skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your argument is bogus. Food is an ongoing thing. We never stop being hungry. We always need food.

Medicine however, we need as long as we are sick. Therefore, there's quite an incentive for medical companies to keep us sick so we'll keep using their medicine.

Doesn't that worry you? Don't you see a sort of conflict of interests there between them wanting to cure you, and them wanting to make money?

If they develop a one shot cure that is cheap, and an ongoing vaccine that people need once a year, obviously they'll hide the cheap cure, and get you to sign up for once a year medicine, because it'll make them more money.
I've been using this for a while. It's hit-and-miss (some programs don't let you change them, sadly) but what it works for, it does well. Very much recommended.
The YC work cycle firstly unsustainable. It's an aberration by design: work like mad to pump something out.

Secondly it's compounded by investor meetings post demo day. They eat up 30-60% of your time.

Ohh and I don't think DHH is right. There is a direct correlation between time spent on apps tagged 'dev' and getting things done. The only question is whether it can last long enough before you burn out. For me, there is nothing too hard about a 45-55 hour work week, and it seems very sustainable.
It does reduce a source of friction in the economy, people aren't going to stick with crappy underperforming companies just because they have health care.

Social health insurance is a larger risk pool, and if managed correctly should be a lower cost overall; something which is borne out by the UNHCF numbers.

The essentially random and punitive nature of health care financing in the US means there are plenty of people who are foregoing entrepeneurial activities because the health risk is too high for them to do without the bargaining power of a large employer to restrain the cozily corrupt arrangement that makes health 'insurance' one of the most profitable businesses in the world.

By supporting private health insurance you are essentially supporting a barrier to entry in all industries...
http://atkinsonhall.calit2.net/merb_reg/
Developers can do whatever they damn well please.

Of course developers can modify open source. My point was that as the project sponsor and checkin-approver, if Google wants to make Chrome friendly to their business model, they will be able to. Sure, rebellious developers could fork and start a new browser project, but it would be very difficult for them to compete with Chrome given Google's technical and marketing backing.

Citation needed.

Like you and ashu, I am speculating about the future of Firefox and Chrome, hence my use of the word "may." Do all HN speculations now require citations? Where are your citations?

CustomizeGoogle makes Google ugly.

If seeing clean, ad-free versions of Gmail, Google Search, and all the other Google webapps is "ugly" to you, then I can only assume that you like to look at web ads. If that's the case, then I can see why you wouldn't like CustomizeGoogle or AdBlock Plus.

Bonus comment

Thanks for letting me in on your secrets for how to win friends and influence people. You're a regular Dale Carnegie.
I unfortunately can't find the link at the moment, but Apple has granted the Squeak project a special exemption.
/Great/ list. Thanks!

I just bought the Polya book a few days ago, and the majority of the rest are going on my wishlist.
Discounted Cashflow Model is one of the most robust way to value a company (whether public or private). Unlike other models like the dividend model, price/earnings model, a DCF model is flexible enough to value almost all type of businesses (early stage, high-growth, maturing).

And its fundamental concept is so simple: You just need to make really good guesses of the future cashflows and discount it back to the present and what you get is the intrinsic value.

Assuming this public company is valued at $1 billion but based on your inside knowledge of the company's projected cashflows, you derive an intrinsic present value of $5 billion - it's a screaming buy.

Later, as time goes by and the company meets your previous cashflow projections, the market will adjust their valuation to your initial calculation and voila, you're in the money.

Other models like P/E and dividend don't work well. Earnings and dividends can be manipulated SO EASILY. Imagine some dying company borrowing lots of cash in order to increase their dividend. Based on the dividend model, its valuation increases.

So the only thing you can back your life on is the cashflow. You can't just manufacture cash.

DCF can help you explain several phenomenons. Eg. why doesn't Salesforce crash despite its high P/E? Because the bulk of Salesforce customers pay upfront. So there's a lot of cash coming in and that cash has value.

So here's a fun exercise for you to do today:
Project Facebook's cashflow for the next 10 years and discount it back to the present and compare it with Microsoft's $15 billion valuation. Then you can tell people whether Microsoft overpayed.

Happy DCFing!
It's quite interesting how this has morphed from a discussion on the pay rate of a CEO being a good predictor of the success of a start-up to health coverage.

One of the interesting ideas that many of the state-based health care systems have (Sweden for example) that the US should adopt is small out-clinic centers. The centers tend to have 1-2 doctors on staff and several nurses. People can either call in for a consult or walk in to the center. If they call in, the nurse will provide treatment options over the phone when possible or either ask the patient to come into the center or send a doctor out for a home visit. The centers have been very effective at reducing cost and giving people an alternative to going to the emergency room for things that do not require emergency treatment.

While I tend to believe that private industry can do things more efficiently (cost-wise and man power required) than the government there are some things that really should be available universally, like health care. Removing the need for all of the currently uninsured people from going to the emergency room to receive care would probably save the industry a large amount of money and bring down costs significantly. I don't see private industry stepping forward to find a solution for this issue anytime soon so we'll most likely need the government to step in.
Which brings me to one of my favorite physicist stories ever. From Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, page 47, describing the 1907 work of Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger:

"There was a way to make individual alpha particles visible using zinc sulfide... A small glass plate coated with zinc sulfide and bombarded with alpha particles briefly fluoresced at the point where each particle struck, a phenomenon known as "scintillation" from the Greek word for spark. Under a microscope the faint scintillations in the zinc sulfide could be individually distinguished and counted. The method was tedious in the extreme. It required sitting for at least thirty minutes in a dark room to adapt the eyes, then taking counting turns of only a minute at a time -- the change signaled by a timer that rang a bell -- because focusing the eyes consistently on a small, dim screen was impossible for much longer than that. Even through the microscope the scintillations hovered at the edge of visibility; a counter who expected the experiment to produce a certain number of scintillations sometimes unintentionally saw imaginary flashes."

Thank god they invented the photomultiplier before I arrived on the scene.
I'm much more familiar with threads in ruby. It would actually be a real boon to this project imo.

I don't have as much experience with python threads as I do ruby. I've toyed with the internals of python and perl as well and know perl to be a wasteland and python to be rather elegantly clean. So I would expect python's threads to be better implemented. Poking at it, it does appear to be so.
Google slashes time it keeps user search links
Out of curiosity, why is this a bad thing (if the service allows you to selectively delete data or nuke your whole dataset)? It's not logging keystrokes or doing screen captures... Just start-time and end-time of window/tab focus.

Compare this to a third party website where you store all of your conversations and many of your passwords (any hosted email or chat/IM), and the privacy implications of RescueTime don't seem that painful... Assuming it actually is something that you care about.
When I see articles that attribute far-reaching health consequences to specific chemicals like anti-oxidants -- which are rarely tested in isolation from other compounds -- I'm reminded of a quote from Gary Taubes:

"If public health research functioned like some of the harder sciences -- high energy physics being the one I know best -- then researchers would be ridiculed and perhaps even run out of the field for over-interpreting their evidence or publicly presenting the results of sloppy experiments or basing claims on premature evidence and none of this would have happened."
I wonder if it's in any way related to visual snow phenomenon[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow
Social Media ABC's - B is for Blogs
Oh... Come on. It´s April´s release.

I am all in for some light-hearted names.

And, while we are at it, why would anyone take seriously a computer company named after a fruit that was incorporated on April 1st?

The lesson here is that you _can_ get creative with names.
LatencyTOP
Anyone have numbers on the Ubuntu install base and if it's steadily growing?
Why the Google Chrome Comic Rocked - Scott McCloud’s “Invisible Art”
Maybe at some price/performance points, but in April I compared a low-end MacBook Pro with a similarlly spec'd 15" Thinkpad, and found that the Thinkpad was something like $500 cheaper. If you want a 15" screen, you have to buy a MBP, which starts around $2000.

I ended up getting the Mac, and I'm happy with it, but not sure if it was worth the extra money. I still prefer Linux after working with a Mac for a few months.
Check out Mind Tools by Rudy Rucker. He is a math professor and novelist, and this book is a tour of advanced math concepts. Super fun and interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Tools-Levels-Mathematical-Reality...
If the interviewee played pickup basketball in his spare time, he would be out.
Wait... you want Mike Arrington to give preference to people who are young and poor, regardless of the merits of their startup? If David Sacks has a better startup to present, why would he be turned down? Isn't the primary goal of TC50 to showcase cool startups?
Same here. Been using multiclutch for back/fwd pages in firefox: http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/06/16/how-to-quickie-swipe-in-...
As an aside, does anyone know of a mathematical dictionary? I've been trying to follow some books and I just get lost in the terminology -- as I scour the net for the pieces I need, I can get the context, but that seems entirely inefficient. Along the same lines, I'm having trouble making the leap from understanding simple proofs to advanced ones.

Is there any hope, save for going back for a math degree? :)
If you like to be instructed by trippy 1970s cartoon characters, Prof. E. McSquared's Calculus Primer is good.
http://www.amazon.com/Prof-McSquareds-Calculus-Primer-Interg...
The market is the inefficiency, not the stock. In order to exploit these iniffeciencies, you need to decouple the fundamentals of the underlying company with the fundamentals of the market. The price at which a financial instrument trades is simply the sum of the market supply and demand. That's the big secret. If supply runs out and demand is still there, the price will go up until someone is willing to supply more stock.
This is somewhat of an OT

But with all the development that is going on, MS are badly losing to the front runners.
That's a really good question. We've got some data to that end, but don't have a definitive answer yet.

My sense so far is that surprisingly few people can make it work, but the interaction changes a bit. With everyone using feed readers the site can move at much slower pace than something like news.yc. We use slinkset internally w/ just 2 people and it's helpful, but again it's a slightly different format (e.g. we disable voting for that).
I certainly agree that anybody can write bad code in any language, but my argument is that PHP itself is bad code. The libraries are inconsistently named, there's no coding standard in standard libraries, and the language changes behavior according to configuration.

PHP as a project is poorly structured, and all other things being equal, it should not define your programming worldview.
Mark Cuban's Amazon Book Recommendations
What's Ailing Google's Stock Price?
Well, you're just making up those numbers. Here's some I made up:

"Hmmmm - over the next four years of my life, I can make $350k a year plus bonuses/benefits working for ACME Corp or I can make $130k a year with the chance to take home a $10m-$20m payoff..."
Pfft, coffee and peanuts does me just fine.
OpenGL and Mobile Devices: Round 2
Except that the comparison is "$100k/year with a good chance to take home $10-15M or maybe even $50M".

BTW - $15k/month mortgage is around $2M borrowed. That's not a big deal in some places (including SV), but it's a huge deal elsewhere.
Yes, but how do RescueTime make their money?

I see no ads on the site, and the service seems to be free.
Ask HN:  An update from Y Combinator Diaries participants?
Like many here, I was following the YCombinator Diaries column in The Globe and Mail before regular updates came to a halt. Does that startup still retain "some value of alive"?
The Growl stuff is something I've wanted forever. Remind me of what I'm supposed to be doing!

Seriously, though, the more I think of it, a server component would be great.
NYC 911 to Accept Cellphone Videos
What happens when they get past Z? I for one am looking forward to that release
Better than "masturbating monkey" :D
Corporate clients.

Future subscription services.
You can also see when you were moving from SF to Boston.
I don't know about that. The drama with TC50/DEMO has soured me on the whole affair, but I think it's still proceeding along the lines it was designed for.

If you have the goods, you're in. If you can't afford it, no problem, there's no charge. If you can afford it, well, still no problem, because you have a cool "startup".

I think in some cases the definition of startup has been stretched, and that's the only area where I might have some qualms.
Google Turns 20 (fiction)
Someone hasn't heard of ctypes: http://docs.python.org/lib/module-ctypes.html

It lets you use arbitrary c libraries in Python. It automatically does the wrapping for you.
I agree that the drama is very annoying. But at least it's resulted in the founders receiving more attention.

Could you elaborate on your definition of startup thoughts? I'm really interested to hear.
User Experience: Learning from the Pros
There's a sequel to the McCloud book, too. Don't remember the name, but it was good, too.
There are two sequels, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics.
Yep, "Reinventing Comics". Here's his personal page on the books: http://scottmccloud.com/store/store.html
Wow that's a lot of generalizations.

What if you just stuck to following friends only? Or is it the chicken/egg problem?

Just because they follow you doesn't mean you have to follow them. :)
I'm waiting for Sassy Sasquatch.

But I agree, the names are too silly for a serious operating system.
It will take you a couple of hours to get paypal in.
Go Drew & Arash!
Build a Tackle Box Before You Go Fishing: A Starter Kit for Internet Entrepreneurs
ITunes 8 Genius Feature Thoughts
Sony Ericsson C902 Red Unlocked
Featuring Sony Ericsson C902 Red with intriguing features such as HSDPA 2100 support, 5 mega pixel camera, Music player, GPRS, EDGE,Bluetooth and so on. Starting with 5 mega pixel camera, take picture and capture video with 2592?1944 pixels resolution , auto focus, image stabilizer, video (QVGA@30fps), flash features.

Deal Price: - $499.98
Bullsh!i Bot? Shortened to B!B?
Would comprehensive encyclopedias do instead of dictionaries? http://wikipedia.org/ and http://mathworld.wolfram.com/
I Heart Pandora
What's your average page size?

Does your crawler support gzip compressed transfers?

What speed is your Comcast link?
You should check out this online resource for mathematics:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

If you need a dead tree version, Harper Collins is coming out with a new edition:

http://www.amazon.com/Harper-Collins-Dictionary-Mathematics-...

I have an older version and it's good for quickly looking up some of the vocabulary, however, it won't give you a deep understanding.
HTML for Beginners
Found it with StumbleUpon. I figure it's great in the early stages and for advanced hackers dealing with a lot of nested stuff.
From the article: "The new platform has been designed to the highest levels of resilience with comprehensive back up, which includes dual processing at two sites and recovery from component failure within a second."

Hmm...where was the recovery? Did it mention anywhere why the recovery didn't occur? I'm guessing, though, that the company won't actively explain what failed or why.
Review?

On seeing your first comment, I sort of knew where this was going..

Looking at horrible code produced by your cheap rent-a-coders won't make it any better - making it yourself might.
At my old employer I used to have a Dell (620 I believe).

The docking station had a DVI and VGA output. You could either:

1. Run two LCDs off the VGA and DVI.

2. Run one LCD off either and the laptop screen.

I was doing #1 successfully.
Fear will keep the { display:inline } - fear of this browser.
How do I do multiple closings for an Angel Round?
A cui bono (who benefits) analysis can often prove enlightening. I think the point of the article is that many presenting at TC50 could well afford DEMO if they chose to. So there may be other reasons for the creation of TC50 (or encouraging its expansion from TC40 to TC50) than bringing the benefits of a launch venue to start-ups that can't afford DEMO.
John Carmack recently came out and said the iPhone 3D (PowerVR based) is as powerful as the original XBOX and PS2 generation:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/01/ids-carmack-iphone-nearly-...

So a lot of potential there to tap into.
HarperCollins Allows Temporary Access to Full Text of "Cryptonomicon"
It's a little tedious to access, but a very good resource since this:

http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/stephenson-neal-crypton...

is missing the diagrams.
Anyone use ZFS on Linux?

http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/061807-zfs-on-linux.html
That's true, but it sounds like you're talking more about speculation (guessing prices irrespective of values) rather than investing (purchasing when the price does not reflect full value).
Town Introduces its own Currency
That's what I thought too, the startups they chose should not require them to have $18,500 to be in.

As much as I don't think too much of their picks, they still don't have to pay $18,500.
In this case, it would destroy that myth by saying that expensive diesel cars are also a way to get fuel efficiency. An imported version of their car would cost slightly more than a Prius (arguably the iconic hybrid) in direct outlays. Plus, with diesel being more expensive than gasoline, you could well have a more expensive car in the long run. If the fuel costs 10-20% more, you need to get 10-20% better fuel efficiency. Assuming Prius mileages around 50 mpg, you can do this, but only barely, and that's assuming the relative price of diesel stays the same.
Let someone tell you how much your pitch sucks
Google Trends says approximately six weeks ago is a good guess; looks like news references to gas prices peaked in mid-July, while web searches peaked a couple months earlier:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=gas+prices&ctab=0&geo...
Based on what you wrote you would hate Courant and Robbins What is Mathematics?, too rigorous. I think you would enjoy Mathematics from the Birth of Numbers by Jan Gullberg and Calculus Made Easy by Sylvanus Thompson.

You might also find Unknown Quantity interesting. I think Gullberg would be my #1 req for you.
I once had the idea for my own "personal currency"... I would set the exchange rate... For some reason it didn't really catch on.

The article alludes to it, but in the UK, legal tender is a bit sketchy at best:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender#In_the_United_King...

The reality of this really comes home when you try to spend your Scottish Pounds in England (I got caught by this first time I went to Scotland).

Of course, the counter-example is the Euro - which the participating countries seem to grumble about a bit (it's blamed for inflating some prices)... but as a tourist it's a godsend.
I've started going to my local ACM CHI events (link of chapter lists in U.S. and globally below) They periodically sponsor interesting speakers who talk about UX. It lets me see how the other side (functional/UXD) thinks. Fascinating at times because I believe the more design aesthetic you can incorporate in your work, the better your projects will become.

http://sigchi.org/local-sigs/
Something's up with Lehman - Bear Stearns No. 2?
Current rumors being circulated:

1) Sell half of Neuberger Berman to raise capital

2) Merger with another public-traded company

3) Announce death
I hadn't heard of ctypes, but the same functionality is available in perl. It seems pretty silly and crash prone to me to dynamically load object code and then wrap it with a load of error checking rather than write proper bindings.
At VMware, a Firing Is Still Reverberating
Google's Marissa Mayer on Chrome, New Web Browser
New YouTube Tool Helps Increase Viewing of Videos
So the only thing you can back your life on is the cashflow. You can't just manufacture cash.

Yes, you can. Read up on Enron's repo agreements. They raised cash by selling assets near the end of the quarter, and promising to buy them back at the start of the quarter -- it was underhanded, but it still showed up as operating cash flow. They did this for t-bills, Nigerian barges, and everything in between. Cash flow quality is higher than earnings quality, but it is by no means perfect.
Totally awesome.

I first encountered this book when I was about six years old, and my mother was using it for a calculus class. I didn't understand the content by any means, but I enjoyed the cartoon characters. Despite not understanding it, the book helped instill in me a fondness for math.
Most turkers don't cash out with cash -- they cash out with stereos and plasma TVs from Amazon.com
"... There are two sequels, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics ..."

There is another out his anthology of Zot ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/zot/index.html
I used it to find scientific citations -- works great. And the price is always cheaper than you think. I figured for something that takes reasonably good search skills, oftentimes not Google.com, 10 cents would do it. I got down to about 4 cents.
As silly as the Ubuntu names are, I find them far better than Apple's codenames.

I know that whatever the dumb Ubuntu "G" name is, it's newer than the dumb "F" name, and older than the dumb "H" name. The package manager config tells me what dumb codename I'm using. It's dumb, but it works.

Then I see Mac apps that require "Tiger" or "Panther" and I have no clue what that is, or what I have. About This Mac shows a number, but what cat is that? I have to look it up on the web every single time.

Dear Steve: cat species are not ordered. It was cute for 10.1, but now it's just confusing.
Wrong thing to say on Jeopardy