skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sure the same people who trade in their cars to dealers and buy new cars will take advantage of this. People seem to value convenience and simplicity over actually making smart choices or pocketing money (which is probably why debt levels are so high)
Thank you. 11k is higher than I would have guessed.

I don't understand your graph. What is the RA axis?
I wonder how currency designers deal with this? In the US, at least, they use Photoshop for this.
I'm young... Maybe a little too young
Hello everyone, new to HN.

This is probably a really simple question, but I haven't found answers ANYWHERE. Yes, I have searched plenty of times.

How old do you have to be; what is the minimum age to get funded by a VC/investing company. I'm currently the founder of a start-up (whos name we don't know yet) and I have another friend who is the co-founder. I've known him for more then 12 years, we're both 16 years old.

We have potential and a lot of confidence, however I believe the age will be very misleading.

What do you folks think? Do investing companies really look at the age, or just the start-up at hand.

Thanks!
That was my thought too. Given the size of the galaxy, the fact that we registered at all a view of the entire thing is, to my mind, astonishing. Go humans.
Source IP persistence causes hot spots. Big web proxies etc end up clobbering a single machine.
Applying is free and can't hurt. But if you get rejected just remember that YC seems to use a kind of mold to decide if a company fits with their program. YC typically does not invest in pure technology or software companies (the kinds of companies that could be the next Google/Microsoft), generally preferring web-based apps that can be launched in 3 months or less. You can see the list of companies that YC has funded in the past at http://yclist.com. From that you can gleam whether you fit the mold.
"Paul Buchheit, the founder of Gmail, had the idea to run ads within Google's e-mail service. But he and others say it was Wojcicki, with the backing of Brin, who organized the team that adapted that idea into an enormously successful product."

Nothing to do with the article, but I just find the "founder of Gmail" language a bit funny in this case. I don't normally associate the "founder" relationship with projects invested in and resourced (and, not to mention, wholly owned) by a large corporation. Being the initial developer != founder.
It's just a bit of a misnomer since the costs increase greatly after a year due to the costs of an EC2 instance seeing as it's not really a "free tier" as that article implies.
here's the response by Adam Langley, the guy who kicked off the "ssl is cheap" thing with another blog post: http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/02/06/stillinexpensive.ht...
The carryover from computer science education to practice is so weak that you have to teach and persuade all over again. People leave school, get a job, and spend five years only using knowledge from their sophomore "Data Structures in C" class while struggling to catch up on all the critical stuff that their CS program taught them nothing about (SQL, source control, release management, etc.) Having misunderstood the purpose of undergraduate education, they believe this experience discredits everything they were taught in school, so they hold you to a higher threshold of proof if you're pitching ideas they heard in upper-level CS courses than if you're pitching ideas they've never heard before.
I can't stand people who get the latest kit because they want to be "cool". I take a functional attitude to buying things, and unless there's a compelling reason for me to upgrade them (more pretty graphics, a new OS that my hardware cannot run, my old stuff is breaking), I don't see the point of chasing the latest and greatest. I guess we have early adopters to thank for driving innovation in a way, however I'm sure there's a lot of people out there with iPhone 3s who queued up for iPhone 4s purely because it is a status symbol.

Out and out materialism is a delusion of modern society.
> Last year I seriously played with using a local client (on Linux) for at least my mail. It was a baby step to the real leap I wanted to make, which was to get off GMail altogether. But none of the Linux clients were really to my liking; they all had some warts that were just too ugly for me to cutover.

Can anyone recommend any good Linux email clients? I've used Thunderbird, KMail, & Mutt, but none of them has really been to my liking. Thunderbird's got the sluggishness that comes with XUL, and KMail & Mutt don't fully support HTML (yes, I know it's an abomination, but other's use it, so I've gotten over it). So I've continued to use the Gmail web UI, even though I'd really prefer to use a desktop client.
That's misleading. Generally "blogspam" refers to a blog entry that has just copied something from somewhere else, so nothing is gained by reading the blog copy instead of the original.

In this case, the link you give says nothing about the possible connection between these changes and the Scoble incident. The blog link gives us a lot more information, and is by far the more useful link to those of us who have not been closely following this.
I thought the same of myself when I was in school. However, it really isn't better. It just so happens that you have more skill than your classmates in writing essays, and are able to cover up a lack of effort with skill.

My boyfriend is working on his Ph.D and I read his students' term papers on occasion. 90% of them are mind-bogglingly bad, but the school in general has a low expectation of "excellent." Thus, these people get A's.

Don't kid yourself; it's still mediocre. Read a graduate school paper in comparison. Ask a graduate school student to honestly grade your paper. ;) Better yet, watch a graduate school student write a paper. They go through ideas, delve into research, and realize they can't adequately prove their idea, so they retreat. And they read, and read. And write. And when they are done, they are fully aware of how limited their paper really is, because they know where they want it to be, but such leaps require original research, and that's what the dissertation is for. :)
___

Further, many of us (myself included) make decisions on which corners to cut when we only have limited time to work on a task. These are decisions we are less hasty to make when we have more time, thus the task looks bigger and we are more likely to procrastinate. Sometimes, like school essays, the 80% solution is exactly what is warranted. I'd suggest you look up timeboxing.
If we're the only intelligent beings in the Universe, then I argue that intelligence is overrated, thus our significance (except to ourselves) is negligible. Unless you go the route of arguing that without intelligence, there is no significance, and thus our self-significance is all the significance there is, in which case you're right - it's huge.
> but the last national convention I went to (many years ago), the cops rounded up the protestors, blocked off cross streets and then forced them into a line of cops with billy clubs who beat the hell out of them.

FWIW, I try to ignore folks who engage in counter-protests. The reasonable alternative is to assume that their cause is wrong.

Counter-protests are basically an attempt to stop someone from doing something that they have some right to do. If you're trying to persuade me, a third party, that said someone is wrong, counter-protests are, at best, completely useless. In practice, they're often an exercise in thuggery, either to make it more expensive for said folks to do what they have a right to do (have a convention, for example) or to intimidate them from doing so.

I's sure that you felt that your cause was just and that those folks were wrong/evil/etc. The way to persuade me is to do your own events and make your own argument.

No, you don't have a right to address an audience that someone else has attracted. You only have a right to address folks who have decided that they want to be addressed by you.

In other words, pay for your microphone.
Good Enough isn't good enough
I did something similar with EveryMentor.com. There have been quite a few fruitful matches so far (one was 2 wedding planners! how that happened I've no clue).
I know what the term means, but that doesn't make it true. The parenthetical in your statement is my point precisely; hardly 'hard-wired' if it's potentially a product of misguided thinking.
Romantic Valentine with No Deposit Bingo
We often see the word "founder" used as an abbreviation of the phrase "startup founder", but that only applies when used in the context of discussing a startup.

The word itself is perfectly applicable in various contexts that have nothing to do with startup companies; charities, political parties, bands, and internal projects. As such, referring to Buchheit as the founder of Gmail is reasonable.
Why is the link to the actual site buried at the bottom of some article? I Ctrl+Click'd two of the screenshots expecting to have the sites open in new tabs, but instead... nothing. I then Ctrl+Click'd the titles, and I got tabs to... this site telling me why I should visit the site I already wanted to visit?
The selection of chattel is your own arbitrary distinction. Being held against one's will, forced to labor, and not paid, is slavery.

Is your concern that slaves are not being bought and sold as property? Well they are bought and sold in many of these cases. Not all of them are, but not all slaves in plantation days were bought and sold either. You're trying to claim that slavery doesn't exist because you want to make it be only something exactly the same as plantation era slavery, which is an absurd claim for which there is no justification.
There's a distinction between substances that interact with brain chemistry in a particular way to enhance addictive behavior, and the circumstances that predispose some people more than others to seek out addictive substances as a means of self-medication.
Sagan was quoting 100 billion galaxies each of a 100 billion stars quite a while ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ex__M-OwSA

[NB That nice round figure has stuck in my memory since I first saw Cosmos in the early 80s]
Knowing I am replying to the article that is no longer available...

I'm an unemployed IT guy, who is currently getting unemployment. I couldnt afford the services I use unless Google offers them free. I do have a blackberry, for the very reason I bought it before the layoffs and I can still afford it (need it for interviews and emailing resumes).

I use Gmail. Because of BB integration, my email contacts are updated near real time with GMail. I also have 2 copies of my emails: phone and Gmail. And well, 7GB storage also helps.

I also use Google Calendar. It blends seamlessly with my BB calendar. I can make notations and such and know my data can be accessed by those I allow on the Google App. None of this loosey goosey crap we see from Facebook. And when Google Engineers do violate security and privacy, the company comes out and actually says "Terminated for Violating Privacy and Security". That takes balls.

I also have a Google Voice phone number. I have switched carriers 2 times. A while back, a number port that didnt was no longer a problem. All my client calls go through Google Voice as does all other business calls. Because of the BB app, I can call from the GV number directly, or use my cell phone's number. Voicemails are transcribed and sent via text, and they are all saved on GV.

If I was to calculate how much these services actually cost, I'm probably looking at 40-60$ month for all of them with the appropriate integration. But they're no cost to me. I know they COST for the service, and that is the knowledge that they datamine who I am and all content thereof.

A complete aside: A few weeks ago, I did a mall survey for Coca-Cola sampling 2 tyes of Coke I assume will be out on the market soon. I did about 8 pages of stuff, including demographic and all that. 5 pages were critique questions on the product I tried. For about 2 hours of work, and 2 cases of Coca Cola, I was PAID $120.

In both cases I knew what was asked of me in terms of time and/or data. And I was compensated well for both.
Rate My Startup (24-hour Hackathon Edition): CheeseBet
http://www.cheesebet.com

We're wrapping up Build Madison (a 24 hour Hackathon) and we wanted to get feedback on our project.

Our goal was to build an application from scratch in under a 24 hour period and see how quickly it could grow in a day. Seeing as our home team, the Green Bay Packers are in the Super Bowl, the most watched, most discussed and most bet on game, we figured we should build something around that.

We would love your feedback. (Note: It is currently only working in Safari, debugging in process for other browsers)

The winner of todays CheeseBets gets a 2 pound brick of Fresh Wisconsin Cheese from a castle made of Cheese http://www.marscheese.com

Who do you want to win the Super Bowl? What do you think Fergie will be wearing at half time?
I guess I could also comment about the article itself.

It's great that Susan is an influential level-headed intuitive executive at Google, and I suppose it's somewhat noteworthy that it was her garage that was originally used as Google's office, but aside from that I'm not sure what the point is. Her style is reminiscent of several senior vice presidents at several companies I've worked at, and her contributions don't seem manifestly larger then any other SVP in charge of a major project. Sure, she makes the most money at the company, but I'm not sure that entitles her to a special spot in Google's history at the same level as the other 12 SVPs and certainly not the founders themselves.
Ultra High Fast, no less. Personally, I only use Ludicrous speed cables.
You may run into issues simply because you are too young to enter a legally binding contract, among other things.

You've probably also read that the investment is as much in the people as the product/concept, so age plays a role, even if just subconsciously.

Do you have an idea of what you are looking for in terms of size of an investment? You might be better off with a local angel sort of investor vs. A traditional VC route.
To Cops At Least, Criminal Oversharing is Caring
Rentalship Is The New Ownership in the Networked Age
A great response to a pretty horrid marketing fluff-piece. A couple of points:

CAs (public ones, at least) are generally phasing out 1024 bit end-entity certs. The VS group are only allowing for 1 and 2 year certs, while GoDaddy, Comodo, Digicert and more are pretty much not issuing 1024 bit end-entity certs except by specific request.
None will issue any that are valid after 31st Dec 2013.

Lots of talk in the other post and a mention here of SNI - which is problematic as far as browser support goes, as was mentioned.
However, there are UCC/multi-domain certificates available. They too have caveats (all the domains have to be validated and in one certificate, so for example a shared web-host might have bobspornshack.com on the same cert as saintmaryschurch.com), but for entities who don't mind that and want to cover a multitude of domains/subdomains that a wildcard might not, they can offer a reasonable alternative.
Wikipedia Works To Close Gender Gap
If your live with your parents try to bootstrap your company without investments.

I think you must be emancipated to own your own business at your age. Think in young actors.
Until this weekend I was also using Debian on my servers and Arch on my workstation. Recently I've started to manage my servers with Puppet. Since Puppet don't support pacman, I installed Squeeze on my workstation and I'm now managing it with Puppet. I might have to follow testing on my workstation, but the advantage of sharing parts of the configuration with my servers has been huge.
I haven't read through all the comments yet... I like the idea, the site's design is pretty awesome, but I'd suggest making the "Help a Hacker" and "Get Startup Help" buttons more prominent and easy to find. It actually took me a bit of hunting to finally find them on my profile page.

Might work well to have them on the index page _if_ you're signed in. Otherwise you get the copy on what the site is and how it works.

Just an idea :) Well done though!
Not really. It's well stated that the costs are ignored, with exception of bandwidth, for a year. After that, "normal" costs are applied.

That's a simple answer, and what I did with Amazon: I went to Wal-Mart and bought a $15 Visa. When the money runs out, no more service. It keeps recurring costs such as these down to a sane level with no chance of going 'nuclear' like some of those AT&T bills did with overseas data.
It would only show up as a parameter "relevant" to whatever sites were next in the clickstream. Remember, not every page transition is Google -> other site.

They'd also be gobbling up tons of random things from forums and whatnot (which should appear on long tail searches, if we knew where to look), most of which spam the heck out of you with random parameters, forum names, and whatnot.

> I see no justification for the idea that url parameters are somehow a more difficult challenge in this regard than the mass of crap that is content on the web, which we know they crawl and index at a massive scale.

Which is why I see no reason to assume that they don't understand or attempt to understand the actual meaning of parameters passed to one of the biggest sites on the internet.
Internal projects is the one outlier there I don't agree with. At every single company I've worked in, I've spearheaded new ideas and new projects I think it would be worthwhile for the company to pursue. It has happened that the company chooses to invest in the idea I brought forward, but in that case I wouldn't consider myself the "founder" of "idea X". I was the origin of the idea, the main cheerleader, the developer of the prototype, the project manager, etc., but not the "founder".

I don't know, maybe it's an asinine point, but I don't think that's typically how the word founder is used, and it still seems funny to me.
IBM's Watson to Compete Against Jeopardy's Top Two Living Players
It'd be nice if the Android Market had a place to explain why certain rights are needed by the developer so this kind of thing doesn't cause such an uproar. You'd still have to take the developers word for it, but at least they'd have a chance to defend themselves before the public gets to worked up about it.
"Founder of gmail" might be reasonable, but to my ear, "creator of gmail" sounds more natural.
The Cost of Egypt's Internet Blackout: $110 Million+
> they did, in fact, remove the files that they themselves uploaded to Google from the litigation.

I meant to write "YouTube", not Google, there. But the point still stands.
I would be sincerely interested in hearing what the "support model" is for anime/movies/books/etc, because "give the software away for free, charge for support" is really just another way to say "charge Fortune 500 companies metric truckloads for the software, let everyone else freeload in the hopes that they work for a Fortune 500 company and will be an infection vector for you."

Fortune 500 companies do not strike me as having huge anime consumption habits which they wouldn't blink at writing 6 figure yearly support contracts for.
I'll have to admit, slightly more engaging than watching paint dry.
I recommend checking out the other pieces on his site---all very beautiful. Several others also build on the theme of turkers interacting with each other, albeit through a limited channel.
If your idea or business is good enough...the VC's will figure it out for you. Go ahead and pitch them, the age issue can be overcome!
I don't think any parent could be sane, rational, well-informed, and opposed to vaccinating their kids, so clearly there has to be something more going on there. And it's not that parents are insane.
Non-aggression axiom
I suppose "De gustibus non disputandum est" applies here. Oh well.
I was tinkering with @font-face in a project website I was working on. It's pretty cool, but unfortunately Firefox renders the text using the fallback font until the font specified via @font-face has loaded, resulting in some ugly snapping around as the various fonts are loaded.

I hear its fixed in Firefox 4.0, though, so I think I'm going to hold off on @font-face until its out of beta.
UML is more naturally mapped to OOP than to flat relations, and relational programming is more natural for a functional language.

See http://web.mac.com/ben_moseley/frp/frp.html
Sure - no problem. Just to give you some context, I got my implant in 1991, and technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since then.

Cochlear implants are quite different than hearing aids. Hearing aids just amplify sounds. Cochlear implants actually directly stimulates your auditory nerve via a surgical implant, mimicking sound. Normally, sound waves pass through your cochlea and stimulate the multiple hair cells, triggering different "sounds" (as interpreted by your brain). Since the cochlear implant stimulates the auditory nerve more directly, once a person is implanted, the person loses all of his or her residuary hearing. Obviously, only people with profound or severe hearing losses are allowed to get a cochlear implant.

My cochlear implant has two components - the inner and external portions. The external portion is the speech processor and it looks somewhat like a hearing aid without the ear mold and it has a magnetic part that attaches to your head. The speech processor converts sounds into electrical signals that goes through a magnet that is attached to my head. The electrical signal will pass through the internal parts of my cochlear implant (the implants itself) and stimulate the nerve, causing me to hear sound. I should add that the conversion process filters out most background noises and focuses on frequencies used for speech. As a result, I can't really appreciate music because with the limited frequency range of the cochlear implant, music sounds all muddled to me.

Of course, that's the technical part. I can hear, but I can't hear anywhere as well as a hearing person. I still have a lot of difficulties hearing in a noisy situation, such as restaurants, bars, etc. I can't really differentiate between certain sounds such as b/ps, g/hs and the like.

I can, however, converse with most people. I have an "accent" because I learned how to speak relatively late - 8 years old. I have met people who got their implants when they were two or three and they barely have an accent.

One thing I should also add - most people who receive a cochlear implant need special training to use it. Since I was one of the first 500 children to receive a cochlear implant after the FDA approved it for children, I underwent intensive speech-and-listening training. I had to learn how to listen since I had no frame of reference for sound. I'm sure you can imagine how hard it is to get a six-year old to sit still and practice listening for hours at a time. It took me two years before I could start learning how to speak. I didn't feel comfortable speaking in public until I was thirteen or so.

Of course, the process is quite different for someone who heard before they got an implant because he or she has a frame of reference. After talking to younger implant recipients, I get the impression that the technology and training methods have improved, so the whole process isn't as onerous anymore.

Hopefully this wasn't too much information and if I misstated something (probably biology-related) I apologize in advance! If you have more questions, feel free to ask!
How Not to do Online Utility Billing
Geocoder - Modular Street Address Geocoder (Ruby)