skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting ideas. I just can't get past the fact the a Director as NASA actually said, "Anybody that watches the [Star Trek] Enterprise, you know you don’t see huge plumes of fire". As if, instead of drawing from science fiction as inspiration, he uses it as a blueprint.

You know what else we don't see, Director Worden? Human Teleportation. And Klingons.
Could you elaborate? are these googles browsers, or something else? what cant they talk to each other? Thanks.
Mozilla Challenges Apple & Google With a New Decentralized App Store Platform
YUI2. yui3 is considerably more sane about the namespacing.
The top 20 candidates somehow always end up being the relatives of the people running the auction. The low bidder wins, but every time someone is arrested for a crime not on the list in the contract (which is 90% of them), the state is charged an "change order" fee.
sounds like you should just move to the valley irrespective of yc.
The only other browser to do visual tabs on the left that I know of is OmniWeb for Mac, which is/was an awesome browser that doesn't see much support.

I still use Opera on my PC laptop because like you, I'm used to the interface and the built in features. However, on Mac I've never felt like it was as stable/fast.

One feature that used to be in Opera that now isn't (but is in chrome) is switching between your first 10 tabs using Ctrl+# shortcut. I've grown very used to that and was sad to see that go.
36 companies last batch
rumored 3% acceptance rate
= ~1200 applications?
You have a tremendous number of potentially severe cognitive biases in just these few sentences. In fact, it strikes me as wearing a sense of pessimistic self-fulfillment in as much as the article author suffers from self-entitlement.

You're not the only generation Xer I've conversed with. I'm right on the cusp between that generation and the next, so I know a number of people from both; it's an interesting place to be for perspective.

And yes, the other generation Xers say these same thing. They were more humble; they were less entitled; they dealt with pain we never had to, and it made them better. I don't think I can say what I want less strongly, so forgive the profanity when I do say it: fuck that noise. With this sort of line of arguing, there is nowhere we can go, because the whole thing has decayed into a battle of generation identity. Reason has exited the building, because you have a vested interest in preserving your sense of superiority in your own identity. At what point could any of us convince you to rethink that? If you say never, then you have a sense of entitlement brought about by your generational brand. You don't get a pass for that any more than the author here gets for his sense of entitlement to some form of employment.

It's ridiculous: I'm supposed to pay more attention to your thoughts, simply because you felt forced into certain sacrifices. How about I pay more attention to your thoughts because they seem more right, and we yank generation identity out of this?

There are a few tidbits I pulled out of the conversation that I think would be interesting to discuss apart from the context of self-entitlement, but I worry they're going to get drowned out in the noise. We're too busy beating down someone else, ostensibly because we think they need to be brought down a peg, but then we say shit like this that is so logically fallacious that it makes this whole thread seem not for the purest of ends. I was with you when you made your first reply above; now I'm not so sure.
You're missing a small but meaningful difference: It's not when you graduate, it's how you grow up.

There is literally tons of data that has been written about gen x. Your comment most certainly proves that you're probably not as familiar with the time period as those who lived it. That's not an insult, just a truth.

Your generation has the unfortunate distinction of being shocked by the current economic situation. It is so far from what you grew up with: a relatively stable period of the post cold war world. Don't worry, I don't envy you. You'll be humbled enough (as we all will be, I fear) over the next little bit.

That's much different though than the world I grew up in, which was transitional to the core. I'm late x, coming of age in the 90s. That means I remember when most of the neighborhood kids had parents that worked in factories and the world was certainly going to end in a nuclear calamity one day. When that world changed in the late 80's, everything was in surplus. It was an attitude very similar to finishing a large project, best described as: Okay, what the heck do we do now?

I maintain that young humans, in general, have less humility than they should

That of course is most certainly true. However I maintain that X, as a generation in time, had much less of an expectation, was much more pessimistic and therefore more gracious and humble than any other generation before it and since. Nothing I've learned collectively seems to suggest otherwise.
I'd guess a problem with having images or URLs not counting towards a character count is the myriad of different interfaces/apps twitter is used in. A lot are text only and it might become a real headache in terms of imparting the information concisely / in a rhythmic and uniform fashion
Try the Pomodoro Technique. Give yourself 25 minutes to focus, and absolutely force yourself not to do anything else but the task at hand. No exceptions. When the 25 minutes are up, you have 5 minutes to relax and unwind. Force yourself to do anything but work for these 5 minutes. I'd strongly recommend leaving your computer/workspace and walking around rather than browsing the internet, but to each their own. Again, no exceptions on the not working part though. When the 5 minutes are up, get back to work.

Adjust the time intervals as appropriate. I tend to prefer 45/10 but other days I do the original 25/5.

There are plenty of pomodoro timer applications for every OS. My favorite for windows is pomodairo: http://code.google.com/p/pomodairo/ and I can't recall the name of my Mac OS X timer at the moment, but I'm sure you'll find it with a little searching.

Here is the original website for the technique: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/
2010 Bargain of the Year: Nortel’s $42 Color Videophone
The problem might be that a lot of users silently drop out if you don't support IE properly.

Part of my user base is also scientists and researchers, so I'm curious what your app or website is.
I agree, very well written. It has a fresh, unique take at getting work. Should not be overlooked.
If your largest Eclipse complaint is speed, check this out:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/142357/what-are-the-best-...
I don't usually quote pg, but I think in this case it's relevant:

"Old Twitter is what you'd get if an engineer brought New Twitter to Steve Jobs, and Steve beat on him relentlessly to simplify it."

(http://twitter.com/#!/paulg/status/25998745559)

To me adding a file upload button, a To:/CC: field, a link field, etc. etc. would be even worse.

The beauty of an API is that power users can download and/or signup for apps that add on to the original service in the exact, fussy way they want. And non-power users can just type into a textarea.
60 percent of Apple’s sales are from products that did not exist three years ago
Oh, I have. It's crazy that I would be intrigued by the idea of spending seven years running, fasting, and generally starving my physical body, especially when I don't particularly have any spiritual reasons for doing it.
Somehow, I suspect the people who would drop out of high school unless $24k/year is spent on their education are not going to college. I'd be willing to bet that the tiny fraction who do don't give $170k/student worth of benefits. If you want to propose spending lots of money, there should be lots of potential upside, and I'm just not seeing it.

Also, I suspect that yes, the benefits of having these people graduate high school is a wash. Currently, a high school degree is a signal that you are not dealing with the utter dregs of society and that the student can do what they are told for 12 years. If we spend $16k/year graduating everyone, a high school degree will be a signal that if an employer is willing to devote $16k/year to supervising the employee, they might be able to get some useful low skill labor out of them.

As for your theory of poor kids dropping out and then going bad/getting arrested, it just doesn't fit my experience. At the school I dropped out of, the kids were carrying metal long before they dropped out, and there was nothing that Dangerous Minds could do for them.

Look, I haven't worked out all the numbers. I've just a feel for the orders of magnitude. If you want to "spend 3x more", we will spend more on education than we spend on SS, Medicare and the military combined. I don't see any remotely reasonable way that the benefits would exceed this cost. But feel free to post your own numbers.

[Edit: just noticed I used a slang term. "Dangerous Minds" is a mocking term for nice liberal white girls trying to save their students. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112792/ (Also usable as a verb.)]
Take Shelter in a Human Habitrail
think or thick?
Last Day To Apply To Y Combinator Winter Session
Just FYI for those who are applying that today is last day to refine your application.
Robert Zubrin estimated that his Mars Direct plan would cost about $20B to develop the vehicles and other equipment, then $1B per launch with two launches per year.

Each launch enables a one-way trip to or from Mars.
Async Fetching in Clojure
Confirmation bias is when you have a working theory, and only look towards evidence that supports the theory. I don't see how that applies to this article.
6. Set aside 1 hour sometime this week to go through your emails and kill them.

Seeing and thinking "1 - 100 of hundreds" is psychologically tiring. Get it off your mind. Set aside an hour sometime this week and get through it all. Set an appointment in MobileMe or Google Calendar or whatever. You might not want to inbox zero right this moment—that's okay. Just postpone it, but get it done.
Wait, what? A lot of PHP code use requires as functions? Honestly surprised here. I've never seen this.
I've seen your Twitter feed--it's full of accolades. Congrats on a great app release.

I'm not picking nits with Writer, though. My problem is with the family of "zen apps" that help writers "get in the zone," including yours.

If someone is frequently distracted when they write, they either (a) need to get away from the internet when writing, or (b) reevaluate whether they enjoy writing. It's like the programmer that can't decide between Emacs, Vim, TextEdit, or other IDEs. Stop making excuses, pick something, and work.

The fact that people will buy this app because it'll finally help them write without distraction just...bothers me. Maybe because I was there before. Anyway, don't take it personally--your app is selling like gangbusters, and it looks like a great user experience.
Even worse, many manager-types tend to be hands-off when everything is going well but are quick to seize upon failures or shortcomings as they come up. This has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging employees to keep a low profile and not pursue anything risky or innovative. As innovation goes out the window, the company stagnates.

I've had too many managers go this route, which is why I always make a point to stop by coworkers' cubicles and thank them for their help or work on different projects.
Why Do So Many Geeks Hate Internet Explorer?
Thanx. Any clue how many total applications out of which 90 made it?
That might have worked in a different world.

Today, the only thing you want to do is hire public relations firm to tell people how you humble and gracious you are...
So is this basically Mozilla's answer to Chrome's installable web apps?
Why are you a YC skeptic? Is it their investment model or the kind of companies they fund or something else?
Ask HN: Free trial vs money back guarantee
I am working on a software-as-a-service product and am trying to decide on how best to implement sign up. My product offers 4 paid plans; there is no free plan.

For those of you who don't know, Braintree's (payment gateway) sponsoring bank no longer allows new companies to offer a traditional "30-day free trial", take credit card information during sign up, and then charge customers at the end of the free trial (like 37signals).

So, I am trying to decide between the following two options:

1) No credit card required at sign up. 14 day free trial on all new accounts. At the end of the 14 day trial, if the customer has not "activated" their account (that is, provided credit card information and been charged), the account is locked/closed until they.

What I like about this method is that it should convert the most users who land on the site to sign up to use the application. My concern is that the additional step (having to provide credit card info after sign up) could lead to fewer paid users... Keep in mind, though, that I am not offering a free plan, only a free trial period.

2) 30-day money back guarantee. Credit card is required at sign up and the customer is charged immediately. But, for 30-days, the user can cancel the account and receive a full refund.

I like this method because it means 100% users are paying customers and actually get billed. My concern is that a "30-day money back guarantee" + credit card required at sign up + immediate charge will lead to a much lower sign up conversion rate on the website, ultimately leading to less customers then method #1.

- Abi
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Don't forget Google needs content publishers for Adsense. Surely that is the only reason brain liquifying content mills like ehow don't get the slap down? This junk is ridiculous (and this was one of the first pages I looked at):

http://www.ehow.com/blended-families/

How to Plan a Happy Blended Family
How to Harmony in Your New Blended Family
How to have harmony in your new Blended Family
How to Achieve Harmony in a Blended Family
How to Nurture A Blended Family
How to Successfully Manage a Blended Family

WTF is this junk? Why does ehow.com get 3 million Google visitors a day? The mind boggles!
Two keys:

1. Remember that a lot of other people don't like being on the phone, either, especially during the work day. When your reason for calling has been resolved, it's perfectly acceptable to say, "Well that's all I had, thank you." If it's someone you know, say that you'll see them soon (if you really will), or that you'll call them later that night or that week (if you intend to).

2. For those people who will keep going on and on, go into the conversation with clear goals and an exit strategy. To end the call, tell the other party that you have other calls to make, work to get back to, or strategically make the call before a meeting or appointment or in transit (e.g., about to enter a subway).
Just gave this estimate in another thread:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808263
I am gen X, and my younger brother is gen Y.
I actually agree with the poster above you, and not with you.

Although it was true that we grew up with reagan and bush 1, and associated global-political fears and sluggish economies, we also mostly graduated from high school and universities during the clinton era when the economy was booming and anyone with a pulse could get a job. I mean, drop outs from "media criticism" programs were getting 80k offers to become "web producers." There was a ton of work, a ton of money flowing around, and not very many young people coming out of school (relatively).

My brother on the other hand has a dual degree in tough sciences and has been un or underemployed since 2008. There is a glut of graduates and the only places hiring are silicon valley and silicon alley. Even if you have a degree in physics, if you don't know PHP you are not getting an interview, anywhere. God forbid you are interested in something like Law, where nobody is getting hired.

It IS when you graduate. If there are no jobs, there are no jobs, regardless of how serene and abundant or oppresive and anxiety inducing your childhood was.
"Be humble and gracious until you actually distinguish yourself"

How about:
"Be humble and gracious.(Period)"

I think it is important to understand the tone in which he wrote this. He is not serious, but he is doing this to garner attention. Your response doesn't match his intended tone.

It is like someone being upset at a joke; you are taking it too serious.
> I'd be curious who actually gets taken by scams like this.

Theory of multiple intelligences suggests, that, when working in the right context, the ability for building strong & profitable businesses does not necessitate the "intelligence" of strong BS-filter. This is why you have a lawyer friend, a strong peer group of entrepreneurs, and that guy full of cynicism, whom you still listen with half an ear. Or if you don't, you should.
Ditto to everything maxawaytoolong posted

TLDR: Mostly lost water weight. I'd done it enough to really know how my body worked. I knew the exercise techniques that worked particularly well for me, and I ate a super-clean diet.

This wasn't a Jared Fogel style "I lost x lbs." He lost fat/tissue. For wrestlers, it's mostly a water cut. In sports like wrestling, boxing, or anything with a weight division you may need to lose water weight to get down to the cap of your division. I was 171 in HS and 197-184 in college. You have to be below the division cap (any over 171 in this case would get you DQ'ed).

Water weight isn't too hard to lose when you start. In your sleep, we all lose from 1-3 lbs, then we use the restroom when we wake up (.3-.6 lbs). If you start with a workout in the morning (1-2 lbs depending on the workout), you can walk 2-3 more lbs off throughout the day. Of course, normal people eat and drink in the course of the day to "refill." Over time, you get to the point where you know how to master this cycle, with extra workouts to boost it, and control your diet to engage the metabolic systems. It's a delicate balance.

In college, I wasn't a starter who had to weight in weekly, so I wasn't always close to weight. Even though we'd work out 2-3 hours a day, we have our bodies to the point where an extra push is required to get down to size. Typically, someone my size and structure should never have been more than 5-10 lbs overweight at most. I just came in one Monday weighing a great deal, and I was also tapped to start for that match to give our starter a rest. Since my resting/homeostasis weight was 5-10 lbs over, losing the first 10 lb chunk was easy. The next portion was a little rougher, but I'd been doing this for 7 years (HS + college), so I knew how to do it.

As for the techniques, I would run, jump rope, and wrestle wearing sweats. Wrestling has a higher caloric exertion rate than boxing, which is already way higher than running or jumping rope alone. Our college facilites also had a steam room, so I would clock time there to keep my sweat up after finishing a workout.

As for diet, I'd start each meal with a couple big glasses of water, so I wasn't quite as hungry and wouldn't binge. I'd then eat nutrient-dense vegetables (spinach salad, bell peppers, seeds, berries). Then eat lean protein (chicken breast, fish, no beef). To end I'd either drink a V8 or a yogurt shake. After all of that water and nutrient dense food, you feel stuffed.

All this being said, you'd have to be completely moronic to try to rapidly that much lose water weight without having done so before. Do. Not. Try. This. At. Home. Trained athletes have died doing this wrong
Public workers highly paid? Not exactly
eh, admit it -- you're just bummed you didn't think of this first. :)

Personally I didn't take this very seriously & figured it was a creative exercise or attention getter. Kinda like the guy who wears his resume as a sandwich board and walks around NYC. Makes you want to hire the guy even if he's just competent technically.

Thought it was hilarious -- could probably get him a job at a marketing/ad tech firm. It's already getting him a bunch of good advice at HN, so looks like it's working...
Absolutely, that's my point. Just because they are valuable doesn't mean they should actually get paid according to their "value".
I hope this didn't come off as a criticism. I was simply trying to understand what Redis does.

I'm using Kyoto cabinet to serialize various hashlist-based-classes and I'm wondering what bottlenecks etc. I might encounter are. I'll take a look at your site.
Surely it's a combination of both when you graduate and how you grow up? My problem with your line of reasoning is that I believe you're mistakenly generalizing in this important respect:

You're lumping the entirety of "generation X" into a shared-cultural-experience group, when someone who was born in 1975 probably had quite a lot more opportunities entering the job market than someone born in 1965 or 1985.

I mean what are we even saying here? In general people had better childhoods in the 90s than they did in the 70s and early 80s? Ok, but we're talking about variations on the edges of various largely immobile population blocks. Your personal experience might have been difficult, but how do you know that mine wasn't just as difficult or worse? How are you so sure that I'm not already as humble as you are? This whole generation generalization strikes me as something like "Ohio State can't win the national championship because the SEC is faster".
<sarcasm>
In other words your code validates past computation and adds error correction code to all files you have to the HDD? After all if you don't do that then it will often produce buggy output and crash. (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/qual/specRates-c.html)
</sarcasm>

At best software running on commodity hardware works most of the time and acceptably broken really is good enough. Granted we want to minimize failures, but there is a wide range between good enough to be useful and perfect.
I don't see how the Prisoner's Dilemma applies here - there was no question of being sold out by the other party.

Indeed, judging by the article, they would have been very confident of being in the best 2 cars, which allows for a simple calculation of the expected return from signing the contract (the same principle applies if you want to break out the odds of coming 3rd, 4th and 5th too, but they don't change the result much - I leave the proof as an exercise for the reader ;)

if they sign the contract and come first, they win 1.7m, if they come second they win 0.4m. If they don't sign and come first, they win 2.5m, and if they come second they win 0. How confident do you need to be about coming first to not want to sign the contract? let x be the probability that you come first, we can determine what x needs to be before signing looks appealing:
x * 2.5 + (1 - x) * 0 = x * 1.7 + (1 - x) * 0.4
2.5x = 1.3x + 0.4
1.2x = 0.4
x = 0.4/1.2 = 0.333

In other words, for the contract to look attractive to them, they would have to think that they had a 33% chance or less of winning. Which considering there were only 5 cars in the race, and theirs was clearly one of the better cars, makes the contract look very unappealing.
Upvoted, this "is it". When I was down, I went to timeboxing and it worked wonders. I changed a little bit how I do it: I allocate to each task just a little less time than I expect it to finish (for example, doing the dishes in 7 minutes instead of 10). Then I have a pressure to finish that seems to motivate me. I wrote about that in my blot (Google for timeboxing mostlymaths if you'd like to read it ;)

Give it a try, it can make a real difference.