skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You think the opportunity to be the cheap, crappy competitor with an audience of technically inclined poor people is attractive? I think that is terrible positioning. If you charged $50, that would still be a whole lot of ramen, and you'd lose your customers to the first still cheaper, still crappier alternative or to free options. (There exist compelling free options for A/B testing if one is technically inclined.)

$400 is not a lot of money when you probably demonstrate increases in revenue. (It is a fraction of BCCs gains from A/B testing. Nationwide political campaigns, Fortune 500 companies, and real estate firms all have slightly more money to spend than BCC does.)
Just to be clear, I didn't describe Lisp as "natural", I described using the STL (meaning, particularly, heavy use of STL algorithms, function objects, etc) as feeling terribly unnatural and forced. Judging by the reaction here, "unnatural" was perhaps not the best choice of words. What I meant was this: when trying to use the STL to get stuff done, I felt like I was always jumping through hoops to do things "the STL way", with the end result being more complicated and less clear than just doing it in a "C++ without the STL" way.

> I can guarantee you that Lisp showed to a novice isn't "natural".

Again, I never argued that Lisp was "natural". And secondly, if you are dealing with a true novice (as in, someone who has never programmed in any programming language), both C++ and Lisp are going to look decidedly "unnatural" to them. But I don't want to beat the natural/unnatural language dead horse any longer, since that was not what I was discussing. However, I will concede that Lisp looks decidedly foreign to people who have programmed before in languages with an Algol-like syntax (C, C++, Java, Javascript, Perl, etc).

And, for the record, I am very proficient in C++ (many years of work experience), and I understand how the STL works very well (I invested a lot of time in learning the STL). I invested that time because I wanted to make C++ do more than it had done for me in the past, and the STL seemed like the way to do that. However, in the end I decided that there really was no good way to make C++ do what I wanted, and the real answer was to go with something that was far better at handling higher level constructs. After trying out Lisp (and Scheme) for I while I realized that the primary things I was trying to do with the STL were no-brainers in Lisp. And with a decent FFI I can still use C or C++ when I need to do things at a lower level. I still use C++ libraries when it makes sense to do so, but I would not now start a new project with C++ as the primary language if given the choice to use something else (unless, of course, the only choices were something even worse than C++ :-D ).
I think the best part is "I don't think I could have remained an angel investor for several years without trying to disrupt the industry too" (or words to that effect).

It is interesting watching innate hackers enter 'traditional' fields. I have been working on semi professional scuba stuff for a month or so, just as a hobby, and keep seeing opportunities to improve things.
Foursquare Testing Version 2 Of Their API. “It’s 1000x Faster”
Facebook Now Worth $50 Billion In Secondary Trading
On Wikileaks: "I think loyalty ... to the greater good, not to a person ... is of utmost important" (my paraphrase of what he said).

Yep, I still don't like him.

Actually, this was really the only part of the interview where I really didn't like him.
if that server has collected information on it. It can be considered leaked. It's out of their control. I would think any interesting information could be considered all ready in the queue. If I wanted to do damage control the best option is to stop any addition of information to that server.

It was mentioned that Wikileaks redacts information.I'm sure it only a matter of time before that information "Leaks" as well.
Seems to me they could use a service similar to http://deadmansswitch.org/ for extra insurance. Diversify your insurance.
And then there's this session by Beardyman and Nathan "Flutebox" Lee at Google... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3kyNGVK-hI ^_^
One thing a lot of people don't realize is that when you're holding an office, everything you say has legal import and consequences. Even Obama stutters and backtracks midsentence these days -- that's because they're filtering on about 12 different levels. It's a lot easier if you didn't spend all day doing things that you're not allowed to speak frankly about.
Considering Streptococcus mitis already survived a period of 3 years on the Moon, and amino acids were found in soil retrieved by the Apollo astronauts, my hopes are high.

edit - source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/as...
Naturally. If all communication and all transactions are electronic, they will be stored and indexed. First, this happens in corporations and other organizations. Since this knowledge is power, the state can't let this go on for very long, and it will demand access to this data. This process is in full swing in Europe with things like the Data Retention Directive and various Echelon clones.

The people can't let the state have all this power, since it's an absurd power advantage which people are rightly afraid leads to an Orwellian society. They will protest with things like the Pirate Party.

There is another way of undermining this information advantage, however, which is to disclose information instead of trying to hide it from certain entities. If you tell everyone what you do, you can't be blackmailed, for instance. In my view, things like Facebook and Twitter are symptoms of this. When my mom goes on about why people broadcast what they had for breakfast, I usually tell her that they are subverting the power.

Zuckerberg, Schmidt and Assange have understood this and are acting and speaking accordingly.

The only other way forward, in my view, is ubiquitous end-to-end encryption between individuals. I'm not so sure that would be a good thing, and I don't see how it could work if the current trend of communication and transactions being concentrated in fewer and fewer hubs will continue, since that means someone has access to at least timestamp and communicating parties.

If we can reverse that and decentralize, encryption between "power symmetric" parties might work. But then, it might not be necessary.
Sarcasm Alert?
In his defense, I have noticed on various podcasts that that A seems to get slurred in speech quite a lot.
What do you do when you get bored?
Ok so I realize how random this topic seems, but this is a real problem for me.

As a long time programmer and self proclaimed workaholic I dont do this terribly often, but every so often I hit what I would like to think is the programmer's equivalent of "Writer's block".

This is basically just a period (usually only a week or so) where I just do not feel like working on my main project or any of my side projects. I seem to combat this by going to play poker, luckily I happen to be pretty good at poker or that could turn into an expensive habit.

Anyhow, this got me to thinking, what does everyone else do when they hit a spot like this? what is your past time of choice when you aren't programming or you just feel burned out for a few days?
> * Rust does not have NULL!!

That hardly strikes me as a feature. Null pointers simplify a lot of error-checking. Don't know if what you got back was valid? As easy as checking to see if it's zero!
Update on this from: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/netflix-par...

Peering Dispute.

"Comcast on Monday rebuffed the notion that the new fees were related to Netflix by saying that the type of traffic distributed by Level 3 was irrelevant. Joe Waz, a senior vice president at Comcast, says it has had a peering agreement with Level 3 to swap traffic fairly evenly. Now Level 3 is sharply increasing its traffic, he said, while resisting a commercial agreement to pay for that.

Comcast is “already carrying huge amounts of video to our high-speed Internet customers every day through commercial arrangements, and it seems to be working for everybody else,” Mr. Waz said. “Level 3 is trying to change the rules of the game.”"
The revenues are sourced from businessweek.com (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/earnings/e...).
Well, then, I'll have to assume you're a libertarian.

How on earth do you square that with opposing what wikileaks does? Liber-authoritarian? Is it just because they published Sarah Palin's email? (BTW, it's illegal to conduct public business over private email, that's why the leak was noteworthy).
Well, my dad's (tongue-in-cheek) theory is that all these UFO sightings are them coming over and cruising through the slums. ;)
Wikileaks is now creating a channel and noise surrounding the release of sensitive information. This can now start planting the meme of disclosing information. It once was a abstract thought, now it can hold onto the possibility of action.
Also on a related note, try Win+R this on Windows:

mshta vbscript:CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice").Speak("Hello, Y Combinator")(Window.close)
Startup Quote: Fred Wilson, co-founder, Union Square Ventures
Startup Riot 2011 accepting apps to present/attend
My first tiny "weekend project": readable text hosting. Useful?
Thanks for this. Very appreciated. I miss him.
SSL with Rails
Those two points don't contradict each other.
s/works/worked/

The desire to keep doing what used to work, in the face of better alternatives, seems to drive most governmental decisions.

Not that they're entirely illogical in doing so. It got them where they are, didn't it?
*without compiling
Christmas Shop
RICO is both criminal and civil. It often gets used for civil matters because it trebles damages. Besides the typical mafia/corruption cases, it comes up in protest/activist lawsuits, i.e. SLAPP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publi...
I don't know those guys. What's the connection?
2011 is going to be even bigger and better than 2010. We're taking 50 startups again and we're anticipating 500+ attendees in 2010. As always, no cost to present and we even have a travel fund for selected presenters that need help paying their way. We also screen out service providers so everyone you meet will be someone useful. Initial deadline for apps to present is mid-December. I expect all 50 slots to be gone by the end of December.
Interesting idea, I played with branches and added a simple script to the end of my blog post to show what it would take - it's a half dozen lines of git if you want so skip the click, with the tricky bit being figuring out what branch you start from so you can return to it.

Seems workable, though by the time you're done working out the details, seems like you should just use a real issue tracker.

I think of my approach as the moral equivalent of post-it notes on the monitor, I wouldn't want to base any important system on it, but it's useful at times.
Ah I think I missed that nugget when I read the article... he is committing just a partial with his one TODO diff only. I didn't notice that.

Still he should use an issue tracker, and then some branches :)

In fact a guy at our company hacked out a really cool git-pivotal integration that lets you create a branch to work on a specific story from the CLI https://github.com/ardell/Git-Pivotal I think it'd be trivial to write a simple CLI script to add a TODO to an issue tracker this way as well.
Killing would be a bit extreme, Discrediting would be another option. Leaking a bunch of fabricated information could harm Wikileaks.

Much of the information can't be verified.It's up to a single source(Wikileaks) to vouch for a proper source.

I'm sure somewhere Elvis is still alive in one of those documents. He's being kept in safe place guarded by Bigfoot.
Actually, they made the NYTimes:

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/netflix-par...
* Because they want to make sure people are listening.

* The media outlets can assign people to cover it.

* It's fun for the researchers.
Or this:

say -v cello droid
The title is misleading. It should be "How Groupon freaks me out".

Facebook Connect doesn't ask for all that information by default; it was Groupon's choice.
Someday, we'll have advanced enough software that "photo sorting" will be done automatically and photo sorting as some kind of common use case for touch computing will look quaint. No one ever looks like they are doing any kind of sorting in a photo sorting touch screen demo.
What do all those "k"s do?
I have a background in web development and would be open to talking to you about your idea. What is the best way to reach you?
Someone should go back in time and tell the Goths that before they make contact with the Romans. Also the Mongolians should have been told to leave China alone.

:-)
How often do the ants realize they're in the presence of another living species? Do they know humans are alive?

Maybe the aliens have been here all along and we just didn't realize it, heh.
Who invests in companies like TOMS?
Where does a socially focused startup (like TOMS shoes) goes for seed-stage funding?
D'oh! Sorry Mr Frankel. This would have to happen when I'm griping about spelling in the same post, too.
One could also say you'd have to be sophomoric to assume the person who put if there didn't do so for a good reason.
Haven't launched yet, but I've got half an app for planning camping trips using the new Active.com API. I decided to do it in Rails, so I was learning something brand new. It's close though. I've got a cool map mashup going at least.
The last time I checked, it was bootstrapped in OCaml. When I met Graydon several years ago (brilliant dude, PS), he was quite intrigued by OCaml, and strongly recommended I check it out. If ML had any influence at all, it uses variant types instead. About time more languages use them!

Rather than, "oh crap! every single variable could potentially be null at any time!", the few functions that can be null make you check for None / Some 'a, and that's it, no tedious null checks ever again. "Null pointers simplify a lot of error-checking.", my ass.
Wow, Facebook is more powerful than Vanuatu. I'm impressed.
Utah's Entrepreneurs meet at LaunchUp
I'm sure something like that is in control of the password.
I only ever had a phone screen (was going to go for an on-site, but accepted a job elsewhere beforehand) and never signed anything.

Edit: For the record, I really dislike NDAs on interview processes. I signed one when I went for my on-site with Bloomberg a little while back. I would've loved to talk about the process without using vague generalizations, as I think they hit on effectively every bad interviewing technique out there, but alas I can't. I believe they do little to actually help make the hiring process better.
If you want to create something great and do it faster than the competition, you need to be action oriented.

- Fred Wilson (@fredwilson)

http://startupquote.com/post/1982022117
What's wrong with our food system?
It could also be a way to spread the ideology of leaking information. I'm sure there is more than just a strategy to leak the information they have, but to add momentum to the whole idea. Undertaking such a controversial objective could be backed up by a belief. It seems giving the sensitive nature one would assume there are larger objectives involved than the attention created, or it could be as simple as that.

You can stop an organization, but an idea........
That's pretty awesome. Actually, I'd like to see it balance itself on a (double) pendulum.
Haha, Error establishing a database connection.

http://img.skitch.com/20101130-brk11r16h3cy86ryxd9sbitr7e.jp...
I'd answer the question of why I haven't published on CPAN (which I haven't, and I primarily program in Perl for work) is that I don't have the time. I've published some small add-ons for Warhammer Online (Lua, not Perl), and have found that even such a simple thing as that, where it is common for add-on authors to abandon their add-ons and users do not expect much support, was a lot of time. That's because if I put it out there, I'm going to support it. If user's ask for features--even features I won't use--that make sense, I want to try to add them.

If publishing something in such a specialized and restricted universe is so much work, I would expect that publishing and maintaining (to my quality standards) a CPAN module, which would have a potentially much larger audience, would simply take more time than I have available.
The Times does WinerLinks
It sounds like you are expecting the ETF would be creating more shares frequently which it does not. That would have to happen as a secondary offering and it would dilute the value of all the other shares in circulation, Assuming they are the same class share.
My point was to be able to publish readable "blog posts" on sites like HN and reddit without an actual blog. I'd love to hear feedback on whether it might be useful, and if not, what might make it so.
bnu.edu.cn's lab on triple inverted pendulum, 2 axis

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjMzMTkyMzY=.html

and quadro

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjMzMTk2NDA=.html
Plus, you're not even allowed to ask questions about any activities before he turned 18. This is insane.

I think the DoD needs to create more systems where people can worth with classified data without having wholesale access to classified data. A lot of those controls go away during war, and a lot of internal need to know controls also prevent "synergy" or "serendipity" etc., so it's always a compromise.
10 life lessons from Richard Branson
Agreed.

Here's hoping this article starts a productive conversation about work/life balance and startup culture myths.

You've got to pace yourself and keep things in perspective if you want to get things done in the long run.
French Professors Find Life in U.S. Hard to Resist
Ask HN: How do I get programmers into the college newsroom?
I'm going to be the sole web developer at my college newspaper (or "media organization" if that suits your fancy) at San Jose State next semester.

We have an existing website, but it has scaling issues and is just kind of sub-par overall. My editors are looking at going to an outsourced solution that we can't contribute any code to, that basically reduces our responsibilities to drag/drop/copy/paste, with no room for innovation.

It's a drag, because YCombinator is looking for news startups, and there's a huge opportunity to do cool stuff with journalism and tech if we can only get CS and CmpE students interested enough to come work on the paper.

What would entice you, as a developer, to come work in a newsroom? What should I say to CmpE/CS students either in person or on a flyer, or something?

And, more to the point, are there any SJSU students here that are interested? The possibilities are wide open, and we could make some seriously amazing stuff alongside some incredibly talented (though technologically lacking) people.
check this out http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1753825
Well, maybe that's exactly why they ask that question:

http://hebig.org/blog/003029.php

Sometimes, doing your own reasoning on a "smart" question leads to new ideas. Just ask Galileo.
Linking to a URL with Feedburner args may not be the best idea.
bloobox.com.br - still a local/national business, still to be launched worldwide

already making enough revenue to keep us up, though (3 people total)
What makes you say it's impossible? Consider the feats that top athletes are capable of - it's easy to forget just how impressive the skills of a professional golfer, quarterback or pitcher are because we see them performed on television every day.
Interesting. I didn't know it was this easy with rack.

Am I right in thinking that if third party embeds/widgets dont answer at an https url, I am stuck with mixed content warnings?
Renai has a habit of writing link bait like this.

He made no friends with this one: http://delimiter.com.au/2010/07/15/how-long-can-atlassian-st...

(link to comment from Mike Cannon-Brooks, Atlassian cofounder)
Why is it that 90% of the stories we hear involving
Australia and technology are about stupid moves by the
government? Is there something unique about Australia?

This can be read as implying that Australians at-large are responsible. This isn't really true, it's an anomaly of our voting system (proportional representation in the Senate on a per-state basis) that sometimes leads to bad policy.

So, for example, the retarded-policy bandwagon got rolling when Senator Harradine from Tasmania held the balance of power. He was able to block bills in the Senate and he used that power to get a lot of what he wanted, including bulk pork for Tasmania and some stupid internet policies.

In the current Senate one of the cross-benchers (who can sometimes affect the outcome of votes, depending on what the Greens and other cross-benchers do) is Senator Fielding, a member of a speaking-in-tongues, happy-clappy christian party. One of their pet peeves is pornography, they think it makes god most displeased. Hence the government has been dangling the filtering stuff for years to help secure his vote.

Technology-wise the current big argument is about a "National Broadband Network" a AU$50 billion (or $35 billion, depending on how you count) project to tear up Australia's copper network and replace it with fibre. To every home in the country. In US terms that's approximately like a $630 billion project (ie ~4.3% of GDP).
I actually have been planning to send an application in with this exact idea. I came to the site today to check in case the next application round is open, and to conceivably fill an application out with this information in it.

I'm not sure what to do, at this point. We still think this would be a success but, good god.

Edit: In the opinion of anyone reading this; do you think it's a better idea to put our application in as planned (using this exact idea...), or to try to differentiate ourselves somehow?
Bad Timing: Comcast, Netflix, NN, Cable Modems and NBCU
PS, "ichbins" = "I can hardly believe it's not Scheme!".

For a while I thought it was [["Ich bin"s]], => "I AM"s auf deutsch.

Good to see abecedarius is finally un-dead'd.
See also, essays on the Great Filter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
It's also possible there were more effective controls on JWICS (TS/SCI) vs. SIPRnet and various portals, so he had less wholesale access to download TS data.

Also, TS+ information from Iraq/Afghanistan is probably actually less interesting to the public than S information -- it would be primarily about counterintelligence, rescuing hostages, signals intelligence, certain HUMINT (i.e. infiltration, James Bond spy shit, etc.), certain task forces going after actual al qaeda guys, etc., none of which would cause moral outrage. In a war zone, S is basically anything operational at all, so you get a good overview of how things are going.
Google NDAs their interview process? Another strike against their "don't be evil" record. I'm not sure why I even pretend to expect differently now.
And now that these are published you can rest assured that they will never be used in a Google interview again.
A meta-meta-analysis from the CDC
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Mediocrity seems to carry a large center of gravity.It's so much easier to obscure evil ethics, than it is to change the core of what you stand for.

The noise will just have to be increased when it comes to hiding the facts. I can see many of these large institutions with skeletons in the closet might lobby for tighter censorship now. What was once isolated events now has a core. Keeping the illusion that they are aberrations stopped them from becoming more than that.
Couldn't agree more. Startups either run out of cash or give up/burn out.

Finding the maximum sustainable pace is a huge competitive advantage most companies don't have.