skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've worked as a professional real estate manager for 15+ years, mostly in California but with also in a couple of places

The expected cap rate (annual rent / purchase price) in on both the East Coast and West Coast is roughly 5-7%. In places like Texas and Ohio, the cap rate is roughly 10% Since a "competent" property manager (like myself =P) usually charges about 10-15% of gross rent, this means your expected cap rate will drop to about 4.5%-6.3%.

Expense rates are roughly mortgage (7-10%) + taxes (1-2%) + maintenance (1-2%). Most commercial properties also don't have a high expense ratio because tenants typically like to keep their places of business up and running. However, keep in mind that commercial properties are usually paid back a faster schedule (usually 10-20 years) than residential mortgages (usually 15 or 30 years), so there are much larger monthly payments.

People usually do real estate for the tax benefits; there are many common, legal and IRS sanctioned ways to create tax-free income streams. However, to get to that stage requires starting with a significant amount of equity.
Women "computers" of World War II
They actually don't discriminate against men. The rule isn't "no men," it's "at least some women." See the FAQ: http://www.astia.org/component/option,com_easyfaq/Itemid,751...
Ow, this is cool. Here's the mouth watering announcement:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/74072
Convore (YC W11) Wants To Be The Easiest Group Communication App Yet
Just one example: investors are more likely to invest in people who are similar to them. Most investors are men.
Python n00b Lesson: Subclasses & the Source Code
It makes practical sense given the dearth of living space in japan.
Convore (YC W11) Launches and Makes Web Based Group Chat Easy and Fun.
Ha! No, there's no ab requirement ;)
IEFBR14 - program for doing nothing (and failing at that)
same here. the great advice above (or below) re: accounting for the standard deduction when calculating nominal tax savings for mortgage interest and the fact I received the tax form from my mortgage company yesterday showing how much I paid in 2010 (ouch!) I can't imagine any low risk vehicle out there that can compete with quickly paying off your house.
The Service Canada web site has timed out. Awesome web infrastructure, guys!
it has never worked for me. I've tried firefox

Hmm it works for me:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110124 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.14

At least, I can manipulate the time okay. If there is a way to make it revert to current time (without loading the page), I don't see it.
i don't have a problem meeting guys. i have a problem meeting guys that i feel any lust for. that's a big problem among the people i know who are looking for lovers on- and offline.

however, i hear the odds are much better for single women in SF than NYC. so if this site doesn't work out for me, i know where i'm moving next..
UBS is a Swiss bank that also operates in the United States.

Birkenfeld is an American who, while in Geneva, participated in UBS activities which helped Americans hide money from the American government - which I think breaks the US law regardless of what jurisdiction the "help" happens in.

Note that Birkenfeld was arrested in the US after going to the US government with information - in your Tarsnap example, it would be like a Tarsnap employee traveling to China to tell the Chinese government that he/she helped circumvent Chinese laws. I don't think anyone would be surprised if the Chinese government then chose to prosecute that person.

As a business you can offer services to clients which may be illegal in some countries but fully legal in other countries - just don't go to the countries in which it is illegal and expect them to not prosecute you for helping their citizens get around their laws.

Also I think the term "fiduciary duty" is being misused in your Tarsnap example - correct me if I am wrong but Tarsnap is not managing or holding their user's funds for them (the "fiduciary" part of the term), but their data.
Liveblogging HP's Palm WebOS tablet event.
Setting Expectations at Funding
Yes, but it's just as generic as i-anything, which is similar to e-anything. I'm pretty sure "e-phones" could have been a mid-90's spoof name of a pocket-pc. And "pad" was derided as similar to a feminine pad, a much worse link than a trackpad.

The magic was in product and marketing execution, and now i- (and "pad") signifies something more than generic. If HP/Palm pulls this off correctly they could integrate "touch-" into a whole line of WebOS devices that has brand-recognition with consumers.
Congrats to Convore on the launch, I've been using it almost since its inception and it's become a staple of my communication platforms.
This really boils down to your personal priorities. Do you need to believe in the product to enjoy work or are interesting problems/fun workplace enough for you?

Currently, I'm trying as hard as I can to get a hold of the most difficult projects I can find in the workplace. If that means working on a technically challenging product that I kinda-sorta believe in, then so be it. My goal is to get my technical chops up. I suspect that as time and my experience progresses, the actual product will mean more to me.
That's phenomenal growth! If we extrapolate that, in two months there will be 73 billion Windows 7 phones! Microsoft might just turn this thing around, after all.
With a bit more context:

"""
Those invited to join are asked to pay a $5,000 participation fee and to donate a 1 percent equity stake. The fee used to be lower, but Vosmek discovered that the more Astia charged, the higher the caliber of the companies that applied. “When we charged enough, people really showed up and were really committed to it, and their success rate really took off,” she says.
"""

Of course, it's possible that charging a $5,000 fee also filters out some companies that are less likely to succeed in the first place.
As the author claimed there are many reasons you may not have had fingerprints. Personally, I would try the tried and trusted 'shrug, I have no idea' method.
A friend who just joined the Linux Foundation saved $400 or $500 on a Lenovo with the Linux discount. They don't advertise the exact discounts publicly, but if you were joining anyway, or already a member, that could be something to pursue.
HN now serving a million page views on weekdays
This was essentially my justification for buying a Kindle: it's about the price of a new bookcase.
For that matter, what about Android?
> don't forget there's a currency exchange rate risk associated with shipping your money out to Switzerland

Actually, there isn't. You can have accounts denominated in USD, JPY, EUR or any other sufficiently mainstream currency. It's even free if the amount is big enough, which is actually not that high (low five figures).

Don't worry about the banks though, they make it all back and more in their ludicrous transaction fees.
This doesn't actually look like a Genetic Algorithm to me.

What I would expect is that with each generation, the "most fit" car or cars from the previous generation are combined with small mutations, and then "duke it out" in the next generation.

What i'm seeing is that each "generation" includes 20 different vehicles, each of which mutates a little bit. I'm not seeing that much trial and error or different versions of the same "DNA".
I'll second that. Even the next step of taking out the optical drive isn't too tough, at least on a pre-unibody white macbook. Runs a bit hot/loud with 2 drives though.
Aren't municipal bonds paying better these days because of fear (justified or otherwise) that lots of them--especially in California--are going to start defaulting?
>be approached by decent young men all day

I wish! I am in cafe right now surrounded by decent young men and all we do is glance at each other's laptops and smartphones.
It would be interesting if they set up a Google Retro and let people try and compare the old search and see if they still think it is an improvement over the newer systems.
Everything can evaporate in 3 months. The world is a risky place, tomorrow someone could come out with something to make your startup irrelevant. Houses prices dropped, used car values drop with the GM and Ford bail out, we mine more gold every year. You show me an investment that is always going to beat inflation and I'll show you a scam.

The only way to real be secure is diversification and never stop innovating and hustling. If you do you'll get burnt no matter what you have your wealth in.
I guess the whole backlash against search results was Content Farms outsmarting Google (atleast temporarily) and distorting results.

Google's search results in 2000 were better than any competitor or Google itself 2 years before. But the same thing can't be said with certainty when comparing 2010's search results to 2008's.
From http://ycombinator.com/faq.html the average age of a YC Founder is 26. I wouldn't be surprised if that age has gone up a bit since the FAQ was written, certainly the Winter 2011 class feels like there's a healthy range of ages.
The one thing that really surprised me in this whole "web/native" debate is the new concept of "installing" web apps (just links?) from the "Chrome web store" ... while all along hearing things like "installation is a big hurdle for most people, web is the way".
$5000 might not be such a bad deal, if that money includes setup and legal fees performed by a for-real law firm. Also consultation, trademark and patent services, etc.

And 1% equity is really great. You won't find an accelerator taking less than that. However, I always think it's funny when people quibble over the amount of equity that an accelerator takes. If you succeed, that 1% won't matter. If you fail, that 1% really won't matter. :)
We already do :\ I need to utilize this advice myself
Best Practices for Maximizing Mobile App Revenue
I'm not sure how you got "services that women find fun" out of "we will prioritize something that provides business value".
Same comment I left on the TC story: Congrats to Convore on the launch, I've been using it almost since its inception and it's become a staple of my communication platforms.
Sulphur mining in an active volcano
Messiah has been around since 1999ish (originally as a plugin for Lightwave), so if that was their plan they certainly work on a very long time scale!

Messiah is actually pretty great at what it does though it must be getting squeezed a bit by Blender3D with the strides that (totally free) software has made in usability over the last year or so.

I do find it a little bit curious that they (pmG) haven't defined what either their goal is or what the timeframe for meeting the goal is. I doubt they are doing anything underhanded, but if the "goal" is not met in whatever the "timeframe" is, it'll be pretty easy for people to make a case that the whole thing was a PR stunt rigged from the start.. of course, then they'd be on the hook for who knows how many refunds, which doesn't come for free.
MongoDB strategies for the disk-averse
Urban sprawl has connected the city where I spend my day with the place where I spend the evening. I"m not the only one either as many make the short commute. It would be nice to get an email from Groupon with both daily deals in a single email, if I choose.
Another "feature" would be the ability to use it without dropbox--save functionality removed. I don't have my dropbox password handy, so the app is completely unusable. (HTML"5" database/ javascript localstorage?)
Fast Facts on jQuery 1.5
For young people financial theory advises against investing excess capital in bonds and for investing in stocks[1]. The idea is that in the long run stocks have a higher return then bonds and the volatility doesn't matter much (agian this applies only to excess capital). If your portfolio does go south, you've plenty of time to earn some extra income and if things go up you can hit a home run.

In practice people tend to increase their relative holdings in stocks, this is highly risky since it's much harder to make up losses and the end of your working life.

For me: Where I live a special accounts for retirment do not exist so I don't have an opinion on those.

The excess cash I'm now started earn will be invested in simple ETF's. They provide good diversification for a small price.

[1] So good for you!
"You can run a successful tech business for years and never speak to a human being on the phone or in person." That's if you don't need an capital and can make it on your own. If you're a female led start-up you're the face of everything you do. Men often presume you to be many things, but a strong non emotional business leader is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when they see you walk in the door. Even if you're wearing your power suit and power colors.
Bernanke to Congress: We're Much Closer to Total Destruction Than You Think
I've been using blender since 2000. It is really powerful, and the UI has incredibly improved with version 2.5.

I use it for everything: App Icons, textures, explanatory animations, diagrams, and of course 3D.
Try it, it's incredible (though the documentation needs some love)
I have the same issue with Mandarin. I believe with practice you will develop the confidence to speak it.
I don't know just how accurate the 1 in 50 number is but it is pretty close to my observations. I worked on a fingerprint recognition system several years ago and collected many thousands of live fingerprints and processed hundreds of thousands of other records (scans of inked prints for example). Recognizing a good quality print is almost trivially easy. Most of the work is pulling good information out of low quality images.

Fingerprints are a reliable source of information in most cases for most people but are a far cry perfect form of identification most people think.
my favorite stat:

"most versions of Chrome have gone from performing a little over a thousand children() operations per second in jQuery 1.4 to around 20,000 in jQuery 1.5″.
That is amazing. What bank is it? Right now the best I can find is a 1.1% money market savings account.

Another thing to consider is the banks that offer cash to open an account. I put $2500 in a new ING Direct account for 6 months and they gave me $50
Agreed. It's hard for everybody with a family.
That's a good point, I was picturing customer facing businesses when I wrote the question. I think it is probably less of an issue when you're working on something that you really could never be the customer of.
Also handy if you end up moving to another continent. I moved from England to San Francisco. I had a lot of books before the move, I sold some, left some with my parents and shipped the rest.
Are you actively trying to learn it? Do you find it hard to tie words together?
I'm surprised this only has 12 points, it's one of the most interesting entrepreneurship stories I've seen on Hacker News in quite a while.
As a side-time Android developer, I can tell you that the platform is anything but buggy. For a while Android antagonists were painting the diversity of handsets as a huge testing hurdle, but that's just not the case. Write sane code and don't engage in sloppy shortcuts and you can get by with testing on a single handset (the emulator is too slow).

My main app is a live wallpaper that pulls radar imagery from NOAA (http://www.appidio.com/apps/radar-wallpaper/) and I have yet to hear of a device that it doesn't work on.
Skype Adds H.264 Support to iPhone App and Supports Skype TVs
I can't speak for others, but my disappointment is with the margin of improvement. I know that results often sucked back in 2001, but with 10 years of progress I would hope to get better results. In the case of "buy domain name" (http://www.google.com/search?q=buy+domain+name), 4 of the top 6 results I get are How To articles, not sources to buy domains.

Google is trying to solve a hard problem, and I appreciate that. I just don't have the patience I did 10 years ago to click through all the results to find a legitimate site. If I get a set of results that look like spam, I try to refine the terms, but often just give up.

I know that Google tries to solve this problem algorithmically, but I can't help but think that mixing in a human review would immensely improve results. And by human, I mean a Google employee, not a sure-to-be-gamed community review.
Your long rant basically says don't invest money at all, just keep cash in your mattress?

That's pretty clearly not what was said.

The upshot is that you are better off taking the mental energy you would have expended on "investing" and subsequently worrying about your money, and instead funneling it into your creative endeavors
FAQ On Standing, Conferences, App Development
I'd congratulate you but I'm not sure if that's the right thing. It is hopeful to see that the quality isn't significantly affected though.
Seems a bit like the first version of Gravity (now convo.io) from the ex-myspace crew, plus chat.
MySQL does this too. I once found a bunch of Facebook User IDs that were all 2147483647 after someone missed the memo that Facebook was transitioning to BigInts.
Hopefully with the amount of hits and new users the site is getting, quality doesn't decline. HN has (In a matter of 4 days) taken the #1 spot on my "TechNews" bookmark folder, so as of now the article quality is great.

As a new user, I'm quite surprised with how civil and helpful everyone is.

Often times when you put a lot of extremely intelligent and strong-minded people in the same place, things can get heated really quickly. Granted, strong-minded people are usually not offended easily.
This American Life did a segment on the auctions for abandoned self-storage units in "Contents Unknown".

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/399/c...

That said, self-storage isn't just for people who can't stop accumulating stuff. In cities like San Francisco and especially Manhattan, it often makes sense to put rarely-used or not-yet-used items in storage, like camping gear, or heirloom furniture that you don't have the space for at the moment.

I've found self-storage useful when moving between cities -- it's hard to predict exactly when you'll find the right place, so it's a reasonably cheap way to buffer the transfer.
Kapor Leads $600,000 Round In SpeakerText
Dropbox does have version control built in, albeit not in the same way which you speak of.

Pretty good way to get people unfamiliar with version control to see the utility of it, though :)
Congrats guys - huge!
Is the post suggesting that the perception of drop in quality is only because google was much much better than other search engines back in 2000?
Hiring Rubyists at a Large Company
It's also a little naive to blanket all networking events with not providing business value. The statement is a false dichotomy. It also appears to reveal a bias that things not directly related to the business or product do not provide value.
A very big problem, indeed. I assume since the OP has been able to convince others to join them in the first place that the idea and what they're working on is compelling enough. Therefore if they're leaving so quickly there is most likely something wrong with how they're managing. That is extremely high turnover.

My approach to leading isn't like what I see most others doing, it takes time and a lot of effort but I find it to be well worth it in the end. A lot of it has to do with being personable and understanding who the people you're leading really are and what they care about. You have to be genuinely interested in them, though, otherwise it would just come off as kind of creepy. With that in place it allows you to talk, and that's really all there is to it. Talking.
Stupid article yes we know that go has proper closures but that dosn't make it a "Functional Language". It allows you to write in a functional style but FP is about imutability to. Go uses points that about as unfunctional as you can get.
Adobe's CS products were 64-bit only on Windows for a while as well, due to Apple's last minute decision to drop 64-bit support for Carbon and force developers into Cocoa use for 64-bit apps. While Adobe addressed the situation with CS5, not every company out there has the same resources available for such a rewrite of their Mac-specific layer on multiplatform software.

tl;dr -- Apple is at least partially to blame for the slow move to 64-bit apps on the Mac platform.
Here's a recent example: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/11/29/white-male-tech-startups-...
This is a fantastic product. Definitely try it out.
Are you serious? Because you disagree with the incubator that they are covering's policies, you think xconomy.com is writing drivel?
Same here. For $40 for pro software, i'll buy even i I don't need it. By the same token, if I see a board game on sale for $10, I take it and figure out later if I like it or not.

I like the idea; i'll leave them figure out if it makes business sense. One thing certain: if their retail price had been $100 on special to $40, I would not even have clicked.
actually, i am in nyc! drinks sometime would be excellent - drop me an email at my HN username @gmail.

i checked out your blog and we definitely share a lot of the same ideals about sex- very cool. as a heads up, your blog's RSS feed is broken right now.
They probably used up all their bandwidth for the month.
They do grow back. Just destroy the chip, then there is no way to read them out again.
Arduino uses GCC as its compiler.
Do you recommend any particular handset?
* 401(k) through employer, maxed out (or close to) every year.

* Additional $200/month into a (taxable) mutual fund

* Whole life insurance through a solid insurer (Northwestern Mutual in my case).

* Rolled over all old 401(k)'s into a rollover IRA through my financial advisor.

Plan is to not have to work past 55.
I really like the RFID entrance I get when traveling back to New Zealand... especially after a 13 hour plane ride!

The tourists and kiwis with old passports all line up in a giant queue, while myself and a few others walk up to some machines, scan our passports, have a quick photo taken, and then just stroll on in!

I've flown to NZ with just carry-on luggage and caught a cab within 10 minutes of the plane doors being opened.
I just thought I'd give groupon a spin to see what the buzz was about. It has a pretty slick landing page that enticed an email address out of me. V-day is coming up and there was an FTD $40 coupon or "Groupon" available for $20 so I thought what the hell, my wife needs some flowers, why not? I click to purchase, it asks me for my basic info, including an email address and CC info. I complete the form and..

Sorry, this email is already in use by another account (or something like that)

Frickin' form: completely blank. Was I supposed to check my email first and create an account? If so, why did it let me get to the order page. So I check my gmail, even the spam folder, and nothing. Even if I signed up a long time ago, an email would be in my archive.

Should I fill it out again with a different email address? Sure... I got time to write this comment, right?

I guess if I end up using this thing more than once, then that will prove the hole bubble charge false. But so far it's not looking good.

Sorry, had to rant.

Update: blank page with window.location.href = "/mygroupons"; after completing the purchase. I sh*t you not. Chrome on Windows, people!
The title really should read, "Using a belt sander to ensure your biometric prints never match your actual prints".

Jacques is in for a world of hurt when he next travels abroad.
So did Leah Culver's other web-chat project (http://leafychat.com/) get rolled into this?

It looks interesting, I wonder if these type of projects will eventually replace IRC. I could definitely see popular open source projects using this over IRC, especially if they have features like snippet embedding.
Tomer has some good teachers, but the admin side is one of the worst bureaucracy experiences I've seen. I've heard good things about Bogazici, including that they didn't let you speak anything but Turkish on campus.