skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
College-aged people are grown-up enough to live their own lives. I know it would be painful to see one's child getting involved with PHP, but in the end that should be their own choice to make.
I was kind of hoping it would explain what Glyphtree is, but it's a riddle/poem.

It has me wondering how 'loser' is defined and if a person can be their own 'friend' ... (read their riddle poem if that makes no sense to you).
It is legitimate fear though. I can feel how my attention span and capacity for deep thought has been attenuated by technology as a mid 20s male. Kids with developing brains and thought processes we should be even more careful of.
So, should you not celebrate such an endeavor?
thanks for the votes :)
Good for you guys, especially starting out not running at all and already looking to do a 5k. I just did a 5k in them last week and it felt great - I picked the shoes up in august and I've been able to run ~3 miles every other day with them since.

I'd recommend trying, if you haven't already, a bit of actual barefoot running - only for a short distance to just get a feel for how it changes your stride. The reason I say this even though you're starting "barefoot" is I notice that the vibrams have enough padding to have a slightly different feel for me than actually going barefoot, so it might be worth testing it out and seeing if you notice a difference (if so, try to maintain the barefoot stride while wearing the shoes).

Good luck on the 5k, I'm sure you'll enjoy it!
Absolutely, I just don't want some rich guy bribing them to drop out. If they develop a great passion for a startup idea, I will provide that grant myself after a period of time and after a rigorous debate.
Admission to Top B-Schools Gets Easier
One small thing I noticed is that selecting a white background on the main screen doesn't "stick" when you choose news/america.

Another small UI thing: the choice of large font is welcome, but didn't go as large as I wanted. When I used command-+ on Chrome (Mac) to go a bit larger, I ended up with horizontal scrollbars. This is a pet peeve of mine. Why can't you use percentage measures for the different regions? I don't mind some vertical scrolling, but horizontal is much worse.

Edit: I forgot to say: Nice job overall, despite my nit picking above. Also, where did the name come from?

Edit 2: The title of the news / america section comes out as "Amerika". Is that just a typo, or a political statement? (I've seen that spelling used to imply the U.S. is being taken over by Facists or something.)
Or, more realistically, they said that it is a conflict of interest to sit on the board of two different (competing) projects, OpenOffice and LibreOffice. No one said they couldn't be part of the "community."

Since the code base was just forked, patches can be applied to both projects (and should, where appropriate).
Love the questions. I really think this could a more useful app if it fulfilled both sides of the equation: let me enter movies I want to see, and remind me of when those movies are in theaters near me/released on DVD or Blu-ray.

I don't see the social aspect as really playing much of a role, at least outside the 1% of hardcore die-hard users.
Looking at that map, I'm struck by the separation into the "San Francisco cluster" and the "Silicon Valley cluster" (with the exception of ZumoDrive, sitting halfway in between).

PG: Have you noticed this causing any effects within YC cohorts (e.g., the cohorts being split into two cliques), or is there enough traffic between downtown and the valley that the physical separation doesn't end up mattering?
Liberal Arts, Post-Recession
Boomerang kids: 85% of college grads move home
The profit argument stopped being true a few days ago, when Google announced their earnings including the mobile break down.
No, everything about it is nonsensical. Learning can be much more intense than in school just as working can be much more intense than in some 9 to 5 job. It's not a matter of age at all.

Getting a degree has other benefits. You might develop a passion for something you didn't know before. Something that's not as approachable as PHP. Something harder. Instead of a one off payment, a degree might enable you to fund your own startup whenever you have that great idea or develop a passion for something.

What if that social picture upload site bores you after a while or doesn't make you rich and you'd rather write algorithms to find patterns in cancer genes? Where will Peter Thiel be when you decide you want to go back to uni to study theoretical physics because you hate PHP?
This is the first I hear about this story, words escape me really. I can't imagine where Saeed finds the strength to keep going after two years of torture.

Can we do something more meaningful/effective than sending e-letters?
Thanks, the quality of the speakers (and talks, since I've heard a few of the speakers before) was immense.
The white background issue is a bug, I'll fix it today, I somehow miss that one.

Indeed the font issue is a problem I have to figure out how to solve, I'm playing around with some fonts , but haven't yet found the perfect fit , so you won't even need to change the font size, if it doesn't work, I will have to change the approach and probably go with your suggestion on percentage measures. Thanks for the great critic and the nice words on the product.

clickable: http://www.mcsquare.me/

EDIT: Oh, forgot to tell you about the name, I'm a fan of Einstein ( E=mc² = mcsquare ) and bought the domain to create a twitter alike board for my University (Mecanical Eng.), but I find out, it wasn't a great idea, so as I switched to this project, the domain was just perfect for me, and here's the logic: site handle about rss feeds, Einstein was a very smart guy, ----> Tag line: Feed (from feeds) your brain (be smart with all theose infos like )---> feed your brain with all the latest news and knowledge.

Amerika is a typo, this happen when one write too much German stuff, "ca" is mostly "ka" in German, updating it now.
And this is why the thought of developing solely for a locked-in platform scares the crap out of me. I'm interested in the specifics, of course, but seeing repeats of both the Facebook and Apple random-dev-bans makes me wonder how anyone could justify staking their livelihood on something like this.
Namebench - Project Hosting on Google Code
End our 'multiuniversities'
I understand.

My point is that I don't want to write a bunch of idiotic code to serve up images on the web no matter how much money that would bring. I would rather write algorithms that simulate the cellular environment as you said, but in this case wouldn't it be better to follow a path like this? Using the money to focus on what you need to learn and working with people who actually know what they're talking about?

It's fine if you get into an awesome college like MIT and Stanford where you can do something analogous to this through UROPs, but what about those kids who can't afford it? Wouldn't this be a golden opportunity to them?

Yet again, just like in college it depends on what kind of person you are. If you want to just chase dollars then you really might be better off in school, but if you want to work hard on hard problems and actually make a contribution. Then this just might be the best thing in the world. For example, where I live an undergrad doing research is unheard of. It's pure sanctimonious nonsense. Students are expected to mug up for exams get good grades, get a job then go do their masters. Or, do a MBA and then.... Well I guess you get the drift.

What happens to someone passionate in a grind like that? For someone like that Peter Thiel's endeavor might actually make a lot of sense.
What do you think they should have done actually?

What I said: make the fastest JS VM in the world years before others got started and make it cheap to call into from the browser. Then web apps could have used Flash's JS if it were available and just run more slowly if it weren't. Since V8 runs far faster than AS3 (in any measurement I've done), this was obviously technically possible. Had Adobe done this, Flash's extraordinary ubiquity would have meant we had access to something like V8 in nearly every browser out there, right down to IE6. Instead, what they produced was a dead end -- faster than the old JS implementations but not as fast as the new ones -- and a monstrosity called ExternalInterface that makes interaction between JS and AVM2 too slow for all but the most expensive computations.
If you treated this as a variant on the backpack problem, you run into trouble as you can't properly memoize or use dynamic programming. You use 'timesteps' as the size of the 'knapsack' since the number of balls is unbounded. At each timestep, you cannot determine the the optimal solution to the subproblem and you'd have to save every possible ball combination.

TL;DR - It gets to be a pretty messy/bad backpack and should probably be solved another way
> I would sue that guy if my kids dropped out of a computational biology program to go write some social picture upload site in PHP.

So, your kid applies for a grant because he thinks it's good for his life. The Thiel Foundation gives him $100,000. And you'd like to sue the foundation for giving your kid money that the kid applied for to do what he wants with? That's... kind of crazy to me.
Ant, waf, and the rest of them are usually overkill IMHO. With makefiles the basics are simple and straightforward and I'd argue that most uses only require the basics, it's like what I've been hearing about autotools these days but even autotools seems overkill especially on Linux where we've had proper pkgconfig support everywhere for years. The same is probably true for the BSDs as well. I can't comment on Windows or OS X as I have no experince there but I imagine it must be easier to write a couple basic makefiles for 2 differnt platforms if you need. Most cross platform projects don't need as they either use Gtk, glib, Qt, etc which already pulls in all their dependencies.
It's a simple sale, no rebill or free trial just one charge of the purchase price.

I use that landing page style because it converts better than anything else I have tested :)
Apple do a lot of things right. But they optimize hard for the 80-90% rule. Maybe even 95%. If you want to do anything in that 5-10% -- you have challenges.

Woz wanted power and flexibility and options. Jobs wanted beauty and simplicity and ease of use. There's nothing wrong with simplicity. In fact - most of the time it's a benefit. But lets call it for what it is -- Apple's design ethos will choose simple over flexible almost every time.
"Try out namebench. It hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use."

The title needs some editing.
Pretty interesting. I've always wondered how stuff like this is made, but there doesn't seem to be much info. (I haven't looked much either)
Learning is a life long process. I would very much encourage my kid to do it - they would get to bring a passionate idea to fruitition, get exposed to running a company and get mentored by very smart entrepreneurs.

If it doesnt work out, I'll still pay for them to finish their degree the next year.

What is the downside?
I don't think there's much that letter writing is going to solve. It seems he's an Iranian citizen from Iran that is subject to Iran's criminal justice system. Yeah, Iran has a poor human rights record, but writing an email is not going to fix that problem.
Not loading
Exactly what I was going to say. He might as well give 20 kids $100 000 each to get dorky haircuts hoping that they each become the next Bill Gates.
http://luaforge.net luaforge seems to still be active and doing a pretty good job aggregating libraries. Check out the "luarocks" and "kepler" project pages for ideas. Or just grab some mysql bindings and start from scratch. Let HNers know if you build a lua blog\cms etc... it's been on my todo list but probably won't get to it until December.
Errata corrige: s/italian/every
Well, I'm guessing more people make web apps and other type of applications (like iPhone apps) more than people making games.

There is still plenty of good information to be found on game making at least though.

Making a game is quite an endeavor. There are just so many small things that have to be polished before it can be released.

Making a prototype can only take 2-3 weeks, but building up content is the real time consuming process.

I'm working on a MMORPG for Android and I wish I could speak more about it. It has some unique aspects due to the mobile nature of it.

I'm building a web app now that lets you create maps, quests, characters, etc for the game and anyone can play them on their Android device right away.

The idea is to offload at least some of the content creation to power users so I can continue to concentrate on polishing and adding features to the game.

In any case, it's ideas like these that are interesting to me and I guess like you, feel that they're not really talked about often.
However, there are nugs here and there. I can understand that web apps are just more popular.

Anyway, you can find my dev blog here: http://developingthedream.blogspot.com
Long article. Would've liked to see video clips showing, "walk like this", and, "instead of this".
Are you affiliated with Lambda Lounge in STL?
I don't deny that it could be an opportunity for someone. But to provide that opportunity, the stipulation that you need to drop out of school is completely unnecessary. It excludes other people who might have good ideas and passion as well. This is Peter Thiel making a point about the education system. I get that point, but I don't like the way he makes it.

The issue this. If someone likes to solve hard problems but isn't a good entrepreneur he/she needs a degree. Just look at who Google hires. Or Halcyon Molecular, the company mentioned in the article (http://halcyonmolecular.com/team/positions-available/). We need many more people solving hard problems than we will have good entrepreneurs. Getting that degree means to leave a door open that you can walk through if it turns out you're a lousy entrepreneur but still want to solve hard problems. That said, it's better to drop out of school than be totally frustrated by it. It's better regardless of whether you get a $100,000 grant or not.

[Apparently Paul Graham doesn't like our debate though. It's a flame war apparently, even though I didn't think it was. That's why it takes longer and longer and loooonger for the "reply" link to appear]
Crypto challenge contest (just fame)
yes, that's because some websites use a framebuster to not allow their sites to be embedded in iframes. Therefore the content absorb the page.
Since i totally understand their point and i think most users doesn't search in a web page anymore but rather in the browser, i am thinking of puting together a new kind of web browser around this idea.
Or try to find a frame buster buster...
hey. hey.

I'm on no particular side of anything. I'm not arguing that openness doesn't matter. I can't figure out where you got that. Of course you can argue that openness is more important. My observation is that when people do make those kind of arguments they make a sort of a deterministic argument surprisingly often.

Incidentally, the rest of this thread is a good place to make your argument that android is already winning.
News Corp pulls its Hulu content from Cablevision customers
They added a plexiglass windshield halfway because it's dangerous to drive without one. They did mention this.
Nice site overall - looks like you put a lot of time and effort into it.

The only thing I would point out is that the site looks kind of "busy" to me. In some ways it looks like a clone of a lot of other aggregators out there, or a site for a parked domain.

Maybe more whitespace? More colors? Make it fun?

Prooost! :P
No, you shouldn't take "sue" too literally. I know it's totally impractical. I just think it's a stupid and completely unnecessary stipulation to _require_ kids to drop out of school and at the same time exclude everyone else who might have a good idea and a passion.
This could have a great return on investment and probably quiet many of the naysayers when successful companies roll out of it.

He will likely have a lot of candidates responding to this (I sure as hell would have in college) and be able to pick and choose the top of the crop. No one else is proactively going after this huge talent pool.

And it could also be a lifesaver for would-be entrepreneurs that come out of college with $80k of debt and forced to work for someone else.
by typing 'b' into the box it will look for the most relevant search with something starting with b.
That means statistically 'bank of america' is the most searched term for users who starts with a letter 'b' in the US.
Psykomatic search as you type so it will filter little by little the results until you get to your target. ;-) But there are chances your reach it before you finished typing.

If the suggestion is not what you wanted you just need to press enter to override the search.
Amazon adds Kindle games
Thanks for the comment. I will look into that ;-)
Thanks for the comment. can i ask which system are you on? mac/win? browser?

cheers
thanks for the comment.
That must be an iframe/javascript issue.
Will look into that!
which system/browser are you on?
I can't speak for any other country, but here in France, where the iPhone is available on any carrier, almost all of my acquaintances have either iPhones or, if it's supplied by their job, a Blackberry. The only people I know that have Android phones are programmers.
> No, you shouldn't take "sue" too literally. I know it's totally impractical.

Okay, that makes sense.

> I just think it's a stupid and completely unnecessary stipulation to _require_ kids to drop out of school and at the same time exclude everyone else who might have a good idea and a passion.

I kind of like it, myself. He's partially making a statement about the mainstream education path - personally, I think people would be better off if they worked and/or traveled from 18 to 20 or so, and then went into university with some experience and critical thinking.

I remember I went back to university some years after dropping out, and I already had experience in entrepreneurship and writing the popular company newsletter, as well as writing contracts, specs, marketing materials, and lots of communications with clients, staff, contractors, etc. Back at university, I had a required course on writing. It was taught by a young adjunct English professor who had done less writing than me whose ideas were absolutely terrible. She was big on form and rules, but didn't understand that the point of writing is to communicate. Her rules were getting in the way of communication. Luckily, I knew better, so I did what I could to get through the class but didn't let her corrode my practical writing with her rules-based nonsense. Especially in business, it's important to communicate clearly - none of the most successful people I know obey grammar and rules very strictly. I feel bad for the younger people that get exposed to such poor quality ideas before seeing how the real world operates.
yup, a lot of time indeed, thanks.

Ok, I took my design inspiration from the nytimes, but it seems like, it doesn't fit well with the site's layout, I'll improve the design, means more colors and whitespace, this should make it fun and less...cold or less work and research tool. Thanks

Prooost! :)
Nah. If my guess is right then it's an exponential function of some sort. You know, the deeper nested the reply the greater the power of some f(x) and longer the time it takes for the reply to hit. There is a way around it though. If you directly link to a comment. A reply box automatically appears.

You know, what I haven't mentioned so far is that I want to go back to college someday and learn everything I can for the sheer pleasure of it. Perhaps, even get that oft dreamed of PhD. So, yes I understand your point, but don't you think that it will be a net win to apprentice under people like Peter Thiel?

He can teach anyone a lot about how to actually get around the entire changing the world charade. If it doesn't work out then fine you have a line on your CV re-enter college and apply whatever you've learnt over there. In a lot of ways that would be the most fruitful thing to do as real knowledge really lies between intersections of concepts. It's like one line of thought represents this plane on which we can walk, but the weird stuff always happens in the intersections of planes. Two, three or more concepts meeting and making shapes that confound us. If you really want to do something with your life then training under someone like that would be like magic.

He could probably teach me more about navigating that space than 90% of the college professors out there. So, in a way it's still a net win, don't you agree?
I can go as deep as I want as quickly as I want now.

I really think that someone should email mr. Graham about this.

edit: I just did. :)
If we it started today, The Home Depot wouldn't have gotten off the ground
The original post was trying to talk about the (over)reaction of people to 9/11. Your argument against that was to take up an ad hominem attack on the poster's values. Your argument implies that you feel that it is impossible to over-react to loss of life if that loss was intentionally perpetrated by a person (or group of people). I provided a counter-argument by bolstering the original poster's point using a statistic of (mostly) intentional murders instead of a statistic of accidental loss of life. Now you have to argue against the original point on other grounds if you wish to proceed.

tl;dr Don't attack people personally, and don't try to make an emotional appeal to win an argument. Those tactics might work for some people, but they sully the debate/discussion so far as I'm concerned.
History API[1]? :) If History API is being used alongside with alanh's method, that would eliminate the links in the wild problem. Flickr's lightbox view[2] is using this method for its AJAX viewing.

The biggest holdback is Internet Explorer, though. (Well, just like almost everything else.)

[1]: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...

[2]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/3986524856/lightbox...
Starcraft 2 most of the weekends. Although haven't played it for some time. Any players around?
The Buzz on Buzz
I'm interested in hardware startups but at a higher level than chip design.

Some semi-random pointers which might be of interest:

* OGP is an open source hardware project to create open source video graphics hardware which currently uses a FPGA: http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php

* Bunnie is one of the people behind the Chumby and has documented his manufacturing experiences on his blog but that seems to be at a higher level than what you're looking for: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/

* ARM is an example of something that started out with a small development team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

For prototyping purposes my limited understanding is that software simulation and FPGAs can be used initially. If you're interested in FPGAs this site of open source FPGA code might be of interest: http://opencores.org/
The most obfuscated java snippet i've ever seen.
You will pretty much be hired at the end of the day. We hire about 10% of people that we interview this way. So we already pre-screen people before spending all that time with them.

Remember you can always leave and we can always stop the interview.

Well this way of interviewing has worked well for 15+ years ;-) , we like it, we'll probably stick to it.
interesting, I had not heard of this. It still does not play nice with curl, but seems a sensible idea.
The Quant Who Won't Shut Up
Walking could cut memory loss in half
There's nothing preventing your communications from having good grammar. Are you really saying that good grammar would have detracted from your communications? I'm curious.