skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
not that surprising...once you have enough money to cover the basic necessities the rate of return on happiness goes down big time.

I mean if you think about it, with just 60K/yr you can afford 99% of the stuff a millionaire can(provided you don't live in California). Sure you aren't driving a Ferarri, and don't live in a bigger house, and don't go to the same restaraunts or take the same vacations, but chances are you have very similar electronics(maybe you keep yours longer), eat the same food(or at least can afford to) and sit in the same train/traffic on your way to work and shop at the same grocery store.

And if you think about it, most millionaires don't drive Ferraris, they drive average cars like Accords and Camrys and F150 trucks, so chances are, the guy making 60K/yr probably own a better car than that millionaire, because he wants to appear to others as if he has money.

I'd probably extend that to about 100K, but after that chances are you have way more responsibility and won't even be able to do anything with all that money.

Reminds me of this anecdote, can't say word for word, but it was something to do with a rich guy going to mexico on vacation, meeting a fisherman and telling him that he should work harder. The fisherman asks him why do you do it, and he tells him so that he can retire at 65, buy a house at a little village, so he can fish and spend time with his family. And the mexican says but I have that now, and I work only a few hours per week doing what I love.
Thanks. Chicago's got quite a lot on the news startup/citizen news front, we're trying to bring new stuff to the table.
Awesome you guys are going this. We should tie this up with the Hacker Meetups we've been running for the last 6 months in London.
With a good investment stratagy you can live off of ~4% of your capital per year and keep up with inflation. 4% of 5M is 200k/year. But if your retiring early you should aim for a 50% cushion which works out to 133k/year which far from amazing when you need to pay for your own heathcare etc.

PS: Rich means "Possessing great material wealth" which I think it stands for more than just the ability to support an upper middle class lifestyle without working.
Ted Dziuba - Sun may or may not be about to obliterate Oracle and Microsoft
Jorn Barger on AI: "Fractal Thicket" Indexing
It does indeed extend to three or more, as others have outlined above. For three couples:

On the first day, nothing happens, which surprises no one, since all the wives know there are multiple guilty parties.

On the second day, nothing happens again. A wife reasons: "If my husband were innocent, then the other two wives would see only each other's husbands as cheaters, which is the same situation as if me and my husband were not on the island at all. By the logic of the two-cheating-couple case, they should then have killed their husbands today. Since they did not, my husband must have cheated, too."

Thus, all the wives kill their husbands on the third day.

The logic extends easily to more couples.
MobileMe Problems Show Apple Needs an Infrastructure Lesson
Even a very risk-averse person would see B as clearly better, but a risk-averse organization will usually prefer option A.

Nobody gets in trouble for following the rules. Besides, the NHS, as an organization, sees thousands of dead babies a year, why should it care about another?
I disagree: having driven a hybrid for some time, I don't want to be looking at the dashboard to watch my driving efficiency all the time. A non-visual feedback que like this would help me as a driver be continously aware of my driving efficiency.
I know you'd rather be there in person, but here's the next best thing. Last year, Berkeley did a one-day Ruby on Rails course and put the videos online.

http://radlab.cs.berkeley.edu/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails_1-day_cours...

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4910EFAA8600A920

EDIT: You mentioned getting your questions answered quickly. I'm constantly amazed at the number of smart and responsive people in IRC channels. You might want to give that a shot.
Open Source JavaScript Template Engine for HTML
Foxconn Building 800,000 iPhones A Week
`git add -p` is even faster :P
You would think that someone is already manufacturing infant-sized dialysis machiness. Throughout the story they emphasize that NHS has no such machines, never quite saying if hospitals elsewhere have them. Is that because NHS just refuses to buy any?
Is there a need for a such a phrase at all?

I think it's pretty clear websites continually evolve, grow, etc.
Why bother? Sure, you might save a few dollars a week, but in exchange you'd spend your whole driving time depressed. Not worthwhile.
Delta Outfitting Entire Domestic Fleet With In-Flight Wi-Fi
Why my relationship with Eclipse is complicated
Vint Cerf calls for Internet speed limits
Robert Maxwell was an avowed socialist. He was once a rival to Rupert Murdoch in the news business. He was also called a "champagne socialist." I remember on 60 Minutes, he was asked how he could be a socialist and yet have the private jet and the yacht. He replied that he was forced by his position in our society as a captain of industry to have all the trappings.
All the wifi in the world isn't any use when your battery dies.

Seriously, this is awesome, but I think I'll take a power outlet over wifi.
It's a great app and I use it primarily to access IRC networks outside the corporate firewall. Trying to remember where I first heard of it and I believe it was Hacker News (recommended in a comment).

To be honest, though, I would probably stick with irssi or Colloquy if it wasn't for the firewall limitations at work. I think it'll be difficult to compete with the responsiveness of a native client app, but maybe people like me who run into firewall restrictions or people who can't install software on their work computer will be the types of people you could market freemium accounts to; essentially, tech savvy business users. And if its techies you're after, I imagine you will have a tough time making money off of ads; most of us just don't even look at them (however, give a look to how Pandora serves up ads). So freemium may be the way to go here. For paid accounts, you might also consider offering a searchable and downloadable transcript log (IRC clients offer this already, but I'm sure you could differentiate by making these logs more accessible).

I'm curious as to what others think about this.
This is a perfect representation of the classic ethical dilemma, the Trolley Problem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem].

Risk-averse organizations fall into the same category as people who would decide not to throw the lever, because if they don't take any action, then they aren't responsible for any of the consequences (which is stupid, imo).
By the standards of most of the world, "comfortably middle class" in the US is rich.
You might also want to look into a laptop with better battery life. For most domestic flights I have no problem with battery life.
With MobileMe, Apple Bites Off More Than It Can Chew
Yea I would use grub and set time out to 0, and have it default load up a windows xp partition. the average agent wouldn't have a clue.
That is indeed a great visualisation of some not-very-interesting data.

The only interesting point is the way that the host countries dominated the medal rankings for the first few decades. At the St Louis Olympics practically all the medals were taken home by US-based athletes.

Of course, it is no credit whatsoever to a country to take home medals at the Olympic games. I'm from Australia, a country which punches far above its weight in the Olympic games, but that's only because we have a taxpayer-funded National Institute of Sport to train the athletes (and are, to my understanding, the only non-Communist country to have one).
Seems news.yc is getting more and more dupes these days, such as this one. Great article nonetheless, but it has been shared before :)

There's a startup idea... give me concentrated data collected from various places on the internet (Reddit, YC, Digg, Del.icio.us, etc...) on a given topic. That's really what I want to see when I search for things like nginx, mod_wsgi, git, etc...

My little brain tells me this doesn't exist yet... but surely correct me if I am wrong :) For the record I am talking about the entire interweb (as we know it through popular "social" websites like those aforementioned) not just entering the git tag into delicious.
Aurora (Part 1) on Vimeo (Mozilla Labs)
It looks good. I do have one minor suggestion. Part of what you're about is helping people find apps. From About Page: "What if, ... you could find the best webapp for your needs, at any given time, and instantly compare it to all of its competitors?" I really like that idea, and it would be useful to me. Currently, no one has got them all in one place and compared them. In fact, just a short time ago I did a post on YC asking about tools because I know I had read about them but forgotten where. So you definitely have me there.

I thinking building on this would really up the usefulness of your site immensely, because people want to know what's out there when they're looking for tools. Rating is secondary to someone looking for tools. Instead, they need to know what tools exist. Building out the categories more is a suggestion, as would be providing your own content (editorial) on how well apps in the same category work compared to each other. For example, if you're looking for a commenting system for your blog, what are the pros and cons of the major offerings. I understand this might run into a problem of what is a web app and what isn't, but people love to have someone else do the work of finding them a solution. That involves more than a one line description and a rating.

Rating is good to eliminate the lowest bottom feeders, but it doesn't help you choose between two five-star programs. Original editorial content helps people by providing more information, as will user comments of course once you get a mass of users.
Is the Mozilla FireFox 3 SSL policy bad for the web?
How to organize your meetings
I always defined "rich" as being independently wealthy, and 5M is plenty to achieve that.
Youth teen boot camp alternative.
A Programmer's Manifesto
Is it wrong to judge a text by the childish (or marketing-oriented) front page?
Could Web Equity Save The Aussie Tech Startup Industry?
What do you mean launching your startup here? I'm new to hackernews, how does one do that? Is it just a comment like this or submitting a press release?
Oh, I was thinking in the mindset of Boston <-> San Francisco which is like 6 hours. (changed 2:43pm EDT. brain == !functioning)

For the usual flight, battery is fine and wifi is a win!
If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that there is no such thing as excess acceleration.
> I want to start a tech start-up with only stupid people

It's been done.
Ask PG: Did you start YC with your own money?
How did you get YC started?
Bear in mind that half of the users are using the widget - embedded in someones website - so these users aren't quite as tech savvy.

I think the most likely outcome will be premium accounts for techies, with extra features - scripting, etc, and advertising supported for other users. Also a premium widget for websites that don't want the ads...

Lots of options open.
No, there is some interesting data. The geo-politics embedded in it show up really well. East, west germany reunifying, Soviet Union disintegrating, the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott by the Americans, the back-at-you boycott in 84 by the Soviets, and Brazil becoming a force (as their economy strengthened perhaps?).
Edit: Also, Japan's absence from the '48 edition after the second world war. Fun going from the map to Wikipedia to find out the reason for some major perturbations.
Gmail hits 7 GB
From Seth's post:

Why not consider making it easy for the confused to ask for help? And treat them with respect when they do. If you don't create a little confusion, it's unlikely you've built something remarkable.

I think it's an interesting way to look at things, but ultimately flawed. When confusion exists, there are many ways to alleviate it. Facebook takes the "blank slate" as an opportunity to actively educate the user. So does 37Signals (http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch09_The_Blank_Slate.php).

These things may not turn "n00bs" into power users, but they'll at least reach a level of proficiency where they feel comfortable. That's the crucial first step. It only takes a few of them to advance to the next level (harnessing their understanding of your design to think of new ways of applying it) to make things really interesting.
Seemed to work for Yelp.
Boston <-> SF is only 10 hours if your flight is delayed 5 hours.

OTOH, wifi + power on a NYC->Asia flight might make economy for 12-15 hours almost bearable...
I just found a game called "Immune Attack" about obviously the immune system. I haven't played yet, but from what I can tell, players control a nanobot/artificial immune cell that is fighting off parasitic invaders. The Federation of American Scientist are working to push the development of more games. I also discovered that some hospitals have an E.R. game that prepares Doctors and Nurses for...you guessed it emergencies. I think this is a start, however I imagine that entities creating for profit are likely to consistently produce the better products.
Seems like somebody read JavaScript: The Good Parts... but didn't quite get it.
New Lotus tech for electric cars; hack it and add a TIE Fighter sound
Short answer: no.
Long answer: don't ignore any users you potentially want to have. It's just bad business.
Yes, people put up a post asking for feedback or announcing they've launched. Usually its takes the form of "Ask YC: What do you think of my start-up idea?" or something along those lines. It helps not to be spammy about it, and sticking around to answer questions is always a good idea. So is having a tough skin, because people will question your every move.

Some recent examples:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267640

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267049
The problem with this is that planes are basically the last safe haven from work. Even vacations aren't sacred anymore.
Let me add an app while I wait for the confirmation email. Don't display it until my account is confirmed.
AA has power outlets on all of their domestic mainline (not AE) flights. Not every seat has an outlet, so look at seatguru before you pick a seat, but they're not hard to get.
Hey, Thanks tstegart. I whole-heartedly agree. The categories, aside from high quality reviews are the most important part. When you want to find the best app for a particular use, you don't really care about how good it is for some other use.

To me, it's kind of like Yelp - sometimes I want to just know what has the best food, and don't care about the service. Sometimes I want to know both.

What I'm still trying to figure out is how to implement this from a user perspective - it's difficult enough to get a user to provide a review, let alone multiple reviews for different purposes.

Perhaps the genii of YC have some good ideas...
I like that one. We do have "suggestions" to existing apps, which anonymous users can make (which basically creates a diff, which has to be applied by an admin, or the owner of the app).

But we definitely need something similar for adding apps. Thanks!
http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2008-07-31

This is a great counter point. There are always pros and cons to every thing. Looking at a single side just appears trollish.
It certainly seems to be some sort of trick question, but it couldn't be to catch the mistake you mention: The bet is a losing proposition even if you win $1 for each person sharing any other's birthday, not just your own. It remains a losing proposition even if you bring the number of people up above 23 (the birthday paradox number) and reverse the 1:2 payoff and assume the bettor has no special information.

Perhaps the kind of solution they're looking for is something along the lines of "Only if I knew that seven of the other people's birthdays matched mine." Or maybe this is simply one of those "impossible" questions designed to test your creativity.
Unfortunately in flight WiFi only has regulatory clearance over the US, so this is a long way away.

It still won't make the flight bearable, though, because as soon as the person in front of you reclines, you can't open your laptop anymore. This has happened to me more than once. (Now I can book exit rows, so this isn't a problem for me, but not everyone is in that position; especially on international flights.)

Fortunately, some airlines are beginning to install "shell" seats in the economy section, so people can't recline into your space anymore. I think it's only CX right now, though. Here's a link:

http://www.cathaypacific.com/cpa/en_INTL/whatonboard/newecon...
I think the answer is yes. PG and the other 3 partners money...
Much of chess is based on patterns. Grandmasters spend hours a day going over line after line in various openings. The real game doesn't usually start till around move 15. Every once in a while, an opening novelty is found before move 10 that dramatically changes opening theory. When the novelties finally are published (i.e., it was finally played in a game), it just becomes part of the theory that anyone who plays that line at the top levels must know. They will take that line and run it through Fritz, Shredder, Junior, and any other chess program they might have and work our preliminary strategies. Any promising lines will then be assessed by a team of weaker GM's helping a much stronger GM train for some important match.
If it's an experiment, the site he links to doesn't add any details or explain why it's challenging/wacky.

Edit: Actually - the site doesn't go into detail as to the nature of the app he's trying to build, but it sounds like it might be some kind of mobile staffing/placement service, i.e. something built for iPhones. If that's the case, trying to find your co-founder by using your iPhone PRE-application could possibly be used as a wacky little test case to prove the necessity of the app you're looking to build.
We're bringing out some (as many as possible) Startuply companies that are hiring, too, so there will definitely be some opportunities here if you're looking to get involved.
Considering he had millions, what do you think?
TRUE Application Performance with Symphoniq's Joe Hsy
It's not that we find it hard to write down all remaining work, it's that when we are forced to do it we face the fact that we don't actually understand what all the remaining work is. Often times it's not even possible to understand it, until more work is done.

The main difference between professional software development and cs101 assignments is that you have to do your own decomposition. Check out the last assignment for first CS class in Stanford: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106x/handouts/35-Assignment-... This is comparable to the complexity of most professional work. The difference is detailed iterative project plan and scaffolding that's provided to the student.
The Truphone app is interesting. If you could do "paging" or something like SMS with it, it would be disruptive. Even though the iPhone doesn't allow background processes, having the push notification on your app icon would allow the user to receive a "page," find a Wifi connection, start up the app and call the person back.

I don't even think the network effects are that important. My girlfriend and I could use it to keep in touch with only each other without paying SMS fees during the day. Then we can tell another couple about it. Much the same happened with Skype and people using it to call their parents.
The very definition of out of the box thinking, no?

I think it's easy to underestimate this. How many times do we hear of something like this. Not often. Most people play the cards they're dealt. He printed a new deck for this girl. This guy is the my-hero type of awesome.
50 Online Applications and Sites to Consider
I think that's Samwise's point - if you can manage your own startup (i.e. find and communicate with a co-founder) without the startup-management application you're planning to build, it looks like you're shooting yourself in the foot - unless the pre-app process is super difficult, a la infomercials that make traditional can openers look unusable.

If I understand correctly, though, you aren't doing it as a marketing ploy, you're doing it to find out for yourself just how difficult it is to manage a small company without specialized mobile applications. My guess is you'll find out that it isn't so hard, but I get what you're doing and it's kind of cool.
The only way to get similar level of contributions from everybody on the team is by getting rid of high-performers or hobbling them.
DevCentral Daily - August 5th, 2008
A short preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w94GQyLqfIM

In all seriousness, I will probably tune in for the first one. Their attitude is infectious, and it is good to take a dose of that kind of enthusiasm once in a while.
To be honest, having the call-to-action to write a review separated from the main text doesn't help. Right now, you've put your ads in between where you learn about the app and where you find the review button. It almost completely ruins the work your interface (which is great by the way) is doing to get people to click on the review button. I'm not sure having the ads there is worth the ruination of your review button click-rate.

People like seeing information where its supposed to be, and ads where they are supposed to be. Part of what makes Web 2.0 websites so great is that the ads aren't in-your-face annoying. Here, your ads are messing up the user experience in an attempt to get in front of the user.
Its today, in 1hr 20min from now. :)
Definitely agree. DC -> Beijing clocking in at 14 hours is just aggravating, with a MBP battery that only lasts 2.5-3 hours.
Not true. After 99 days, every woman kills her husband.

Consider the case with two couples, (1) and (2). (1) knows that (2) cheats, so when the queen says that at least one man has cheated, (1) knows of two possibilities: either [a] only (2) has cheated or [b] both (1) and (2) have cheated. If [a] is true, then (2) will immediately know (2) cheated, since she knows that (1) has not cheated. Thus, if by the end of the first day, (2) has not killed her husband, (1) knows that [b] must be true. The numbering is arbitrary, so every woman kills her husband after one day.

Now consider the case of 3 couples (1), (2), and (3). From the point of view of (1), (2) and (3) have cheated. (1) also knows that (2) knows whether (1) has cheated or not, so (1) considers what (2) is thinking: "(2) either sees that [a] (1) and (3) have cheated or [b] that only (3) has cheated. If [b] is true, then (2) will be able to figure out whether (2) has cheated like this: since [b] is true, (3) will kill her husband on day 1 if (2) has not cheated. If she has not, then (2) must have cheated. If however, [a] is true, no one will have killed their husband after 2 days" Therefore (1) waits 2 days and kills her husband.
I second this. Is there a reason for needing to login when adding an app or review? I only say this because I saw an article today on getting rid of logins. What about just requiring a captcha?
Might consider star ratings without forcing a login. I think the site is useful, but not useful enough to want to create a user account. A great technique is marketing is to get people to make very small commitments (star ratings) which will lead to bigger ones (getting an account).
Going on 30 minutes now with no confirmation email. Checked spam, not there either.