skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think this is uniquely American, more like ambitious or not. Otherwise it would be too easy for everyone to "hack" success by simply setting easily attainable goals.
I do not remember the source, but heard that the town had checkpoints at entry as well.

The guy was six and a half feet tall and on kidney dialysis. How was he not noticed for this long?
I'd never understand why people put the TL;DR section at the end.

Good Luck!
if Arrington's showing favoritism or is holding back, simply because he's invested in a company, it makes TechCrunch less relevant

It's up to you whether you want to read his stuff or not, and why. However, I do not believe that bias in and of itself disqualifies a speaker/writer/source from relevancy:

http://raganwald.posterous.com/bias

By way of a similar example, most people think Daring Fireball is biased. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with Gruber's investments, just his passion. Some people avoid his writing because of his bias, some embrace it, and some--like me--try to include it in a portfolio of things I read.

I have my own reasons for not reading Techcrunch, but Arrington's investments isn't one of them.
Should you be able to have access to your genome? Emphatically yes. If you can pay a company the cost to sequence it for you, you should be able to get your hands on the 3.2 billion basepair sequence of your genome in As, Cs, Ts, and Gs.

Should private companies be allowed to sell you medical interpretations about said genome ad lib? I think that this is where the case for regulation shines.
Wow you went on a cruise? You have money in the bank? You're going through YC again? Sounds awesome! Focus on the positives. You'll regret getting down in the dumps now, when you look back and realise how good you had it. Make the most of now and stop worrying so much.
I want the theories to be wrong too, it's just that I'm a sceptic in this case simply because of the utter awesomness that would be the result.

I will happily spend more than $100 just on delivery if that is required to make a payout in liquor (local Swedish flavors) across the world. Crisp paper is fully acceptable as well :)

Doubt we will ever settle this though... I have painfully little faith in scientific breakthroughs.
Fancycat.rb: blip.tv's smart JavaScript concatenator
What's with the downvotes ?

Makes no sense.
Manual for N55 spaceframe vehicles (open-source bicycles)
This isn't a real answer but... http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

In seriousness, just be aware that sometimes the changes you ask for can seem incredibly simple but have major ramifications for the overall design. Also, treat your designer like he knows what he/she is doing. I don't think there is a designer out there that doesn't want input but to some degree you have to trust their vision even if it doesn't quite mesh up with yours.

I also had a client that spent a month tweaking and tweaking (make the logo bigger, move it over about an inch, add this below the logo, etc.) and then was surprised when their website wasn't available on time. That can be frustrating even if you're getting paid hourly.
Because... they like their disks to not fail?
HTML5 Microdata, Microformats, and RDFa Tutorials and Resources
There is a huge problem with the linked article. He asks the rhetorical question: "is hiring only the best practical" for every situation. The answer is of course no, you can get by with competent or very competent and don't need the absolute best in a field, which few can afford.

But the question asked is a giant red herring that has nothing to do with his stated problem!

His actual situation, as he explains, is not that he is trying to choose between the best and the merely excellent. He is trying to choose between the completely incompetent (the only applicants he has) and no one!

That is an entirely different problem from deciding whether or not to hire the very best.
Facebook Deletes “We are All Osama Bin Ladin” Page
I don't see this event contributing positively to the revolutions in the Arab world. Some segments of society will surely hail him as a martyr and this is sure to deepen some divisions and could (theoretically anyway) undermine some of these revolutions.

This is a time where people need to unite and forget about what makes them different. I don't see this event helping this cause in any way. Rather it has the potential to do the opposite.

But I'm somewhat optimistic that hopefully it won't be anything severe.
Hacking the Customer Acquisition Game
Corrected to use actual location of Osama's compound, as determined by zeteo from satellite photos here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2506963, instead of the fake one making the rounds.
That's simply not true. Even in Nazi Germany there were pockets of resistance and people like Sophie Scholl who gave their lives because of their ideals. I for one am doing my best to resist tyranny in all its forms. I certainly won't write a backdoor or vote for anyone in favor of Patriot Act-style tyranny.
No, warned people here and on Twitter.
That doesn't solve the "casino security" issue though - unless you prevent people from discovering who your friends are. Which is also possible on facebook. The point is to be able to share the information, that's what facebook is for.

This whole story to me seems like "chainsaws the most appalling mutilation machine ever created", whilst that might be true [I doubt it] they're just a tool and one is at liberty to choose to use the tool how one wishes (within the confines of its locus of potential operations obviously).

Does naivety of users make a tool bad?
Thank you! For the widest possible appeal I would choose MySQL.
Good and bad advice, Identity and storytelling
Learn ROR or Django and make some traction. If you ever want to manage start ups you should have an idea of what's under the hood.
After botched child porn raid, judge sees the light on IP addresses
More points for laziness
Firefox doesn't support the notifications API either. Currently only Webkit browsers do.
The daily lunch delivery of India's dabbawallahs
The Emperor’s New Network Effects
Although you haven't cracked the big time yet, this still all sounds pretty bloody glamorous to me!
The context here is completely medical, it seems, but there are other issues as well:

Imagine an database where you could voluntarily, anonymously upload your genome to find relatives, lost parent-child connections, etc. I think this is also grounds for allowing people to have control of their genome and it doesn't require medical knowledge -- just a 3rd party company who can use a well-known algorithm (I'm assuming there is one) to say how closely you match someone else and what this likely means (same lineage, sibling, parent, etc).

Related to this, I really wonder what life is going to be like in this new world we're heading into where there is going to a large increase in the number of children and parents who find out that the children aren't the offspring of their live-in father. There are a lot of social implications of this.
Please don't take it personally, but I would never use that and neither should anyone else. First of all, building a 'notification system' is incredibly easy, it's just javascript popups. Reading through your code and adapting it to my own application would be a waste of time. Pick any decent js framework and you can do this within fractions of an hour.
Secondly - don't do popup notifications ever. They are the antithesis of user intent. Nobody ever 'wants' to see a popup.
This is a comment I made.
It sounds like 10 people would care about it in that example you gave.
Second, I think we need regulation here

You have no business telling other people what information they can or cannot acquire, and by what means they do so. Even if you're right, you still have no business dictating to others what they can and cannot do, simply because you consider yourself to be more learned and qualified to make a diagnosis.

I went to the doctor. I needed to have specific tests done, because my ethnicity is prone to very specific genetic defects in children. My wife and I needed to know if we had the appropriate markers and if precautions should be taken. I was quoted $3000 per person. That would be $6000 for myself and my wife.

23andme does those same tests and more, for $100 each. On top of that, our doctor is willing to use their results and add it to our medical records.

Again, who declared you or anyone, fit to determine which information I'm privy to and how I go about retrieving it?
The cruise was a Christmas gift from my in-laws. No way we could have afforded it on our own :)

Yes, there are plenty of positives to focus on, and that is what we are doing. It doesn't mean that there aren't still struggles.
Visualizing public data with Google Maps and Fusion Tables
Some data was transmitted in real-time to the Airbus maintenance facility. That's how we know (for example) that the pitot tubes appear to have failed, that the autopilot disengaged, it switched to alternate flight laws, etc.

Of course, satellite comm requires various things like intact antennas pointing the right direction. On-board recording does not.
Take the $500 and put it towards your start up.
This is a really great idea, and definitely something I would like to take part in. I would need more time to plan for it though - 3 months lead time is about right for me.
I would be willing to throw myself headlong into learning RoR or JS or whatever, except that I don't want to be designer or a developer.

Everyone in a startup has to do things they don't want to do, or aren't good at, in order to get off the ground. Knuckle down and learn enough to prototype your idea far enough to land some tech talent. At a very bare minimum, you're going to need a solid demo to land a competent tech co-founder. If you want to found a startup, get used to wearing a lot of ill-fitting hats. :P

It's something of an exhausted topic here on HN, but "idea guys" are a dime a dozen, and ideas have no intrinsic worth. You need to bring something tangible to the table, be it design or code work, or the money and connections necessary to make the design and code happen under someone else's steam. I'm not trying to be harsh, so please forgive me if it comes across that way, but "I have an idea and no money or practical skills to bring it to fruition" is so common that it's almost cliche; the way out of that is to make it happen, even if it involves developing skills that you don't necessarily want to turn into a career.
Zeon.js
The best place to hide is the last place you'd be expected to.
Also when you hear of cases like the man in Austria who kept his daughter captive in his cellar for years and of Phillip Garrido in California maybe people shouldn't be so quick to assume the worst motives of the Pakistani authorities
The History of Search (Infographic)
Does it matter? Maybe they will contribute something useful, maybe they won't.

If we shut them down now, they definitely won't.

Exactly - that's why I say don't shut them down, regulate them.

To prevent service providers with a government granted monopoly from extorting payments from the rest of the economy?

Is this a serious danger in the personal genomics market? I was under the impression that the FDA wanted to prevent consumers from purchasing genetic tests without receiving permission from another government granted monopoly (doctors).

There is no govt.granted monopoly here. All they want is to be sure that a medical advice is givem by 1) qualifieed entity 2) if 1) is not possible then atleast based on research done by a qualified entity (i.e. published results)
Starting a startup in a toxic environment?
What advice and tips do you guys have for starting a startup in an environment where everyone expects you to go work for someone else?

The ideal solution, from what I hear, is to move to an environment that supports the idea of startups but let's say it's currently impossible but it's something you keep in the back of your mind.

So now your stuck in this environment. Friends, family, etc tells you to get a job and climb up the ladder. Absolutely nobody wants to help you with your "crazy" idea. A relative is grudgingly willing to let you stay at their place but they aren't that thrilled with what your doing. What is you next step?

To help lower the variables, let's say it's an internet startup and you know enough basic coding to test out a few ideas you have. Oh, and your hungry too.
does facebook has the right to? or is it double standards?
Could we theoretically form some sort of trust network of HN users' personal mailservers? Would that help at all?
Someday google will have a streetview of the most wanted with his face blurred out
Clearly it's not practical advice. It's simply a reminder that just because the person can code does not mean they are worth hiring. For a lot of founders, they are under such pressure to produce output, the mere indication that a person wants to help them do that makes them not want to pass up the opportunity.

Startups have a hard time hiring because the benefits are not as solid as a large company, there is almost always not enough bandwidth to weed out the ridiculous number of bad candidates, and there are rarely hiring processes in place. However, for a smallish startup, hiring a bad person can literally ruin the company.

There are a lot more variables when hiring a person for a startup. For example, is there a strong cultural fit, is the person financially stable enough, is the person technically competent in the areas that need competence and able to learn new things, is he/she willing to spend what many regard to be extreme hours working and sacrifice normal aspects of their life, can he/she work quickly and also not cause friction, etc. Nobody is perfect and a lot of people simply don't prioritize their job or life this way, which is totally fine, but it's much harder for a startup to absorb those differences in the same way that a large company can. Therefore, there needs to be an emphasis on hiring the absolute best candidate you can find.

To translate this into practical advice: take a long time to hire a person (don't rush), only do so if you are absolutely sure that you want to hire a person, and even then hire them on a contract-to-hire basis, and be quick to let them go if things are not going smoothly.
It was covert enough that no one knew who the target was until well after the event. The neighbors knew something happened, but had absolutely no idea what.
You have to pay a $500 application fee and cover the cost of your own airfare?

I stayed at a pretty nice place for $10 a night in Costa Rica, so $500 covers 50 days during which one can code or swim and ends up owning outright whatever they write.

Have to be crazy to take this deal, it makes no sense.
This was my comment.

I am a 31 year old American citizen. As a free man of able body and sound mind, it is not the place nor the responsibility for any other person to restrict my access to the knowledge of my own genetics.

There is fundamentally no more personal or basic information about a human being than the very structure of their fabric.

If I choose to hire a company or specialist to sequence my DNA, that information belongs to me, because it is me. There is no distinction between the combination of genes that makes a man and the man himself.

Keep these facts in mind, because they effect all of us, including those of you who may read this.
IonMonkey: Mozilla’s new JavaScript JIT compiler
Is there a $500 application fee?
Google Apps Dev Blog: Upload all file types to any Google Account
FreshBooks Code Swarm
FreshBooks codebase evolution done visually.
I thought it was clearly to explain this: but it's still pretty crazy how much effort casinos will put out to thwart non-mechanical card counters.
Keep up the dream, screw going back to a 9 to 5 and something you settle for. Do what you love, I am in the same boat, I am moving down this summer to San Fran. and I think at times if I am making a mistake and say hell no! I rather be after my dream my whole life than settle for something. Its all about the chase of the dream.
I always thought notifo was a terrible idea. It doesn't really add any value. Change your idea please. I mean look at your services page. The number one thing is "google voice alerts" so you can save money by not getting texts. Let's say you save someone $1. There's no way they're gonna pay you $1 for that. Then you also list Skribit on that page, a dead service.

I would take the mobile notification technology and pivot to notifying about something people care about, like people in the vicinity with similar interests.
This is a brilliant idea.

Wish I had thought of this first, for Jamaica :(

Would love to know how it goes.
So I assume you are also against FDA regulation to force pharma companies to list adverse reactions alongside there drug commercials? If you are, then the discussion is mute, if you aren't then your point is.
Certainly and it's good to hear about the struggles. I was chatting with a guy the other day about how little information there is about failure and how then only really spectacular failures make the news. There must be so much we can learn from people who don't quite make it, or who make it small time!

When reading this post, though, I was just a little nonplussed at why you were telling me how hard it all is when it seems as though you're going pretty well.
Their is a shortage of skill trade people in the country. It might be time for some people to go down that career path.
This is a real stretch.
Nietzsche Source — Digital Versions of Nietzsche's Complete Works
A further insight into the type of man OBL was.

I heard BBC reporter John Simpson describe his one encounter with OBL which occurred in 1989 in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets. Simpson was interviewing some Mujahadeen when OBL rode in on a horse and tried to persuade them to shoot Simpson and his crew. They refused.
The biggest thing with a POS system is support.

Where I work (not my dept.) we were locked in a five year contract with a company based 5 times zones and 5,000km away.

Adding new printers, configuring printers, connected by cheap off-the-shelf switches and routers, too many people with admin access and employee turn-around losing the people who knew the system.

Add to that old and usually proprietary hardware that tends to get damaged faster in an environment with a lot of food and liquids (restaurant/bar).

Add to that restaurant people tend not to be technology oriented.

I can't see my workplace buying a bunch of iPad or iPod Touch devices just to use a brand new system. I know the staff would love it. If you had an iPad/serving tray that would be interesting too.

The perfect system would run on old existing hardware, be bullet proof, very intuitive, cheap and with lots of support every day at all hours.
AT&T To Impose Caps, Overages
I am a coauthor of the original emysql. I wouldn't recommend using Erlang for your average web application. I would recommend it when the problem you're solving thrives on an idiomatically distributed and fault tolerant platform.
Scott Gu is really respected around the company. I'm sure this will be viewed very positively from within. His rise through the ranks is pretty unparalleled in a corp like Microsoft.
That's easy enough without Facebook. One example: phone records.
I think the biggest problem is that Apple has created the behavior of going to the appstore to find stuff, and until startups and developers stop going this route, or Apple really starts doing what they say, and promote HTML5 apps.. then the transition will be slow.
>Split this video into a, "Here is what your servers will see, look how easy it will be to get those minimum-wage monkeys to use this" and a "Here is what you will see, look at how much more money this will put in your pocket as you are able to manage more effectively, you king of food you!"

Yes.

I'd really want to see it in action at a table to see that the drill-down method of entering orders is going to work fast enough - there's a reason that current systems have the "million buttons" interface and I don't think it is solely that POS designers can't make good interfaces.

As an improvement I'd add in something like a margin/upsell reminder system. The server would have someone to know high-margin items from the menu list and have key upsells highlight when a dish is chosen ... "do you want fries with that!".
Kinda hard to create the next Facebook when you have a tropical beach next door, no?
Thanks for the great post! I don't think you'll ever quit until you succeed. I think the key to creating that one successful company is about trials and errors. "Learning doesn't happen from failure itself but rather from analyzing the failure, making a change, and then trying again." Don't be afraid to fail early and fail often, until you hit the nail right on the head. One thing I didn't understand from looking at your project is, why did you feel the need to get funding to begin with? It doesn't cost much to keep a website alive, and you have the support of your wife in order to continue developing for Notifo or a new project. I'm also a co-founder myself, so I'd like to know if there's something I'm missing here. :) Another thing I'm curious about is, why you're so set on sticking with Notifo, instead of moving on with a new idea? Is it because you already have tons of users and you need money to expand your company? I've only been involved with one website and I'm still learning, so it'd be great to learn more insights so I know what to expect ahead of time. :)
Our YC Interview Experience
1. our company is called pogoseat and we've developed a web app for in-game seat upgrades. we're monetizing empty seats for the venue and giving fans the freedom to roam and an fan entertainment platform to find & engage with other fans, players and local business services at and around the venue.

2. the interview was exhilarating to say the least. like other groups (i think), we got in about 25% of what we wanted to say and the 10 minutes felt like

3. we wanted to discuss our different pricing model options, our ability to license our technology and partner with different white label ticketing system solutions and talk about how we've got 4 more hackers who we just brought on board but that we didn't have come to the interview and we got to none of that. i think yc was concerned that we actually had 5 founders, which we dont. We just brought extra folks from the team so careful about doing that bc you likely wont get a chance to introduce them as non-founders. we didn't start out with a pitch and we didn't show our demo. PG launched right into the questions and we were off and running.

3. i think it's important to keep in mind that PG and co. have strong reasons for asking the questions they do. they usually get right to the heart of the matter and in our case, our entire conversation basically centered around 2 key points. i would say the conversation was fairly cordial for the most part and was way closer to a lively discussion that to an interrogation. i think personally i talked too much and listened too little (hard when you're excited about the discussion, but something to keep in mind).

4. how did we do? well, we definitely didn't hit a homerun but i don't feel that we totally crashed and burned either. from what i've heard from yc alums, almost no groups that think they killed the interview get accepted, so i guess we've got that going for us.

5. we hung around yc campus for a couple hours after our discussion with YC partners and it's awesome to network and meet all these exceptionally talented and intelligent people doing exciting things. Not only that, but Amir, one of the founders of another yc applicant company, i think called tinkerheavy, already introduced our team to a MIT buddy who works for the Houston Rockets business strategy group on ticket pricing, partnerships with vendors and providing business intelligence to the Rocket's their various biz units.

looking forward to a phone call this evening but even if we dont get it, the experience and the people you meet make it worthwhile.