skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A friend and I have this running agreement that if we ever do a startup together, we will force all employees to take a nap after lunch.

As a college student, I understand how useful naps are. Students live in short bursts of concentration during the day (e.g. when in class), and that 30 minute nap between classes is a life saver. Heck, a lot of our conversations involve talking about naps in its intricate details. Like many great entrepreneurs say, the most important features and ideas will be brought up over and over again over time. And napping is one of those great, haunting ideas.
I'd say Minecraft's more the exception here, not the rule.

Or, turning your comment on its head, Minecraft's income looks absolutely amazing compared to this!
First of all, this makes me nervous on your behalf: Thus, I feel sort of obliged to live nearer to him and my mom

That's a really crappy reason to do anything, much less a major life change. Talk to them about what they want, and get your own motivation clear. $100,000 in salary differential pays for a lot of people to "help out" in a professional capacity.

If you all decide that moving there for six months is the best option, talk to your boss about taking an unpaid leave of absence. If you are valuable to your current employer, this is a no-brainer on their part-- it will take them at least that long to get somebody new up to speed, if your job is at all complex.

Finally: look at consulting type gigs, rather than trying to get hired outright in North Dakota, especially if you are only planning on being there for six months. You'll make more money that way, too. Presumably, you've got skills somebody will pay for.
When the Interface Ends
Woah. Sanity. Kinda shocking. You are definitely not going to be hired by TechCrunch any time soon.
I know what you mean. A team of guys at my old company had "40 years of combined C# experience." Not bad for a language released in 2002!
thing, = stuff works too.
Reminder:  4 days left in the SPIL Games HTML5 contest
I think what they're saying is that:

"Pilots who nap for 30 minutes on a long haul flight improve their reaction time by an average 16% versus their initial reaction time. Pilots who don't take a nap experience a decline in their reaction times making their reaction to stimulus 34% [?] slower by the end of the flight."

People tend to say a persons "reaction time has decreased" when they mean the time taken to react has increased, reaction time is given as if it's a score rather than a time period.
20 to 30 minutes doesn't seem sufficient to make a big difference, especially if you're not able to drop right off. And exactly where is your typical office worker supposed to take this nap?
That's a weak analogy. More like "The cost of an accident, should one occur, could be extremely high in terms of human life and the risk is completely avoidable in that no one absolutely needs to eat meat in flight, they can eat vegetables."

If that was scientifically plausible, I'd be happy to eat my broccoli in flight.
I suppose it would get interesting as far as scheduled hours are concerned.
Does the 30 min nap have to occur in your lunch our?
Is there an extended 30 min attached to the 1 hour lunch?
Would that mean that companies would work 30 min less a day or would the work day have to be 30 min longer?
Would companies realize that the efficiency improvement would offset a need to have a longer day since people are doing more in 7 and 1/2 hours as opposed to the non-nap 8 hour?
You can always have an acquirer write the first and last check for your start-up.
why would you charge money of the first people you'd approach? The idea is to do give it to them for free and then you use their reputation to sell more of your own product.
"What the hell do some of these angels offer to entrepreneurs, anyways? Money is a commodity these days." As a founder, I'll take a stab at that. I haven't been to YC or raised money, but from my perspective, here's why I would:

1. They offer advice. For a first-time entrepreneur, this is probably enough reason to work with angels right there.

2. They offer networking. Good angels are supposed to know everybody, including just the right people you should be talking to to take your company to the next stage.

3. Money is important. I happen to have savings, but if I were trying to start without already having money in the bank, I'd have to go get an angel round. And people straight out of University don't have money.
Have you ever taken the time to learn it? JavaScript is a pretty neat little language - the way it does functions and closures allows for a programming style that doesn't really work in Python (due to the lack of multi-line lambdas).

My eyes were first opened to JavaScript during my Computer Science degree, during a course on Programming Languages - the professor spent a full lecture on how interesting it is, and it completely changed my opinion of the language.
A New Object-Oriented Programming Language: sh [ps]
I'd like to attest to the power of naps myself. There were several times when I was assigned an application that had a function with extremely broken code and trying to fix it in frustration. After a meal and a nap, an elegant solution present itself to me almost always, which requires less coding and easier to implement.
So we have

so if I was wrong in my original assumption that stuff has exactly one element, Python will shout at me before this will manifest itself as a hard-to-find bug someplace else in the program.

and then later on,

This method works even when stuff is a set or any other kind of collection. stuff[0] wouldn’t work on a set because set doesn’t support access by index number.

The second argument is basically in favor of duck-typing which is the pythonic way of writing code, ie, not caring about the actual object but only if it responds to the given message.

But what about the first argument? Couldn't you make the case that the pythonic way of handling it is to only care about if the object responds to __getitem__(0)?

Which idiom you use would depend entirely on context, wouldn't it?
Kno, a startup backed by Marc Andreessen, Offers a Second Tablet Computer
There are some big companies out there with a lot of their on-the-books valuation existing in the form of software patents. If they suddenly have to mark that stuff down to zero, imagine the crash...
I'll probably get downvoted (again) for tooting my own horn, but I am developing a JavaScript framework to definitively solve the JavaScript templating problem.

http://www.jaxscript.com

Here's a screencast version of a presentation I did for a local user group: http://vimeo.com/15127654

The technology works, it's really, really solid. I think all server-side template languages are going to be obsolete a lot faster than most developers are prepared for.
Bing Gordon: “Zynga Is Four Disruptions In One”
Reid Hoffman (sort of) returns to his super-angel roots
in this case, the API was so simple, I could easily roll my own (it's not even a real framework - I have one resource, the alias and I allow basically just POST to /aliases to create one at the moment).

The beauty about node is that it's so simple to extend and add the functionality you need. No magic, no huge framework to learn.

The little things you get though work awesomely well and are a pleasure to use.
I think one of the Roger Moore Bond movies starts with the villian trying to kill him in remote controlled helicopter so there is definitely a precedent.
Yes, a 50/50 is reasonable, even if the other guy had the original idea (which you didn't mention, but I would assume given the facts).

Ideas are (almost) worthless. The equity split should reflect resources put in (including potential resources like industry connections), risk taken, and opportunity cost.

Sounds like you're both putting in same resources and taking same risks. You didn't mention opportunity cost.

If it's his idea, and he can get someone at his term (0% ownership, percent of sales), then it makes no sense for him to take you on a 50%.

If you have to quit a $500K/year job to work on it, and he has to quit a $50K/year job to work on it, then even though the idea is originally his, the split should be biased towards you (Not necessarily 90/10, but definitely not 50/50); Essentially, you'll be paying $500K a year for the privilege of founding the company, whereas he only pays $50K.

It's a market like any market. If you couldn't reach an agreement, the price wasn't right for either side. Sounds to me like you did the right thing.
Are you sure it can use a MySQL db to do that? I know it stores preferences in a MySQL db, but actual message data...?

You'd also need an MTA that can deliver the mail into the database in the first place...
Except that there are plenty of cross-browser-incompatible features that aren't exactly "bleeding-edge", unfortunately.

For example, in IE < 9, there is no implementation of "Array#indexOf" -- the only way to check if a value is present in an array is to write out a loop to check each element.
Last time I submitted this someone mentioned the issue of signing over the IP of your game. This morning someone from SPIL emailed me to let me know they've changed that, you now enter a 6 month period of exclusivity after which you're free to do whatever with your IP.
Ask HN: Is there any GPS device small enough to be hidden in/on a bike?
I'm imagining something small enough to fit inside the handlebars or possibly under the bike-seat. Something that would be small enough to remain concealed if the thief stole your bike.
Thanks and I appreciate any help.
Sure it may have more net carbohydrates, but the real difference is the density of those calories and the types of carbohydrates they are.

Eating fast food contains saturated fats (and trans fats) which are incredibly difficult for the body to break down. Olive oil, on the other hand, is almost all monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which the body can break down much easier.

So yes, I think the GGP poster was more correct in that sometimes people just want a nice big fattening hamburger.
Segway Owner Dies Riding Segway Off Cliff
If these are both "relative to baseline" and not "relative to one another," then yes (except for spelling and grammatical mistakes).

Of course, as stated, not taking a nap apparently gives a greater improvement, so presumably they didn't actually mean "decrease" and instead meant "increase."
Original Models: A Look at Iconic Tech Prototypes
Change in iPhone policies prompts EU to drop investigations
Electronics zap DNA into pores to read its sequence
Reading this has made me sleepy!

I'm interested in this concept of mid-day rejuvenation. However, which works better, naps or meditation? Or does each serve its own purpose?
In psychology class we studied various effects on learning (eg: environment, state of mind, etc). One thing that I remember learning was that sleep caused the brain to retain information better, so they recommended napping after studying and other similar things. If you're in a job where you're learning new things often, a nap could also help you learn more quickly and retain the lessons long-term.
I have never really napped during my time here in college, but it sounds intriguing. I have always looked as time as a bit of a commodity and napping seemed like a way to lose a chunk of the day.
Mobile users: can 911 emergency locate you after you call?
I thought that they did hear the ATC instructions but they were misunderstood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Proba...
1. In the middle of a long flight, compare pilots' reaction times just before the nap to just after the nap. Result: After the nap, reaction times are 16% shorter.

2. Over the entirety of a long flight, test pilot reaction times initially, then at regular intervals until the end of the flight. Result: Without a nap, final reaction times are 34% slower than initial reaction times.

Yes, it's a little bit of a factoid soup, and citations would have been nice.
> What about the Academia? Wasn't it supposed to be brightest subset of people?

Giggle.
Yes, but imho the kool aid is believing that there is (or even should be) "one language to rule them all".

node.js is neat but it's also immature and incomplete. There are all types of "applications" were it would be a good choice or at least worth consideration. But if you pick it (because you know javascript and don't wanna learn Erlang) over say Erlang/OTP for serious a/o large production deployment you're probably and idiot and certainly a "too much kool aid drinker."
> according to the numbers in that post, they're selling 20 copies a month.

please don't jump to conclusions.

that's monthly salary per person, which in turn is how much they choose to pay themselves from the company's revenues, after monthly expenses, which I would assume include server and equipment costs among many other things.
The point of this campaign is that the Supreme Court has recently said, "Software patents go too far."

This is an opportunity to tell the USPTO that software patents are not sensible, as they are currently being granted. It is not about "ending software patents" per se, but making them harder to obtain...and now is the best possible time to say something about it, because the supreme court has said, "Yeah, this whole software patent thing probably doesn't exactly make sense."
They open sourced it too late for it to get much traction, I think.

Also, does it solve any particular problem in such a way that it can't be ignored? Doesn't seem like it to me.
I think the comma's a lot easier to miss compared to (thing,) though.
Would he have any enemies?
I was going to ask this with it be limited to not just the SV echo chamber but the Techcrunch one as well.

What stood out to me the most, maybe because I'm not in SV, but the claim that ~10 "angels" were involved with 99% of the startups in SV. That just doesn't seem possible in a really healthy startup environment. I mean, there are startups that self boot-strap, there are startups that have a single owner that can fund them, there are startups that have a reputation and pedigree and go straight to institutional funding. There are also companies that stay below radar. How many software companies are we talking about in the greater SV Bay Area? 1200? 1500? And these 10 guys are in nearly all of them? Surely these are only the startups that fill in their crunchbase details or something, right?

Does nobody go outside the valley for funding?
Apple updates Ping, Makes Its New Social Network More Useful
"Plan 9 failed simply because it fell short of being a compelling enough improvement on Unix to displace its ancestor. Compared to Plan 9, Unix creaks and clanks and has obvious rust spots, but it gets the job done well enough to hold its position. There is a lesson here for ambitious system architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough."

- Eric S. Raymond

It's worth noting that Plan 9/Inferno are cited pretty regularly in computer science papers and a number of the ideas of P9 have been absorbed by Linux, such as representing 'everything' with the filesystem. Last I checked, the 2.6.x kernels also support the P9 protocol.

"...for the last 8 years" Yeah, well, Plan 9 hasn't had an official release since 2002.
It's worth looking at Rob Pike's (one of the Plan 9 inventors) paper, "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant": http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf

My own view is that Linux is Good Enough for most people. And that "good enough" beats "better", at least for most values of "better". This is an admission that "path dependence" matters for the operating system market, and that network effects can cause the appearance of market failure.
HN uses the asterisk to style text. Ideally, the parser would be smart enough to know you wouldn't be trying to italicize three paragraphs at a time, but as you can see, it isn't.

Hopefully you will check back within the edit window, in time to correct the mistake.
In 2008 I had just founded a textbook-selling website, and one of the first schools we went to was University of Illinois- Urbana/Champaigne. We had a genius marketing idea: rent a Segway and ride it around campus handing out fake dollar bills that had our information on it You can see the example here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4971801/Illinois%20Heads1.jpg ). Not only could we move around campus faster, but we would stand out!

After arriving in Chicago, I went to the Segway store you mentioned. They didn't rent Segways out. Two hours later, I emerged with a $500 bill and a Segway for 7 days.

I went to Kinkos and printed out a thick cardboard front with "BrunoBooks.com" on it and taped it to the front of the Segway. I gotta say, riding those things is a LOT of fun.

Unfortunately, I underestimated how bleeping cold it is in Illinois in early January, and therefore failed to realize the implications of what I'd done. For the next week, I rode around in sub-zero temperatures handing out fliers. I'd had the choice between University of Texas and Illinois, and I'd made an unforgettable mistake.

Follow-ups to this story:

1) It didn't really work. Of 40k students, ~500 visited our site. After conversions, this was terrible for business.

2) Everything is negotiable. For the right price, you can rent anything. In a larger sense, don't take no for an answer.

3) Don't be an asshole to people handing out fliers. Usually they're just doing their job, but even if it was their idea there's no need to be a dick about it.

4) Don't ride a Segway around U of I in January.
How long before there are signal detectors in the toilets alongside the smoke detectors?
At Starbucks, it is more expensive to hire people to stand around making coffee all day than it is to purchase and roast the coffee beans. This is easily recognizable by anyone who knows how to make coffee themselves. The majority of the money you spend when buying a drink goes into that service aspect of the business. Somehow Starbucks has managed to stay in business despite the fact that what they charge is not the "real" cost of a cup of coffee.
I assume they would have to continue enforcing patents for some years to come, but stop granting new ones.
If it were true it might be a good thing in the sense of more privacy to create great products, without the scrutiny they have gotten recently...
IMO Plan 9 didn't gain critical mass because Unix is still "good enough". It's also very difficult to keep current with hardware drivers for a niche OS.

However, there are some things that came from Plan 9 that are very much mainstream, the most notable being UTF-8 which was invented by Ken Thompson and first implemented on Plan 9. Linux's clone(2) system call is obviously inspired by Plan 9's rfork.

And one could argue that the Go language is a spin-off of Plan 9 as it's substantially implemented by Plan 9 refugees to Google (Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Russ Cox) and is explicitly descended from other languages that came out of Bell Labs (Newsqueak, Alef, Limbo). Of course whether Go will be a success is an open question, but I think its chances are as good as any other equivalent language.
Planet Clojure is maintained by [Baishamapayan Ghose](http://freegeek.in)
In binary the logical 'or' would give you three. Take'em one bit at a time from least significant to most:

2 | 1
-----
0 | 1 = 1
1 | 0 = 2

1 or 0 => 1
0 or 1 => 1

2 | 1
-----
1 | 1 = 3
Only patent trolls would crash, which is almost entirely private equity. Let them crash. In fact, I'd argue that it would be a great good for the market in general to knock the wind out of the parasites who live off of software patent trolling.

Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. companies that make money from legitimate sources would be barely effected at all (and many tech companies who have huge patent portfolios have spoken in favor of ending software patents or making them less broad). And, startups could breathe a sigh of relief and stop worrying about being the subject of extortion the day they turn a big enough profit to be a target of patent trolls.

Besides, this is about how the USPTO grants software patents. It's not about revoking them or abolishing existing patents, though lawsuits to break some of the more pernicious ones probably would follow.
The tl;dr bullet points:

1) Sharing with friends and family is allowed, and encouraged

2) Your e-mail is your registration key - when you try to activate on another computer, an activation link is sent to you via e-mail, and you can do this 10 times. After that, you've just got to ask Puppygames for more activations and they'll almost always approve them (I assume the main exception would be if someone was passing around a registration all over the Internet, which is pretty easy to notice if it happens).

3) If anything screws up re: the DRM system, it errs in your favor. In particular, if you haven't registered when you boot the game and you can't reach the server, it will assume that you're good to go, and turn the demo into the full game. It will never shut you down because it can't phone home.

4) The only way the full game gets disabled is if the server tells it that you've asked for a refund (which they always honor).

5) They're aware that 3) and 4) are very easy to game (block the Internet connection once you get your refund), and that's fine, they prefer not to hassle legit users unduly.

IMO, this strikes a pretty good balance - it tends to err on the side of the user while still throwing up a tiny barrier to piracy (pretty much just enough to thwart the casual pirate). To do more is not worth it, because people that will go through the trouble of bypassing the registration process on the demo would probably just find a cracked version anyways if it was any more difficult to do.

Also, I should mention that the demos that Puppygames provides are quite substantial chunks of the full versions - if you've played enough of the demo to reach its limits, then chances are you've been liking the game enough to warrant buying it. I think this is pretty important, it's probably the main reason they have so few refund requests.

Finally, I encourage everyone to check out the game itself at http://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans, too - Cas and Chaz have always put together really polished and fun games, and it's a shame that they haven't been able to figure out how to sell more of them (Cas was not joking at all with the self-deprecating stuff about people not buying the games, they really are only selling a handful of copies every month). FWIW, I have no relation to either of them, I'm plugging them because I've always liked their games and would hate to see them give up.