skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks to the influence of Milton Friedman, the US government has a fairly minor role in the micro sphere and a very active role in the macro sphere. The government interference is still there, but it's mostly invisible -- it comes in the form of higher food prices (mostly due to ethanol subsidies, less so to tariffs) and a constantly-depreciating currency (due to the Federal Reserve's power). Oh, and taxes.

The invisible macro-interference may be overall more minor than having to pay a large incorporation fee and filling out tons of paperwork, but it's also going to be much harder to remove.
thanks for the link :)
Lazy Evaluation For The Win
We are 4 people right now. 3 founders and one that we brought in from the previous company.

What if you have exhausted your network (which admittedly wasn't that large)? How do keep those referrals coming?
hey there, YH buddy :D
Credit card companies bullied Discovery Channel so RFID vulnerabilities weren't aired
It's actually higher than you think, although I do not have exact numbers. I know for a fact though that some YC companies have died due to passports, Visas and government paperwork. If as a YC company (or any company really) you do not file an 83b form within a month of formation you are essentially dead. This has happened. When I wrote the original post I wasn't even thinking in terms of IP, but you're probably right there.

Europe's government, in terms of red tape, is an abortion too, but that doesn't mean America's is good. They're both infuriating and full of subsidized bureaucrats and arcane processes.

TicketStumbler Inc is actually the third company I've started. In each case, the amount of redundant paperwork I've had to do is astronomical. Last year, for my smallest company, I spent more time on paperwork and tax filing than I did actually running the company. Mark Cuban has a great post on this here (ignore the tax free stuff): http://is.gd/16pS

I'm not suggesting government elimination or anything crazy like that, but rather complete streamlining and optimization (I should be able to do 99% of the TPS online). Additionally, while I agree that "make something people" is problem number uno, the government is doing their part to make sure that this doesn't happen.
The author lumps "mean as a snake republican" (doubtlessly, opposing Obama or Universal Healthcare) with outright stupidity and unreadability? I guess some stereotypes of San Francisco culture are true.
I've been watching Slashdot since it came out.

Over the last 2-3 years, it's went into the crapper. More political ranting from the left, more pointlessly provocative articles, and more anti-MS bashing.

It's just a cesspool over there. I blame the new editors.

I will say that it's good for jokes. Also there is a very small percentage of posts which are ranked interesting and are actually interesting.
Start-ups are great for your health, or at least mine has been for me. I don't have enough money to go out to bars all the time, so I don't drink much, and I would really rather pay rent than buy cookies at the grocery store every week. On top of that, I don't have a car, and since it's generally just about as fast to walk as to take public transportation, I might as well get some fresh air, I tell myself.

But maybe it's the stress that has so positively impacted my health. Yes, you read that correctly: stress has made me healthier. Work can be frustrating, leaving me feeling like a caged wild animal, ready to run 100 miles, wanting nothing more than to get away and to get away fast!

To be fair, it takes me a full week to run that far, but I'm still at a start-up, so I'm sure it will go by faster in the future. In the meantime, I probably won't be getting too fat. You don't have to, either.
Honestly, I bet she makes more at Lifehacker than PC World.
Augment management is probably closer to the truth than automate.
While many people who see therapists would probably also benefit greatly from an increase in their exercise level, a lot of people have issues that can't be solved by lifting weights or running. One is not really a substitute for the other.
It would be pretty hard to argue against streamlining, and reducing the complexity of the process. If I recall correctly, the ease of opening new businesses is proportional to the wealth of countries.

It would also be difficult to say that things are anywhere near perfect in the US. Still, I just don't see it, ultimately, as one of the biggest problems compared to other things that cause businesses to fail.

Good point about the immigration stuff: it's something I personally loathe, having faced the sharp end of the stick myself in Italy. It's probably something more prevalent in Y combinator than most small businesses, though.
I think you missed the point. Google (like most large ad networks) does a lot more than just contextual advertising, especially now that they own DoubleClick. There are a lot of sites like MySpace with little or no context that make up a huge % of Google's non-search page views.

Google serves ads there largely based on context from previous pages you visited. For instance, if you searched on Google for "digital camera" and then later went to YouTube, they might show you ads for digital cameras.

Many big ad networks do this. Browsers blocking that would greatly lower CPMs.
s/Hackers/Crackers

Upvoted, but please fix MSM's newspeak when submitting.
Gaming can be solved by introducing attack resistant trust metric. The best one the humankind has come up so far is money.
It's amusing that a comment above made the same point - just in less forceful language - and got modded up. Validation - you downvoters are similarly dry, stuffy cynics.
Well, you have to fit in both the 800px wide (less than that because of a sidebar that contains ads and other doohickeys) screen to accommodate the lowest common resolution for people who have not upgraded to a monitor made after 2000, and you want most of your content to appear above the fold (less than that with a monstrous header image). Plus, who's looking at the code? The prose is where the actual content is at, right?

The worst part of this is that these kinds of themes make it really hard to change a few things quickly in the CSS (which I use firebug for occasionally) to make it easier to read. I've started skipping things that have layouts that make me work to read 'em. At least all the people who are not techy using low resolutions can read your tech blog post.
I've probably put on about 60 pounds since starting up years ago. The ridiculous hours take it out of you and mean that you don't get to do the things you want to do.

I was very successful with the hacker diet years back, but even now I don't have the right combination of time and energy to successfully pull it off.
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Taiwan busts hacking ring, 50 million personal records compromised
A brilliant comment, but sadly, electronic and paper money is not attack resistant.
Dialing into a no password-system is hardly any tougher than knowing a bit of PHP.
It sounds a lot like LETS:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Local_Exchang...
You have a middle manager type who actually at least puts on airs of doing actual research in an attempt to at least fake an informed decision? Xanadu!
Seeking PHP AJAX developer for Classified Ad project
I'm looking for a programmer to help build a new classified ad network for bloggers.
The goal is to make it easy for readers of a blog to buy and sell items related to the blog’s content (gadgets, computers, collectibles, etc.). The payout to the blog owner would be cost-per-click, a much better deal than ebay or Amazon currently offers. There is a large opportunity with this market. I have already gotten interest from several bloggers in testing the system once it's ready. I have been creating web applications for the past six years, and am located in LA, in the San Fernando Valley. You would receive equity and a share of any profits made.

The project would entail customizing an existing open source php classified system and creating an AJAX widget to display and search it. I have created a mockup of the widget here:(http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/7089/watchblogmockupxu1.png)

You would be responsible for creating the complete system, so you should have comfort in AJAX and LAMP.

If you're interested in learning more, please contact me with some links to your projects, your phone number, and a good time to chat.

Thanks,
Russell
russell@adamm.net
Sounds like a fun game to me.

I'd put a "426 karma points" badge on my Facebook profile.
D.J. Bernstein proposes an almost zero-effort DNSSEC alternative (Presentation)
DNSCurve, an almost zero-effort DNSSEC alternative (Site)
"Customization pushes a very fundamental human button."

You wouldn't think so based on all these trends to REMOVE customization from user interfaces in the name of ease of use. It may push a button with hackers, and it may push a button with the myspace crowd, but not all customization is created equal.
Judging from a lot of the management I've observed, even augment is probably a bit optimistic. I can see several issues with this approach:

1. The article paints a picture of a world where "management" basically becomes a role of data-entry and adjusting some parameters and constraints until the system tells you what to do. It seems unlikely that managers are going to support such a system.

2. The system can only do so much to take the human factor into account. The author of the article compares this system to efforts by IBM over the last few decades to apply similar research efforts to supply chain management. But people aren't widgets in a global supply chain operation, and are unlikely to appreciate being reduced to an interchangeable commodity deployed by an algorithm.

3. The system is not allowed to use personnel files, including performance appraisals, in the analysis. It would seem like this would be one of the richest sources of actual data in the system.

I still think the approach has some value and is definitely interesting, but I'm not sure that it will have the impact that they seem to expect.
http://nuclearphynance.com , too

lots of ridiculously scienc-ey,mathy, yet pragmatic finance dudes there. Some humor when trolls/know-it-alls arrive.
+1 for techcrunch doing actual investigative journalism.
Look, this is how you write a job ad: don't bullshit people. This ad violates that single rule in every sentence.

People who think they are "rockstar" programmers are probably inexperienced college kids with inflated egos. Meanwhile, the EXTREMELY FEW people in the world who are actually as good as this ad is literally asking for are probably wondering what this job pays. $65,000? Oh, stock options too?

People like this aren't exactly free you know, no matter what you just read in the book you just bought at the airport.
Imagine 5 or 10 years down the line, tough times ahead for the web as we know it. Any ideas on how to fix this mess?
What's next? Maybe

7 Reasons Why Aspirin is Better Than Massage Therapy

Figuring out how you became who you became -- that's therapy. Improving your mood and health -- that's the gym.

Why the false choice?
That hasn't happened to me yet, but if it did I'd find every interesting, somewhat relevant geeky meet-up in town and start going to them. Obviously don't openly declare you're there to recruit someone, but if you stay aware and know how to spot hackers, you're bound to find a suitable one who happens to be contracting or unhappy about their job... Basically, expand your network :-)

The problem with this is of course that you don't have a clear deadline on when you get the person, so it's best started early while you can still wait.
Somebody please write a trojan to download movies from torrents in order to max the cap and send it to everybody as an emoticon pack for live messenger ;-)

In a week comcast will have thousends of customers complainig their connection has been terminated and they'll have to remove that stupid cap.
iTulip forums, about economics:

http://www.itulip.com
I clearly didn't define the term clearly enough.

What I meant by "CTO" was the technical cofounder - the all-round technical get-shit-done guy who can pull the entire product out of his ass if he has to, and who can do so in the completely chaotic environment that is an early start-up. Someone who will basically do "everything" - like any good cofounder should!

Which is what Redline appeared to be looking for. And which is not what you get with a lame job ad.
Kindergarten class in San Francisco adopts new learning method
The cubicle turns 40: Arrgh It's just another day at the office...
Where's the space elevator?
>Try Europe sometime if you really want to see government making life difficult.

You've just made one big sweeping generalisation about 47 different independent countries.
My daughter starts at this school next week - it's hard to believe this is a public school. Apparently, if the experiment continues to go well, San Francisco will convert additional schools to the Montessori method. This could actually help stem the tide of families leaving the City once their children reach school age - quite a development.
Ask HN: University business idea competitions?
There's a "business idea competition" sponsored by my university's business school. Are these things worth participating in?

I'm a PhD student in another department and it seems like it wouldn't take that much effor for a chance to try and grab the big prize of $10,000.
I suspect it's related to the prominent "Advertise Here (click for details)" at the head of the article.
Tour De Babel -- Rant about programming languages
IBM tests 4-terabyte solid-state drive array for enterprise computing
The DMCA is screwing a ton of potential music startups. Tipjoy is in a ridiculously regulated space of finance. Plenty of YC startups get screwed by immigration laws.

I dislike arguments about government size that bring up Europe to say the US is great. Certainly, conditions could be worse, but they are far from perfect.
F# to get units types
Implementing that feature would likely take less characters than it took me to explain it. It's more a matter of is it a good idea at all, so unless you can come up with a scenario where we end up worse with this feature than without...
If only there was some way of representing locations on paper in miniature by using proportionate distances...
Which is kind of awful. Though in my recent experience, roger's extreme is too damn slow for me to ever get near the caps.
1/3 spy on text messages
One thing I find quite annoying about the Google App Engine is that it does not allow many slow requests. In fact, it will block your app for several hours if you have issued too many slow requests.

This can be very annoying, especially when you are trying to figure out how to speed up your requests -- it's hard to experiment.
I'm surprised by the frankness of the CIA and other experts talking about how much of a "home court" advantage the US has in terms of intelligence gathering...
Twiller: Texting novels 140 char at a time
In an aside about Emacs, Steve Yegge notes,
"[...] I type 130 to 140 WPM, error-free, in Emacs, when I'm doing free-form text."

That explains so much.
There should be a way to check the # of times a text message has been read, along with timestamps.
Are these rankings based on page views or unique visits or something else?

Page views is a particularly poor metric for single-page JavaScript and Flash apps like Snipshot and 280 Slides.
Any startup tackling healthcare?
Startups launch here very week. We see messaging, productivity, ad networks, etc...I am wondering if your strartup or one that is close to you is changing the world by tackling the Health industry. Thank you all
Girl Power at School, but Not at the Office
"... Then I left the egalitarianism of the classroom for the cubicle, and everything changed. The realization that the knowledge and skills acquired in school don’t always translate at the office is something that all college graduates, men and women, must face. But for women, I have found, the adjustment tends to be much harder. ..."

Another reason to break the mould and try startups. You can get good at playing the game or redefine it.
The only time YouTube comments have ever been useful to me was when they identify a song that is played during the video (as a soundtrack to something or part of a mixtape that was posted online.) Admittedly the videos that have these songs that I tend to look for usually have less than 1000 views, so your theory of getting rid of all the comments would still be pretty accurate.
The fix is easy. Charge more, per year, for domain names. You'll never "cure" misspelled domains at this point, but the domain names at the fringe would be too expensive to hold on to as they wouldn't recoup their costs, which would force speculators to release more of them and improve overall availability.
Doesn't this say 1/3 spy, and of those, 60% spy while the target is in the shower?
My blackberry times out in 30 seconds or so and requires a password to come back.
Gates predicts software revolution
MIT Museum Extends Hack Display Due to Doubled Weekend Attendance
Specifically, it says that of the "slightly more than 500" Virgin Mobile Australia phone customers aged 18-29 polled by a marketing firm, one in three claimed to spy on their SO's text messages, with women "more likely than" men (no numbers here, odd).

Of that 33%, 60% snoop while their SO is in the shower and 41% do with them in the room, which apparently means that there is one Virgin Mobile Australia customer whose (ex-?) significant other really doesn't trust them.
I didn't have any trouble staying in shape at my previous corporate job. Although the sitting around all day was really bad, it wasn't too hard to get into a daily routine that included 2 hours in the gym. Diet was only a problem until I found a place nearby that sold huge subs for $3, for whenever I didn't prepare my own lunch.

Sickness (eg influenza), alcohol, and lost sleep have had a far greater impact than work of any kind. YMMV though, I've never been overweight in my life and have never been a heavy/frequent drinker. Ultimately I think it depends on how you manage time and whether you prioritize exercise and diet.
insane out of sorrows because he didn't get what he thought he would get.
yeah, the chokehold of the monopoly fades away... off course there is a surge in innovation.
It's not the existing YC companies that suffer, but it's the companies that never get started because they know it's impossible to do business in certain highly regulated sectors. How many YC companies are trying to fix healthcare? Or sell educational software? Or fix the financial sector? All of these sectors are desperately in need of new startups and new business models, but regulations make it nearly impossible for a startup to compete.
Money is attack resistant. Those who think otherwise might end up in jail.
How is the educational software sector regulated? I haven't heard of this before.
Update 8/30:

After reading about the tactic in the news, 90% now spy on text messages when their partner is in the shower
I want to focus on one point that I find an interesting study in language design:

> * I haven't found an expression that is better written as a list comprehension than as a map/reduce/select expression.

map/select are better iff you have a concise block syntax.

For mapping with a single ready function, all styles are reasonable:

items.map foo
items.map { |x| foo(x) }
map(foo, items)
[foo(i) for i in items]

Now suppose you want to modify the mapping function to foo(bar(i)). You could cascade it:

items.map(foo).map(bar)
map(foo, map(bar, items))

but this quickly gets out of hand and makes modifications painful. What you really want is a place to write arbitrary expressions instead of just a function name.

With comprehensions OR a good block syntax, it's a smooth transition:

[foo(bar(i)) for i in items)]
items.map { |i| foo(bar(i)) }

But without one, the change is ugly and annoying:

map(lambda i: foo(bar(i)), items)

So why wouldn't Python just embrace a nice block syntax?
Precisely because this naturally leads to expressing most control structures as functions taking blocks!

Now that is not wrong in itself, but it is a question of taste. Pythonic taste favors a different approach: instead of passing the block directly to a function, have a few built-in control structures that can act as combinators.

E.g. don't write an "each" method that accepts a block - write an iterator, and use the built-in "for" loop as a bridge between the iterator and the block. Why would this be any better?

1. Because we can: it turns out that the vast majority of custom control structures can be sorted into a few patterns (iteration, pre/post guards, function wrapping), each served by one natural combinator ("for", "with", decorators). There is a price: it takes time until new patterns are recognized and the missing combinator is added (e.g. "with" is a very recent addition).

2. Decoupling: an iterator is a self-contained passive object that can be used outside of a for loop. An "each" method takes control and is less versatile.

3. Readability: seeing the combinator gives you an immediate idea about the style of flow control. This is just a matter of taste (Lisp and Ruby solve this with naming conventions).

4. Syntax taste: stupid as it sounds, passing blocks to functions is just alien to Python's syntax. Many smart people tried to marry them - and it wasn't a pretty sight...

But in the end you can't judge decisions of taste by pro/con arguments. You have to look at the sweet spots (and the sour spots) that arise in practice.
A particularly nice sweet spot that arose in Python is the combination of reduction functions with generator expressions:

sum(i**2 for i in range(10))
any(p % i == 0 for i in range(2, p - 1))
dict((v, k) for (k, v) in dict_to_invert)

This is very cool because the map-reduce pattern covers lots of useful computations. Of course it's just a one case and YMMV. I'm sure Ruby has its own sweet spots...
This guy is possibly the worst writer I have ever read. I do not understand why his material keeps getting circulated.
Perhaps it's the reverse, and liberals base their positions around promising science.
I highly recommend Unqualified Reservations ( http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/ ) and Unenumerated ( http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/ )

Both are incredibly smart blogs, with very smart commenters. Their main shtick is bringing historical perspective to contemporary problems of government and economics. The result is fascinating and eye opening. I've learned more history from these two blogs then I learned from majoring in history at Yale.
Lines and Bubbles and Bars, Oh My
"... #1 - The Gym is Cheaper ..."

#0 - pt, walking, running & climbing cost nothing.

I don't know what it is about "Gym's" but they have the "kiss" of death about them. I don't know if it's the idea of exercising in crappy air, looking at the same sterile view of some other poor sod trying to exercise last nights excess. Instead I enjoy this ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2803128286/ and this ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2602820069/in/set-72157605... Nothing quite like exertion, fresh air & natural views.