skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're broadening the scope of the debate again. I said you should have a plan in place for issues like who compromises their career. How does that balloon into "put off having kids until things are perfect"?

Of course, there are extenuating circumstances which can waylay any planning; I never intended to imply that there weren't. Go back and read my post, and you'll see that my criticism was conditional. If you did have a plan in place, and then extenuating circumstances derailed those plans, then fine.

Twice now you've taken statements that were pointed at a specific issue and acted as if they were broad indictments of your parenting skills that amounted to nothing more than ad hominem attacks. False umbrage hardly contributes to a strong and friendly community.
The S&P, which models a portfolio of 500 large-cap stocks weighted by market cap, is adjusted for splits and dividends. Splits effect neither the index value nor the weights, and dividends are implicitly assumed to go back into the portfolio, altering the weights but not the cash value. So what the S&P tracks is the performance of this portfolio, with cash dividends immediately reinvested. In other words, the returns calculated include dividends.

The S&P index is a damn good measure of market performance, since, although only 500 stocks are included, it comprises about 80% of US equities by market cap. (Wiltshire 5k is theoretically better, but the practical difficulties in index arbitrage on 5000 stocks, many illiquid, make S&P futures more popular.) The Dow, on the other hand, is a terrible index. It's not weighted for market caps, which means that if a Dow company splits its shares, its weight in the index declines, for no good reason.
Ask HN. Do you know any web based python development environment?
Do you know any web based python environment for editing and testing code.

* I promise this is the last time I am asking this question :).

Thank you.
Someone mentioned 2-7 kids per "overseer". Where I went to kindergarden, ratio was 20-30:1. Even later in elementary/high school, the ratio was 25-35 kids per teacher.
Seems like blog spam, but this post has said nothing new from all of the other 'PHP sucks' posts, so I have no idea why you decided to make yet another one.

I like PHP since it is so easy to deploy and it can be used for anything from a simple two page website to a full-blown web application. Being written in PHP also means that you are not limited in hosting.

If you're a startup creating a single web app, then fine, use Python with mod_wsgi or Rails and five mongrel servers. But if you're creating basic CRUD websites, especially more than one, then there is nothing wrong with PHP. I can fit dozens of low-traffic websites on a $20/mo 256MB RAM server using Apache and mod_php; try doing that with Rails.

As I said, if I was going to focus on a single web app with its own dedicated server, then I would definitely look at Python and mod_wsgi, but since I create a lot of 'smaller' websites (nothing too complex), it is much less of a hassle using PHP since I can fit all of them nicely on a single, cheap server.
Honestly, I wouldn't be at all upset if Google turned only IP addresses over to Viacom. It's my username I don't want them to have.
LinkedIn lets you decide whether or not to have a public-facing profile. That profile is fully indexable by search engines. You can choose to turn it off.

Nothing to see here. Move along.
Facebook Apps for International Markets
Today Google Preschool, tomorrow Google K through 12. :)
How are the new folks to know what ideas have been discussed to death? And, sometimes there is a delta of thought that does add value, specifically for frequently/commonly discussed topics.

Gabriel maintains an excellent collection of topics on his startup wiki: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive
Create and Compare Amazon Lists on Facebook
reality checks once a while :-)
"Pick one, and stick with it"

Best advice i got.
But we still have 95% to explain.

More like 99.99 % to explain, but we are working on it (neuroscientist here.)

As for consciousness: the ghost in the machine. That is, one can explain the machine with and without it -- the ghost is just one's perception of the other self, one's generalization and oversimplification of the other self.
Hey

PG, we've built a product similar to a product you have already funded. Whats your policy on issuing funding to a similar services, albeit marginally.
Of those three, who do you think is most likely to jump first? Yahoo is very corporate-friendly, so I'd expect them to be the last to give up IE6 support. MSN might want to push everyone towards the latest IE version so Microsoft can finally stop supporting IE6 altogether; Google might push for Firefox, but then they might draw some antitrust criticism for that.
I was thinking the same thing. I thought about posting a "please stop" thread to this but decided against it. I figured that if I ignored it then it might go away.

It's not that I don't appreciate this sort of discussion. I like the openness of asking these questions. It's just that I can go to any corner of the internet with a forum and see most of the same.

They say you're not supposed to discuss religion and politics, I'd personally prefer to keep to this guide, and we don't see much of politics here.
"First of all - you should disregard unusual personal experiences if you don't know of any way to repeat them."

I disagree. Experiences are not always under your control and therefore you can't always repeat them even if they are true. This is true in relationships with other humans and it seems likely that it would also be true with a personal god.

Let's say your girlfriend does something nice for you and you feel like you love her for it. Let's say she then dumps you for hottie that doesn't even know how to code and never talks to you again. You can't repeat that experience with her because her free choice made it possible. That doesn't mean that the experience was fake, it just means that it is outside of your control.

I'm sure there are some wholes in that logic, but hopefully it was able to shed some extra light on the subject.
Mountain View is indeed expensive but $110K is $50K more than the average household income in the Bay Area. Aside from packing 3 people to a cube, Google pampers its employees above and beyond almost any other company in the area. There is free food, health insurance, free gym, free laundry, free haircuts and so forth. Taking this into account, a Google employee doesn't have to spend much money on anything other than rent, transportation and food for the kid. Even if renting a $3000/m apartment and leasing a Lexus a Google employee making $110K a year would still have $50K a year left over. "Making ends meet" perhaps isn't the most accurate way to describe the situation these people face.
Awesome explanation of Bayesian probability
What exactly constitutes "personally identifiable" is a very complex issue -- almost anything can be personally identifiable with enough data processing or in combination with other data sources.

The judge and Viacom are the guilty parties here, trying to blame google only distracts from that fact. These are the same people who are working on laws that will mandate ISP logging, allow them to search your laptop and iPod at the airport, etc. Google keeping or not keeping logs isn't going to help you -- it's just running from the problem.
here's an explanation of gravity http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misner/d...

long story short, gravity is the curvature of spacetime. objects of mass cause the curvature, and the curvature in turn causes objects to move locally along geodesics (shortest-distance paths), which causes the curvature to shift

when you throw a ball and it's moving through a parabola, that curve taken with time in a riemannian space is actually the straightest line possible from one end of the throw to the other

this is Einstein's magnum opus General Relativity
But Google day care is said to now cost $57,000 for two kids in post-tax money (which means closer to $80,000 of pre-tax money). right?
"How are the new folks to know what ideas have been discussed to death?"

A link to the list would be put in evidence somewhere. A link on the article submission page would be a start.

"And, sometimes there is a delta of thought that does add value, specifically for frequently/commonly discussed topics."

I did mention: "refrain from posting/upmodding articles about those subjects if they don't bring something truly new to the table"
Bandwidth Barons Want More Money for Fewer Bytes
Taking Money Back
"The judge and Viacom are the guilty parties here"

Are you sure? I swear Google was the one violating copyrights..
In Japan, a 900 Gigabyte Upload Cap, Downloads Uncapped
This is the third time you've asked this question in 2 days. Please stop.
web2py http://mdp.cti.depaul.edu/
Without wanting to start a debate about licensing, unionisation and so on, I expect that to take decades. Much of the enabling technology is here now, but the medical and legal industries have decades (or even centuries) of experience in limiting entry to their industry and thereby maintaining high wages... er, I mean, "high standards". They won't let this happen without a PR war on whichever government is "allowing it to happen".
What is interesting though is that no matter how unoriginal the question are we still don't have accepted answers, which suggests that it isn't time to stop asking the questions (which is unfortunate for those who are sick of the questions).
Here is the working URL
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sisense_an_analytics_da...
Or lazy.

It's easier to understand creationism than physics.
37signals are proof of what David is saying. None of their applications are original, and just based on old ideas (except, to a certain extent, HighRise, although that's arguable). It's the implementation that counts, not the idea.
Sisense - An Analytics Dashboard for Amazon S3
This is what credit card chargebacks are for. The punishment for failing to honour cancellations (which DO NOT have to be via the approved route, provided there is evidence that the company should have seen it - the reply from the CSR drone in the Zagat thread would be enough) is pretty high.
Agreed, entirely. The big problem with voicemail as a medium is that it takes so long to read. Not to mention lack of indexability, near-impossibility of seeking accurately...

...So remind me, again, why we're getting so excited about video comments on blogs, or sending audio clips instead of emails? It's like, after a few years with a high-productivity medium (rapidly-delivered text), some people have just completely un-learned so much of what it taught us.
Blog spam? What does it mean?
E-mail is not reliable enough to be a one-stop medium (as an alternative to voicemail - as highlighted in the post). I love e-mail as a medium, but I never know for certain (or even with just an 80% probability) whether a message I send will get through. Thanks to spam, many bounce / "message undelivered" type messages are never sent back, and mails disappear into the ether.

At least the phone / voicemail are reasonably guaranteed. Voicemails stay where they should and phone calls are instantly verifiable. E-mails are not, and you cannot /entirely/ rely on them at any point.

E-mail as a conceptual medium is great, but its delivery mechanism sucks for anyone who needs reliable communications with the rest of the world.
I'm almost positive I paid for my haircut while there...

The haircut, dentist, car-wash, etc perks aren't so much about being free as they are about being convenient due to being located on-site.
Yes. It does seem absurd that Google day care costs more per year than attending Harvard. A full time nanny can be hired for half that. Someone with a $110K salary and a working significant other has plenty of options for child care. If they are truly struggling to make ends meet, they are simply mismanaging their finances.

I'm assuming the other person works too, which is why they need child care. Thus, their actual combined income is over $110K, which is an enviable position for any household, even in the Bay Area.
Internal Branding
Internal branding is becoming a key to your overall marketing strategy. The information presented in this post came from six years of experience through over 550 focus groups.
How to Analyze and Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Website
One of best ways to increase reader engagement is to make sure that your site architecture interlinks related content and displays them in a way which encourages the user to click around.
JL: Why I Do YC
Atheism is simply the nonacceptance of a claim (theism) that lacks any supporting evidence. Not accepting a baseless claim is the anti-thesis of "faith" (ie. faith = accepting a claim without evidence).

Being agnostic is NOT a middle ground between theism and atheism. The break down is like this:
1) A god exists.
2) A god does not exist.

Theists accept #1 and reject #2.
Atheists reject #1 and can either accept or reject #2.

Gnosticism (for the purpose of this discussion) deals with what you claim to know. A gnostic claims knowledge about the truth of an assertion. An agnostic (literally "without knowledge") does not claim to have such knowledge.

The term "atheist" is very similar to the legal term "not-guilty". Declaring a person "not-guilty" does not mean they are "innocent". It simply means that there is insufficient evidence to declare them "guilty". Saying that an atheist must "prove" that no gods exist is like saying that you must prove your innocence in a court of law. Rejecting an assertion because it lacks supporting evidence does not require proving the opposite assertion.
Now I'm glad I invested in a basementfull of eggs.
This should be a browser feature/plugin. Perhaps a question-mark icon next to the address bar.

Site doesn't load or has other problems? Hit the question mark and see the latest reported issues. Your details (browser, IP, etc.) are automatically uploaded and attached to an optional comment, for other people to compare against (same ISP, same country, same browser, etc.).

Pingdom and others sell monitoring. You could probably sell this data to companies - live reports on failures for certain user groups.

Actually... why not make it an open database where you can log issues (not just site failure) against all kinds of services - internet banking sites, the London Underground (District Line still suffering signal failures), etc. Many organisations would ignore or oppose it, but the good ones would find it useful, which implies a way to make money.

All you would have to do is connect the question-mark to the web site / page being visited, and use that as the basis for the ticket. People could maintain a database of contact/help email addresses for each site (the sites could pop up on a queue as they were reported), and the tickets could be sent to that address, to let the organisation know "you are being watched". :-)

Every organisation has a site, and every site has a way to get a message to whoever runs it.

This could grow to a size where it became a significant cultural force. Perhaps that's just the wine talking, but it's quite good wine, so who knows.

Edit: You should also be able to submit a screen-grab with your complaint/suggestion.

Opinions?
They are guilty of harming privacy, which is the topic here.
Your concept of how Google works is way off. These blog posts are not off-the-cuff remarks by random employees -- a whole team of people put together that policy and statement as part of some other legal battle.
on a more general note, i see it from the perspective of obvious design (natural or otherwise)

what's more reasonable from a survival point of view, that that cut you just received on your left arm from a knife show up in some sort of terminator-like HUD...

.

.

.

[DAMAGE TO LEFT ARM]

.

.

.

[AVOID RECURRENCE IF POSSIBLE]

.

.

.

or that you are made to "feel" the cut as intrinsic to you? which are you more likely to heed? that's basically what i think consciousness arises from -- the need to internalize sensations so that you respect them. so that you respect the fact that some maniac with a knife just took a slice at your arm, or that your fingers are burning on the stove while you're standing there being absent minded and you NEED TO GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW

a HUD would be very poor for that sort of thing. i see consciousness as the best solution
The Real Hackers
Can I just take this opportunity to say that the term "organic foods" bugs me? I mean, of course it's organic -- it's food! With the possible exceptions of water and salt (one could argue about whether they're really food) surely all food is organic.
Not really. At least, the supply of gold increases more slowly than about anything else, especially stocks. Or am I missing your point?
Caterers are not a must I think - we didn't have any at school. Maintaining the infrastructure: isn't that usually included in the rent for a building? Maybe somebody should check where all the money for the schools goes ;-) But I think most teachers earn more than childcare nurses.
Dunkin’ Donuts Aren’t in California… Yet?
If science fiction has taught me only one thing, it's that zeppelins (and beards) are very popular in all parallel universes. Perhaps they know something that we don't?

Seriously though, I'm also not convinced that it uses less fuel than an ordinary jet to carry the same number of people the same distance. Look at the amount of air which needs to be pushed out of the way of that great big hull just to carry a couple of dozen people, and remember that a single 747 carries twenty times more people.

Also, helium is (in practical terms) a non-renewable resource for the moment.
I agree with this point of view, but I think it could be taken the wrong way and I don't think that it should apply to all wannabe entrepreneurs. There's a fine line between a good product or driving force of a startup, and just creating shit because someone gave you a little kick in the ass...
I am sure most of my ideas are not unique, but on the other hand I don't think they are so common that, like, every second person alive on earth has them. Maybe there are 100 other people, or 1000, I don't know. Or maybe only two or three.

I don't think I deserve anything for having had an idea, but it is OK to kick oneself if one sees that the idea could have been made into a success after all. It is one of those occasions where you tell yourself to finally ACT on the next idea.

Without ideas, common or not, there would not even be the option to act on something. So I really don't think ideas bashing is a worthwhile thing to do.

What worries me most is that maybe I am missing some secret ingredient to make my idea a success: being able to play the investment markets? I think it is possible that two people execute the idea equally well technically, but one makes millions because he has the right connections, and the other remains an obscure hobby.
Actually, we have eight, ranging from 7 to 25. (I'm an old guy, 53.)

Our kids are among the best "socialized" (as if that were the ultimate goal of life!) I've run across.

Yes, having a single child would be tough on that child in terms of learning to deal with others and their needs.

We educate them at home, or, rather, give them the tools & guidance to educate themselves, which is the only way it's ever going to happen.

It's been good that I've been working from home for 18+ years, running a "lifestyle" small software business (5 people distributed around the country).
There are a variety of patches available that give you anonymous functions, as well as closures. You need to seek it out and compile. But, I guess from your laughter, that shouldn't be an issue for you since you've got the CS thing down.

http://www.opendogs.org/pub/php-5.3dev-071228a.patch

You'll have to backpatch it for 5.2.6 but it took all of an afternoon for us to do.

At massify, we run a patched version of PHP that provides all of the above.
It is not at all obvious that {...} is better than, say, array(...) for a language that has operator braces {}. PHP's array constructs are a little verbose, but they are visually distinguishable and thus are not that bad at all.

{...} as an array/dictionary literal makes more sense in a language like Python, where braces are not used otherwise.
Science itself may not have anything to say about religion per se, but a scientific worldview is incompatible with a christian worldview, as a scientific worldview demands evidence and falsifiable claims and a christian one demands the opposite, faith.
I think I clearly stated that this was the last time I would ask this question. If you have an answer other than this genre I will be very thankful, otherwise hold your peace for ever.
Ask HN: Adding SMS Integration to Web App
I am developing a web application(using codeigniter) and want SMS integration so data can be queried over a cell phone in US. Do I need to talk to the phone service providers ? How does it work ?
True, but can you think of a better single word (not a phrase) to convey non-industrial-as-currently-practiced? "Natural" has the same weakness you identify, so that's out also.

It's a bummer that there's no commonly accepted definition for organic, but it's probably because at least for now, the fight is against current practices (which explains the many alternatives that have sprung up), instead of being for a particular practice, which could be named more accurately and concisely.
No, he may be entirely agnostic on all three, neither believing nor disbelieving any of them.

That seems like a pretty sensible attitude to have, actually.
Good Enzymes are Hard to Make (de novo computational protein & enzyme design)
I recently thought about the same thing, but my feeling is that I would like to charge more about 10000€ for signing an NDA. But even that might not be sufficient.

The main problem is that as a "hacker" (wannabe maybe), I always think about ways to improve things with technology. So basically any aspect of human life I come across I have the one or other idea about. That means the likelihood is about 90% or more that any NDA I sign would touch an idea I already had.
Actually the worm was a characteristic example of hacking in both senses of the word.
"reality is an opinion"

I like it. Can you explain further?
Personally I really doubt (2). I work in theoretical condensed matter physics, and it's awfully hard to accurately simulate anything with more than a very small number of atoms. Sure, computers will continue to get faster for a while, but these problems scale very badly with the size of the system, and we're not all many orders of magnitude away from the fundamental limits of computation. I suspect that even if you were to convert the whole mass of the solar system into one big computer, you probably still couldn't run a decent simulation of any system on the scale of 10^23 atoms.

It's possible you might be able to run a somewhat dodgy simulation which doesn't work on the atomic scale unless it has to (e.g. when your simulated person decides to do some atomic-scale experiments, it would suddenly launch a proper simulation, and otherwise it could get away with a neuron-level simulation). But I still don't think that we'll ever get the computing power needed to make these kinds of simulations trivially easy.
Yes, but without the lasers, is this really hacker news? :)
If you're applying for a designer job at a small slightly famous company, against tons of competition, and you can't take 1 minute to double check that you spell the company name exactly like they do, you don't deserve to be hired.

Designers are supposed to be totally detail oriented and notice things like spacing, typography, color, font, etc. 37Signals <> 37signals and a designer should totally notice that.

They probably had a few hundred other applicants do it right and they were absolutely correct to throw out every single application that had any kind of small errors, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, etc. They still probably had too many to interview after that.