skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lawrence et al (2008), Nature 456, p168-169

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/456168a

Some snippets from the above:

"...when subjects were introduced to the hot components of the task, differences were observed. We found that entrepreneurs behaved in a significantly riskier way, betting a greater percentage of their accrued points (63%) than their managerial counterparts (51%)."

"… risk-taking performance in the entrepreneurs was accompanied by elevated scores on personality impulsiveness measures and superior cognitive-flexibility performance. We conclude that entrepreneurs and managers do equally well when asked to perform cold decision-making tasks, but differences emerge in the context of risky or emotional decisions"

"... the entrepreneurs (mean age 51) are comparable to the young adults aged 17–27, whereas the managers (mean age 50.5) resemble their age-appropriate group" [with respect to risk tolerance]

"There are courses that teach the 'know-how' of entrepreneurship and, within this, teach how to mitigate risk through extensive business planning and market research. Yet given this new evidence, courses teaching the opposite — risk-tolerance in both behaviour and personality — may also be desirable"
it's a tax thing. Cash income doesn't go reported, and they offer to 'save you the tax'.

no fees, no tax, under-the-table income. Happens in a surprisingly large number of establishments.
I started using LessCSS back when SCSS didn't exist, so it was a choice between SASS' brand new, backwards incompatible syntax and Less' "progressive enhancement" philosophy.

Since then SASS has grown the SCSS syntax, but haven't really given me a reason to bother switching.

Also: Less now has the even better less.js, which is handy for quickly throwing together less stylesheets and really fast on the command line compared to the old Ruby version (an order of magnitude faster for 4,000+ line files).
For instance, I will always take a $50 loss over any chance of a $1000 loss

That's almost certainly not true. 0.1%?
The common case is being in Manhattan and needing to get to Queens or Brooklyn or far far uptown. The solution that's worked for me is to get in the cab first and then give your destination. Asking the driver through the open window if they'll take you to X is usually going to get you nowhere in that case.
> Its pretty well understood that the brain runs on glucose

Actually, most of the brain's energy needs can also be met with ketone bodies, which come from fat (either stored or dietary). So it's possible that he may be running on ketones in the morning, after a night's fast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet#Diet

That said, I agree with you that his theory is based almost entirely on speculation, and should be treated as such.
Storage Tiering vs Caching
A bubble exists when people buy something based not on their belief in it's intrinsic underlying value but because people think it will appreciate in price. I.e. tulips, california real estate.

You can't have a bubble in something you can't resell.

This isn't an argument that salaries are at the correct long term level. I'm just saying that salaries can't have a bubble that "pops" and collapses like asset bubbles do.
Is it just me or was choosing a 5% chance at a bigger reward more interesting/fun than choosing a 13% chance at a bigger reward?

Dunno, maybe I'm just weird.
I know he said it's not scientific, but what dreck. Even if the premise holds, it's more likely that creative people are too busy creating to eat...
Apparently I should have included the sarcasm tags :(
It's only against the rules to not accept credit cards or charge more for them (like a fee on top of your total if you pay with one). You can discount for cash, which is what you've seen gas stations do. The bar with a $20 minimum is against the rules and I have reported them in the past, along with refusing to pay.

These rules were implemented to re-enforce the "everywhere you want to be" mantra. It would get really confusing if every merchant had different rules. The net positive of taking plastic typically outweighs the negative of low dollar transactions, so retailers go with it. Losing the ability to take Visa is a huge knock on a business, so they tend to follow these rules.
Creating a successful startup confers more than just financial rewards. There are a myriad of other rewards like recognition and professional freedom that factor into the risk calculation. Depending on how much people value those non-monetary things it could be perfectly rational to take the option with a lower expected monetary value.
Googlers and ex-Googlers may be living in a bubble. That doesn't mean that the wider engineering talent pool is.

From what I could find on the bls.gov site, in 2008 there were about 900,000 jobs in software engineering and 75,000 jobs in computer engineering. From what I can tell from searching, Google has 20,000 employees, but not all of them are necessarily engineers.

Even if all google employees were engineers, and they were going out and trying to create startups in order to be bought, that would be 2.0% of the US-wide engineer pool.
Show HN: our November Startup Month submission, collabacode
Long time lurker, first time poster.

We want to make writing software for the Web easier. collabacode represents our proof of concept.

I find it highly doubtful that collabacode would be where it is without Hacker News. As a show of thanks I'd like you to be the first ones to see it.

Thanks HN!
There was no beta attached to the time-value of money - so it was no way to measure the risk.
I am pretty sure he is aware of this.
s/peeked/piqued
College Sports Vision - What do you think?
If you ever read the Innovator's Dilemma, this article makes a lot of sense. For a project to make financial sense for a big company, or appeal to its current user base, it has to get big fast, be scalable off the batt and be compatible with their current software. So, it's iteration speed goes way down. Think about Buzz. They couldn't launch to 1,000 users and iterate quickly as they grew. They had to release it to everyone. Imagine the pre-launch engineering required to make an app ready for tens of millions of users?
This is summed up in the old adage, "The hungry hound hunts best."
Wow! I never expected to see this posted here. I'm a closet Harry Potter fanfiction reader, and I loved this story. I think it's time to re-read this again.. be back in a while.
How Fast Is It? A Storage Infographic – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat
Watchdog Planned for Online Privacy
All this talk of NY cabbies and not a single mention of Uber App? I can't wait for them to arrive here in the city and disrupt this chaotic system of NY and gypsy cabs.
excellent, just appended '/html' to the default browser search engine url.

would be great if instead of having to use specific urls that this could be set up as a preference in settings. still, i'm a happy camper :)
And also potentially lose a lot of money in fines. They keep your money for a bit until it clears, so your fines come out of that and you don't have the ability not to pay them.
‘Hustle Is The Antidote’ When Starting And Running A Business
The Q-BAL programming language
In the cases where I've been on projects that successfully used Google Wave, it was always as a coordination tool to google docs...basically a content management tool with pointers/links to individual docs...on occasion as a file repository as well.

Basically a kind of sharepoint.
Great talk by angel investor and entrepreneur Travis Kalanick!
Maybe it's just me, but I don't believe you can claim Windows supported by Cygwin proxy.
The syntax hurts my eyes.
Exactly.

Choosing between

a) 100% chance of $10 vs 10% chance of $100

is very different question than choosing between

b) 100% chance of $100K vs 10% chance of $1M.

or

c) 100% chance of $1M vs 10% chance of $10M.

I think many people will choose 10%/$100 combo of a) just for the thrill.

The latter two are of course dependent your financial situation, but hit an interesting sweet spot for YC crowd.

What would be your choices?
Like professional sports, we'll probably see the bottom of the salary range for software engineering drop significantly, due to increased competition resulting from globalization and because the higher pay at the top of the range will make the field more attractive.
Adams is a great observer and he has great talent of bringing things to attention of the rest of the world. His analysis may be lacking. Well, that part is cheap, you may do it yourself.

Edit: i didn't mean that he is unable to analyze. I meant that analysis, whatever he presents, if any, isn't the primary thing in his blogs, and isn't really there for the analysis purposes per.se. It is more of unspecified association lines thrown in to hyperbolise the possibility of real and interesting connections between the things and to trigger you to look for them yourself.
(Oops: I meant 'symbiotic'.)
Iterations, a new internal app for managing what we work on next
In my experience, no. After generating the CSS, we run it through YUI compressor for the deployed version. Any size differences remaining are measurable in bytes, and the ability to truly refactor our stylesheets more than makes up for that small difference.
Please whatever you do and no matter how much it may hurt in the short term: completely and utterly ignore these people.

Once they figure you're vulnerable they will start to work on your account 'overtime'.

Yelp is a bunch of scum (for not verifying that a relation between reviewer and reviewee exists) and I wouldn't be surprised if they were involved directly or indirectly, the temptation must be huge. A negative review system should be run based on verified ID of the reviewer, anything less is simply setting up a vehicle for blackmail. Apparently one of Yelps income streams is to influence the sort order for paying customers, positive reviews on top. Of course that only works when there are negative reviews.

Blackmailers are cowards and as a rule they move to the softest targets, any kind of response that they've been noticed is going to backfire big time.

good luck with this
6 Wunderkinder: An Awesome New Startup
We live in a civilized society, where intelligence can triumph over brute strength.

Are you sure about that? I'm not at all convinced -- especially in the US.
‘Angry Birds’ Toys, A Photo Essay Part 2 (Pig Edition)
Twitter job opening: "Pluses: responsible enjoyment of beer"
If Wave wasn't associated with such a disastrous public perception, there could be a viable market for customized, hosted enterprise Wave instances.

The rub would probably be finding that niche group that A) has made Wave an important part of their workflow, B) is incapable of instantiating it on their own, and C) hasn't, since hearing the news, already found another solution to replace Wave.
Make Titan then bail, awesomeness.
Sure, there was a time he spent a lot of time building OO systems. I don't know how much time he's actually spent building ~distributed~ systems.
Fraud Has Taken Over Everything From Mortgages To Markets To Politics
One point that this analysis is missing is that tech salaries were being artificially deflated by Google, et al with their agreement to not raid each other for talent. With those practices now being abandoned, we are going to see a spike in salaries as they seek equilibrium. Googles 10% pay hike is the first such example of this.
In Facebook I can delete advertising using the X-button, and radioselect a reason (inappropriate, uninteresting, ...).

Do you get feedback on those actions, or does facebook use that only internal?
Recently re-read it myself. A tip for new readers -- if you find this version of Harry insufferable, yet the basic concept makes you keep reading, wait for around Chapter 20, where a much-needed mentor helps him learn some self-control.
This is ridiculously awesome piece of fiction. If your friends are of the sort where logic at least partially underlies their thinking and behavior more so than it does most folks, then you will really love this.

Bewarned, it's very well written and fun(ny). You may fall out of your chair with laughter
Ask HN: How do you hack fitness ? 
How do you manage to stay fit ? I am moderately fit, but more often than not, I lose motivation to go run everyday or workout / eat healthy food, and so it turns into a two step forward, one backward story.

This post [How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do / http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1806944] a couple of weeks ago, re-inspired me to pick up and add some more discipline to my daily habits by changing my thought process a little, and on a similar note, I would love to hear about how do you manage to stay fit, and what thought process, and routine(if any) helps you get there ?

Thanks.
How to get into venture capital
>For instance, in one user authentication system I've worked on, there are about ten database updates to create a new user.

That strikes me as a strawman, because the obvious RESTful way to do that would be to POST a document fully describing the new user.

Mind you, I don't doubt that you've seen this in a RESTful API. You can write Java Beans in any language.
For CLisp on Windows, one should also put the DLL-files from Base/Full within same directory. For base-users, this means libiconv-2.dll, libintl-8.dll and readline5.dll. For Full, this means zlib1.dll (if you're using it), pcre.dll and svm.dll. Windows usually complain about not finding these, so for portability you should keep them there.
I think it's the responsibility of everyone involved. This is why I don't like solutions which claim "The kid needs to learn independence, teach him how to do a chokehold and let him take it from there." or "The kid can sit back and let the adults handle things."
Regarding card payments, the rules are changing soon because of Dodd-Frank:
http://blog.vantagecard.com/post/Merchant-Card-Acceptance-ch...

It's also important to differentiate PIN based transactions from signature based. The "accept all cards" rules are the creation of Visa and Mastercard, they aren't inherent in law, and don't apply to (most? any?) PIN-based debit networks.

It's generally not against the rules to charge a surcharge on debit transactions.
Travis is a great guy!
More commonly (in NYC), I have had cab drivers request me to pay cash if possible as they have to pay quite high credit card processing fees.
I agree, Yelp is not a reliable source at all. I've gone to places that had 4-4.5 star ratings on Yelp and were utter garbage in service, food quality, and price. I've been let down more times than not.

Ignore these people and maybe try contacting Yelp and see if they can do anything about the reviews from people with no other review history and fill them in on the blackmail threat, maybe they can help, I don't know though.
At first glance I always think it's "simpler than shit.", but then I read the article, and no, for my poor brain it is not simpler than shit.
"To set expectations, the first drop will be effectively a "SoyLatte"-level implementation, but is packaged as a Universal Mac OS X .jdk bundle that can be dropped directly into /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be adding pieces and parts of our Java SE 6 implementation to the public project, and will cut over from using an X11-based AWT to a Cocoa NSEvent-based one with a new OpenGL-backed graphics layer.

There are several parts of our Java SE 6 implementation (like the AWT widgets) that are not contributable, in much the same way that several parts of Oracle's implementation are not. However, the vast majority of our Swing Aqua Look and Feel implementation is, as well as the eAWT/eIO API. We intend to host the legacy AWT widget set using lightweight peers, but that work is still in progress."

Mike Swingler (Apple Java Engineer) on the java-dev list

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Java-dev/2010/Nov/msg00104.h...
Accounting systems for startups?
Accounting systems for small companies seem to be on the rise. Can you help me sort out the current offerings?
Ask HN: Suggestions for Online Meetings
I'm on week 3 of creating CompanyLine and now have the need for an online meeting solution for use during customer feedback sessions with customers that doesn't use iChat or Skype. Are there any solutions out there like WebEx or GoToMeeting that don't cost so much $$$ and work for average consumer?
No, but you can just find any recipe database and parse the ingredients out.
Farther down in that diet you can see that its not considered healthy as a general practice:

"The ketogenic diet is not a benign, holistic or natural treatment for epilepsy; as with any serious medical therapy, there may be complications."

"Long-term use of the ketogenic diet in children increases the risk of retarded growth, bone fractures, and kidney stones. "

In other words, it does not seem that the body should be run this way long term.
It sounds crazy, but as someone who reads a lot of fiction (and very little fan fiction, because most of it's crap), I sincerely think this is one of the best things I've read in years. I'd personally rank it up with Asimov or Heinlein at their best.

If you're the kind of person, upon discovering a 'wizarding world' would:

- Look into establishing arbitrage between the wizards' fixed ratio of Gold/Silver currency and the muggles' variable ratio

-Try to discover the underlying laws and mechanics of magic

-Use a time machine to prove/disprove P == NP

Read this Book!
Would $3.5M have been too much to keep Paul Buchheit at Google?
so he could have created FriendFeed there, so Google could compete with Twitter/Facebook properly

Or Ev Williams who actually created Twitter?

Or Dennis Crowley who created foursquare?
This is a known HN "quirk". If you double post, one post gets autokilled. If you delete the wrong post, you end up with one duplicate deleted and the other duplicate autokilled.
Too meaningless to be false is hardly the same as "pretty accurate".
I suggest calling your local FBI field office, and discussing your best course of action with an agent.

Most likely they'll tell you that you're on your own, but you never know. The level of loss is far below what normally interests them, but if you could show that this is widespread, that could change things.
This would be after your boss took a job that legally required him to perform FOO upon request.
I suspect this is marketing more than anything. There are companies out there that specialize in cleaning up online reputations. Perhaps that's just how they market -- look up companies, then try to reach out to do it -- but not in a very good way, it sounds like.

Have you done a reverse look-up on the numbers (phone # provided and fax)?
Also, some kind soul is maintaining an RSS feed for chapter updates, since FF.net seems to be stuck in the last decade: http://demented.no-ip.org/~feep/rss_proxy.cgi?5782108
15 Stories In 2 Work Days: Time-Lapse Video Of Construction In China
The biggest issue is probably just trying to find a return fair. Late at night most people are going from Manhattan to one of the outer boroughs - not the other way around. The usually end up driving an empty cab back to Manhattan, so they are effectively getting a half-fare.
You don't have to be a math prodigy to play six tournaments at once. I used to play six 6-handed cash games at once, and one day I played 16 full ring cash games at a time for like twelve hours straight.

The craziest players can sustain about 50 tables at a time. That is not an exaggeration.
"someone whose skills can be supplied by a good number of people will likely get far less."

If your idea is so easy to implement that it can be done by any cheap programmer, it's probably going to be hard to defend yourself against competition. Ideas like that aren't worth very much, even if they are correct and very clever, because they're so easy to duplicate.
Pro tip: Because of the smallish text size and full-screen layout (which gives some of us absurdly unfriendly line lengths), I find Safari's "Reader" feature to be indispensable in reading this fic.
I found the blog post unique and an interesting perspective from someone sharing their honest thoughts.

There is no hidden motive here, he is just sharing an observation he has. Everyone has crazy ideas that are often unfounded and incorrect - I find it interesting to see them shared.

What point are you trying to make with your comment? Yes, he is making an unfounded and probably wrong statement. He readily admits this in the post. What is the problem?
Ask HN: Daily HN slowdowns to the point of being unusable
I've notice a serious slowdown in HN's service over the past couple of weeks. I'm the UK and it usually happens around 19:00 (trans: 7PM) onwards here most evenings. No other sites exhibit this problem, so it is not a local issue, although it might be compounded by something Interatlanticish. Up until this time of the eve all is hunky dory.

Symptoms are page loads with text, but text is enlarged, suggesting perhaps that the .css hasn't arrived. Also, the up and down arrows are left as placeholders.

Just want to ask if this is a general problem, and if so to give heads up to the sysadmins.
I have my creativity spikes when I'm feeding on a specific source of calories - beer!
> I walked down my street a couple days and said "Good Morning!" to everyone I walked passed. A lot of people totally blew me off.

One of the best ways, even for the most socially recalcitrant individuals to get warmed up or even fired up, is to say 'Hi' with a real big smile to everyone en route to a social event. The first twenty or even forty people might suck. But once people start acknowledging or even reciprocating, oh boy...
Really think its a better idea to find out what this is first -- really could just be marketing (albeit dumb marketing). Unless there was a direct threat (wording would need to be shared here by original poster), sounds like there's not much of a case for involving law enforcement, at least at this point.
Its probably the same way President Obama writes letters. Just a few chosen (either at random or someone reads all the letters and choses a few for him) letters get replies, from the hundreds of letters he gets.
These guys knew they had bot. PokerStars do a good job removing them. Full tilt knew they were there but kind of tolerated them (no idea why). The bot community says (people who made them) they had unwritten agreement of tolerance from FTilt.
But now HR2267 passed which give high hopes of getting online poker regulated and all these sites would want a license so they are cleaning up the ship to get in good books. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2267

Also look at Lee Rousso case against Washington state which has a law making online poker play a felony. State Supreme court ruled the law as constitutional. Now PokerStars had moved out of Washington state for the same reason.

If it was pre HR 2267 PokerStars wouldn't have done it.
Android and Qualcomm Are the New Wintel
And if you do that you're really writing POX, with any true-REST features being fifth, sixth, and seventh wheels.

Other than systems that post documents that describe state transitions, REST is all about having an inappropriate coupling between your API and your underlying data models.
Energy inefficient?

You have no idea what you are talking about. Estimates for how much computation a human brain is doing start at 10^14 flops and only go up from there (Kurzweil, known for his optimism, puts the brain at 10^16). Current record-holding supercomputers, BTW, are just barely at 10^15 or so.

And the brain does this on a watt or two, not 1.3 megawatts (http://www.top500.org/lists/2008/06/highlights/power).