skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Write a Brainfuck interpreter. Seriously, it is trivial to write a simple one, slightly harder to write a compact one, and then just hack on to optimize it for speed. There are great test cases too including ASCII Mandelbrot renderer :)
"Physics" has no real relevance to my issue. Microbiology is the main issue (edit: plus chemistry). It's a long story. Short version: Doctors were all too happy to condemn me to death. I was all too happy to politely tell them to shove it. I'm currently off all drugs and healthier than I have ever been in my life.

Peace.
At least he didn't spell "lose" with two O's like I've seen half a dozen times on HN in the past month!
nike id site,
Startups need to do everything more, one could also say.
proof that interface and pleasing users means little to acquire vast sums of money from old economy capitalists.
With $41 million to work with and an insane amount of PR (even bad PR), Color will probably end up rising from the ashes and laughing all the way to the bank.

It's the Rebecca Black of iPhone apps.
This isn't 50% of all tweets, it's 50% of all tweet impressions. That is, multiply each user's tweet by the number of users following them when they tweeted, and you'll find that 20K users (likely, people with more than a million followers who tweet with frequency) are half of all these impressions. However, the number of tweets you'd get by following the 20K would be far smaller than the firehose, probably a few hundredths of a percent at most.
Well, it doesn't read ID3 tags, but if you just drag your music folder into Firefox, you can browse around and play MP3, Vorbis etc. files. It also works with videos.
Ask HN: How to get around programmatic writers block?
I'm a corporate java programmer in Cleveland, OH. Not exactly a job that inspires creativity, not exactly a city that inspires it either (that second part is slowly changing). I've done some Rails projects and a friend and I tried our hands at writing an Android app a few years back. Since then I've obtained a Mac with a desire to do some more serious Rails/Python/iOS/Android programming. Partially for myself, partially to shore up my resume as my wife searches the countryside for a job.

My problem is this: I've assembled everything I need to get started and I regularly sit down in front of my computer and fire up my tools and then....nothing. I am having serious drought in terms of creativity and ideas for sites/apps. I work at a company that has formal requirements gathering and software design (actual this-is-how-the-software-works design, not this-is-how-the-software-looks design), and so I feel my ability to think up things on my own is atrophying and I'm curious what other HN'ers do to spark creativity, especially if they're not the artistic type.
Stretching the definition of programming language a little, but CSS is pretty awful.
ATLAS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviated_Test_Language_for_A...

"The ATLAS language was initially developed by an international committee made up of representatives from the airline industries, military services, avionics manufacturers, and Automatic Test Equipment manufacturers. The goal of the committee was to design a standard English-like language that could be easily understood and used by both avionics and test equipment engineers."

The result was the goatse of computer languages.
But isn't that obvious? Isn't that basic supply-demand?

(All but the 'don't invest in currency-unit tied business' advice)
Free Audiobook Resources
Instrumental music downloads - hints and tips
He has, but it was too long to fit in the margin of the whiteboard...
They have done a very poor job of convincing users of the app's worth (and f¤#"ing purpose!) and sceptics of the prudence of the investment.

They, dare I say it, may have to pivot.
We thought of doing something like this for college students with crowdmarkup.com a while ago - didn't follow through after the first lean startup machine - best of luck.

My Suggestion - Build a 1 sided tool to get jobseeker contact info - solve 1 side of the chicken/egg problem first. Maybe some type of resume critique application - checks for spelling errors, makes some simple suggestions like using action words and using more qualitative numbers. Maybe matches keywords in a job description to the resume and gives a match score.

Also, make sure you know the # of job seekers you want in advance so you know the milestone you're looking for and it's not an arbitrary number.

Finally, make sure when users submit their resumes for the critique, they consent that it might also go into the next version of the application.
Depends how you define spectacularly.

Will it achieve absolutely nothing of note? Very unlikely.

Will it justify the investment? Much harder to tell.
Crunchtime - a new show where CS students build games in 10 weeks. In Scotland.
Too early to tell / not enough information.
A bit off topic: while I am confident that Page will do a great job in his role, I think that if Eric Schmidt really does take on just a minor role at Google then that will hurt the company.
Yes: transcribing it. I wish the OP had gone the extra mile, but I'm glad this review was shared.
I get a 'Not available in your country' error for that video.
Herpes Dating - HPV Dating - STD Dating
Whoops, for some reason I put "honest" in quotes, I didn't mean that and I can't edit it now.
yes they will fail. they have already spent money carelessly on their domain name. Just think what a few good developers could have done with that money.

Unless they change radically, which I dont think they will, they are going to die.
They've already shown that they budgeted a large amount of money for marketing by purchasing color.com for 350k. I'm sure at some point they will start infiltrating their marketing into news/media.
I always add to my inputrc

set completion-ignore-case on

It relieves some of the annoyance factor when tab-completing in linux.
The warning of "don't use it alone" is worthless.
The UI is such a mess still now i can't understand how it work.
Agreed.. Furthermore I think the whole purpose of this company is to get acquired by Facebook prior to their 2012 IPO (possibly trying to get Microsoft, Apple, Google into a bidding war). We'll see if I'm right.

These are smart and well-connected founders and investors who know what they're doing.
I put together Ferrante for Android using Mirah:

http://github.com/technomancy/ferrante

It took a lot of diving into undocumented things; it's definitely at the point where to do much you have to be ready to blaze your own trails. Though while writing Ferrante I factored out a bunch of the icky build things in Pindah, so it's much easier now: http://github.com/technomancy/ferrante

It's a huge improvement over a year ago, when I had to get Charles to fix a bunch of compiler issues just to get the simplest of apps to compile: http://github.com/technomancy/Garrett
I think it's important to separate complaints about languages themselves and those about the spirit of the language and how it came into being. For example, I think people who hate on Java and Perl would probably agree that their designers had noble goals and clear thinking but, being human, produced flawed implementations.

On the other hand, there are deeper things to legitimately hate in the spirit of languages and how they came to be. C++'s 'everything but the kitchen sink' feature set reveals a lack of the essential job of curation in its design. I think it's fair (and not silly) to 'hate' this flaw, since it means you've observed and learned from that mistake. PHP's evolution has stemmed from the "screw it, just hack it out" mentality, with less thought to long term consequences of design decisions and inconsistencies. This attitude bleeds into the work built with it. I think it's fair to 'hate' these things, since they are important cautionary tales for people who set out to build something new for the world.
This came up once before, here's what I had to say: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2144142
You realize that taking 41 mm raises the bar substantially on the exit price right? Conservatively speaking if 41 mm represents 49% of the company its being valued at 82 mm. Thats the first round. Should they need to go back to the funding trough again the value is going to go up even further. With the standard requirement that investors be paid back first (liquidation preference), I don't think the investors and founders are looking at an early exit (< 2 years) any time soon.
Does this remind anyone of the marketing/PR around Cuil?
Yeah, but the 'stair steps' are way smaller. To start an airplane business, you need to go in with some big bucks to get things off the ground. To start a bingo card business or a bug tracking system or a project management system or a lot of other things, you can get by with a lot less, and ramp up as needs be.
hehe ya. I have to start from somewhere, so decided to have job seeker profiles first :)
Second Release
Hey, everyone:

We released our site for public BETA, and could really use some constructive critiques. Feel free to rip it up, just please explain your bashing so we can improve.

Many Thanks in advance.

Josh

http://www.SpotBanks.com
Crap! I made this site pretty quickly, so there's not a ton of thoughtfulness. I'll go back and try to make it work for netbooks, etc.

To give you an idea of how much I didn't care to please a lot of the audience, it doesn't work period in IE. I should probably fix that, though.

Good tip.
In such a country, not talking to the cops is not necessarily better.
How to Fix Oversize Executive Compensation
It's related but not the same concept. Plutocracy means government by the rich; the Citigroup article discusses plutonomy, an economy of the rich.

The Citigroup report argues that income distribution is so skewed among the elites of the Western nations, there's a whole other transnational economy that has nothing to do with people on the lower side of the curve.

They're sort of arguing in the same vein as the "power law" meme that was popular a few years ago; that the concept of the average consumer, in a plutonomy, is meaningless and outmoded.
Part of the quest. I too was reading from the iPad.
Hi, first of all, welcome to Hacker News. I hope you will enjoy this site.

Please do not ever use URL shorteners around here. Thanks!
Fork a FOSS project and add a feature.
"Living in a society that floods us with unattainable expectations around every topic imaginable..."

Using advertising to program people to feel like they need material things (flashy car, big home, huge yard, latest gadget) to be happier has been a grandmaster move on the part of the elite to control average people in a very long running economic strategy. One of my nieces and her husband are the perfect example: they have a fairly high standard of living but if anyone they know gets something that they don't have, they try to immediately get the same thing. They have been programmed in a very real sense.
There is Myst for iPhone/iPad, btw.
Unless you're an insider, it's hard to understand how any opinions about their longevity would be anything more than knee-jerk uninformed speculation at the present.

I'm not very impressed with their PR posture or product so far, but I know enough about business to not count anyone out this early, especially those with a track record and money.
Here's why I don't need to try the app: I've been looking at Color's website, its app description in iTunes and Android, and at various blog posts linked to from HN, and so far not a single person has been able to tell us what the app actually does and how it's used. Why would I install something which no one can tell me the purpose of?

Sure, Color might be awesome for companies that buy the data collected through the app, but as a plain user, what's the point of the app?
It's kind of funny how willing the populace is willing to give more power to those who already have the most power.
I think it would stand a much better chance if every review containing "$41M" in the app store was discarded. The app may well deserve a one star rating, but is the money relevant?

Apples and oranges, I know, but it reminds me of Kindle owners polluting Amazon book reviews based on cost/availability of the Kindle version.
The most important part of blogging for startups seemed to be completely missing from this piece: historical record.

Startups need to blog to remember what they did and why they did (and this is the most important part) within the context of what was happening at that point in time.

We think we'll remember all of our brilliant moves and boneheaded mistakes. But we won't. And sometimes it isn't even obvious why we made them, out of context.

But a blog will provide an historical record of what we did when. So we don't repeat the same mistakes next time. And so lessons learned are documented.
Economics are boring. An influential billionaire telling people to go out and make something might make a difference. It's why quotes are frequently misattributed.

Who would care if Bill in cube B12 said the same thing?
The Color bashing is amusing, really, but at this point it's quite literally becoming marketing for them (perhaps that was their real genius). The more Yes upvotes it gets to flunk, the less likely that is it seems.

If this app is really so outrageously bad, then it seems odd to devote several of the top stories on HN to it; perhaps leave that to Reddit. ;)
The headline, perhaps, but the article itself is a very good read. It's more about what made Buffett successful and what makes a good business a good business than about plutocracy. The plutocracy bit was a sort of throwaway line in the middle of the interview used as a linkbait headline. But the interview as a whole was a lot less political than you'd expect from the headline.
Nice project!

After some use, there are some points I'd like to share with you:

* Everytime I save I create a new url. I feel bad, like I'm creating things I'm not gonna use... And this way I can't edit the already saved urls, so if I share one with my friends and then I want to change something, I can't. Maybe you could ask for an optional password before saving.

* If I create a custom CSS, let's say for dribbble, and then I click a dribbble link in the 'frame' in csspivot, the style is not aplied to the loaded page!

Btw, that's what I got: Dribbble Black http://www.csspivot.com/y036m (just for ff, srry I have no more time).

Good luck with the project! ;)
I really suspect that's not going to work. You need to find some means to populate the site with something of value to someone to start attracting one side or the other. I don't know what that would be. I've done a bit of reading up on this topic in recent weeks/months. I gathered a few links here at one time: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209

Here is a link to another discussion about the topic that has links to other good discussions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239281
Is it really HN's place to attempt to influence the fate of Color? I'm not a fan of the app by any means, but I'm not sitting here hoping for it to fail.
Ask HN: Where to send a 10th grader who needs a 2 week summer C++ course? 
A friend is in the 10th grade, is an avid IT enthusiast and he wants to learn C++ over the (US) summer. Any online courses / teachers that could be recommended? He would be open to a two week course on-site somewhere in the US if there is a particular really good course. Any ideas, help or suggestions on the best path to a career in IT would be greatly appreciated.
Ever wonder why your laptop fan turns on and you lose a half hour of battery life when you load up a tiny, blocky online video? It can't be because the video decoder is written in a language like Actionscript because everyone says performance doesn't matter...
This is just sickening.
Then what? spend an eternity in heart-break hotel with LispM & BeOS fans? ;-)
Color clearly has a much bigger vision than what we're seeing. Sequoia knows what they're building, and has the experience to know how much money it might take to build it.

Even if they have a 90%+ chance of flopping, the investment in them could be justified. If a VC sees the potential for them a market size like Google or Facebook and a small chance that they could capture it, tossing in $43 million makes sense.

So I think Color will most likely not be a success, but that doesn't mean the investment was a mistake.

I believe there is certainly a level of innovation in social connections that will make Facebook look like Lycos and Altavista. Color probably doesn't have it, but they managed to convince Sequoia that the might, and you have to take those gambles.
Water-Powered Spaceship Could Make Spaceflight Cheaper
Here's what I would be curious about -

Does anyone have any stats/history about companies that have in the past gotten the "big valuation/major PR" during their initial launch/funding and ended up actually becoming a $billion dollar business? I feel like the pattern is usually the opposite -- Google started as a grad school project and was funded with $100k (before Sequoia put in $25M). Facebook started a few years ago without a ton of fanfare and $500k, etc.

I feel like everyone is predicting failure because usually when companies and investors so loudly proclaim brilliance/future success in such a public way, we're used to seeing failure in the end (Cuil)...

Curious to hear any examples folks might have....
No one actually believes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis anymore, do they?
Something quite similar happened to me few years ago and I ended up with a very scary case of dysautonomia. Luckly it only lasted for couple month, but in this rather short period of time my whole perspective on live changed. It was only then when I truly started to appreciate the saying "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present."
Chrome 10: Succes (although I can only select a folder)

Firefox 3.6: fail

Chromium 10: loads, fails to play

Opera: loads site with errors, clicking button doesn't do anything
> Is it really HN's place to attempt to influence the fate of Color?

Certainly that is not HN's place or purpose. HN's purpose is to provide high-quality Hacker News. Its readership gets to decide what that is.

(Sidenote: A side effect of that is, yes, a force that can influence the fate of one project or another.)
I see what you mean.

After that $350k domain purchase they're only left with the measly sum of $40,650,000.
Going to Web Expo 2.0?
From out of town, will be in the Bay Area for Web Expo 2.0 from the 29th - 6th.

Sounds dumb but, I don't know anyone, so if you are a cool individual in the tech scene then I would to buy you a coffee for a conversation. Perhaps I can tag along with you at Web Expo 2.0?

Best,

Adam Kaye
Founder of Silicon Tally - www.SiliconTally.com
Owner of Railroad Square - www.RailroadSquare.com
"Sustainable" Developer of the ART-TECH Hub - www.ArtTechHub.com
Circa 2007. Still a classic though.
A friend once told me that an MBA teaches you all you need to run a business theoretically, but only making decisions whose outcome you are not sure of gives you the experience you need.

Great article
How the iPad revolution has transformed working lives
Albeit an old video, a fun talk about the merits of git, I was never really bothered with git before this. Haven't looked back.
well, if they bought it for 20 million, they'd be left with a measly 21 million
So I've been reading all of your comments and I'd like to address the issue.

1. Cost was/is a big issue. If it hadn't been, I would have hired someone locally. I picked the best (or what I thought was best) team at the time based on price and the intelligence questions I received from them.

2. The company knew I was a non-technical founder. I made is explicitly clear that they would have to use their best judgement to implement the required features without having me to review the code.

3. I actively encouraged them to use their best judgement. As things became viewable on the front end, I would give feedback and they would tell me what they thought would work.

4. The primary issue is a communication issue on two levels:

a) Communication between a non-coder and a coder
b) Actual messages not coming through (status updates sent on schedule, not being online at the right time, etc)

After multiple attempts to solve the issues myself, I decided the best thing I could do is find a coder co-founder. I did, and he is feeding back shorter, concerte, assignments to the outsourced team. We are also focused on iterating the release which means I hope to god we get rid of the godaddy landing page soon. This is to be followed by the primary component of the site and then we will assess from there.

As far as motivating the team again, that is a far more difficult thing to do. I think the best thing for morale is to make progress (that way they can be done with this blasted projected). I can't justify throwing more money their way (nor do I have money to throw at them). When I was in Egypt I was even thinking about flying to India and head to their office to see if I could help there. It didn't happen.

For those of you who are criticizing the way I handled the whole thing, fine, there are definitely areas where I made mistakes. If the whole thing collapses it was worth it for the learning experience, however, I am firmly committed to leveraging the outsourced team as much as I can via my co-founder.

Thanks for all the feedback,

Dale

PS: This is the most blog hits I've ever had (which isn't saying much).
Has HN become a watering hole? Believe it or not, it didn't start out that way. I remember people doing serious work to moderate away ValleyWag and other stuff that is intensely popular/viral but counter to the original vision.
Just to clarify, my only 'point' on body language was that writing "Study body language and you'll be pretty shocked at how often peoples' spoken words contradict their telltale non-verbal cues." un-sourced is unhelpful and doesn't answer the question.

I wasn't stating that there was not scientific basis behind the study of body language; only that if you are going to claim it, I would like to see it backed up with some science.

---

However if you like to discuss the specifics I think it's a very interesting topic. Certainly there are some cues that can be garnered from the study of body language, although from everything I've read the role it can play is over-stated.

Interesting choice of examples: I'm a professional poker player and the role of live 'tells' is generally assumed by non-player playing populace to be much more important than reality[1]. Everything I've read recently about criminal profiling has thrown it in to a negative light and questioned it's validity[2].

A lot of NLP has entered in to 'commonly held beliefs' or is now considered 'intuitive'. When someone is lying they look to the left to access the right hemisphere; this type of hand shake implies dominance; all that jazz. This stuff is easy to test clinically and there is just not the evidence in support[3]. As you brought up eye movement, one study sourced in the Wikipedia article shown no evidence of "a person's preferred sensory mode of thinking can be revealed by observing eye movement cues"

This stuff is very easy to believe and is certainly 'intuitive'. But to my knowledge it has no scientific basis; but I'm certainly interested to read anything that shows otherwise.

1. http://www.pokerpages.com/articles/archives/negreanu30.htm

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/15/criminal-profiling-... one article I read recently.

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Cr...
All this anti-color sentiment is really unbecoming. Just get over it and work on your own startup.
I now insist that developers spend at least a couple of hours per working day in my campfire room, so any issues or miscommunications are dealt with early.

i also have process guidelines documents that they have to read - its fine to deviate from them but be prepared to justify that decision.

however i'm also technical, so i can suggest alternatives to issues that crop up and i can recognise when i'm being bullshitted.