the tools they want to use as part of their job/life, then that's a tradeoff I'd be more than willing to make if I was in the shoes of a Gmail manager.

The model for Google web search involves getting as many users to search on Google, and putting the most relevant ads possible next to the results. The enterprise aspects of the business model don't exist, and that's why Gmail business model != Google search business model.
Hardware key/value store appliances is a great startup idea.
Another famous example is Picasso. Sometimes considered the greatest painter to have ever lived, he was incredibly inventive and broke basically every "rule" in the book. However, if you look at his really early pieces -- he was a fantastic classical painter. He didn't start by breaking the rules, he started by mastering them.
Some other manuals for the 704 are at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/704/
This is an absolutely amazing wealth of information. Thank you so much.
If you are in SF looking for technical folks, I would recommend you attend a Hackers and Founders event ASAP. It's a frequent meetup focusing exactly on founders looking for hackers and hackers looking for a project/job. Here is a link

http://www.meetup.com/Hackers-and-Founders/calendar/13712634...
Wow, thank you. This is amazing, I'm blown away by how much knowledge is being shared here. Made my day
I don't think it is that unique, it seemed like a stretch, almost as if they were trying to prove to themselves that this was worth writing about. It is only used in a tiny portion of the game.
Intel CEO: I need an antivirus. Can you buy me something?

Some time later, his assistant: DONE! We just bought you McAfee.

Intel CEO: Cool! What version?

Assistant: Hmm, version?
Screencast guide to HTML5 Boilerplate (by its creator)
Car doing 100mph hits concrete piling: piling wins
For what it's worth, I rarely watch introduction videos... if I need to watch one to use and understand the site, there's probably room for improving your site design.
The catch is, I guess, that the chemical here is a protein. We already have TRIM5a in our bodies, it's just not the right allele. Unlike the antiviral action of bleach, this is a mechanism that already works within the bodies of other primates (rhesus monkeys).

Among other possible developments, this might prove the killer application for gene therapy, which has made steady progress in recent years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy
Defining "rich" as a fixed amount is silly - define "Rich" as "all your time is your own, and the passive income you make on the side is enough to cover your expenses, whatever they are".
Hack Your Finances: How to Get Financially Organized for 20-Somethings
Fusion Apps questions Oracle should answer
You look at someone like Ozzy, compared to the others there. I say this as a Sabbath and Ozzy fan, he's got a rubbish voice. There's something there that makes him interesting -- his persona, songwriting and the other guys in the band carry his performance. It's not "breaking the rules" as such in terms of his vocals -- he simply can't sing. It's more like successful marketing.
I would assume that one would just go through all the browsers, find the shortcut, and put it onto a list.

... or are you asking for a list, and disguising it as a question about how to make a list?
You could get by on that in a "nice" latin american country.. but it won't go as far as you think.
I see one guy who had a reality TV show and four people I have never heard of. Pop culture, you foil me again...
I went to a ~3000 student private liberal arts college and we subscribed to a handful. 90% of what I needed was out of reach. I suspect there are some economies of scale, but those economies are completely artificial; there's no reason the per-student rate should be different for a small college than a large one.

Well, I suppose there is one: most of the cost is administrative overhead in actually collecting the bill, so it's easier if you've got one bill for 40k as opposed to one bill for 3k
> I'd like to see some standard play/pause and volume control buttons.

I tend to disagree. I liked the design aspect of not having these. The video fits into the same style as I presume I'll get when using the service (I don't have a webcam handy right now).

Do you actually need play/pause and volume controls while watching the intro video? Would you actually use them, or is it just that it doesn't match your expectation of what an intro video should be, rather than a functional deficiency?
Kick Start Your Creative Thinking
I can think of a hack that could be faster, but wouldn't be very portable... Probably won't have the time to try it out though: JIT the `needle` text into a bunch of dynamically generated functions matching the characters at specific position, one "miss" (skip len(needle) chars) function and a jump table. Sure - it will need a `255 x len(needle)` jumptable, but 99% of the addresses will point at the "miss" case and you don't need that many cache pages if you're streaming through gigabytes of data. So basically it would be a JIT-unrolled BM.

It would be a "jumps -vs- mispredicted branches" cost challenge, but I'm not sure which would win...
Why worry about who gets covered on TC? There are almost certainly more productive things you can do for your business. (I originally meant "than worrying" then realized this could get read as "than being covered on TC", not that I disagree with that reading.)