skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even faster, I've setup "keyword searches" in Firefox (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches). I created the following bookmark:

Name : [so] Search StackOverflow // the "[so]" here is just a mnemonic
Location : http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Astackoverflow.com+%s
Keyword : so

Then, when I want to search for "vim vs emacs" on SO, I open a new tab (Ctrl + T), type "so vim vs emacs", and press enter. This searches "site:stackoverflow.com vim vs emacs" on Google.

I have a similar smart bookmarks setup for HN searches, and you could get more creative if you want (DuckDuckGo search, or even a custom StackExchange search like rayvega mentioned, using "http://stackexchange.com/search?q=%s in the location field).

Chrome has something similar: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
I, too, would be interested in more info (like total lines of code, whether or not they built a Twitter engine from scratch for the app, etc).

I believe that Twitterrific uses MGTwitterEngine now, but originally had used its own.
How many of those are duplicates of existing questions — doesn't heralding growth contradict the original site goal of wiki-edited QA that stays fresh forever?
App-store get-rich hype probably did a lot of damage too.
Doesn't mention dunning specifically but does say "automatic emails which are sent during specific events such as a new charge, new recurring charge, expiration, cancellation, upcoming expiration, upcoming charge, etc." .
OS X 10.7 “Lion”: The King Of The Apple Jungle, The Last Of Its Kind, Or Both?
Nice. That might do the job.
Why thank you is more than just good manners
Another reason to be happy I don't own a car. Woot!
This is such a fundamentally important issue in the sciences. Without the source code, you can not truly do peer review, and you may not be able to replicate someone else's work. With no peer review or replication, you are no longer doing science.

I've seen source code for software used to produce results in major publications like Nature that was so poor quality it is surprising it even compiled. You don't generally get tenure for producing well written software, so there needs to be another incentive for scientists to spend the time to write well thought out and well documented code. I think sunlight helps tremendously.

Warren DeLano, the author of PyMol, the very popular molecular visualization software, was an early voice about the importance of open source software in the sciences. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us, but it is hearting to see others now taking up the cause.

The only way to publish software in a scientifically robust manner is to share source code, and that means publishing via the internet in an open-access/open-source fashion. - Warren DeLano (2005)
And I've seen many spaghetti messes that had to be cleaned up by full-time "developers" who cared more about getting paid than if their code worked, let alone if it could be maintained.
Quick thoughts on what Facebook Comments Means
No, I enjoyed reading it, and most of it was fine. But if the point of his post is to say "I'm sorry" and do damage control, he shoots himself in the foot by whining about people complaining. If 99% of your users are on the free plan, and they're the ones complaining loudest, bashing them in your apology is possibly not the best plan to get you out of the mess.

Pvg says it much better than me below.
There is a direct relationship between uncertainty about the economy and the problem of finding/retaining talent for startups and small businesses.

The current U.S. government's "tax the rich" attitude can't be helping small business, either. It just adds to the uncertainty.

Some have been running for cover, but some of us are running against the crowd.
That has nothing to do with Cocoa.

It would take me as much time to do a Rails app well as it would for someone who has as much experience in Objective C as I do in Rails (that is, not nearly as much as I do with Cocoa).
The graph does not show growth increasing linearly, as you say. What it shows is that the rate of growth is increasing linearly, which indicates that there is an acceleration in how fast solar power capacity is being created. Thus, the growth of installed power plants will in fact be increasing quadratically.

In layman's terms, quadratic growth is often referred to (incorrectly) as "exponential" growth. If the article included a graph of the total solar power capacity over time, it would indeed appear to be increasing "exponentially."
Startup idea with marketing from top pool players guaranteed
Due to some luck, I have a cousin who is a top 9 ball pool player and his friends are all the top 10 in the world e.g Effren Reyes, Rodney Morris, Mika Immonen, Ralph 'The kaiser' etc.

He confirmed that they are interested in an iphone app and they would support it and market it assuming someone is actually capable of building it and not damaging their reputations.

He asked me if I could manage it. I can't, I'm working on a startup and even though it's a no-brainer, we are launching and it's too late for me.

These guys play pool, they don't live in the startup world. They don't imagine that someone would sit there and take the risk to build the app and so I explained how it can work.

The concept I have in mind is something very simple and addictive for pool players like 'staircase dismount', 'angry birds' 'fruit ninja' etc - but in a pool setting

Pool players are currently in a situation that, due to anti-gambling laws in the USA, they can't make as much money as they want and the prize money has gone down since then but they still have huge followings.

If anyone is interested, get in touch with me. These guys are willing to fly out and meet with you to talk it over. In fact, I think they'll insist. Work out your own percentage split with them and your own contract and the terms for the marketing.

You'll be building a product with an agreement, in advance, of marketing guaranteed. Just make sure you get what you want and they get what they want.

We launch our product on friday, I have limited time for this but I've also promised to get it moving.

If you are interested, then I suggest you go via the y-combinator route to make it happen. I'll put you in touch with them and you can go to y-combinator with a guarantee of having it marketed. I don't want to manage it and unless I'm wrong, Y-combinator processes startup idea's.

Stats: everyone plays pool at some point in their lives and there is a hardcore following of millions. My cousin quoted a worldwide following of 130 million, for some countries, it's a national sport. Current pool apps might be good but they are not addictively simple as it does not have to be playing a full game. Personally, i think the first version could be as simple as 'maximum break' with bonus points, flashing lights and an addictive feel.... just get that right and then build more apps to sell in the future.

my email is p.kullar@gmail.com for urgent questions, although best if you post here and we'll work out next steps. Work together, form a new startup, whatever it takes. My cousins name is raj hundal of www.rajhundal.com he's got a sizeable facebook following and so have the others. He mentioned wearing the app symbol on their t-shirts when they play pool on tv... so you get my drift? It's an opportunity no-one seems to have put together properly yet.
What was the need/motivation for capital raising?
I'd think it also has to do with battery life. Especially with long running apps.
Why Planting Farms in Skyscrapers Won't Solve Our Food Problems – http://www.alternet.org/food/146686/?page=entire
I use Hacker Newsletter (http://www.hackernewsletter.com/) to catch up if I miss stuff during the week.
Why doesn’t Google have a hedge fund?
The problem is that they can't change the UI model without pissing off their existing userbase that likes clicking cardinal arrows to shift the map tiles around. Google's never going to implement that interface, even their nojs interface uses a different UI model.

If Mapquest's users wanted GMaps, they'd have switched by now. Aping that would only infuriate them, and since Google will always do a better job of implementing the rich JS interface than Mapquest can, the previously-recalcitrant users would just switch.
While I strongly believe that scientists should publish their code along with their papers, I do think it has one potential disadvantage. Suppose a scientist writes a big piece of code to some complicated calculations, but makes a subtle mistake somewhere in it (perhaps some parentheses are nested incorrectly). If the code is not published and another scientist comes along to extend the results from the first paper, the first thing he will do is try to replicate the results of the original. If the code is unpublished, the second scientist will have to write the code from scratch, and in doing so will likely catch the original error. But if the code is published, the second scientist will just use the original code and probably won't catch the error. Consequently, the mistake will take much longer to catch, if it's ever caught at all.

The advantages still outweigh the disadvantages, but it's important to remember that there are always trade-offs.
You can check it out here:

http://www.thesharedweb.com/alpha/intro
It took me a little while to figure out it was a practice aid. Something like - practice with a full orchestra at your own speed - would have made it clearer. The 'your interpretations' also confused me, I wasn't sure whether that referred to recordings or orchestrations.
Not only is the lack of steady work a problem, but also there are other costs of freelancing that people don't consider when employed. I have to be pretty careful about additional taxes, cost of equipment and other necessities (everything from my own computer and software to desk, chair, internet and more), and especially for me, health insurance in CA where I have preexisting conditions that insurance companies hate. (And yes I've done my research on group rates and such...that's yet another thing I have to do that I wouldn't have to worry about as much if I were employed.)

So yeah, I might seem ridiculously expensive when I go bill someone at $200/hour, but I make nowhere near $300k and out of what I do make, I don't get to save a lot after paying all the bills. But in exchange, I get a lot more freedom when it comes to working, which leaves room to do other things in my life. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make because I can find fairly steady work, but I would never do it if I had a family or if making money was my sole objective.
Unless your time is worth less than $.01 / hr, this isn't profit :)
It's the sites that shouldn't depend on JS that irritate me. Sites that load completely static content, dynamically. Newspapers where you get a blank layout instead of an article. They're more common than you think. I don't mind temporarily whitelisting a site to play with some cool thing but if it's something that shouldn't require javascript at all, let alone need to degrade gracefully, I often just go somewhere else.

And then there's sites like this: http://partiallystapled.com/~gxti/trash/2010/10/09-javascrip...
This looks very nice. It's so good to see people trying to mitigate the awkwardness of event-driven programming. It makes it easier for people to use and adopt async infrastructures.
Keyboard simulators are awesome
Apple 3rd in US PC sales
I'm not arguing with the point of the article (that there are more commercial companies who "leech" off open source) - I don't have the data to argue against that, and in fact anecdotally I do believe it to be true.

I am just saying that if there is a drop in open source, you don't have enough data to eliminate the recession as a significant factor in the decline.
Perhaps solar panels could be tied to a battery that powers the dash electronics, so that they don't have to siphon power indirectly via gasoline? Small potatoes compared to actually moving the weight of the car, but it would still be cool.
In the US the government isn't even allowed to hold copyright on its works — the taxpayers funded it, so all Government publishings must be public domain.

In the UK and Commonwealth countries the Crown holds full copyright by default over all government works.
Based on the comments here, I think Carwoo will take a while to convince users of its utility. But there are people out there for whom this will save time and hassle. A friend of mine, for instance, recently decided on the exact car he wanted and then faxed an offer sheet to various dealers in Northern California. First responder got the deal. And he was able to pay a bit below the price he would have had to haggle for showing up at a single dealership.

As this catches on, I think there will need to be some education regarding the proposition itself as well as how financing might play into the service.
Good numbers in the Tesla Roadster wikipedia introduction.

wikipedia: The tesla roadster use 490 kiljoules per kilometer.

compute: Our 30 megajoules above will take us 38 miles.

Of course I'm still using mythical 100% efficient solar cells on a biggish flat roof and all sunny days, and Tesla used mythical shape hugging solar cells on all of their exposed surfaces.

I still think the best solution for a solar powered car is to place your solar cells the south western deserts near LA and pull what power you need from the grid. That way you get a lot more power delivered from your cells.
I think that to the contrary, that it would allow people to determine whether the original results were due to flawed software by analyzing the code. Subsequent efforts would remain free to create their own implementations from scratch if desired.
It certainly seems like an easy to understand value prop. I've done ok on negotiating cars, but only after a lot of research and through a lot of frustration. I've told a friend of mine (an aggressive attorney) that I'd gladly pay her to go negotiate a car for me.

One of my worst experiences was trying to play the "let dealers compete" game online. I'd get 4 to 24 hour turnaround times on emails, which just wasn't going to work. As a bonus, I still get several emails a week from dealers still trying to get my business. (Thankfully on my semi-throwaway account.)
I think it's a great idea, but I'm guessing pg might not want to do the work involving billing, even if it's really easy.
Has anyone used both Intel's Thread Building Blocks and Apple's Grand Central Dispatch? GCD is focused around adding blocks to C and managing dispatch queues.

Anyone have pros and cons of both frameworks?
I'm one of those who browse without JavaScript and Flash and for me that IS a better experience. Try it once and see how much better signal to noise ratio is. I also like the additional benefit of having much less chance to be attacked through the browser.

And I also use Opera, exactly because I can enable using the built in browser settings both JS and Flash only for a few sites where I need it (like youtube).

I have just checked again: I don't have JS turned on for HN. It just works.
Alternately, adding those lines to every single host you control is one hell of an annoyance for something that doesn't stop any sort of real attack on your server. It's trivial for a real attacker to find your sshd running on any port.
The long search for a terminal font is over
What I was suggesting is do the SELECT name FROM friends query as part of the initial page load, not as a secondary AJAX request. Store the results as JSON that gets put into the page, then use JS to manipulate the comments client side. As you noted it should be cheap and as others noted, quite cacheable (friends don't change frequently).
I'm in Miami and I go to the art events now and then. I was planning to do an Art Basel Facebook+iPhone app but my time ran out before I could even get the funding together.. C'est la vie
Suddenly, Bing Has What Google Doesn't: Data From 500 Million Facebook Users
Start with graceful degradation when things get tough? (Less comments, top friends,...).
That isn't correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Spencer_(computer_engineer...
Nation's helium reserve running on empty?
Why is no one mentioning the somewhat obvious aspect that people might not want to live in CA?

At some point, all of the available in state talent is going to be employed. Now you have to look outside. Much of your senior talent are not going to be able to up and move. There's a big difference between working insane startup worloads with a company in your home town vice doing the same AND doing it a new city after having moved your family across the country.
What annoys me more are websites that only let you log in with a facebook account. I don't want a facebook account!
Truthy - system to analyze and visualize the diffusion of information on Twitter
You need to price yourself higher. While $20 for you may be a lot (as I thought it was during school), for a reputable firm this is nothing, and it means you won't be taken as seriously. This manifests as them often wasting your time in terms of developing features they don't really need. This is probably going to happen in any software project, but a higher per hour cost makes people think about your time in a better light.

Also, get a retainer. Took my 18 months to get money from a friend's company once. Retainers get rid of so much BS.
I get the impression that home page has been optimised to within an inch of it's life and converts like crazy. A very impressive landing page, I had the overwhelming urge to put in my Url and try it out. Well done.
Come by Mixpanel and we'll hook you up with a free shirt--trust me they rock! =)
There are very few sites with a relevant content that are really "necessarily dependant on JS." The worse the content is, or the more amateurish it is, the more probable is that the creator thinks that the "cool menus" are a good substitute for content. It was always so. MARQUEE and BLINK of 1996.

You can almost recognize who's mostly in charge for some site:

-- needs JavaScript only to bring me to another page: some bad "programmer" whose best achievement was that he learned JS.

-- needs Flash only to bring me to another page: some "decision maker" who wants "dynamic" or a "programmer" whose best achievement was that he learned Flash.

- needs a magnifying glass to read the text set in 5 pt font: some "designer" who doesn't care for the text anyway. But look how good colors he selected. And everybody has the same screen resolution as it's on his computer, got it?

-- needs a magnifying glass to read the text, the menus are half JS behind images, half Flash: you tell me, but there's higher chance it's made by a West European guy.

etc.
people might not want to live in CA

And suddenly a lot of people can't. The financial crisis has toughened up immigration everywhere.
The conflict of interest problem could be significantly reduced by having a third party read the x-rays (i.e. make the interpretation of dental radiographs a radiology subspecialty or create a subspecialty within dentistry for doing this). This wouldn't have been very practical in the old days of film-based radiography, but with digital technology you could easily transmit all the images to a third party for reading. Having a dedicated specialist reading the x-rays would both address the conflict of interest problem (the specialist has no incentive to be biased; they'd get paid a flat fee to read the images and generate a report) and would very likely also improve the accuracy of cavity detection because the images would be read by someone who reads way more dental x-rays per day than any individual dentist ever would.
PopCap Games: Don't be stupid, have fun
From what I've heard:
* If you paid by google checkout, you were never actually charged
* If you paid by paypal, you should have been refunded by August 17th, 2010 (http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/08/17/timing-update/)

So if you paid by paypal, just check your transaction history around that date to ensure you actually got the refund.
Have used 3 Asus systems in the past 6 months, none of them were dumped as bad machines, merely changing requirements;

Asus UL80vt; Extremely good battery life, quite good performance, initially had a problem with the hybrid graphics setup between the integrated intel and discrete nvidia but stock 10.04 worked fine on this, the only catch was the ath9k chipset for wifi, which although it did work would randomly drop out and require a reboot for reconnection, switching to the preempt kernel line fixes this issue.

Asus N71JQ; Good middle of the road system bang for buck wise, ATI drivers were significantly shakier than Nvidia, but not enough to dissuade me from ATI entirely in future purchases, exact same problem with the ath9k chipset as with the ul80vt.

Asus G73Jh; Ridiculously awesome performance and the hybrid drives on the system make this perform significantly better than even desktop 7200rpm drives (at least for read), the cost is significantly lower than even a mid range MBP and you simply cannot get these specs on an MBP at any price. The drawback is that the video card is past the bleeding edge that is gracefully handled by the stock fglrx drivers from ATI.

I spent days first fixing this in ubuntu 10.04 by manually patching kernel driver files and rebuilding the fglrx modules myself, followed by this being broken a month later when upstream went ahead and fixed the same problem in a different way, resulting in extensive maintenance to push out the conflicting fglrx mods. That said, this issue should actually be fixed as of the present 10.04 release and the double dose of pain I got may have been an artefact of my specific case. If this is really the case this is an awesome development rig. The only other drawback is that old ath9k chestnut, same fix as required for the other two mentioned model, the preempt line of kernels fixes this.

The only other issue affecting all three systems is that the touchpad freeze function does not work without extensive kernel level messing around and I couldn't be bothered to go that far to fix what I felt to be a minor issue (it was most pronounced on the ul80vt due to the size relative to my enormous hands and least on the G73jh for the same reason).
While Instagram's "overnight" success is certainly impressive, it's worth noting that this wasn't the team's first product. Instagram was a "pivot" from Burbn, an in-browser foursquare of sorts.

Founder/CEO Kevin Systrom tells the full backstory on Quora here: http://www.quora.com/Instagram/What-is-the-story-behind-Inst...
A great read, but shocking in how much it costs on the App/dev/Infrastructure side. Each app seems like a startup in itself, yet, the risks seem far greater.

Are the dev tools that bad that it costs that much, and requires so many people, to produce a concept to result?

Am I missing something? I must be.
Basho Luwak (large file support for Riak)
Luwak is a service layer on Riak that provides a simple, file-oriented abstraction for enormous objects.
From the tippy top of the README:
Luwak is a service layer on Riak that provides a simple, file-oriented abstraction for enormous objects.
In agreement with what Zed is saying, you would be shocked by the number of companies, YC companies especially, who use Orbited (www.orbited.org) but never ever mention it, contribute a patch, offer me a job, or really add anything of value to the project.

Great, that's their prerogative... its MIT licensed software. But I can tell you, after this sort of interaction for years, I no longer invest my time in Orbited, and instead I bill $250/hr to share my expertise with consumer facing internet startup companies.

One actual data point to add this discussion anyway.

[ edit for spelling ]
Maybe now tech companies will wake up and start to re-think their ageist hiring policies.