skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the issues you'll run into is that if you do make the day-to-day progress available, someone will expect you to support it. You'll either need to explicitly say that it's "use at your own risk" or have to make sure that the exposed "daily" branch works. The former probably isn't useful for the majority of your end users while the latter introduces extra overhead to your development process that you may not want or have time for.
I would argue that this just means that some things and processes, like evolution, do not have a purpose, rather than that their purpose is whatever actually happens. If purpose just means result, then you've defined purpose such that it no longer applies to lots of systems we actually already understand the purpose for.
Blagojevich found guilty on only 1/24 counts
I'm sorry but your naivety abounds. I have family that have huge houses on acres of land, but make less than me (in my early 20's). Yet here to get that where I live, you literally have to be raking in the money.

The reason so many people have a problem with wanting to get rich is because it is invariably at the expense of all else. This is where the naivety truly is, because those who are rich are there because of all those 'vs money' options. I can't work my job if I'm not healthy, I can't get a promotion if I can't make friends, I wouldn't even have my job if it wasn't for my family, and I wouldn't be happy if it wasn't for all of the above.

You'll never get 'filthy rich' if you don't have people to help you. IIRC Google wouldn't even exist because the founders were friends with their professor, who encouraged them to stick with their method for the PageRank system. AFAIK their university studies appear to have both been paid for by their family.

The idea isn't necessarily offensive in a moral nature for me, it's offensive because it's wholly naive.
I just 8x slowed down Daft Punk - Aerodynamic (Using the tool mentioned in obiefernandez's post). I liked it a lot so I have uploaded it here, for whoever wants a listen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRFwzub7yGc
Geckoboard API: see custom data in your status board
This is one of the things I love about this site.

Right now, I'm half tempted to see if I can find something to submit or discuss that will lead to other tangents relevant to my interests.

It's funny, because I think I was interested in the Y-combinator itself when I came here...
Does anyone have any advice for finding and attracting a technical cofounder? As a hacker, what would you look for in a startup where you take the lead technical role and build most of the product?

I would consider myself a hacker, but I'm not very good at writing code(I only know PHP) and I don't enjoy it. I prefer to work on marketing/bizdev problems, which are my areas of expertise.

How do I avoid getting dismissed as just another "business guy"/suit by hackers?
If you look at the statistics (the Economist ran some recently), America has fewer long term unemployed. Also it is relatively easily to become accepted as an American a few years after you come to America. At any rate, at least your kids will be considered American.

In Germany, even when they were here for a few generations, the, say, Turks are still considered Turks.
I'm referring to git merge --squash.
What do you think about this project?
This is something I've done part time, at the beginning it was to satisfy my own need, and mainly for fun.
URL: http://www.xnapi.com/

I've been meaning to ask the YC community if this is something that you'd want to use. If you want, you can try the small demo with Gmap API I put together. Basically it is a website that would help you use web APIs without coding knowledge. Even if you know how to code, it could save you time reading documentation and learning the API yourself.

I know this is a hackers community and you might well feel that you can just work with APIs yourself. I'm asking for ideas on how this can be further developed. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks :)
> Print long emails. You'll actually read them.

It is working ?
"Hipmunk?" I don't get it. Why not tripmunk

Derived from chipmunk, I presume.
Tripmunk would've been better though.
Well. What do you bring to the table?

Edit: I ask not because I want to be impertinent, but because no one here is going to make you a successful cofounder. Think about what it is that makes you want to be involved in a startup, and what you think your role would be. I find that thinking about that sort of thing both helps you figure how stuff works, and where you are in relationship to that.
The Copyright Troll? No.
It's old hat to ASCAP & BMI.
Ensuring that branches are useful and not "cluttering" requires a bit of discipline. It's easy to get a bit branch-happy in which case you end up with changes scattered across a number of branches that may or may not have a consistent starting point. This will cause issues when you have to merge all the updates for a release.

A general rule of thumb is only to create a branch when you need to work in parallel: code needs to be separated to allow for simultaneous updates or if a feature needs to be isolated until it's release timetable is set. This will vary depending on team size, work patterns and the nature of code changes.
Did Sun ever sue Google?
If you define the Web instead as "stuff that happens in web browsers" then... you come to the same conclusion. What definition of the Web would not include all this video traffic?
An idea I had was a site where members can make a list of all their possessions and how much it'd take for them to part with each item.

They then have the opportunity to search the stuff other people own and see much they'd want for it, and can make offers if it's something they'd be willing to pay the asking price for.

Basically a classified ads site for stuff you aren't really bothered about selling, but would do if the price was right.

Don't know how you'd monetize it though as most transactions would probably be done cash, in person.
Ether everywhere!
Cute - submitted something.

My annoyance is how many things are owned by squatters. Domain tasting / kiting really caused so much collateral damage :(
Never forget the critical meta-features: usability, performance, and robustness.

Get those right, even with a well-worn idea, and the world's your oyster (see the iPod, google, etc.) Fuck those up and you better already have a monopoly or the market will grind you into the ground.
Wrong. Recent (as in, this millennium) Linux kernel contributions require all submissions to be under an open source license. For GNU, the FSF has recommended since the beginning that the copyrights of all GNU contributions be assigned to the FSF. They have documents for download on their website and the whole shebang.

"Also: authors are perfectly free to write up licenses that allow use until the copyright term is up."

Well that negates the whole point of the non-transferability doesn't it. If people are allowed to license all rights they have to a third party, until the end of the term, then what's the difference with transferring the copyright outright?
They were in the wrong, true, but a simple takedown request would have cleared that up if this was about copyright. The bone of contention is that this fellow has set up a company designed to buy up rights and pounce on violations for profit, regardless of whether the infringement was malicious and without notifying his victims that they were in the wrong. Most of the people he sued appeared simply ignorant of the law.

While he may be operating within the law, a world where relatively small mistakes result in four-figure lawsuits without any opportunity for making amends isn't one most people would enjoy.
Interesting anecdote about the Android acquisition: Larry and Sergey bought the company without telling Eric Schmidt about it[1]. Google moved into the mobile market on a whim.

Google's strategy seem a lot more planned and methodical from the outside.

[1] From a Schmidt press conference last year: "Android purchase, he didn’t even notice Larry and Sergey bought it." - http://searchengineland.com/live-blogging-sergey-brin-eric-s...
I'm a big fan of Ubuntu (server and slowly trying to ween off OSX onto Ubuntu Desktop) and their regular release cycle is actually reassuring -- I've never had major problems when upgrading, although I keep all my production servers -1 LTS (all currently 8.04).

I'm not sure, however, what the big differences are between releases on the server side (lots of improvement on desktop, sure). All I see is slowly growing memory footprint but little performance gains or other benefits. Anyone have a thought?
One Tip on Starting Your Own Company:

Satisfy a customer.

All the rest are details, "hyper-practical" details maybe, but details nonetheless.
the easiest way to not be dismissed is to be interesting.

If your ideas are interesting ideas, I'll work for you for little or nothing, but if they're dull, then it's not worth the time or effort.
Disappointed that this comment does not recommend an alternative.
Yep, I used it all through grad school, mostly around framing electronic structure problems and doing spectral deconvolution. For a certain set of problems it's really good especially for prototyping.
No, but Viacom sure did. In fact their lawsuit included infringing materials that their own employees uploaded to Youtube.

And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who tried to file joke patents are now working for Oracle, which is also suing Google.
Programming Language Popularity: StackOverflow and Ohloh
In the following example, programming language popularity is measured based upon two data sets. The first is the number of contributors associated with a language on ohloh.net. The second is tag usage at stackoverflow.com.
All software patents are silly anyway.
Maybe to be subject to deadlines?

If you are in the YC program, you have different milestones to achieve by certain dates.

For me, it's like training to be able to run long-distance. Best way to motivate yourself is by actually entering in a marathon race.
I assume it is too much to hope that next time someone will think twice before taking the piss out of a person whose circumstances they know nothing about.

Naively, I forget that many treat it like an opportunity for some kind of freak show. Thanks for the reminder. I think.
Sort of an apples and oranges comparison? StackOverflow has a pretty significant Microsoft bias and Ohloh is all about Open Source.
Yes, but the idea is that data from two different sources on the web can be quickly compared and correlated. The differences between the data can help reveal the biases at play.
The Big List Of Indie Marketing And Business Tips
No, Viacom did.
Being smart about trying to get rich includes getting the right people to help you. Obviously.

Think about the richest person you personally know. Was it really "at the expense of all else"? Or did they structure their professional and social lives in such a way that they built upon each other over several decades?
If someone's teaching you how to win tennis matches and isn't reminding you to enjoy the game, you've found an incredibly bad tennis teacher.
It looks like I wasn't remembering the Youtube announcement correctly. I was thinking of this:

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/05/little-bit-of-polis...

I believe that just says they are letting video and audio tags through. When those are in the feed the ipad can play the video inline in reader. A little testing seems to show that they are also letting their iframe embed through as well and when you use that you do get the html5 version of the player on the ipad and iphone. It looks like the Vimeo iframe embed isn't allowed to pass though but hopefully they will allow it. I put together a demo feed that shows the difference if anyone is interested:
http://serveany.s3.amazonaws.com/soclose.atom
so, you think that black people are stupid? That is your answer? Since when is HN the new HuffPost?
Game length and value
No one likes a Smug Geek
Thanks. I agree about the squatters, even some random keyboard smashes have produced registered names for me.
That reminds me that I actually tend to worry when I accidentally end up walking a few steps behind a woman in the dark. What if she thinks I am a stalker and shoots me? So I always try to overtake them as fast as possible.
Just have http://www.deadmansswitch.net send your passwords to a friend...
Interesting. Could use a bit of clarity/simplification on the home page.

Maybe just get rid of "The web today is full of useful...

...with XNAPI."

and go straight to the TRY IT NOW button.

I'd love to see more examples.
Groupon Buys Japanese and Russian Clones
Yes, but what I'm pointing out is that what you are complaining computers fail to have, other physical systems also fail to have! Even a second bucket of water can't predict the first bucket of water! Thus, the fact that a computer can't either is sort of insubstantial to the question of a simulation's utility, no?
I walk around the same area carrying a quarterstaff for self defense, funny enough the only people who bother me are asinine college students. It says a lot about how people conceive weapons that I can carry a quarterstaff which is just as deadly as a katana: just because it is not bladed none of the college students think it a threat, but everybody else with brains knows it is.
Excellent. We do open source development and I was about to write a complex script that moves patches around to be able to keep a few private commits and still stay in sync with the single-commit release repos.
Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7: looks cool, but is it enough?
Cash is one way that technical cofounders can vet business cofounders. It's a two-fold win for a technical cofounder: the cash compensation minimizes risk and the fact that the business cofounder was able to convince others to part with their money is a good sign.
Merging is still a pain with git. Especially if you have to deal with xib or xcodeproj files (for iPhone/Mac dev). To the point where the usual process I see amounts to "don't touch this file -- I'm working with it (and don't want to lose any work)." instead of dealing with a merge that is almost guaranteed to make someone lose work.
Isn't DashCode almost literally Interface Builder for the web?
I would strongly expect that for the experiment to have any validity at all, the people in the group primed with feelings of power would be selected randomly. I don't see the connection with a propensity for being selected randomly, and a lack of skill with spacial reasoning.
I think some authors would prefer to get away from it, but the publishing market, even though it's slowly moving in that direction, isn't quite there yet. If you're shopping around a solid 75-page piece, it's too long for a magazine (or even most journals, if it's research), yet too short for a book. So you either chop it or pad it, usually.
Ask HN: Opportunities for Structured Data?
Ever since Google acquired ITA and Metaweb, I've been thinking of other verticals where building / aggregating structured data would be valuable. Seems like many niches have already been covered:

- Lawyers: Avvo

- Doctors: Vitals

- Location: Yelp/Foursquare/etc

- Cars: Vast

- Pets: Vast

- Movies: Imdb

- Credit Cards: NerdWallet

I think it would be interesting to brainstorm some other verticals where building your own structured data could be a viable business.

Here are some that I'm thinking about:

- Colleges: It's a pain comparing which college is better vs another. Having a single structured database/model for all colleges would be great. Could extend it to comparing courses/costs/future salaries/etc.

- Disease: There are some companies already doing this, but I feel like it could be more open. Symptoms, cures, timelines, progression, location, etc.

- Soft Goods: Clothes, accessories, etc. Not sure how you'd go about creating / gathering enough structured data, but seems like there is a need.

What do you think are some good opportunities to apply the structured data biz model?
What strings do you pull to get featured on The Huffington Post for something that at this point is just a good project?
Kernel trick
I've heard this is why time seems to pass faster as we age as well. Not because we experience time as passing faster, just that fewer things are novel as we have more experiences.

In other words, fewer memorable things happen to a 40 year old than to a 10 year old... unless that 40 year old is about to be hit by a bus.
I think you're missing the point.

The article does not claim that Huffman coding was superseded by dictionary methods. It does not confuse statistical modelling with encoding.
This document is confidential
Net Neutrality: Why Should Enterprise Developers Care?
Oh I misread the question! You're asking if it's rare for linguists to learn 3 languages? I dunno. But I think linguists who get offended if people ask them that are kinda of silly...
IE Turns 15: The Birth and Life (So Far) of Internet Explorer
For some reason, that doesn't really surprise me. I mean, GMail was basically a whim, and I kinda got that same feeling when Wave came out. The Android acquisition could just be considered like a 20% project, but scaled to the CEO level.
I'm both a technical guy and a business guy, so I don't need a business cofounder. But if I were to evaluate a business cofounder, I would ask, "How are you going to make money?"

The answer is really revealing. It can reveal planning skills, marketing skills, prior business experience, and just plain B.S.. You can also get a feel for how intelligently they deal with risk. It also can reveal red flags, like a business cofounder who is overly optimistic.
Can you say more about this?
Background a running process
This is a great example article with short, concise points that are practical and EVERY startup can use.

For his point 8, I would suggest getting the best chair possible since you'll be spending 10+ hours a day in it. If possible get something ergonomically like the Herman-Miller Embody. It may seem expensive, but if you divide by the hours you're going to spend in it you're actually getting a deal.
Similar take here. I used to work at Orbitz and I know for a fact about 4 years ago an engineer created a UI extremely close to Hipmunk, in his free time, as a solo prototype project. Not sure if it ever got product-ized however. Travel search visualization and travel completeness/door-to-door still seem like have plenty of opportunities to innovate. So much crapritude in the travel industry.
> Isn't the last part of the Cuckoo hashing paper the
> part that documents it as slight less good compared
> to existing algorithms?

No, Cuckoo hashing is a trade of a little run-time performance for better memory utilization. It's still O(1). The performance cost amortizes as a constant.

If you have gobs of memory you don't need it. But if you're memory-constrained it's a big win.
For what its worth, Server 10.04 boots dramatically faster than 8.04. I've been able to reboot a VM in under 10 seconds (timed from typing "reboot" to getting a login prompt again)

The main reason to upgrade Server, though, is to get access to a new generation of packages which are considered stable. The stuff you get in 8.04, while reliable, is getting long in the tooth features-wise.
I could see someone being interested in subsets, but yeah, they don't have a definition here. One that might be interesting is: what amount of time do people spend reading mainly textual documents online? That'd correspond somewhat to a classical view of the web as hypertext (you know, a "web" of interlinked documents).

That would, though, have to exclude not only watching videos, but also paying your credit-card bill on a bank's website, and other such web-as-thin-client rather than web-as-documents uses. Forums like this also occupy a weird place, since they're somewhat more like web-as-listserv/usenet-replacement than web-as-documents.

But, I'm not sure the end result would actually show a decline anyway. Wikipedia and blogs, for example, are more or less hypertext documents in the old sense of the term, just with some new conventions for organizing and editing them. Wikipedia alone probably rivals (exceeds?) the entire mid-1990s internet in size and readership.
SETI built on GIGO
Or more likely Orbitz does the affiliate deal with them now. Then if it appears Hipmunk is popular and getting traction then Orbitz tries to buy them, at the very least to keep it out of Google's hands and/or beef up their UI features relative to ITA/Google.
Ask HN: Google App engine pricing vs. AWS?
Roughly, how does App engine pricing compare to AWS. Of course, App engine is free at first (although it's hard for me to get a sense for how much you get for free).

In particular: I have a forum app running on AWS, costs me about 150$/month, getting about 500,000 pageviews. Could I run this for free on Google Appengine?
This system is so incredibly broken. But it advantages the companies with the most money, and the most political influence, so of course they love it.

Is there any hope we'll ever get rid of this travesty?
I just tried it, looking forward to seeing what you come up with since I have been stumped. FYI, I got an invalid email error even though I entered a valid email address. You may want to check on this even though it let me send you my message.
I'm slightly confused, but I saw your id being bored guy and sort of realised another thing people realise from the time they start realising, that talking from the top of your head is easier than getting the hard data and actually having something to say.

Sure the article has short falling, but you can not just dismiss it like that. It contained a lot of psychological studies, it was not just an opinion piece like your comment, and actually was cool headed.

I do not think the article was about devious people in any way. It was about power and the fact that power corrupts. That you might say is something we know, but the article offers details in how it corrupts. You might say those details we know also, but hey, that's mainstream scientific journalism.
I like the colleges one. Good question too, giving it some thought...
As mentioned above I(and, I imagine, many business cofounders) would bring marketing, monetization, and bizdev. This isn't vague writing a business plan strategy stuff, but rather concrete steps to take a startup from a side project to a business where you put in $X and get $2X back- in other words, the exact thing investors are looking for.

The problem I've seen is that many hackers view the above "softer" skills as insignificant bullshit compared to actually building something.

I'm asking for ways to overcome this misconception and present myself as equally valuable as a coder in an early startup team.
I don't get it. What exactly is going on? Am I looking for a picture or sound?
Weird, I got your email. I'll get to work on it :)
VLC is already doing some of that (an area where Mac users can envy their Linux brothers a bit).

You are aware that VLC does work on Mac, right?