skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
New Yorkers: help me defeat the evil NYC real estate market
Hi guys

I am an NYC based hacker who has had enough of dealing with the horrible process of finding and getting an apartment. One of the major issues you have is that you can only trust what the broker tells you to be true, ie "trust me, this is a good deal."

I have a solution: collect the rents of people in the city, and get a general idea of how yours compares (or how much you should be paying for a neighborhood if you are planning on moving).

Right now the app is very simple: it's just collecting data. Ultimately I'm not 100% sure how I'd use the data, but it would likely be open/free via an API etc. on top of my product. One vision I have is something like a Yelp.com but for real estate.

I am open to your ideas, and I'd love to get any feedback about the idea you have (I know the site itself isn't much). If you are a New Yorker, I'd really appreciate if you could take 30 seconds and fill out the form.

Thanks!
NYC RentEnforcer
If it can be used again, I'll use it again. No sense it paraphrasing just for the hell of it. You can't plagiarize yourself.
FWIW, the author did somewhat touch on the issue of performance at the end of the article: Of course speed is an issue here. Emscriptened benchmarks currently run at about 1/20th the speed of gcc -O0 run on the original C++. and goes on to explain where the performance loss comes from.
Hi guys

I am an NYC based hacker who has had enough of dealing with the horrible process of finding and getting an apartment. One of the major issues you have is that you can only trust what the broker tells you to be true, ie "trust me, this is a good deal."

I have a solution: collect the rents of people in the city, and get a general idea of how yours compares (or how much you should be paying for a neighborhood if you are planning on moving).

Right now the app is very simple: it's just collecting data. Ultimately I'm not 100% sure how I'd use the data, but it would likely be open/free via an API etc. on top of my product. One vision I have is something like a Yelp.com but for real estate.

I am open to your ideas, and I'd love to get any feedback about the idea you have (I know the site itself isn't much). If you are a New Yorker, I'd really appreciate if you could take 30 seconds and fill out the form.

Thanks!
NYC RentEnforcer
And the expression "less is more" which predates that.
No, I agree that it's worth seeing again. Helping technical people to communicate with non-technical people is gold. How many people produce what they think is a fantastic web site only to find that "normals" can't use it?! How thick can they be?! It's obvious! Can't they read?

We should be reminded of these lessons daily (although I wouldn't recommend resubmitting daily 8-)

I've put this in my "Great Articles" site that I'm trying to get time to work on.
Ageism comes as no shock when people think 6 decades is a long time for a profession to be around.
Who cares who really said it, I saw the Techcrunch post on this and I had the same concern before seeing this. I think i posted - I hope Facebook doesn't ruin YC.
Migraine Steroid
I love that you're fighting the good fight, but to these people who run things, code is in fact a commodity and so is the person producing it. From the owner's perspective you buy coders low, you maximize their output and sell it high, accumulate the difference, and repeat. If you're a more liberal owner, you buy them free lunches and build up a "culture", let them wear sandals, send them to conferences, tell them they're not little units to be counted, but at the end of the day these pretty lies are just costs -- costs, which may or may not yield profit over the long run.

As a coder, and somebody who loves the craft and identifies strongly with it, I "disagree" with this relationship ( as much as that is possible, since nobody asked me to vote on it or anything ) and I think it is dehumanizing. But wishing it away or romanticizing what we do, avoiding the fact that we are commodities just like every other worker in a corporate enterprise is just a terrible strategy for overcoming it.

I like what the guys at http://www.bettermeans.com are doing with the open enterprise governance model. I don't want human activity to continue the process of commodification, and this is a big step taken to change course.
Ideas can always be stolen. We've had so called investors try to rip us off left and right. Don't think Facebook isn't capable of the same.
"The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to peak."

An extraordinarily small percentage of mathematicians ever make any significant contribution to the realm of knowledge, as is true in most fields. It is unfortunate that such a small sampling is then used to judge the pursuit as a whole.

They are the exception. Further, it's just as possible that those very, very few would have led long lives of contributions, but the early success corrupted and waylaid their focus.

We see the same sort of observations in the field of software engineering where a remarkably small samping of Torvalds and Carmacks are used as a baseline, when they're anything but. With all due respect, the technology behind most startups -- many of the YC examples included -- almost qualifies as purile. There are remarkably few that represent any depth or significance, although granted there are some great fundamental ideas and some excellent dedication.
What about startups founded by "old" people? Wouldn't they like to work with people of their own age group?

I think if I were 25 and launching a startup, hiring somebody twice my age really might feel a little bit weird.

Maybe this alone could explain it - if people only like to hire people who are younger than themselves, there would be fewer places willing to hire the older you got.
If you want to parse that extra-pedantically it looks like Dave's just self-assessing himself as being in the 51st percentile of 50ish devs. I'm pretty sure everyone thinks they're above average.
The new Google phone service is entirely on the PC. It doesn't call your phone like the original Google Voice.
As another European I agree. When we eat in a restaurant with my family its almost always the case that for some people the portions will be too big and for others too small. What we sometimes do is we just pick a dish for each person and each of us eats about 1/n'th of each dish, with the people who are more hungry eating more and the others less. I'm not sure if this would be considered bad manners (not that we'd change it, we're tasting n dishes instead of one and having more fun comparing what we like and don't like, especially if the restaurant is good).

I'm pretty sure that taking food with you in a bag is unfortunately considered bad manners :( Asking for a second plate and silver maybe a less so but still.
Interesting, if not relevant, tangent: Modern LDS missionaries are expected to bathe daily, without fail, when they are abroad proselytizing. I have heard anecdotal accounts of this causing some friction with their hosts due to the custom of daily bathing being wasteful/abnormal and/or a hardship on the local water supply.

This article makes me wonder if this psychological effect has been known by various religious groups for quite some time. From old-school Judeo-Christian "laws of cleanliness" to the more modern LDS church, keeping clean may be about self-righteousness more than sanitation.

Very interesting experiments, nonetheless.
The Western media certainly never tired of claiming that Iranians used Twitter to organize and coordinate their protests following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's apparent theft of last June's elections.

Seriously? I guess that's the Western media for you. My impression at the time was that the Iranians that were using Twitter were largely using it to inform the rest of the world of their situation. It's not surprising the Western media would gloss over this, because that essentially means Iranians were using Twitter to do the Western media's job for them.
Paul, how would it be linkbait as Jason already has enough of an audience..

I could see your claim if Jason was arguing up against someone with a dramatic more of an audience..however that s is not the case as both of you have about the same numbers in audience..

Not to say that you do not have some points.. just put in better form than the linkbait argument
I've worked at 3 consecutive startups that each had $10M+ series A rounds...
...offensively wrong...

Why wasn't 'wrong' enough? Why should any honestly-presented, based-on-experience opinion like Arrington's generate 'offense'? Why not assume good faith?
A real-time chart is a great progressive enhancement over the raw data. But when I can't get the data even without the chart, that's broken. As for other sites out there, I never claimed my opinions are commonly held. There's a long history of shoddy work succeeding in this industry.
CodeSounding: computer generated music sounds from a source code structure
Not terribly useful as comparisons go. GWT likes to compare itself to hand-written JavaScript, which tells a more practical story.
I also hate that you're arguing it again. Especially since your argument is nothing more than a moronic tautology.

It's a shame that shallow thinking like yours is considered worthwhile on this site.
Is it also possible that increased water in the bloodstream resulted in less food being stored as fat and/or more fat being used as energy?
People

That's what a Geriatric doctor, I consider a friend, who saw many "humans" dying told friends & I once at a dinner I remember. When I said most of us when dying will regret things they did not achieve like a book, a business, a house, works of art, scientific discovery, something that we could be proud of. He said to me "hey, you may know better in your 30s, in my experience most people before they die they regret not things but other people; not having spend more time with their children, not having forgiven their father or mother, not having told them how much they loved them before they died...". I personally like that post but I think my doctor friend would say: "too many words".

I now have a little son and I do a startup, in both cases, I make effort to remember what this doctor friend told me, "one word,

People"
Interesting view on empathy, but he doesn't really take into account how much of our identity/empathy springs from there being an 'other', someone to oppose or be different from. Having a global empathy seems possible but I would argue that different 'regional empathies' will always win out when we really have to make a tough choice.
Sorry about the links, as I am new to this site...
Thanks for adding them.
Yes, they require me to upload the complete source code.
When doing phone sales or interviews, I often put on a suit beforehand so I sound smarter and more smug over the phone. Odd, but it works.
Heh, I agree with you. Sadly those concerns would also be valid for many other RCTs!
but take my advice on this one. :-)

Why, on earth, should anyone listen to you?

Did you provide data? No. Did you provide facts? No.
Do you have any kind of credibility whatsoever? No.

All you have is a pink blouse and a pathological case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder that you unfortunately feel obliged to broadcast in HD at the slightest opportunity.

And by the way, do you know what will happen when facebook/YC screws people over? The word will spread like wildfire. Because people have their own little voices around here. We don't need you and your pink blouse to save us.
Here's how it happens: if a woman engineer starts talking, men will wait until she says something notably clever before they start taking her seriously. Men on the other hand are taken seriously by default, and only get dismissed if they say something notably dumb.

I was neutral to mildly positive on the post until this point. It is simply false. In tech, nobody is taken seriously by default. I certainly never have been, and I'm a young tall skinny white guy with glasses (the very computer-geek stereotype if ever there was one). I have to re-prove myself every time. I've never observed anything different with regard to anyone else.

It turns out that there is one way you can get people to take you seriously from the get-go: "earn the respect of your immediate peers" (people take you seriously if it's obvious that everyone else does). I suppose it might appear that this implies that the majority is taken seriously by default, because most of the people who have the respect of their peers will be from that majority by simple averaging.

Now, I don't mean to comment on whether or not it's harder for women to "prove themselves". Never having been a woman myself, and not being a neutral observer, it's hard to make that comparison. My only point is that the amount of effort is nonzero for men as well.
Hm, I'm sorry that the comment was killed. Perhaps she didn't want to get sucked into a debate that she feels is perennially useless.

It's hard to answer the charge of being told what I would probably think.
It doesn't give it a free pass but there is no 'supervisor' to stop it.
You do realize that this is a Western societal phenom? I work with women who are from India and China. Quite a few of them in fact. What is different in their cultures that they have so many women in this field and we do not?
No worries, point well taken.
Funny enough, I'm in the group that thinks EVERYONE is incompetent and absolutely worthless until they prove themselves to me. This might not be as big of a deal in the bay area where tech is a bigger deal, but here in LA there are posers everywhere.

We ask candidates in interviews to hand-code a front-end page, assuming that is the position they're applying for. Some will actually be able to write markup on a piece of paper, which is a pretty stressful test. "Code this page, here." (slides pen and paper) But a lot of people end up saying something like "Oh well I'd just throw a div here, throw a div there." It's literally a joke. I've had to stop laughing in meetings. We'll ask a rails developer what kind of stack he's familiar with, and they'll look at you like a deer in the headlights.

I don't go into an interview with a woman assuming she wont be nearly as good. In fact, right now the ladies are 1 for 1. Unfortunately she's no longer working with us due to some family issues. A lot of the guys we've interviewed are actually quite literally living in their parents basements and building porn websites with their buddies. I could care less what people do in their personal time but holy shit, make something of yourself.

Anyway, this doesn't really side with either particular argument in this whole man/woman debate, I just personally have gotten so jaded with worthless people who have no skills or drive whatsoever that their sex doesn't matter.
I have been waiting years for someone to make something like this. I still believe Twitter has a lot more room to grow, and a lot more experimental spaces to explore, on the way to becoming more like IRC in many ways.

Thanks for making this, it's awesome!
> The answer may be related to the early age at which mathematicians seem to peak.

I may have been searching badly, but I couldn't really find anything to support this idea, at least in terms of a cognitive deficit. The following was the best discussion about mathematicians and age that I found:

http://sps.nus.edu.sg/~limchuwe/articles/youth.html

Bullet points:

- Mean age of best contribution by mathematicians is 38.8 (based on counting references to research by historians and biographers). This is roughly the same for other SET researchers.

- The Fields Medal cannot be awarded to mathematicians over the age of 40, which skews the mean age of mathematicians receiving their field's most prestigious award.

- As mathematicians get older, they take on more administrative work, have families, etc., which reduces the time and energy they have to devote to research. (I'm reminded of how Andrew Wiles basically shut out the world while proving Fermat's Last Theorem.)

- Rapid expansion of the field meant an increasing proportion of mathematicians were young, thus more discoveries were by young people.

- Math is a field where someone can make a great contribution without having acquired a large body of knowledge.

- Young math prodigies get a disproportionate share of attention.
Talented Designer Needed
Your observation is likely correct, but I was talking about sorting two or more independent sets, not partitioning the sort of one set; assuming that a "proper" (non benchmark) application will have several workloads waiting to be processed at a given time, so the GPU can be working on one while the data for the next is being transferred (so hiding the latency for the transfer for all but the first set).

[edit] I don't know how practical that is on real world hardware; a billion keys is obviously a lot of data to transfer.
> ...if minimum wage were raised, unemployment would increase. If it were lowered, unemployment would decrease.

And yet, there are so many stories from wait staff about how important tips are to their ability to survive. Lowering unemployment at the expense of a much larger group's ability to survive is not a good idea IMO.
It should be noted that an M.A. in statistics will require aptitude in both the calculus and algebra. Moreover, a generalized applied degree will require preliminary knowledge of ordinary differential equations and real analysis. I’ve also heard from professors that some competency in scientific computation (i.e. familiarity with both a well-used computer algebra system and statistical package) is usually expected.

I haven’t pursued either, but I suspect that I will--I’m still an undergraduate studying general mathematics. But my assumption is that a generalized applied program is more useful than statistics. I’ve found breadth to be more important than depth in curriculum. That is, if you have a rigorous foundation in probability and mathematical statistics, then you could conceivably learn sampling theory, Bayesian statistics, or linear models outside of the classroom. Likewise, a rigorous foundation in differential equations might enable you to pursue chaotic or dynamical systems independently.

I can’t speak to computer graphics specifically, but some of my peers work in quantitative finance, and they’ve echoed my sentiments on breadth. I’ve also heard from professors that one unexpected occurrence about students who enter either program is that many enter with a specific research interest, say quantitative finance, but realize they prefer to work in a different field, say biological statistics. I find the mobility and flexibility attractive.
I ended up with IE8 because I ran Windows Update, not because I had some desire to get a new IE.

Exactly. Chrome updates faster because it does it with zero user input. It just happens whenever spare resources are available and politely lets you know when it's done. IE8 needs you to run Windows Update, which a significant number of users don't want the hassle.
We had NVIDIA folks coming to our game studio, and they've said almost the same but for another set of applications - Basically if you want full support for Autodesk or Adobe products (3DS Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, Photoshop) then you should get Quadra card.

The Quadra has ECC, it's produced by NVIDIA itself (not 3rd party), and they have developed extensive driver support where each application that you run (Windows) would have specific settings that give you the best performace, quality or stability.

There are tons of other manifacturers that produce NVIDIA cards, but they don't put ECC memory, boost the GPU frequency until they almost don't burn, etc.

Also some specific features exist only for Quadra, that are not important for games - for example quick antialiased lines (just a simple example, there is more).

So what MRB is saying is right. At the surface it looks Quadra/Tesla are worse, but their stability is much better, and customer support is guaranteed.

NVIDIA can't simply support HW not built by them in large. It's not possible for them to know every kind of card there is.
Setting a minimum wage makes some people's wages rise to it - AND, unavoidably, it also makes some people unemployed.

Because not all employers extract the same value from the same workforce, those more efficient will be able to afford the raise. But, by definition, the employers of some of that population will not be able to afford that raise (otherwise the market value would have been greater). This means some people will become unintentionally unemployed.
Talented Designer: Join Us
> I'm not sure if you could honestly classify spending trillions of dollars on space colonization is the best way to allocate resources for a poverty reduction program.

Historically, this has always been the case though, and the initial up-front expense has always benefited the society willing to fund the exploration. (Or, almost always; I think I recall a case where one civilization went exploring, bumped into a another much more warlike civilization, and was all but wiped out. I don't recall which specific example I'm thinking of though, and there are probably a few anyway.)
Ask HN: Advice on getting brands to sell on your store
Hi I'm making a new account to post this question, as people sometimes do.

My startup involves an online store selling some products. It has tremendous benefits over existing channels so I'm not very concerned about selling the merits of the idea. I know how to present it's usefulness from the clients's perspective.

As a hacker I found coding the the site easy. But I have no business side co-founder. So as a total noob to business I'm just looking for advice so I don't embarrass myself.

Specific questions I have:

Are the any general business decorum I should know about when presenting the idea (phone) to a company.

How important is the written proposal. I assume if a brand is used to selling with many retailers it will be easy, but on the other hand a smaller brand might have more requirements?

If the client is international, how feasible is getting a deal without flying there and shaking hands.

Am I over thinking this and this will actually be way easier than I thought.

Are there any general advice you might have for me.

Thanks HN
typography is bad, try to avoid serif fonts, Use sans-serif fonts for better read.
Outlook unintuitive -- Here's an example: Try to access your signature(s) for adding/updating without starting a new email message first. I think I'm mostly peeved at 2 things: changes to menus in Outlook 2010, and poor handling of the message list for IMAP accounts.

Gmail minimalistic -- I just never caught on to the label thing. I know some people love it. It also seems I can't choose a different signature while composing an email. And the arrangement of buttons never seemed right to me. Probably the biggest thing is by default I want to see a folder tree of my email, arranged in the state I last left it in. The Gmail client is just a different paradigm.
Let's attack the issue, not the messenger.
Thanks for the insights. I really enjoy studying math for its own sake so I'm naturally more inclined to study broadly and build a solid, common foundation than I am to zero-in on one speciality. My experience in FP, for example, has kindled an interest in studying algebra in greater depth.