skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ok. Linearity isn't my term -- it's jgc's. But I presume he and Carr mean something like a sustained engagement via a body of text. In essay writing, this usually involves multiple revisions, again and again, across the same space. In essay reading, this usually involves a closer level of engagement with a text and its progression than is otherwise normal -- somehow, via its thoroughness, it challenges us.

The disadvantages with this type of approach are that you can get off base. Hence, something more dynamic, with feedback (in the form of a Socratic dialogue, etc.) can be much more useful. Perhaps the Internet has the potential for being more Socratic -- was my point before. But only if we understand exactly how it fits -- how, arguably, we've been waiting for this, in our linearity, for a long time. But if we abuse its dynamic qualities, we might totally lose it. So Nick Carr by reminding us that we might think about these things -- is useful.

The advantages of the linear approach are that by dwelling with something in an engaged manner -- you can often extract value that otherwise superficial readings don't. At some point all ideas come into contact with each other, and are validated, etc. But arguably by giving people more space to develop their ideas -- sort of mentioned in this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html

-- you extract more value.
There a lot of people in this space. The problem is that how companies deal with DMCA request varies a lot.

A lot of PR capital can be wasted on one bad DMCA complaint gone wrong.
Well, and my point is that VCs are very often down the line from YC, so there has to be a feedback of sorts.

YC has to measure its own success somehow, and I suppose they do that by "exits". Such as a VC round, a real exit (acquisition), or a certain level of prominence and profitability - that which is not compatible with bootstrapping. Boostrapping is only great when you attack a small niche, that is too small for people with more resources to get into. The same smallness will inevitably make meaningful "exits" impossible.
http://zokier.net/stuff/minion_pro.png

Firefox does really badly with Minion Pro at smaller sizes. Well, maybe someday.....
I think what he's saying is that the odds look worse for single founders, but this is a little misleading because disproportionately more bad ideas come from single applicants.

The applications that get funded probably have a good background/idea, just the same as the rest.
Vagalume - I NEED Your LOVIN' - Eric Carmen
the world is filled with boring jobs. your goal should be getting yourself into a position where you have the opportunity to do work that you don't find boring.

from what you have written, i assume for you that means ones where you get to think. working at mcdonalds doesn't involve much thinking. here is the burger, here is the proscribed way to make a burger, here is what goes on it. if you learn how to cook and get good at it, you can be in a position to play and create your own dishes.

you could repeat the same basic story for most industries.

i know people who have programming jobs that involve taking a cookie cutter website and adding some basic theme changes and providing customer specific offers. they are bored to death doing it. some people would be happy just to get the decent paycheck it provides.

my point was that most organizations are built around people who solve the problems, come up with the tools to solve the problems and then others learn how to use the tools and repeat the process over and over again. don't put yourself in the position where you are one of the tool users if you want something more challenging.
I think you typoed voracious, but thanks for the new word, Veracious means truthful and honest. Cool.

Dr NakaMats who has invented a huge number of incredible things recommends memorization as an important part of preparation for what he calls Ikispiration.
http://www.whatagreatidea.com/nakamatsu.htm

Here's an excerpt from an interview:
What are the teaching methods used to prepare Japanese children for the strong competition they face? And how does this affect creativity?

NakaMats:

One method is memorization. We teach our kids to memorize until the age of twenty, for we have discovered that the human brain needs memorization up to that point. Then young people can begin free-associating, putting everything together. That’s how geniuses are formed. If a child doesn’t learn how to memorize effectively, he doesn’t reach his full potential.
OP: "I'm pretty sure the Mono people are worried. "

You are saying that Miguel de Icaza is not one of these Mono people, nor is he representative of them.
People who travel have interesting stories from their travels. They have a broad outlook and set of morals, because they have met people from diverse groups. They are social because they have had to be outgoing to make friends. They can form long term friendships because they return to places. They are romantically successful because they are appealing and meet a lot of people.

There is nothing inherent in being a traveler that makes them "weird", though they may be unusual because of their unusual life. I can't see why either having or not having stuff is relevant.

Travelers make great friends who I miss when they are not around.
Get Lamp: The Text Adventure Documentary
You comment is shallow, mean-spirited, and is aimed to derail the conversation with innuendo.

Why not tell us instead what you think about the content of the book or any of the ideas it espouses? Or maybe you could criticize author for not practicing what he is preaching. That is if you were able to demonstrate that, which you won't because he actually did bootstrap several software businesses before writing the book.
You'll have a tough time raising money from traditional angels/VCs if it's not a C-Corp.

I've heard of a couple VCs out there who want to invest in social entrepreneurship, though, so maybe you want to ask them. Check out Good Capital: http://www.goodcap.net/
How people fund a startup initially is a separate question from how ambitious their long term plans are. So we would be very interested in investing in the next Microsoft, for example.
Economists See Increased Chance Of Double-Dip Recession
Drivers don't directly pay for the full cost of roads, e.g. through a gas tax

We already pay gas taxes, and car registration fees, and license fees. I'd be interested to hear how the road construction budget compares to the amount of money brought in by these.

they're in support of the idea that the real costs of driving ought to be borne by the driver themselves, and that non-drivers should be unburdened by the imposition of driving costs

I'm okay with that, as long as we also support the idea that the cost of public schools should be supported entirely by those who send their children to public schools, and the cost of Medicaid is supported entirely by those who benefit from Medicaid.

But it seems that social engineers only ever want to implement user-pays solutions for things that rich people use. They think that the costs of services used by rich people should be borne by rich people, and the costs of services used by poor people should also be borne by rich people.
"disproportionately more bad ideas come from single applicants" I only agree with the above statement when single founder startups do not take the initiative (and common sense) of interviewing potential users/clients for the app/product that he/she is trying to create, this will tell you at least if the idea is good or not. Thanks.
Forget a Double-Dip, We're Still in One Long Big Dipper
A lot of people who are frustrated with being a "wage-slave" believe that other humans are forcing them to work or die. The distinction they view between "slavery" and "wage-slave" is that there are a few more options in the type of work you do.

This is probably why they don't just call it "slavery" and have given it a different name which is understood to be less harsh.
We all thought it was dead, but it's still ranked 194th by compete.com, with over 6 million uniques per month.
Appel's series of Modern Compiler Implementation in * is easy enough to ready and apply, and some come with code (IIRC).
> Underserved search terms

This is what Associated Content does. And they are in Denver, just next to CU-Colorado. AC is currently looking for cool algorithms for discovering unsatisfied demand for content.
Looking at this and these competitors there's a few things I like a lot more with this app:

Google Lat - Disgusting barrier to entry, 99% of my friends don't know what it is yet they HAVE to be a friend of mine on the service to see where I am.

Foursquare,Gowalla,Brightkite - Not Realtime tracking, I'm not going to 'check in' every 10 seconds to achieve the same effect. Also these are much more 'stalkerish' while this app is pretty anonymous.

This seems like the opposite of a social network and more of just a utility.
If you think you have a physiological problem, see a physician. (I know, you went to an ENT-- go to your GP, explain the problem, and get a referral to whatever specialist he recommends.)

If you think you have a psychological problem, see a psychologist.

In neither case, is asking random strangers on the internet a good plan.

There are lots of physical disorders (some serious, some not) which can result in body odor, and the right diagnostician should be able to help you out.
Performance. Embedding 18 fonts via CSS would add a lot of weight and the browsers (particularly mobile safari) don't cope too well when you embed too many fonts at once.

(I work at Typekit)
What's your weekly diet? Please be thorough.
It sounds to me like a psychogenic illness similar to the Tanganyika laughter epidemic:

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

It is extremely unlikely that wifi would make kids sick. These same kids probably get wifi exposure at home too, even if it is just spill over wifi signals from their neighbor's homes. The parents clearly don't know enough about psychology or electronics.

Chances are the parents are inadvertently encouraging psychosomatic symptoms in their impressionable children.
You're exactly right. If I had thought of the poker analogy, I would have included it.

I'm glad someone on here agrees with me...;)
My friends just started a site called Snapgoods.com for this. Not sure if it's gaining traction or not.
Not thought about these much, but I have them jotted down on my ever-growing ideas list. They're a bit dated.

1. Bluetooth analytics. A lot of people are broadcasting their BD_ADDR and don't know it. Give shop owners some way to see recurring visitors - or perhaps even track how they move around the shop.

2. P2P file distribution for businesses. Your users install a client and get paid a small amount per hour (which changes depending on demand). Businesses needing to distribute a large file pay you to host it on your 'botnet'. I don't think ISPs would like this an awful lot.
Scott, that's exactly what I was getting at.

My only fear about making it as a startup is having to one day answer that existential question myself. I frankly don't know what I'd decide to do.
What technology worker spends all day worrying about survival? It's not hard to save up a couple years living expenses on a software engineer salary, and it's not hard to find another job (or even found a successful company) if you have a couple years to do it.
Except that he then goes on to argue that the people who get FU money won't confront those questions because they can't be happy that much money, they'll have to keep going because of their "insatiable hopes of yet greater scores". And, if that's how you think, you're just as trapped as any "wage slave".

(Incidentally, I think the author is wrong, and skewed by his time at Goldman. I personally know substantially more people who have either had "small" payoffs, or have lifestyle businesses or passive income streams, and their desire doesn't seem to be to collect still more money, but rather to spend their time travelling or backpacking or what have you. But, I'm probably just as skewed by living in Portland as the author is from living in Manhattan.)
I always thought "Method of exercising a cat" was the best patent ever

http://www.wikipatents.com/US-Patent-5443036/method-of-exerc...
Weird, I'd think that they would all use the same font rendering provided by the OS.
Read The Map of Innovation by Kevin O'Connor, founder of DoubleClick. http://www.amazon.com/Map-Innovation-Creating-Something-Noth...
The provision of surface-level parking reduces urban density, making cities less walkable, bringing with it an array of other social problems.

There are all sorts of social problems associated with high-density housing as well.

1. Crime is rampant in high-density areas all over the world.

2. Children have nowhere to play. You can't just let your children wander freely.

3. Noise. One jerk with a subwoofer can spoil the night of a hundred people instead of just three.

4. And so forth. I'm sure if you looked at statistics you'd find all sorts of horrible social problems (mental illness etc) correlated with population density, even once you correct for income and so forth. Cramming too many people into too little space just has bad consequences.

Personally I couldn't stand to live in Houston's outer suburbs, nor in central London, but there's plenty of middle-way that lets people have their own cars plus be able to walk places plus catch public transport when they need it. Give each family of four a quarter-acre block and you've still got ten thousand people per square mile.

But hey, different strokes et cetera. People who think Los Angeles should look more like Paris should go live in Paris instead of trying to turn Los Angeles into Paris. And vice versa.
I don't make music but I love music. This is a way to potentially help every indie artist/label in the world.

I have an entire database of music industry listings. These types of databases usually cost lots of money and therefore independent artists have been excluded from using them. We're talking 50,000 listings spanning across the united states and canada. Lots of independent labels and artists I've spoken to are excited by the prospect of having the most comprehensive music industry contact database available for free, to anyone, any age, anywhere in the world.

The database is legit and put together by myself and a friend who is music industry major.

THE PROBLEM:

The programming behind it sucks. It should be re-built from the ground up, using the database as the starting point. The search is horrible and doesn't pull the results that users expect (even though the results exist!). There should be more community features. The best way for this type of database to stay up to date and accurate is for users to contribute. Users can also talk to each other about what works and begin to talk about their experiences with different contacts.

Business prospects:
- advertising
- premium accounts

There's always advertising, in this case the ads are to a very niche crowd, so that always helps. There's also reasons why a business with money, like an indie label, might want a premium account.

To be honest, this probably doesn't have a big chance of making a lot of money. My hope has always been to make it simply sustainable. The upside is that you are literally helping out every independent musician and label in the united states and canada that wants to be heard. You're helping the underdog expose their music to the world.

If community participation grows, it's easy to start allowing people to post listings from countries other than US/Canada. And that would be awesome.

There's quite a few interesting technical challenges this site is facing and currently no one is stepping up to face them. The code, project, and database is yours if you want it. Maybe we put it all under an open license? I'll even continue to help with design/front-end development (photoshop/html/css/js) as that is my strong point. Programming is my weak point.

http://www.indiedirectory.net
I try to frame it in terms of skills learned: "I'll start my next company when I've learned X and Y and tangibly accomplished Z." This is also a moving target, but at least it takes effort to move the goalposts, in the form of figuring out what your next goal is. At that point, you have to think about it anyway, so if the rational choice is "It's time to leave and start my company now," that should at least enter into your mind.
If you had a patent on patent trolling

Funny you should say that. Elsewhere in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1608556
It reminds me of the apt quotation (I can't get an authoritative source on it in 30 seconds of searching), "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."
That should be loseweightgetlaid.com (1 less 'o').
The have a beautiful coast line, however, it still needs work. The lack of jetties, detached/floating breakwaters, groynes and seawalls is going to cost them in the long run. The city is still in its infancy so they may be planned- at least one hopes so.

For comparison:

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&...

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&... (scroll along the coast)

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&... (nice example of erosion)

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&... (prime example of good coast protection.)

Here is a good example for what is in store(area of Dubai): http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=google+maps+dubai...

Here we can see erosion(/) and building(\) taking place. Those "palm" islands are not going to stay that way forever.

After looking more into it, here are some articles about the risk their beaches face.

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/environment/saving-dubai-s...

http://www.dubaipropertycrash.com/wp/2009/02/tsunami-dubai-p...

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/27...

http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/UrbanSustainability/111

http://www.cnsm.csulb.edu/departments/geology/people/bperry/...
Berlin U-Bahn - 173 stations, 91.3 mtl, 1.4 mdr

(Berlin S-Bahn - 166 stations, 206 mtl, 1 mdr)
Increasing the Probability of Pizza Consumption: Why A/B Testing is important
I'd say there is and always will be more than one way to do it. Even if a language manages to constrict usage of the syntax to the guidelines, one layer of abstraction higher up it's all choices once again.

There have always been good and bad practices in Perl. Without change and reevaluation, how should there be progress? I regard Modern Perl as the aggregation of the community's knowledge, experience and best practices with regard to designing software. I'd like to emphasize the last part of the former sentence, since I believe Perl's continuing influence and ability to find new talents is at least in part depending on the nature of the community. And especially the fact that it doesn't matter where a good idea come from. If the Python guys come up with something smart, more power to them, because we might be able to use their experience. And at the same time, I think Perl wouldn't have been such a success for a long time if it hadn't been as flexible as it is, catering to people coming from other styles and other environments. Yes, the Perl community might have a common way to do it, and in this day and age even a library that does it all for you, and stuff you wouldn't even have thought of yet, but that doesn't mean you can't come up with something better.

With the ability to extend the grammar in Perl 6, I believe this will go full circle. Since then everybody in the Perl community will be able to experiment with language design, find bugs, write proof-of-concepts, and so on.
i think most people would disagree with you on that.
You need to know stuff to have things to put together. School may seem just to be about memorization, but you're doing yourself down if you memorize and then discard.

Instead, memorize and keep! The more you know, the more opportunities you'll have for things to bang together, make sparks and create a fire in your belly. Oddly enough, this can be true even of history or grammar, although it's impossible to predict how.

Don't simply memorize, though. Work out for yourself how things fit together. School is giving you this opportunity, but you need to take the chance.
I think it's no coincidence that the likes of Page and Brin and Zuckerberg never really intended to start businesses. I think it's no accident that Warren Buffett still drives an old Cadillac and lives in his old suburban house.

I can think of a few counter-examples - Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Felix Dennis.
Hackers create wifi-sniffing aerial drone
#2 is partially handled by rdio (http://www.rdio.com/) you can create and share playlists and any number of people can listen to them. Not sure about collaborating on playlists but considering the heavy social aspect of the site I would be surprised if that feature never arrived.
I honestly think I'd say: Constrain your clients. Only offer to do X Y or Z, not whatever the hell they tell you to.

Make sure X Y and Z are all in the realm of good stuff.
Google CEO Suggests You Change Your Name to Escape His Permanent Record
Deadly Whooping Cough, Once Wiped Out, Is Back
I visited their office recently. It is like visiting a living history museum of the dot-com boom. Their business plan called for more of the same served in classic web 1.0 style, and they seemed rather proud of it too.
Jonah Lehrer: Choice Blindness
There's a startup called Catapulter.com that's pitching themselves as Kayak for ground transportation. They're in closed beta right now, but opening soon.
4. http://www.divvy.com/
Have you guys sorted out the Safari issue?

We were going to use TypeKit but it looked like crap in Safari 5.
Ask HN: Review our webapp: AirDropper
Hi everyone! My co-founder and I just finished our second pass at our new app and we were hoping to get some feedback from the HN community.

https://www.airdropper.com

AirDropper is a Dropbox companion app for requesting files from anyone with an email address. You just authorize your Dropbox account, make a request, and we put the file the person uploads into your Dropbox. Everything's secure in transit, we can handle larger files than most email services, and it's really easy for the person sending the file.

To provide some context, I started my own law firm this year, and I immediately ran into some friction in trying to securely get files from clients. Many clients were uncomfortable sending sensitive documents as email attachments. I walked a few clients through signing up with Dropbox and sharing a folder, but that caused a lot of back and forth with creating an account, setting sharing permissions, etc. I talked through the issue with my perennial side-project partner and AirDropper is what we came up with as a solution. We made a "two week" version a little while ago and we got some great feedback, especially from designer friends who need to get files from clients that are too big to email. Today's version incorporates their feedback, along with some improvements we've stumbled into along the way.

What do you think?
I've worked for a company a few years ago that during one period had a small (3-4 person) true UX team for a large development crew (had something like 160 java devs all in same building). They produced the wireframes based on client services' input, tested with users in a controlled environment, did the heatmaps, produced the wireframes for the dev team, etc. However, the company axed it along with the initiative to centralize core functionality. Why? The primary reason was that it was hard to determine how it was helping the bottom line and the centralization and addition concern over UX was slowing down the overall pace. I still think that people need to spend more time thinking about UE/UX and spending time improving the UI based on real world data. However, what will they axe money for first when the s--- hits the fan?
noticed you used python. Check this discussion out on how to do this really simply.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/367586/generating-random-...