skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Drinking, screwing, and bullshitting about postmodernist deconstructionism for four years is pretty appealing to a lot of 18 year olds.
Airplanes have less fudge factor and more stress than Office building so while an office building might last 30-300 years with little problem, all airplanes have a shorter lifespan. (Assuming regular use.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_%28material%29

Note: Damage is cumulative. Materials do not recover when rested.

And if you look at the bottom of the page you will find a fairly long list of airplanes that failed.
Ok, this guy IS a genius physicist. However why the hell didn't he just get on a plane and fly to Tuva?!?!? Or hike there!

There are terrorists paying to learn how to fly in the US, there are Mexicans coming across the US border, journalists wandering into Iran, and many other places. However a genius couldn't figure out how to get there.

Instead he spent 5 years figuring out the language and trying to get some sort of random "official" approval through numerous exchanges with people around the world. The botanists however just walked there. I spent 45 minutes hoping to see entrepreneurial thought at work and all I found was genius physicist who couldn't get to a remote country.

Am I the only one that finds this lame? I'm not saying I'm not inspired by his work but his approach to getting to Tuva is the exact way you prevent forward motion in a startup. He put false hurdles/barriers in front of himself to make it more exciting and romanticize it rather than just go there.

Disappointing.
IMHO it will be related in a way that it will still be around replicating social interactions offline online.

The way i predict success in online businesses is how well they can replicate real-world actions and dynamic. The bigger and better the set of real human actions a startup can build a online counterpart for, the stronger it becomes.

Facebook is building online equivalent of verbs or actions you can do with people. so the more verbs it can do the more unstoppable it becomes.

What if someone can build the Facebook+ phone? i would also bet on that.
I'd be interested in the source so I could mess around with it but can't seem to find a link to it

Are you (DTrejo) planning on putting a source up?
Personal Hygiene
Oracle Database Enterprise Edition: $47,500 per processor, plus $10k yearly update/maintenance.
> Predictions for 2011:

Doesn't this mean you think it is more likely to happen than not?
If Google and Verizon jointly pay for a high-speed 'dedicated line' between YouTube and Verizon broadband customers, and only YouTube traffic goes over that line, is that the Internet or not? Should it be illegal?

In a networked economy sometimes coordination between different companies is deeper than two offices of the same company. Why should a company be allowed to have dedicated lines between its own arms, and not to important partners?
I want to get a pair, but I don't think they have a model appropriate for motorcycling, thus limiting my ability to use them.
Strangely enough, I completely don't agree. Most of these items are available on my phone, but if I wanted to really use them I'd buy the real thing. For example, if I needed a GPS unit it'd be strapped to the bars of my bike, so it'd need to be durable, waterproof, operable with gloves- things my phone is not. The same applies in one fashion or another to almost every device on that list, particularly calculators and alarm clocks.
Paul was right when he said not to do side consulting work.

For me it was simple; a 3-month consulting gig will give me a financial runway for the next year. So I am doing it, and nothing else. Come December 1st I will have enough to live comfortably for the next year, probably 2 years if I move to somewhere cheaper and bring my fiancee over.
Those comments were cached when comment scores were turned off 10 months ago. It's strange that they haven't been updated since then.
I really don't see how that is an apple to apples rebuttal.

The parent is talking about receiving $5,000.

Cash4Clunkers required one to take their old car, trade it in, and purchase a new car.

So, not only did you have to already have a used car, you had to be able to qualify to finance a new car or have the cash for a new car.

Additionally, the trade-in car was destroyed, with no parts scrapped. All engines of perfectly functioning vehicles destroyed. Entire fully-functioning vehicles destroyed.

That is a much smaller subset of people than "anyone who wants to buy a used car."

Back to the other stuff...

"You're twice as likely to get a job with a degree as someone who finished HS, and almost 3x as likely as a HS dropout."

I don't see how you can use an unemployment rate to determine the likelihood of finding a job in the current economy based on education level....maybe educational level most likely to be laid off, but that is still a stretch.

Higher level education is expensive because it is subsidized.

Look at the housing market. Harder to get a mortgage now, yet rates are at an all-time low, and property prices are at historical lows.

I guarantee if anyone were able to get a mortgage, even at 20%, housing prices would drastically increase.
This is good to see, as it can be quite disheartening when something you worked on is effectively killed. That being said, this talk needs to be backed up with code quickly. People will be evaluating their options and they will wait only so long. There needs to be a credible effort.
Hello camel nose!

Once you agree that total equality isn't actually possibly, we are now arguing about exactly which non-neutral policy to apply. Very similar to the anecdotal story about Winston Churchill that ends with "Now we are haggling about the price."
How important is it that you get every unique line? Is it ok for some small percentage of unique lines to not appear in the output?

How much memory do you have available?

The Bloom filter is a good way to go. Here is one possibility:

If you have 2 billion unique lines here's how much memory you need for a Bloom filter:

Error rate Memory

------------ --------

1 / thousand 3.35 GB

1 / million 6.70 GB

1 / billion 10.05 GB

1 / 10 billion 11.16 GB

1 / 100 billion 12.28 GB

If you have 12 GB available you can reduce the chance of missing a unique string down to almost zero.
Neat! I'm surprised and happy this works; I presumed the Apple SSL framework would only check the trust setting on the root.

Unfortunately, you can't (as far as I can tell) do this with Firefox; import the Comtrust certificate and turn off "use to validate websites", restart Safari, and it'll still accept the Etisalat site.

What does work is to take the CER file, pop it open in a hex editor, whack 1 byte of it, and import that; the result is a mismatched certificate error on sites signed by Etisalat/Comtrust.
Except it doesn't substantially differ from the FCC's NPRM from back in 2009, the one everyone was so happy about. It's the NPRM for wired networks, and a "wait and see" approach for wireless networks.
Oracle is a business that sells products which in turn have prices? Wake me up for the film at 11.
Hey wwortiz, if you'd like to browse the source right away, you can do this: be on HN, right click > inspect element > scripts > chrome-extension://gobbledygook/hnkeys.js

I was thinking about putting it on github, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Not Harvard, huh?
With the scrutiny and cuts schools are facing, I find it hard to believe academia is as bloated and wasteful of money as government.

(of course it will be a little bloated and waste a little money- every establishment does, unless it's brand-spanking new)
Not sure why they used parentheses rather than a letter variable in the example. Having gone through the American education system myself, I can definitely tell you 4+3+2=x+2 is a much more common syntax.
What the _snowman param in Rails 3 forms is for
I must admit I didnt follow this completely. Do you mean that because Buffer pre-announced he will lend $5K to people, the prices of cars will increase to accomodate this $5K?
Well, search is most of Google's pay per click ad revenue (and probably the ideal use case for pay per click advertising).

I agree with your take on the strategy for last mile ISPs.

But I don't see how it amounts to much of an advantage or disadvantage.
This is why America's doomed.
Writing about not writing.
Well I was experimenting with how to present the core idea since it got modded down in a few other threads mercilessly :)

I suppose it's more of a hypothetical prediction... one that Google ought to be fairly concerned with.
but it's 3 characters versus 1. is it easier because you don't have to hit SHIFT?
> But in 2005, during a major overhaul of the bankruptcy code, private student loans were given an elevated status and thus couldn't be discharged. This didn't make sense. If we are going to have a fair bankruptcy system, private education loans should be treated the same as other private consumer debt. That's the risk lenders take, similar to the risk borne by providers of loans for cars, homes or other consumer purchases.

http://edlabor.house.gov/edlabor_dem/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBl...

> Lenders receive a 97 percent guarantee against default losses, which removes almost all of the default risk of the loan to the lender. If a borrower does not repay his or her federal student loan, the government pays the lender 97 percent of the outstanding principal and all of the accrued unpaid interest. In other words, the lender assumes default risk for only 3 percent of the loan principal.

http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/federal-stude...
Here's one I haven't seen mentioned: social network fatigue. People gradually realize that online friendships tend to be shallow, unfulfilling & transitory. They switch back to the old model where being somebody's friend actually takes some effort, and has tangible emotional and social benefits associated with it. FB becomes irrelevant. Cf. that Wilson Quarterly article that was on here a couple days ago.

Hey... anything is possible :-)
Right. Especially when it is doesnt match their goals ;)
We've made a multicore update to GNU sort recently, so with latest from git one can just do: sort -u
That will chunk, compress, merge automatically
Also run with LC_ALL=C if that's appropriate as it will greatly speedup. Also see the -S
I can only do one large thing at work at a time, probably because I refuse to give up my leisure activities: I enjoy them and they keep me sane.

So I did a substantial 7-month consulting gig last year, collected the cash and have been working on my startup since.

Incidental details:
1. I blew two months on a startup idea that was going nowhere.
2. I live cheaply.
Cool, github would be great too, since I've never messed with chrome extensions I was more interested in how everything works together.
BTW, as you desire to decrease your error rate Cuckoo hashing starts to become an attractive alternative to Bloom filters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_hashing
http://www.ru.is/faculty/ulfar/CuckooHash.pdf

You can get your hash table utilization to almost 100%. If you're willing to accept a 64-bit hash function and you have 2 billion unique strings you'll need just over 16GB to do it all in one pass.

A 64-bit hash is is just barely enough for 2 billion items. You might get a handful of collisions. Add more bits to reduce the probability. 128-bits would double the required size to 32GB but you're unlikely to ever see a collision in your life time.

If 16GB or 32GB is too much you could do it in multiple passes. Make N passes through the text file and adjust the range of hash values you accept to test only 1/N each time.

8 passes through the original file with a generous 128-bit hash would take only 4GB of RAM.

I have the feeling this is more work than you would want to put into the problem, though.
1. Can you contract out any elements of consulting work to others to free up time? Perhaps some of the lower-value work? You'll make the spread b/w the rate you get and what you pay them. You'll profit less but gain incremental hours for your venture.

2. Pick or find consulting work that "scales well" meaning it allows you to leverage (sorry for jargon) knowledge/things you've already done or built. This type of work will be more efficient for you, more profitable and you can reinvest saved time into your startup.

3. Regarding multiple startup ideas, I'd pick one to focus on. Diversifying amongst startup ideas esp if unrelated doesn't work in my experience. It leads to doing them all half-baked which ultimately won't get you further from consulting which is where you want to be.

4. As mentioned below, we treated our own company as a client which meant we acted with same sense of urgency as we would with other clients. It is a good way to make your own venture a priority else it always gets back burnered.

5. This one is a bit drastic but exit the mortgage if you can by selling your home and renting. Fixed costs like mortgages can be like anchors for an entrepreneur. Take the money you may make and put some away for a rainy day fund for the wife/kids/you and a portion can be used to give your own venture some additional fuel or runway.

In same boat as you my friend so "feel your pain" although sounds like you have too much consulting biz which is a high class problem IMO.

Good luck. And if you figure out a "solution", pls let me know.
at least they're up front about it rather than saying "type your contact information in so we can have a 'sales representative' spam your inbox and voice mail" like a lot of enterprise software companies do. cf. #10 in http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
It takes a bit longer for the HTML5 version to be generated I've noticed.
If you want to view the Oracle price list in HTML5, you will need to fill this form first and an Oracle account manager will come back to you with a price quote for the HTML5 URLs, per CPU core.

If your organization deploys clusters of iOS devices for surfing HN, and enterprise knowledge acquisition; Oracle can provide an in-house demonstration of the URLs and their reachability. Our support staff can provide accurate support and trouble-shooting of rendering quality at the pixel level.
This explains that http://people.forbes.com/profile/larry-ellison/60466
Would you mind giving more details on this? I don't understand how it would be possible for a human to do this with n > 1kish, and even then I would imagine it being horribly slow.
Oracle's standard operating procedure is to double each salesperson's quota every year.
Oracle's other database, MySQL, only cost's $0.1 in download costs, + ~$1 yearly download costs for updates.
Check out vimperator/vimium.
Agreed, not sure why this is getting up votes at all on the topic. If you're running a DB that processes $100M in transactions annually is paying $250k in licenses and $50k/yr in maintenance unreasonable? Of course that pricing for the software isn't for every use case but they aren't trying to sell to the entire market.
A good summary. After several days of thinking about this I can only come to two conclusions, neither of which I like:

a) Oracle is realizing that mobile is strategic and has decided this is how they will get in on the action. They think it is much more important than Java. They will force Google to license Java from them and that way gain not only royalties, but actual control of Android.

b) This is purely about damaging Android. There is an agreement we know nothing about yet between Apple and Oracle that if Oracle takes down Android something will happen in return from Apple. They don't care if they win or lose, they just want to smash adoption of Android. It could as easily be a move from MS but it is hard to think past the bitterness and sense of betrayal expressed by Jobs about Android, or the frequently reported "close friendship" between Ellison and Jobs.

I wish these were conspiracy theories but I can't account for Oracle's willingness to detonate what is still an incredibly valuable Java asset any other way.
*official student document policy at a state university

"Make sure to print the documents, then place them in the bin, so they can be scanned into the students file"

From my 5 years working in Higher ED that phrase pretty much sums it up.
Launch.
Maybe see if you can postpone some of your features until v2 and just get something out there ASAP that people can use and ultimately pay you for. Easier said than done of course, but that's your real answer I think.
Easier money will increase demand. Higher demand puts upward pressure on prices.
I think they value Java quite a lot. The frightening part is that they must value something else quite a lot more. For my money, it has to be that they want a stake in the mobile market - they've decided they can't sit by and let the future of computing pass them by. This is their way of getting in on the action.
Google makes billions because it is the site where people go when they are looking for something, often something to buy.

Facebook isn't going to make money just by knowing general things about you. It still needs to be there when you are looking for something.

What do I care how targeted an ad is when I'm not at a location to buy things to begin with.
Hacker Uses XSS and Google Street View Data to Determine Physical Location
anyone care to comment on whether multiple dispatch or multimethods (e.g., in CLOS) solves this problem more elegantly?
The first time I saw these unusual barefoot shoes was when Sergey Brin was wearing them on stage at some tech conference. I don't even rememeber what he was saying—all I could do was stare at those weird, awesome shoes. Then I thought "oh I guess that's what eccentric billionaires do, they have strange custom shoes made for themselves" without knowing it was a real product.

For the longest time I've worn the smallest, lightest Pumas I can find, because of the closer to barefoot feel, so I may just pick up a pair of these to try.
The extra $5k people have to spend would increase the price people are willing/able to pay for a car - and increase demand-- which would lead the car sellers to raise their prices.
This list is incomplete - it only contains software that Oracle considers "off the shelf". Products in their lineup that are targeted at very specific niches are not listed.

Without naming specific products (I'm probably under some kind of NDA though I don't work for Uncle Larry), to give you an idea: products that are sold exclusively through RFPs and the like are less likely to be on a "this is what it costs" list.
Unfortunately Speed is only available in Europe, while Bikila is practically impossible to get anywhere. There was another five fingers shoe made with thicker soles and kangaroo hide, but apparently the stitching on the kangaroo hide is weak so they're having problems with seams splitting easily.
AOL fell by the wayside.
How do you know? Google and Verizon didn't pass a law, they made a mutually beneficial agreement. And the telcos have been saying they want to tax successful business running on their pipes for years.

Note I wrote "can be", not "will be." This looks like a slippery slope for fair use and content independence.Perhaps the EU and/or other big groups outside Washington/USA can stop the telcos/ISPs.

You assert your opinion without giving an explanation and without taking into account things will change (for good or bad.)
I haven't voted up or down here, but cam is correct. Maybe the tone was a bit rough?

http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=129234... (found via images.google.com .)

This site also has an amusing comparison of crocs & vibrams.
HN Meetup: The Startup Cup in SF tomorrow (14 startups)
Weebly
Wepay
Scribd
Footbalistic.com
Kabam
UserVoice
Slide
Xobni
Revision3
Square
Socialtext
TechCrunch
Evernote
Box.net

Join us tomorrow (08/15/2010) at 9:00am to 1:00pm at Crocker Amazon Field @ Geneva and Moscow St., SF

Come cheer on your favorite company at this year's soccer tournament!

http://www.thestartupcup.com
I've been doing exactly this transition for the last couple of months -- transitioning from consulting to running a business and working on services (basically, a startup, just under my company's brand).

For me, trying to schedule "startup time" didn't work. There was always too much immediate consulting-type work to take care of.

So about a year ago I ran a Craigslist ad, spent a day wading through applications and making phone calls, and found someone that was willing to work on a part-time, on-call basis, for good wages but less than my consulting fees.

A year later, I've got a couple of people that I work with now -- sort-of employees-on-call -- and I was just able to take my first real vacation in 2.5 years. Everything was handled fine while I was unreachable. So now I've got plenty of time to work on software.

So, one solution is to run your consulting like a business for a while, grow it, get some contract help, stabilize it, and then manage it part-time.
Screw Your Brilliant Business Idea
Don't sell your house though. Rent costs money too.
http://www.thestartupcup.com
"In case you're (somewhat) unfamiliar with OOP terminology, polymorphism is a pretentious name for the concept of late binding."

Actually, they are two related, but different concepts. Polymorphism generally refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtype_polymorphism but there are other types. In short, it involves virtualizing an interface. Late binding, aka "Dynamic Binding", on the other hand, makes no assumption of an interface and does not necessarily imply polymorphic behavior.
It's actually more fascist than socialized, which is why you see "private" institutions affected just as much. By fascist I am not equivocating Nazi Germany, but rather saying the means of production are heavily influenced by government regulators. The commenter above who talks about loans hit the nail on the head. And those loans are largely backed by the Federal Government.

It would be interesting if you had to go to a bank (who also didn't have the FDIC backing) and demonstrating the probability your education will make you able to pay the debt you're about to incur. I think you'd see far fewer loans, and also better market signals for the types of majors that are worth high dollar figures.

Right now there's no significant market signal. The primary signal is whatever lobbyists can curry favor with the government to get money or more funding for huge loan programs.
Finding solutions to problems in the middle of the night while sleeping has happened to me. Usually that's how I fall sleep at night, thinking hard about a problem, or trying to build up an idea. Having things on ones mind before sleeping probably does influence what we dream and think about while sleeping.
(Shrug) If I vandalize a road sign, the highway department has the right to close the lane, replace the sign, and prosecute me for the act. They do not, however, get to sell the highway to a conglomerate that also owns a trucking company who will be charged lower tolls for driving on it.

That's all 'net neutrality' means, or should mean.
Innovate, Yes, but Make It Practical
True. Perhaps it's me being in NYC where you can rent for significantly less than carrying cost of mortgage/maintenance on your own condo.

Plus why invest in real estate (highly uncertain and perhaps going nowhere in near future) vs. invest in oneself?
Hasn't this been well covered in books already?

Summary: study, listen, speak, converse (esp with native speakers), immerse, repeat. Add read and write for bonus points.