skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think we already know the answer to this question. taking you O_O as an example, your new startup called Lotaar, do you think it can become a global scale startup? The problem with us Nigerians/Africans is that we do not like to scratch our own itches, 2008 here in Nigeria, social networking sites were the rave, all because facebook was just becoming huge here then. Kenya's startup scene is light years ahead of Nigeria because they are creating "local" startups which are relevant there and also meet needs in other places, e.g. ushahidi (which I might not be right to call a startup) was created in kenya to monitor their elections but has been used in places like haiti to monitor disaster response during her earthquake. If african's can create startups that would be useful here in Africa and meet local needs, I think such a startup can grow to a global scale because the continent has an estimated 1 billion people. Like I have always said ( http://aitoehigie.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/building-a-world-...), Africa doesn't need clones of facebook or twitter when there are other fundamental problems that technology can be used to solve.
No. These synapses: http://synapses.clm.utexas.edu/anatomy/chemical/asymh.htm

EEG sensors measure large aggregates of activity.
I am not saying I believe there's any correlation, but I think the parents concerns do deserve a closer investigation: sure there might be no correlation, but maybe there is.

That's the scientists job: let the investigate and their final word is it.
Can you explain this? I don't understand it.

"they tag-team with us on projects, often for months, without being billable"
Here we are again, trying to talk ourselves into another crash. I really don't understand the Journals (in particular) fascination with doomsday.

For every item on the list you can point to trends that are positive for the exact same metric. Like (there are a lot of other examples):

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100726-710938.html

I agree that the economy is quite uncertain right now. However, waving the flag of doom isn't really productive at this point. Particularly when you're cherry picking data to arrive at what appears to be a foregone conclusion. I don't know if it's a fascination with disaster or (I suspect) more politically motivated.

Either way, it makes you no better than this guy:

http://lamarhowell.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/the-end-is-ne...
Macros are important, that's why I seeking guidance in Let Over Lambda. The most suitable lisps for writing macros are lisp-2, hence the preference for a lisp-2 dual namespace.
Is your app a piece of shit?
When I was a kid, my classmates and I would frequently get temperature, feel tired or sleepy, and even have strong headaches during school days...

... usually it happened just before a test, or a "long enough period of time" since our last such occurrence. Later on we found out going to the beach was a great help, but we never got teachers (or parents) to listen to us. :(
You don't have to use it. Your opinion on objective-c is irrelevant, and Apple aren't gonna switch to Java.
I hear homeopathy works pretty well for this kind of things.
Not a physicist. However, I'll take a qualitative stab.

Radiation that we care about (mostly beta and gamma) is measured in rems, which is essentially a biological statement about how much tissue damage is associated with a certain dose of a specific type of radiation.

I assume that WiFi releases no beta particles (electrons), so we're just talking about EM emission: visible light, X-rays, gamma rays, all that fun stuff.

Your WiFi equipment is emitting in the microwave spectrum. The energy of photons at these wavelengths is orders of magnitude weaker than the energy of ionizing radiation (essentially gamma radiation). If you don't ionize, then there is no currently known mechanism by which you can cause cellular damage (except via thermal damage ;-) ).

If we were to posit the WiFi emitter as a blackbody radiator, it would have to be thousands (millions?) of times hotter than room temperature to have an appreciable emission of gamma radiation thanks to Planck's Law.

In other words, I'd guess that 1 banana probably emits as much ionizing radiation as all WiFi emitters have for all time.

If you want an unreliable quantitative statement, try this: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/featu... (1 year of strong WiFi = 20 minutes on a cell phone - which as far as we know is also 0 rem).
The scrollbars were bad well before Apple shipped a mouse with scrolling functionality.
Another thing oo, PG doesn't know Africa like you and I do, so I don't think his statement is the final word on African startups. Lets prove him wrong. (rolling up sleeves....)
The original comment was snarky but it does raise a point. It sounds like they're specifically targeting foreigners (English language, don't have to be a Chilean native), so they must be betting that the increased exposure and business opportunities from this will offset the potential for money to flow out of country. Unfortunately, South American history favors outflow more than increased opportunity. Then again, the startup world will undoubtedly be better for this sort of thing than investment by large multinationals and political cronies.
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى وشبيبة القبائل بث مباشر
As a Russian I'm, of course, concerned about it. Almost every intelligent young person under 30s here believes that the system is really broken. However we don't see any changes and I've been puzzled why.

Theoretically, even the most egoistic government who's only purpose is to get more for themselves must realize that in order to preserve it's welfare it must make sure the citizens are doing fine. Russians are not desperate yet, so maybe the government has found the right balance. Obviously, many are involved in the scheme and many people have things to lose if the government initiates a real war on corruption. So the government must be afraid too and that fear is greater. However, I don't think you can keep that balance forever. Like the article suggests, the brightest flee the country and someone has to make the economy going.

I realize I probably don't know many things guys up there are aware of, but it seems pretty obvious from down here that the only thing that should be done to help the country bloom is to eliminate corruption. For real. Then all those silicon valleys and scientists start reappearing on their own, healthcare starts recovering, investors begin coming back. Focus.
Ask YC: Review my startup, Atombox
http://atombox.net

Atombox stores small bits of text -- those things that you might write on sticky notes, index cards, or scraps of paper. We use it for Getting Things Done (GTD) (http://amzn.to/bxm1G3). It is full-featured (SSL, backups, keyboard shortcuts) up to 128 atoms and costs $5.00 per month for unlimited atoms.

I'm chatting at http://tinychat.com/atombox as well as on Twitter as @contextlines. Any thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks!
We had an established company incorporated in Australia. When we got into YC we set up the company in the US same as all the other YC companies, and transferred our IP to the US company.

Many YC companies already have products on the market.
I'm 100% sure that these kids have absolutely no issues at home, where their parents operate cordless phones and microwave ovens in the same unlicensed spectra, and their house is bombarded by WiFi signals from their neighbors (in my previous home, I could see 20+ unique SSIDs).

I love one of the reader comments to this article; I can't tell if it's serious or just a beautifully crafted troll. I'm worried it's the former:

The eyes are very sensitive to EMR and you will notice many young people now wear ball caps and granny sunglasses even when it is cloudy. This is similar to sun blindness.
@hga: Appreciate your response. Replying late, as I was away from all possible lines of communication.

Taken to cleaners risk, technology sufficiency: I would choose to have faith, I guess. As both individual and startup, this is not the first time I would be taking decisions based on incomplete knowledge/information, and it certainly would not be the last.

Technical knowledge: A saving grace is that I am technical after all. Just a different discipline - that of putting spaces and buildings together. The hypothesis is that the principles of problem-solving are universally same - just that language, grammar, syntax and rhetoric are different. If I have managed to produce cinema and theatre using my training as an architect and designer - I am hoping I can pull it off for a consumer internet application as well.

Having said all that, a tech co-founder would be ideal - except that I do not have a shared non-work history with any - and this level of chemistry is essential for the travails of co-founding. It feels somewhat lame to go 'date' a potential co-founder, just for the sake of having a tech co-founder.
YC invests its own capital, capital accrued through voluntary exchange, and that capital will be freed to more productive ends should they make poor choices. The application says as much:

"The original motivation for Y Combinator was benevolent, but this is not a charity. If our investments pay off, we can invest in more startups, and if they don't, we can't keep doing this indefinitely."

Contrast that with this Chilean taxpayer-funded scheme.
Awesome "alternative-medicine" sketch by two British comedians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
Not sure what degree your going for, but I just graduated from college with an EE degree, and I'll be starting grad school next week. Here's my advice:

-Have fun and enjoy classes (Go to them!) You'll learn a lot from your professors and other students even though you may initially feel like they are a waste of time. Also in smaller classes the professor notices.

-Also on classes, it's important to make a good grade, but it is also important what knowledge you take away. There are quite a few fundamental classes that I got an A in, but I retained very little that I am regretting now.

-If you are not being challenged in a class, esp. programming. Talk to the professor, and they will probably find a way to make it more exciting/interesting.

-Like you said, meet as many people as you can. This is esp. true the first semester. Everyone is excited about meeting new people.

-I would also recommend finding something outside of you subject area to balance your life out. For two years I was a cheerleading at my school. Met a lot of cool people/girls.

-Depending on what your major is, you may want to talk to a professor you like and see if you can get a job with them. This will cut down on your personally time for hacking and relaxing but makes up for it with great experience and recommendation letters.

-Once again, if you are doing C.S. or engineering look into REU's, Research Experience for Undergrads. I spend a summer at USC in their robotics lab for an REU, with housing, meals and a stipend paid for by the REU. Awesome time and I got a lot of letter of recommendations.

-Finally, be safe and have fun!
"The teachers do not realize that they themselves are not very creative, and therefore they may not value creativity even if they can recognize it."

"If the people in charge are very egotistical then they want to take credit for everything that happens, and they want to feel that they are in control of everything that happens. And that means consciously or unconsciously they will discoourgage creativity in other people."

Full credit to you Mr Cleese.
Neither one of these things should impede you from applying. (2) could even work in your favor.
Tyler Cowen is the author of the article :)
So HN comment history contributes to the application process? It makes sense, but as a lurker I have to admit I'm a little unsettled by it. It makes me wonder if my tendency to take a backseat and only raise my hand if I'm sure what I have to say is relevant and has not already been said, is somehow an indicator about my likelihood of success as an entrepreneur?
Eh. That's a bit like saying that a web server isn't a web server unless it supports the various bells and whistles provided by Apache.

Most people don't have a gigantic cluster of computers. Their fault-tolerance needs are minimal, because the most likely point of failure is their own code. In that situation, a minimalist map/reduce implementation can be a good compromise between scale and complexity. And let's face it: for all of the internet hysteria over map/reduce, it's a very simple idea.
note: I don't think the hosted apps would not be targeted, only search traffic.

It could become very ugly, and net neutrality is definitely the simplest and cleanest approach, but there might be a win for consumers with less neutrality too.
Do Not Feed the Troll
P vs NP is basically talking about problems where you can checking each possibility in a reasonable amount of time, but the number of possibility's keeps growing faster as the numbers get larger.

The traveling salesman is the easiest to understand, let's say you want to visit 11 city's which route is the fastest? It's easy to find out how long a route takes just add 10 numbers (the travel times between each city). However, there are basically 11! (11 * 10 * 9 * 8 ...) paths to look at. Add a new city, and there are suddenly 11 times as many options and each of them take 10% longer to compute (you add 11 numbers for each path vs 10). Going from 1001 to 1002 city's gives 1001 times as many routs, but calculating each route only takes 0.1% longer to compute (add 1000 vs 1001 numbers).

The only real hope if you want the perfect solution is for there be some secret that let's you eliminate many options without checking them. The simple truth is you can skip some steps aka, if your looking for the fastest trip though every major city in the US, you can ignore any path that starts with a longer trip than a complete path. AKA if you now of a route that visits every city in 21,357 miles you and you take longer than that to visit 80% of the city's you can ignore all paths that start that way. But, what are the limits on those improvements? What is the fastest possible approach?

PS: There are many options that can give a reasonably good solution, EX: if a computer picks the best random path from 1 million possible paths then it's probably better than 99.99% of the options. You can then take the best random paths and try to improve them by trying simple manipulations (swapping city's etc).
I'm not sure that's really the opposite view at all.

In my case, I found that just a few hours a day in the library made it possible for me to have an extremely active social life, with great friends, and no details to sweat.
Why would a developer minimize parking space if it will put his building's stores out of business?
> He wants to tax those who commute, you, it seems, might want to give incentives to companies to move to suburbs or to let employees telecommute, or to have some kind of tax incentive for employees to move to the city.

Those might kick-start things by forcing the hand of businesses that influence behaviour, but I think any sustainable and politically credible plan for the long term needs to achieve the results by changing social expectations. As our local authorities have discovered, you can't price people off the road when there is no sufficiently attractive alternative. All you do is gain some extra money, at the expense of popular support.

On the other hand, there is clearly a lot of latent hostility towards current employment practices. I can see a sustained campaign for sensible working practices eventually leading large companies to open up their flexible hours and telecommuting policies, and small companies having to do likewise to remain competitive as employers, simply because that is what a lot of people want anyway.
I liked the article "Have You Partnered With Thieves And Robbers" by Alok Kejriwal of Games2Win. There he describes how they managed to outsmart various portals pirating their games by showing ads only when the game runs outside of their domain, thereby compensating for loss of licensing fees, and using the pirate portals as a distribution mechanism.

http://indiamicrofinance.com/partnered-thieves-robbers.html
I'm skeptical of the doom & gloom stories a few months before an important election. The numbers don't look great but it could be a lot worse.
Badim wrote one of the most detailed posts I've come across on his revenue from Casual Flash game development: http://blog.elite-games.net/blog4.php/2009/12/17/total-reven...
It was not my intention to be snarky. I was genuinely surprised at the placid response. My sense has been that entrepreneurs take pride in creating something of value, finding others that are willing to invest their own capital to bring the idea to full fruition. That notion seemed at odds with the sort of unalloyed rent seeking described on the linked site.
1) we can figure these things out later, they won't affect the investment decision

2) yes. there are several companies on the current round who applied when they had both a launched product and were also already generating decent revenue.
Restaurants Use Menu Psychology to Entice Diners
If you're on a Mac, MacRabbit's CSSEdit [http://macrabbit.com/cssedit/] does that too. It's a fantastic application. I can't design without it.

Usually, I draw a basic sketch on a piece of paper, then write the HTML file in TextMate, and then spend a lot of time in CSSEdit.
That is to say, eliminating corruption is a dangerous and a difficult task. Someone really smart should be working on it. I can tell by the speeches they're not doing it at all right now.
Simple Collision Detection in Java
I think quality trumps quantity. I would think if a user posted tonnes of sub-average comments, it may hurt him. And if a user posted a dozen comments of value, it could be a plus.
I wouldn't sweat it. I think I had almost no karma when we applied.

I don't think it hurts you as much as it can possibly help you. If you have lots of intelligent comments, it's one more reason to put you in the "interview" pile. I think only a few people in our round had notable HN records.
Just selling a single popular product in a sector does not make you a monopoly. Brushing up on the definition of the term might help you understand.
"In all cases, the measured Wi-Fi signal levels were very far below international exposure limits (IEEE C95.1-2005 and ICNIRP) and in nearly all cases far below other RF signals in the same environments."

From this study:
Radiofrequency exposure from wireless LANs utilizing Wi-Fi technology.

Abstract:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17293700

Full text:
http://www.medfordumc.org/celltower/wifirfexposure.pdf
Is there a plausible mechanism?
He did mention he was traveling for work - business hotels, business districts, fancy lounges that the office takes you out to... those are incredibly similar no matter where you go.

I think that's part of the point - "real" traveling involves seeing the unique aspects of the place you're in. The nouveau riche jet-set lifestyle isn't really optimal for that (or maybe it's just sour grapes from me) :P
Oh really? I heard from a writer that emacs is the best word processor.

http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.sht...
There's always a lag time between accomplishment and external validation. Sometimes it's brief, but more often it's not. In my own case I'm used to it being on the order of two years or so. ;)

My recommendation is to learn to be satisfied with the results when you have created them. Be your own first judge, and if you feel you've done a good job on something from as objective a viewpoint as you can get, enjoy that. Reward yourself somehow, and take someone else along who'll at least lend a sympathetic ear and share your enthusiasm. Get yourself a nice dinner out, buy that expensive book you've been wanting, whatever.

Then plunge back in and do some more, while you still feel good.
It is said that Wiles first came across the statement of Fermat's Last Theorem in a popular math book. Who knows who might read this article/item and possibly start working on it.

More, people might read and understand this, and then pass it on to students as one of the current great mysteries in math and science.

Who knows where it might go? To think otherwise is amazingly short-sighted.
> You know I meant they agreed on a compromise that is mutually beneficial

In what way not having net neutrality on wireless is beneficial to Google?

> why would Google care to defend against P2P throttling?

They do care on landline, on wireless there is not much they can do. They tried hard for the last 10 years but failed as nobody supported them (FCC, telcos and gov). So they are trying to at least get net neutrality on landline.
Again, after ten years of battling for net neutrality, what do we have today? Nothing, not a single law to defend it. Google realized that it was not going to happen after lobying for it for years, so they at least are trying to get it on landline while putting wireless on hold (temporarily as the proposal says).

What have you done to defend net neutrality?
I would recommend you check out http://www.reddit.com/r/webdesign there are tons of articles submitted and I've learnt a lot from it. Although its a news aggregator, I learn a ton from the comments.
I hire Joe the Up-And-Coming Vulnerability Researcher (or rather, Cory does, since we hired someone to replace me 2 years ago so I could do more product work; see how this works?)

Joe and I work on projects together for 2 months.

I'm the billable resource on those projects. Joe doesn't bill.

I start out working harder (I have to deliver for clients and ramp Joe up). Pretty soon Joe ramps up and we start delivering the same work a lot faster. Eventually, Joe's so demonstrably capable (in our case, he's finding the same number or more security vulnerabilities in code that I am) that he becomes a billable resource, scheduled just like anyone else.

Depending on who you hire, this process can take months, or it can take weeks. If you hire someone with experience in your field, it may not take more than a week or two. If you hire out of University, it might take 2 months. It's almost always worth it.

I actually think Matasano has a harder time doing this than many other companies would. Our clients are extremely discriminating (we're a high-end firm) and we have to be very careful about hiring. We have clients that pick researchers from our firm by name. Staff bios go on every proposal. I can't imagine that this is the case for, say, iPhone development; most consulting companies are paying for an outcome, while security research contracts are paid in part for the process.
What a tool.
The upside of patents in general, or software patents in particular?

The standard case for patents is to compare them to business secrets. In a world without patents, innovators may choose to keep their methods secret, and not share them with the world, in order to protect them. A patent gives the inventor a legally enforceable monopoly for a limited period of time, in exchange for publication of the details of the method such that others can reproduce it when the term expires.

The key practical difference in terms of software patents is that reverse engineering makes it relatively impossible to actually keep an innovation secret-- but, as I said, that's a practical issue, and doesn't effect the philosophical justification of the patent system.

In other words, young grad students Sergey and Larry are able to slave away on their super-secret algorithm, secure in the knowledge that no better-funded evil empire can steal it and implement it and compete with them.