skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Doctors Conduct First-Ever All-Robotic Surgery and Anesthesia
http://quickbrownfoxtutor.appspot.com

It's an HTML5 typing tutor that I'm working on. Also planning to sell the tools I use to build it as a jump-starter API for folks wishing to create GWT/App Engine products:

http://gwtquickstarter.appspot.com
And it's also worth saying that diagonal dominance is a stronger property than positive definiteness. That is, something can easily be PD but not DD.
This looks useful. It would be a good idea to have the pros and cons lists next to each other so that one doesn't need to scroll down long lists.
This was something that always impressed me with HN. Instead of using a robust, proven forum system, you created a new project that grew with the community, and opened the whole thing up for us to see and even hack ourselves.
http://movief.ly

Wanted a place to keep track of what movies I was watching, when and who I was watching them with, and then be able to recall them later.

For instance:
Recent movies watched http://movief.ly/users/adamfortuna/viewings

Movies first seen in 2009
http://movief.ly/users/adamfortuna/lists/first-seen-in-2009

Never went beyond the 'scratch my own itch' stage, but gomiso seems to like the idea of checking in to TV/movies.
Next version. We've partnered with animoto to make photos sync with the music. Konami code obviously.
regvex.py -- http://gist.github.com/641688

Regvex is a proof of concept timing attack against regex engines. To make a long story short, the timing characteristics of regex engines make it perfectly suited to timing attacks, allowing you to (locally or remotely) create data that matches a given regex, and potentially even reconstruct the actual regex you're matching against.

The current version works locally against Python's sre, but I plan to take it further when I have time.
Snarky as it may be, "you're using your iPhone wrong" is a pretty myopic way to end that sentence.

There are several reasons a user might want to close an app without saving its state. One is to prevent the app from using background APIs. VoIP apps, GPS apps, etc can continue to access several APIs while their states are saved. In many instances, users might not want this.

Another reason is that many users make use of the app manager as an app switcher. This is one of its intended functions, of course. Switching between commonly used apps with a quick double-tap is far easier than swiping through home screens and digging through folders. It's also easier than using Spotlight.

In this scenario, when I open the app manager why should I have to swipe past the Settings app, the Phone app, the Weather app, the App Store, the Clock app, etc... just to get to the more commonly used app I'm looking for? (Why would I ever want my iPhone to save the Clock app's state in the first place?) The result, for someone who uses the app manager in this way, is a poor user experience.

And this poor user experience is easily avoidable: "How about a long-tap on the home button to close an app, fellas?"
So, Jeff Atwood can't take me seriously as a programmer: As he puts it, when was the last time you saw a hunt and peck pianist?

But I'm a composer, not a pianist, and technology has been liberating composers from the need to be expert performers at least as far back as since Apple funded a MediaLab project to give grade school children computers to perform music so that they could compose music a long before they could learn to play their own compositions.

Then again, he may have a point, I do a lot of whimsical programming. Maybe if I took programming more seriously I'd learn to type. And learn to use an IDE. And learn to push dirt:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/codes-worst-enemy.ht...

:-)
He can sell support contracts, documentation for it.
"has falling profits (and) is trading at a generous 23.5 P/E today"

23.5 is not generous at all if the denominator is tiny (coz of the falling profits). P/E is actually pretty meaningless when E is small coz of low margins [1], since small transient changes in margins (e.g. .1% to 5%) can make P/E vary wildly. And it's even more meaningless when E is negative.

[1] The exception being when the low margins are steady, and hence predictable.
http://bigbooksearch.com

A visual search engine for Amazon products. It needs some work, and I don't have a scalable way to get traffic..
Gahd, who reads this and thinks it describes them?

Some of PG's essays stress me out just by reading them. They usually involve the d-word (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+determi...). I did my thing (http://readwarp.com) for 8 months. But PG and others told me early on it didn't have commercial possibility. So was it determination or inflexibility that I kept at it? I eventually figured it out for myself, in some approximately systematic way, that it wasn't going anywhere. I've taken a job so I can save enough in a year to last me two years while I take stock. Is that lack of determination or flexibility? Would I be more determined if I was contracting instead? I still work on readwarp in the weekends; I find I can't stop even if I know it's not going anywhere. Is that inflexible? Taking a job has allowed me to change readwarp drastically, make it even more minimalist, something I just couldn't prioritize when it was something 'serious'. I still use it everyday. Am I being inflexible?

When the running back retreats is it flexibility or lack of determination? Can you really tell without knowing if he ended up downfield?

If you watched me work on any given day you'd think I have no determination or persistence at all. I give up at the first sign of trouble, go off to do something else, one of a dozen projects. But in the large I do seem to get things done. I circle back in a few hours or days on that problem I was stuck on, and I find a way to make progress. Is this flexibility? It seems a dynamic fundamentally at odds with being an entrepreneur. Funny thing is, I think PG works like this.

I'm not making excuses, just seeking my blind spot. Somehow the things I'm interested in don't seem to be of more general usefulness. I haven't accomplished anything that would stand out in a YC app. I don't know how to hack any realworld systems, except maybe job interviews and negotiations, but that's probably just another sign I'll give up and go back to a job. So I keep seeking my blind spot. What's missing? What works for others? Why am I on the outside looking in?

Perhaps you think I just shouldn't care what he has to say. But shouldn't I keep looking for feedback? Different phrasings suggest different answers.
http://courserail.com

A project to revamp the online course directory for UCLA. For reference, the original directory is here: http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/schedule/schedulehome.aspx
cool. would love feedback. we haven't really 'launched' it yet as we've just too busy on other projects, and for instance when you do google analytics integration you can end up with WAY too many keywords and some weird behavior on the dashboard page...
Ah! We are in violent agreement. If I had another to give, I'd upmod you agin.
They'd only admitting that settling costs less than winning or losing a lawsuit.
In #1 and elsewhere they reference "a certain threshold of intelligence." So isn't that #6?
So if you have someone who is a great writer, they need to take time away from writing to do things that aren't writing, in order to make money?

If writing is something we value as a society, then there should be a good way for good writers to make money by writing, instead of having to find ancillary things they may not be particularly good at.
But that doesn't mean you should quit either.
"Yes, higher education is broken. But so is everything else in this world."

^ Such an accurate, simple statement.
Awesome Phreaker reference...nice
I'm definitely not a master, but I'd add another tip: learn something else. Not instead of PHP, but in addition. I just wrote a post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822306) about how I use PHP for client projects, but I've spent a good portion of this year learning Objective C and Python, and I'm a better programmer for learning a few different languages.
Of course it doesn't, but it didn't really warrant a preview either.
If YC funds someone to clone Photoshop in the browser and run it in the cloud, are they ripping off a concept or are they disrupting an incumbent?

("Yes" is a perfectly acceptable answer to my question, of course.)
Hmm, that's odd, because that's how they billed Snow Leopard.
My software may be free, but my labor is not.

In other words, your previous answer was a cutesy lie. You do not, in fact, earn a living giving away software. You earn a living getting people to pay you to to write software.

That you don't sell the software is irrelevant: you're still creating the software because there is money in doing so. What would the effect be on your creative output if nobody would pay you for it? How much software would you be writing if you had to crank widgets for a living instead? More? Less?
And technically you are committing a crime. It is your responsibility to report use tax to your state for things you buy from out of state.
Interesting idea - in a similar space to my startup http://www.happybuy.com/

It may be good if the site was able to, based upon the metadata and extraction from the product description, show the relative differences in the specs of the products.

For instance, if I compare a Macbook 13" and a Macbook Pro 15" it would be great if it listed all of the differences - such as screen size: 2", price: $300, speed: 0.4Ghz, weight: 700gms, popularity: 200 difference in sales rank etc.

It would allow objective comparisons to go along with the subjective comparisons of the reviews you currently show.
An IAMA on reddit would be very interesting. Plus you'll get some publicity for your startup.
Defend PHP; convince me it isn't horrible
http://promoappcodes.com

A site that lets developers share promo codes for their iOS apps to bloggers and app reviewers. It does the job, but there is so many things I want to do with it.
Not with Amazon Prime :-)
http://urls.matthewm.boedicker.org/

code http://github.com/mmb/murlsh

Right now a link blog for those who want to self-host and customize. May build a site that hosts these or add some kind of federation.
I disagree that math is easy to self-teach:

The fundamental things being taught to math majors are how to distinguish between valid and invalid reasoning, and how to produce arguments (proofs) that contain only valid reasoning.

For better or worse, the way these skills are taught is to pick a couple of subjects (like analysis, algebra, or number theory) and demand that students produce dozens of proofs, which are then mercilessly picked apart by professors and grad students. That negative reinforcement is combined with lectures that (should) consist entirely of good examples of mathematical reasoning, at that's an Education.

(The fact that students may also pick up a few facts about analysis or algebra is just a bonus, it's not the main point.)

You can certainly get the good examples from books and video lectures, but not the experience of having your arguments criticized by experts. This part is crucial -- it's just as easy to miss the flaws in your own proofs, especially your early attempts, as it is to miss the flaws in your own programs. (Worse, it's perfectly possible to reach a conclusion that's correct through an invalid argument. You're wrong, but you'll never be able to find evidence against your conclusion.) Feedback from experts is essential.
for me the question is: how do you know if the company is unethical? it's because the news? in the intimate of every company we can see unethical behaviour.
Heat treatment
I long for a mechanical keyboard about as much as I do a typewriter or non-power steering and I used to have one of those Model Ms back in the 90s! I'm a writer more than a programmer but the new "thin" Apple keyboard does me proud for hours on end and is only marginally less comfortable than the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard I used to enjoy.

This is yet another "different strokes for different folks" scenario, though I love the irony of Atwood not taking other programmers seriously considering how often he gets reeducated by Spolsky on their podcast.
I have a model M as well and I love it. It feels amazing to type on, but yeah, I can't use it to take notes during a phone call/meeting, or if I'm doing anything where I also need to hear what's going on in the background.

Still, it's worth the trade-off for me, because I find it so comfortable to type on. I bought a Mead 5 subject notebook for meetings.

I work from home, too, though. I'm sure if I worked in a shared office space, my co-workers would be ready to kill me... but then again, on the plus side, due to its mass and solid construction, the Model M is probably a viable weapon for self-defense, and would likely still work just fine afterward.
So, Jeff Atwood can't take me seriously as a programmer

Thankfully this is hardly a slamming indictment.
Hadn't thought about that... I'll look into it.
I think that it's a scissor-switch keyboard[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scissor-switch
Well - feedback so far is: I signed up and setup a profile/keywords etc. in under 2 minutes. I'll email you when I start getting information in my inbox :)
There are two flaws in your argument. First, the price is no longer fixed, Apple took care of that. Granted, Amazon didn't give that option before, but they do now. Second, the market obviously would bear $10, which is why the Amazon Kindle store took off as it did. If the market wouldn't bear it, people would not have bought the Kindle and the books. Remember, Capitalism doesn't care what the fair price is, but what people are willing to pay.
Moving to a buckling-spring keyboard (similar action as the Model M) relieved a great deal of forearm pain for me. I am naturally a furious typist, and the increased resistance seems to help.
How can I list on this?
Half baked (it currently mostly works): http://github.com/stucchio/Idli

An attempt to make bug reporting more git-like, in terms of UI. Use the command line (not a browser) to file bug reports. Currently interfaces with github and trac, bugzilla support is next.

1/10 baked (command line part not yet written): http://github.com/stucchio/Sqlite-Diff

It will be exactly sounds like, a diff utility for sqlite databases. It's something I've wanted on a number of occasions, but had to hack around. Currently I compare table headers, not table contents yet. (Currently it's only a library and some tests.)
I'd like to check it out, but it doesn't seem to be up.
I've used to type exclusively on my handy IBM PS/2 keyboard ( http://www.dansdata.com/images/clicky/ballboard1024.jpg ). Not only was it a beauty to behold, it was manufactured in 1983, had no performance degradation either since then, or throughout the 5 years we spent together (-circa 2007(!!!)), and had an awesome tactile feedback.

Finally, the ps/2 port gave in to excessive wear, and I switched it to a deck. Still have it in my old room, owning a piece from ancient history :)
This is cool - and kids will love it. I don't get the "50%" thing though - why complicate this any further?! I mean I know I'm FARRRR far far from being the target market here - but it just seems to make no sense to me and doesn't add anything to the usefulness of the program.
A timeline of violence - Secret Iraq Files
General point about P/E and P/(E * G) ratios:

- P is at a snapshot in time, but

- E is over a period of time (can be short/long, past/predicted-future)

- G (growth) is over a period of time (can be short/long, past/predicted-future)

G is usually the predicted value, and -as you'd expect- predictions can vary a lot, making PEG vary wildly.

The G used in this article is one determined by some unnamed analysts, but the market thinks the analysts are wrong by a factor of 2.
Before I met her, I had a cofounder that didn't work out. It really cost me. In essence, he was to do the front end, and me the backend. He didn't deliver anything of substance. It took me several months(which is millenia in startup land) before I gave up and just did it myself (with help from the aforementioned girlfriend). The story is much longer than that - but those next few months I spent learning javascript, CSS, html, design, etc, cost me what time I had left; the site got online, but it's a mess (it takes 15 seconds to load each page, for one thing).

Since then, of all the stupid things, I haven't had any good ideas. I know, people always need - technical cofounders, or this, or that... ideas are cheap, right? But I haven't got one. Oh, we had a few. A simple iPhone app, a somewhat derivative board game... nothing really sticks as really a good idea that we both think would be awesome

There has to be something out there, but no luck yet.
If there's one thing that I hate at most "modern" keyboards, is the fact that keys are a bit smaller and they seem to be more crowded.
It's worth emphasizing that information and entropy are subjective, in the Bayesian sense. The more you know and understand something, the more you can encode it in a small number of bits.

Consider the sequence:

31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97

Most people would have a hard time remembering it because it looks random... But of course, it really is "All the primes between 30 and 100". That's much easier to remember, because the brain (at least, the average brain on HN) already has concepts for "prime number", "30" and "100".

Compression has a strong connection to AI. In fact, Occam's razor is perhaps AI's most fundamental theorem: if you have derived many programs which can perform the same task, which one is the smartest?

A: The shortest one.

I would also recommend MacKay's book. It's awesome.
That's a great point -- currently, I'm in the process of scraping specs from other sites, and I really like your idea of putting a layer of understanding over that to simplify the display for the user.

Kind of like Google Squared, but easier to generate the table.
A service that has no backend (no server calls, DB, 'scary' stuff to consumers) that lets you back up your tweets on your own terms. Basically gives you ownership of things you write, without relying on any third party to access, store, or send you your own writing. Eventually will be given out as a folder with some .js and .html files, all self contained.

http://www.mcphersonindustries.com/bucket/tweets/RunMe.html
I've stopped commenting about MRI entirely, it just makes people mad, and it's not even fun anymore. It's too easy. Still, I have to give Matz credit for making a language a lot of people sincerely love.

I know it's splitting hairs whether bytecode + a VM counts as compiled or interpreted (it's both, really), but compiling to bytecode rather than a pure interpreter usually makes enough of a difference performance-wise that it's worth giving some credit.
Twitter Employees Get Google’s 20% Time… For The Entire Next Week
First - the publishers are profit maximizing, and they would prevent you from lending your physical books if they could. (In fact, they weren't big fans of Public Libraries when they first started springing up)

Second - The difference between a physical book and a eBook is that (A) you carry your _entire_ library with you all of the time and (B) your books are never lost/damaged.

I'm one of the 5% outliers who actually finds DRM encumbered eBooks (significantly) more useful than physical books - I never lose them, never have to move them, they never take up space, I never have to dispose of them, and can read them anywhere, any time.
> Real "CA" systems don't do that--they're "available" because the non-partitioned nodes are still responding.

This sounds like a fencepost type of error to me. When you have a partition, you are splitting a single set into two subsets. It may be live/dead or live-net1/live-net2. The point is, in the presence of a partition, there are no non-partitioned nodes.
I was wondering how much effort it took them to implement these practices. In a typical Oracle based systems, some of features are invariably used(sequence, triggers) even if you assume that application were already written to not have any stored procedures or PL/SQL (which itself is rare for a system implemented in Oracle). Some of these best practices I would not call them best practices: for example using natural keys for primary keys, not sure if that is a good idea. And setting up kind of replication he is talking about is not easy to setup. One of the reasons he gave for this migration was that they wanted to save their eng resource to focus on product related stuff but this migration itself would have cost them significant resources to done.
Overall, http://ourdoings.com/ is beautiful once you've uploaded hundreds of photos. But there are still ugly parts: I'm still not 100% satisfied with the registration page. The headlines page for any given year is ugly. Several features (e.g. using a custom domain) are not self-explanatory. But I'm definitely proud of it.
> Emails were supposed used Mailhide, its a Django filter, which broke, and which renders things in plaintext on failing.

People shouldn't be angry at you for "exposing [their] email addresses" if you can parse "A at B dot com."
cool idea. double "within within" 24 hours for each listing.
No, but at the same time, I wonder if being a terrible typist is a little like riding my bike with a rusty chain. Maybe my riding is more about where than how fast, but whatever my speed, there must be a decent return on being more efficient.

If I typed more quickly, maybe I would have more time for thinking. That might be very important.
Mechanicals are too loud for me most of the time, but I understand his point. I enjoy a quality keyboard.

I've also never really liked the apple keyboards. It's nice to have some contour to your keys instead of just flat.

Key layout is the thing that kills a keyboard for me more than anything. I've brought home a few keyboards just to find out when I was unwrapping it that the Insert and Delete key rows are goofy, or the arrow keys are all messed up.
The price of tea in China actually varies by orders of magnitude depending on the tea. Some teas are surprisingly fancy, especially in a country with a long history of tea-drinking.
My parents share a Google account, synced to their android phones, making it impossible to know who I'm sending gtalk messages to and for them to determine if they've already read an email or not.
Each and every passionate, would-be founder is also a would-be hacker.
I stand by my original statement, and I think the tone of your response doesn't particularly invite debate on that point, but I do want to address this:

How much software would you be writing if you had to crank widgets for a living instead?

I've done pizza delivery, tech support, coffee barista, construction, and a bunch of jobs I barely even remember.

I was writing software while I was doing all of it.

My side project is Appleseed, which I've written in my spare time, which is tens of thousands of lines of code, and six years in the making, without any particular economic incentive. I've always worked whatever job I could to pay the bills, but no amount of poverty has ever stopped me from coding, at one point I had to sell my only computer to make rent, and managed to find someone who could lend me an older laptop so I could continue coding. And everything I've written is open source.

Writers, like programmers, and artists, and other creative people, create because they love to do it, because they'd rather do it for nothing, than not do it at all.
I use and endorse the use of the Kinesis Advantage keyboard; I have two (one for home, one for the office) and I love the things. I don't get RSI pain in my joints any longer, a development that correlates (who knows about causation?) to my adopting the Kinesis and switching mousing hands, about ten years ago. I used to rock the Model M, and I still love it, but my favorite keyboard, at least from an aesthetic perspective, was the Apple Adjustable; I loved that weird-ass thing.