skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A description is a statement that represents something in words in order to re-create a mental picture that represents a person, place, event, or action so that the reader may picture that which is being described. In short, to describe is to represent in words. (The etymological origin is from French and literally means 'I copy off, transcribe'.)

An explanation is a statement that makes something comprehensible by describing the relevant structure or operation or circumstances. Further, to give a sufficiently detailed report about (a) the reason for something, about why something happened, about a causal chain of events; about (b) how something works, about how elements in a system interact; about (c) how to do something, about the steps which need to be accomplished in order to accomplish a certain goal. (From French as well and means 'to flatten, or spread out'.)

So, for example, saying that, 'that combustion engine is 4 feet high, 150 pounds, shiny gray, loud, and hot' would be descriptive.

Saying the following explanatory bit would be a good start at describing how it works: air is initially introduced into a combustion chamber. The air is then compressed. This high compression heats the air. At about the top of the compression stroke, fuel is injected directly into the compressed air in the combustion chamber. The fuel injector ensures that the fuel is broken down into small droplets, and that the fuel is distributed evenly. The heat of the compressed air vaporizes the fuel. The vapor is then ignited by the heat from the compressed air in the combustion chamber. As the vapor reaches ignition temperature this causes an abrupt increase in pressure above the piston. The rapid expansion of combustion gases then drives the piston downward, supplying power to the crankshaft.

As was said: all explanation includes description but not vice-versa. You describe the components of an explanation. You may be making a fallacy of composition (the fallacy of inferring from the fact that every part of a whole is some-thing that the whole also is that same-thing [or something like that]). Just because an explanation is made up of descriptions does not mean that an explanation is only a description. (Just try that with an average American girl; here babe, I brought you a loose pile of pure carbon. What? A diamond! It's the same thing, no?)

Also, check this response out http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1630769
Ack, I apparently can't type or proofread. fail
Even when you don't buy anything immediately, this kind of policy definitely helps hold on to customers.

About 12 years ago my friend and I were shopping at a local Middle Eastern grocery/restaurant (Holy Land in North Minneapolis for those local) and she happened to mention to the owner in passing that the halvah we bought a week ago had a funny taste. He immediately jumped on it "oh, we had some trouble with the refrigerator last weekend. Here, let me give you some more for free!" That was a complete surprise and to this day if I'm in the area, it's the first place I think of to stop and get a bite to eat at.

I've found over the years that most places have such mediocre service that anyone who rises just a bit above the mean sticks in my mind and I tend to patronize their business from that point on.
Time lapse for his 2009 entry, Bunny Press: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abyL33Z6Z5I
You're falling for the percentage trick that works really well when your numbers are tiny.

"I've grown revenue 300% month-over-month for the past six months" -- "How much in absolute dollars?" -- "Oh, well almost $400 this month I think"
We modified /etc/sysctl.conf to have really small buffers per socke, modified ulimit to allow for 999999 fds, and modified /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range to max out ephemeral ports per connection.
Film business - dead from Digital Cameras - time taken ~7 years from first affordable high quality cameras.
Music Distribution business (cds/vinyls in shops) - death throes from Digital Music players - time taken ~7 years from first affordable high quality mp3 players.
Newspaper business - first models of viable media devices (Kindle, iPad) now viable - gone by 2015?
Backcountry.com has the same policy, plus a healthy network of amateur experts documenting products and writing reviews.

Fry's : Best Buy; backcountry.com : REI
It's 2010 and your browser has an assembler
If you want mortification, try writing for a living. In reality, you're running a small (one and a half person) business supplying IP to large multinational OEMs. But if you say "I'm an author" everyone thinks you spend your days swigging dry martinis by the pool while languidly dictating to your busty secretary -- or that you want them to think that's how you spend your days. The media have a lot to answer for, for turning "author" into a lifestyle rather than a job description.

(I think in future I'll start saying "I run a contracting company in the intellectual property sector". "What kind of intellectual property?" "Stories about space nazis ...")
So, I don't want to be a whacko or anything, but... this is the plot of 2012, the movie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_(film)#Plot

In the film, solar flares and sunspot activity are blamed for altering radioactivity levels in the earth's core, causing it to rise and the earth's crust to melt, leading to worldwide, CGI-friendly apocalypse.

The thing is, in 2009, when 2012 was filmed, nobody knew there was any linkage at all between sunspots and radioactivity. We thought the rate of decay was constant, and the science behind the film was bullshit. These guys hadn't published yet -- correct me if I'm wrong.

Now it's still obviously bullshit -- the change caused by sunspot activity is not nearly big enough to affect the planet's temperature materially -- but there is a linkage.

Which is, y'know, weird.
There are companies that are off the record every in pretty much every YC batch. Attendees are asked to keep those companies "off the record".

YC doesn't require any NDA that I am aware of. I'd expect that the risk of being excluded from future demo day events if you disclosed off the record companies would be a better deterrent than an NDA in this case.
I got a mac a year ago, and the first time I had to install an application I was completely baffled. It took me an hour to figure it out. I'm a software developer by the way.
Well I can still buy 35mm film, and vinyl records, and CDs and DVDs. So no print won't be gone in 2015, but it will likely be a shadow of its former self.
inDinero (YC S10) Adds Automated Financial Forecasts for Businesses
That is much better put. Your original formulation did not convey that connotation.
YCombinator is getting so big that I am using YC company products without realizing it.
I don't remember ever seeing this many companies in a single YC batch that were successful and/or well known before they even applied to YC.
to suggest that they're the only ones building awesome tools

could you point out when this was suggested?
Hey guys, happy you're liking Simplenote. There are some kinks in this update but we're working on them. Let us know if you have any feedback.
It sounds like they didn't get funding in the corporate world of 1976.

>Although we attempted to address the last question by applying Moore’s law to our architecture (15 to 20 years to reach the consumer), we had no idea how to answer these or the many other challenges that were suggested by this approach. An internal report was written and a patent was granted on this concept in 1978 (US 4,131,919).

That seems to be as far as Kodak took it until digital cameras really started to eat their lunch.
Goals are not the same thing as wishes
There are numerous tools that are on par with Cappuccino in terms of functionality. However, I don't want to create a never ending discussion thread on the new HN, I don't have enough karma or patience to deal with it. I was simply stating a point.

You can disagree with it, but I refuse to start any discussion with you. It's obvious from your tone and content that you don't intend to actually have a meaningful discussion.
I definitely like this theoretical approach over the Google TV approach, which requires you to be hooked into either Dish TV or to control your cable box with an IR blaster. There's something about that that feels very first edition TiVo; it's prone to operational failure, and it's slow (and still requires your cable contract).

I've often thought that if networks could start fresh and get everyone into the sort-of Hulu model where people are forced to watch a minute of commercials, they'd take it. The hypothetical Apple TV model would allow exactly that.
I'd be curious what, if any, subscribers you see from the Time coverage.
Did they really only take 500K in funding? (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/280-north)

I know they had some revenue, but 500K across 4 developers + expenses for 2.5 years seems low.
rumor from a very good source has it they actually took less
Bill Gates' favorite teacher
Since we had a thread this morning talking about sceptics on HN ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629583 ), I have to say that I'm not a big fan of this idea.

As it turns out, multiple people in the same location can already talk to each other. In fact, that's how it usually happens.

One of the problems I see with this is critical mass, will you get enough users on it to be useful? Note that most other location related services (say yelp, foursquare) don't require a critical mass of people to be at the same spot at the same time.

Conferences would certainly have enough people that some might wander in to your track's channel, but would it be used enough day to day for people to naturally open it up when they have an extra minute?
This book isn't coming out until late 2010, is it worth waiting or buy the 3rd edition available now?
A letter to my students
Five new Y Combinator startups to watch
Photos Too Racy for Facebook? Put Them in the Fridge (YC S10)
Pretty sensible article, except for the health concerns. Don't be afraid, just prepare like you are.

Glad the author is in robust health, but be prepared with antibiotics, anti-diarrhea medicine and remedies for whatever you are prone to getting, say, allergies. Worst case planning makes the trip more fun. For example, my friend got malaria in Kenya.

You just don't know what kind of medicine or care is going to be available.
There sure is nanotech. It's called biology, and it's five billion years old.
I stopped using my iPod and went to a zune because I was tired of getting 99c to death. It was the best move, I would rather just pay my music "tax" and have access to all the music I want. Currently, there is about $1000 dollars of music on the device, when I had my iPod I never spent more than $100 dollars a year.

I am one of the few that actually want to pay for the things I like, as it will ensure that more of those things will be available.
You don't need a technical founder. There are many examples of great companies built by people who can't code. It is just a lot more expensive and difficult. Having someone who works for free and who has the company vision in mind as he codes is quite beneficial.
Install "thin", and use the latest code - development is much faster than they used to be.
DevStructure
"When the density of matter reaches gargantuan proportions (more than about 1,050 kilograms per cubic meter)"

I assume there is an a missing exponential in there (10^50?), since lead is an order of magnitude more dense than 1050 kg/m^3

Kind of nitpicking, but with an error like this I have to wonder about how well any of this is actually being explained. (Actually, given the accuracy rate of news articles on a science topic I'm very familiar with, I think I know the answer, unfortunately).
Isn't it already?
You left out the most important and confusing step: Running the app. That requires not clicking on the icon you see in the dmg folder, but opening the applications folder and scanning all the apps looking for the unfamiliar one that was just installed.
"As defined by Andy Grove, the right kind of ambition is ambition for the company’s success with the executive’s own success only coming as a by-product of the company’s victory."

I'm not sure I agree with this part. Yeah, I think it's important for the executive to not seek personal objectives at the expense of the company's, but it's unreasonable to expect them to look out for the company's interests before their own.
I just started using Notational Velocity for OS X and I think Simplenote is going to make a good mobile counterpart. Looking forward to using it.
Compilation of revenue figures for different kinds of startups
I'm really interested to know some names. I haven't seen anything that allows you to abstract completely away from this multiple language/multiple framework nonsense that web development is mostly (at the most basic level, having to deal with html+css+javascript+frameworks).

There are a lot that do a part of it, but none I've seen that are complete and are not plugins. And what about something that comes anywhere near atlas/interface builder+nib2cib?

I'm genuinely interested. Now, I need a backup plan in case atlas never comes out alive. :)
What matters is not how much revenue you generated over time in the past, but how much you are generating right now and what the expectation is of future revenues.

If you get down to just numbers, the 'standard' way of valuing any enterprise is to calculate the current value of their future cashflow. This is why (many) V.C.s ask you for a revenue projection. It is debatable whether this is the right way of doing things; in the case of most startups it may be the wrong way, but if id Software was making, say, only 10M/year at the point they got bought, and left alone, if their cashflow would have stayed the same or stagnated, 105 million would be 10.5x their yearly profits which is decent.
My underlying point isn't about Kurzweil at all. It's that sincerity doesn't excuse being a professional crank. Amateur cranks are bad enough, but professional cranks do benefit from "people's fears and ignorance" at their expense, no matter how sincere and well-intentioned they may be.
I think you're a bit quick to declare something impossible just because it seems unlikely or counter-intuitive.
Paying $5-10 extra per person for 3D is overrated, especially for movies that aren't shot explicitly for 3D. Animated films like Toy Story and Despicable Me are ideal, and possibly worth an extra few dollars. Alice in Wonderland was not.

The novelty has worn off - it's a premium experience for some films, and a detractor for others.
no. we do not make anyone sign an NDA.

what happens is if a startup has not yet publicly launched and still wants to be able to give someone an exclusive/control how they launch then they mark themselves as off the record. what this prevents is someone briefly mentioning them in an article and then another publication refusing to write about them because it's already been 'covered'. if the startup doesn't care about this, then they keep themselves on record.
They have skin in the game and a strong incentive to do really hard things to make the business succeed.

Many of the innovations that'll ultimately make you stand out from the crowd are very, very difficult to implement. If the difference between implementing that and implementing the same 80/20 solution as everyone else is, say, getting a $150k/year salary instead of a $100K/year salary, they're not going to bother. If the difference is cashing out with $20M vs. ending up with nothing, they will bother.
I think the paper itself is a challenge to carbon dating. The question is whether the resultant inaccuracies in carbon dating would invalidate the theory of evolution. Whether or not they do (and it seems obvious to me that they don't), creationists will claim they do.
Apparently pay is the new free.
wouldn't it be easier to email the pics to the friends directly?

Posterous works because people actually intend to publish their thoughts, and they are uncomfortable with using an web interface. But in case of picture I dont think people would be comfortable with idea of sending it to a third party website, why not just add multiple emails addresses to your 'to' field. also threaded conversations make it easier to have all comments / replies in a single place.

Also facebook album with proper privacy settings is much better option.
Leftronic (YC S10) Dashboards Optimize Your Data Displays
(with-open [fis (FileInputStream. source)
fos (FileOutputStream. target)]
(do-stuff fis fos))

I wish they would spend less time adding stuff to the Java language (especially features present in other JVM languages), and more time fixing the core API and improving the JVM feature set. Continuations would be nice.
Biostatistics vs. lab research
non parametric statistics isnt Machine Learning.

Only few methods such as K nearest neighbors are non parametric, rest all methods such as SVM's, decision trees are all parametric.

So using it as a jargon is a bad idea.
I thought Atlas was for building web and desktop apps. I never saw anything mentioning Android? Did I miss something?
Hilarious User-Generated Star Wars Reenactments
Untangling the Cloud from the Web: Paving the Way for Enterprise Apps
Tracking Google's Acquisitions
Damn good point.
> I am left in the bittersweet position where a) I 99% agree with an article and b) scratch one post in my Wordpress drafts, because it would add very little to the topic now.

Post it anyways? Your articles and style fill me a mix of joy and inspiration. And I think hundreds or thousands of other people too.
"Ay, there's the rub" - Hamlet Act III Scene i
Except that the current article suggests a cycle of 33 days which is not due to the Earth - Sun distance but hypothetically correlated to the face of the core of the Sun (which the article suggests has a period of 33 days compared to the 28 days of the surface of the sun).

I don't mind that journalists don't publish your "30 seconds of Googling". Doing so would suggest that top Google hits are fact.
"You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less, trained worse and worse, loaded up with more and more mindless administrative duties, and given less and less real support from administrators and staff."

What evidence does he provide that the decline in quality of education is due to lower budgets? As technology improves we should expect costs to decline. We should expect higher quality for less cost! When this fails to happen it usually because of artificially erected barriers to entry in an attempt to capture rent for a select few. And just who are loading up teachers "with more and more mindless administrative duties"? Taxpayers? Who benefits when it is increasing difficult to acquire the "skills" necessary to become a new teacher?

He doesn't really provide any unique insight besides blaming all of society's ills on tax cuts. Food has gotten cheaper, electronics have gotten cheaper, why has our government gotten more expensive!?
I have the same scanner, and feel the same issue all the time...

I just wonder if the counter parties of electronic signatures get that it's the same thing legally as a analog signatures. I'm not sure they do always.
It's not that I disagree with you. It's that you haven't said anything of substance, and I hoped you would. Your comments have merely been dismissive (first toward Cappuccino and now toward me personally). I always appreciate helpful comments even if I disagree with them.

I've recently been reinvestigating these Web app frameworks for a new project and not finding much that I loved, so I really did hope you had some useful insights. But oh well, I guess.
Ask HN: Did your startup come out of academic research?
Where did it come from, what was it, and how did it turn out?
How about zim wiki + Dropbox?

http://zim-wiki.org/
One-night stands make birds uncooperative
I think it's fairly uncontroversial, especially in this forum, to say that I'm sick and tired of subsidizing a race to the bottom. Food network has increasingly stopped showing cooking shows, and I'm ready to vote with my wallet. The same goes for most of the other subject networks. If they lose that money, I'll be quite content, because they deserve to lose it.
Yeah, they are dominating in webmail. Tech savvy users tend to think everyone switched to GMail but that's just not true.
I think it's indicative of either (a) Apple's willingness to quickly realize they were wrong, or (b) their willingness mislead to downplay a delayed but vital feature. Personally, I enjoy the latter.
I think the author is mistaken. You see, what happened in years past is that they "took out a loan" to pay for now with the promise that they'd pay it later. However, later has come and now those that benefited the most can't understand why those that have to pay for it need to tighten their belts. None of us want to stop paying for it but we've learned what they haven't: you have to live within your means.

My father said it best, "I had it great, you're screwed. Thanks for paying for it."
There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower.

Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflation?
refusing to write about them because it's already been 'covered'

Does that happen? It seems impossibly childish.
The field of economics has, for quite a while, been suffering from this sort of scientistic behavior, aping the practices of the physical sciences, while dismissing aprioristic economics simply because it doesn't.

The following is a rather long, but quite decent discussion of the topic with a physicist that actually worked with Feynman.

http://commentlog.org/bid/4408/Feynman-Rothbard-and-the-Scie...
Facebook forbids pro-pot election ads
It's useful to know that brain researchers think this. It's not useful to hear a lot of random anecdotes about multitaskers! And to think that it's you attention-span folks who make me feel guilty when I don't read all the way through this sort of article!
People like you are a very small percentage of the cable tv market.
It helps that they lock in sweet contracts with DSL providers like SBC to provide email services.
Before we joined Y Combinator, my co-founder and I had plans to build a Panic-style status board. Then we realized that status boards were not our core competency and we dropped the board completely to focus on our primary task at hand. I love that I can pay Leftronic for a fully customizable, fantastic-looking board – this way we can make our product and track it, too!

BTW, I've seen one of these boards in person and they're really slick. I can think of a hundred ways these could be hugely motivating (have a dial tick down based on bug-counts, have a meter showing avg user engagement, etc).
I and few others pitched this same concept to YC in 2009 and they rejected it.
Holiday Madness: SEO Australia
>> Because it looks more like an static image than something you can interact with?

There is even a line of text that explains how to interact with the two object presented, if you aren't already familiar with the paradigm.
Do they help you control your thoughts? As in, focus on what you want to/ prevent ADD.
Very well, I'll create a list later tonight listing the most notable ones, along with their features and benefits. I'm sorry for misinterpreting your response.
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>that's going to be at least $150 per month in rentals.

That's the kicker right there. At $1/episode they're practically charging the cost of buying a DVD, except for all you're getting is streaming or crippled DRM'd 640x480 video - really just a rental.

$15/season ain't happening, and the formats they're offering aren't a reasonable value proposition for the buyers.
Game theory in Jersey Shore product placement