skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the problem isn't that they can't change pay. It's that it's terribly difficult to change the pay for a hundred thousand workers (I'm assuming the CA gov. employs that many).

For instance, let's say that you calculate an employee's salary as: Position Salary * Location Variance + Yearly Boost * Number of Years Employeed. That seems simple. The program stores those variables and outputs a number for each worker. Now, if you tried to get everyone to $6.55/hr ($11,921 per year), you'd be in a pickle. You aren't storing wage or salary. So, there's no way to adjust someone's salary. Even if you consider variable wage/salary increases per year (vary by person and by year), you could still have a system that didn't give you a salary.

So, I can see how that would happen. What I can't understand is why they can't just get a list of employees and send that to their bank and say, give them all $458.50 every two weeks! So, I can buy that they can't alter their system - these types of things can be made in the most stupid ways. Why they can't just get a list of employees and cut them all equal checks doesn't compute.
I'm not sure that's really the point, but I'd say that there is a heavy force in education against science, math, and all other forms of critical inquiry.

One of the biggest reasons people would leave the Mathematics department at my university was because they couldn't deal with being told that their proofs were crap, and that they needed to get the quality of their work up if they wanted to succeed.

It's not that the work was "too hard". It's that students couldn't get coast on extra credit points and pure-opinion essays, like they had gotten used to in high school and junior college. Finishing a complete trip through Math, Engineering, or any of the sciences required actual effort, as well as the ability to handle criticism, a skill that many students lacked after over twelve years of education.

I also had a chance to see the other side of the coin, because my second degree was in a foreign language. My Japanese degree consisted of nearly four years of classes which required almost no effort whatsoever. Loads of extra credit and students handing in work months after the deadline were the rule, not the exception.

Many of my fellow students in the Japanese program were majoring in Asian Studies or Asian History, and complained incessantly about the difficulty of their classes. Even though their major fields were focused heavily on Japan, many of them couldn't even read at the equivalent of a fourth-grade level, after studying the language for four years.

I asked many of them why they chose their majors, versus engineering or mathematics, and the most common responses cited how harsh their previous Math and Science professors had been, by not allowing extra credit, late homework, and so on.

While this does not constitute any sort of proof or rigorous study, it illustrates the point that our schools are far too lenient on students, and lenient schools do not produce graduates who can survive the crucible-like atmosphere of even an undergraduate science program.
The ad looked fake to me. There is no way it soaked up all that cola that quickly; I think he preloaded the rag with cola.

A google search reveals that these things don't work at all.

Sometimes I think I'm too cynical ... but I haven't found this to ever be the case ;)
Other cool Microsoft ads by B&M (of Mojave fame)
Launchbox Startups
I think the Koofers one is the one I see being a huge success
ExpiresDefault "access plus 10 years"

I guess someone is not planning on updating any images or css for the next 10 years.
There's no question as to the feasibility. The desirability is another matter. I would sooner write TCP packets by hand than use that thing.
Reminds me of a science-fiction short story that I once read. A team working on a massive particle accelerator built to study some exotic low-energy particle kept having it break down every time they tried to use it. Even if everything was working perfectly, something would fail right before the crucial moment, and stop the experiment dead.

Months of replacing perfectly good parts went by, until they finally figured things out: They had been accidentally destroying the universe, due to the nature of the particles being studied.
I can see the Koofers one being the big success out of those. It has that Facebook explosion factor to it
I think it's fairly coherent. He says that Students are more affected by cultural than market forces as they are being educated. And that cultural forces are science/hard work hostile.

What I disagree with is the implication that some how the market forces are science friendly (i.e. the need for scientists and engineers translates into good working conditions, opportunity, etc.). Unfortunately this is not so much the case.
Ask YC: Convert Video To FLV With H.264
Correct me if im just being a moron here:

a) The video is recorded in 1280x720 and made a mov
b) I want to convert that .mov to a h264 HD FLV

I know flash 9 started supporting this. How do I convert the .mov to a h264 flv (HD). This is for a bunch of demo videos and quality really matters.
Dyson, instead of crazy late night marketing, just plain built a technologically better vacuum and marketed it as a Ferrari of vacuums. There's plenty of ways to sell household goods without resorting to the infomercial style of ads.
I think it's worth noting that I don't think the people in my Japanese classes were inherently stupid, lazy, or anything else of the sort. Merely that they've been spent years being indoctrinated to avoid criticism, and that the end result of this has been them shifting to the easiest possible path through college, rather than trying something because it was hard.
ffmpegX. http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

Give that a shot.
"How much will my startup be worth in 3 years?"

"Definately."

Hmm.. should really repeat and average..

"Will my startup be worth megabucks in 3 years?"

"Yes."

Sweet - I like this one.
$177 million seems much too high for a replacement system. Of course 200K employees seems much too high for a state government as well.
Justin.tv has those features :-)
If it's as good as they say, making money is trvial: just make the predictor proprietary. The real question is: "Can they make the predictor good?"
Even republics now use qik (my thoughts)
A bit surprised seeing Luc Castera on that list (with ShareMeme). I have to assume it's the same guy as luccastera, though?

edit: After some research, what I meant to say was, congrats luccastera for launching!
"... 'Risk-taking increases the resilience of children,' said one. 'It helps them make judgments,' said another. Some of those interviewed blamed the 'cotton wool' culture for the fact that today's children were playing it too safe ..."

I'd agree with that. One of the problems with not letting people try things is they have no real gauge on what is dangerous and what is not. So they tend to over react to things that are not dangerous and underestimate the danger when it really exists.

"... The research also lists examples of risky play that should be encouraged including fire-building, den-making, watersports, paintballing, boxing and climbing trees. ..."

Add to that: rafting, caving, rock climbing, bush-bashing, shooting, building structures with rope & poles, long distance bike riding, tree felling (axe and chainsaw), motor bike riding, tractors, swimming at surf beaches ( a mob of tourists drowned at a beach last year where I happily swam as a youngster ~ http://www.google.com/search?q=anglesea+drowning+beach+surf ) ... the list goes on. You do get a sense of what is dangerous and what you can handle. Having done all those before I was 14 meant I had a huge head start on my peers. To the point where even at Uni I'd done enough different things to leave experienced pro's wondering where I fit the time in for all these things.

There is a downside though. If you do make a mistake there is a pretty good chance you will get injured. If you don't you will fail to build up the store of experiences that you can call on in the future ~ http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2730793708/

So what does it really tell you about over protective parents?
Didn't hear anything about anything until now.

Also, surprised to see you here... Long time no see.

Do you run into Luc at all?
These are pretty impressive. Definitely closer to a YC batch than a TechStars one.

I could see myself using quite a few of these, especially JamLegend (I hope they'll allow compatibility with a Rock Band drumset).
He's a skinnier version of Billy Mays. They are both loaded (Mays almost unfathomably so, he drives around in a Rolls).
Short answer, just try to play the .mov file in Flash.

Long answer: Flash 9 Beta 3 added limited support for the MP4 file format (or "container") and the H.264 video encoding. The FLV container format does not and will never be able to contain H.264 data.

MP4 is an ISO standard -- before that it was known as "QuickTime" aka ".mov". Yay! But MP4/.mov/QuickTime has very little to do with the actual video and audio encoding it contains. Your .mov file, which is an MP4-compliant container, may have video data in lots of different encoding formats, tracks, cover art, meta data, etc etc. Boo!

Flash 9b3 supports only MP4 files with a single video/audio trak, and only moov atoms containing H.264 data. The file extension does not matter; it inspects the magic bits inside the file.

There is not at the moment a cheap open-source way to stream these files. MP4 is an odd format: all frame metadata, usually about 2% of the total file size, is in the front of the file and MUST be fully downloaded & decoded before a video will start playing. Adobe is very aware of this and will gladly sell you expensive server software to stream H.264 video. :(
The video doesn't have to be in FLV format. Why do you want the video to be in that format? You can use a flash player to play a h264 MP4 video file.
Yeah, it's been a long time, Aston. If you can believe it, I'd lost my password . . . that's why I'd been away.

Since I left DC, I've not run into Luc much except for on Twitter and e-mail.
San Francisco is building many high-rise residential towers right now - the City is the place to live, until the kids need to go to school. But there are a growing number of good private options, and even a ray of hope on the public side.

One of the worst Public schools in town (William Cobb Elementary) is being transformed into an AMI certified Montessori school with complete replacement of the staff. I have no clue how this is happening here politically, but it sure is encouraging. A nice side effect to the certification requirement is that all the old teachers don't qualify :)

The new direction started with a pre-school program with the support of the top international Montessori school in Marin. The Cobb Montessori program now has a 5 year track record with glowing reviews from parents. We are enrolling our 4.5 year old there now. I never dreamed of having our child in public school until I found this one.
Taking that line of reasoning further, a reasonable definition of "independently wealthy" might be, "able to maintain an upper-middle-class lifestyle on investment income alone, while also growing one's capital at or above the rate of inflation". (That last part is to distinguish the truly "independently wealthy" from retirees who may be living off their investments, but can only do so by drawing down the principal.) Under that definition, $5M seems to be around the lower limit of wealth necessary to achieve this. As others have mentioned, you will be paying for your own healthcare, and you will also be paying capital gains rather than regular income tax on all of your income.

To sustain a flamboyantly "rich" lifestyle on investments alone, the lower limit of necessary wealth is probably more like $30-$50M. That's, of course, significantly harder to achieve (Wikipedia says 95k people worldwide are this wealthy). In fact, the groups of people I can think of who are typically associated with such flamboyant lifestyles (Fortune 500 execs, financiers, entertainment icons) do not, as a rule, do so based on their investments alone - rather they continue to work and are merely paid large salaries.
"Voting, for now, is here to stay."

Translation: voting is temporarily permanent. Nice writing.
Im one of the JamLegend guys, glad you are excited about it. We definitely want to get the Rock Band drums working, although we honestly haven't tried hooking them up yet. We got the Wii Guitar Hero controller working in no time using bluetooth.
Mibbit has become my de-facto IRC app now. Does it support XDCC, etc.?
Luc Castera is quite possibly one of the best RoR hackers out there. I should know. We're co-founders :)
This is even slowly happening in Pittsburgh, whereas until very recently absolutely no one has lived downtown and the area adjacent to downtown, uptown/"The Bluff" is the most blighted area in the entire city. I'm optimistic that the area will eventually revitalize; it's just that they just built a damn highway along the best riverfront land.
"Based in Washington, D.C., LaunchBox is the Y Combinator of the East. "

Wait, I'm no geography professor, but where is Boston? I thought Y Combinator was the Y Combinator of the East.
He says it, as if it were true, without any evidence or even argument other than "I said so" to support whether these cultural forces have any effect on outcomes. As someone elsewhere points out, he does reference poor outcomes, but that doesn't mean he's made any argument other than hand-waving.
When you do it in private, it is stalking. When done in public, it is a service to society. :)
"... YC08 Summer Founders Hosting Hacker Meetup in Cambridge. Come Join Us ..."

I won't be going, "artichoke end of the world". But it does make me smile that an ecosystem of yc startups are supporting and using each others tools.
What Google Should Learn From Startups
"we have endlessly extolled the virtue of 'sustainability' against the ravages of 'progress.'"

"A society that worries itself about which chromosomes scientists have isn't a society that takes science education seriously."

Sentences like these make a lot of sense, until you think about them and realize they don't actually mean anything.
Thanks for the post and comment. We've made some exciting progress at Virginia Tech, and we hope to continue to provide helpful services for students/teachers across the nation.
An analytics engine / machine learning tool has to begin somewhere. Why not start on a small(er) data set you are passionate about (and that has immediate benefit to your business model and user base), that you can record and measure more easily, and that is not generally obtainable by many others, before unleashing it on the public markets where people will be less tolerant of inaccuracies.

Mighty oaks begin as small acorns.
Same guy :-) Thanks man.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that.

It look liked something hollywood would dream up-- not a competent UX designer.
Since the Launchboxers appear to be watching this, can you share what you thought of the Launchbox experience? Are you moving to the valley (DC sounds like a weird place for a startup)?
Heekya is considering the move.

LB experience -- it's not over yet, we're just at the beginning of the real journey.
The solution I came up with was just hiding the number of votes either way. Bump up good things and lower bad things, but otherwise keep it normal. It's not a perfect solution, but at least it stops the groupthink and leaves us with the dilution problem.
I don't think that's what he is saying. I think he is merely saying that science ranks below things like diversity and self esteem on the academic list of priorities. And that's almost certainly true. As an example, when applying for a certain NSF grant, you must address "broader impacts" (aka, "why should we care about your research?"):

"(1) effectively integrate research and education...(2) encourage diversity, broaden opportunities, and enable the participation of all citizens-women and men, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities-in science and research; (3) enhance scientific and technical understanding; and (4) benefit society."

https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/NSFHelp/flashhelp/fastlane/Fast...

The attitudes he is describing are quite pervasive in academic culture; as an academic, I know exactly what he is talking about. Keep in mind, he is writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, so he expects the typical reader to be familiar with what he is describing.
These startups are awful -- especially that Heekya. ;)

There are a bunch of LB founders hovering on HN (MyGameMug, JamLegend, ShareMeme, Koofers, Buzzhub, and Heekya that I know of).

Heekya (my startup) is actually in private alpha testing -- shoot me an email david at heekya and I'll let you in.

Would love to get the HN community feedback when we're ready -- everyone here has been a great inspiration. Best advice ever: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95857

First step on a hopefully long journey.
Zadby is a great idea; do they have any competitors?
What story was it?
Cyclone Waste Heat Engine
That's what I like about del.icio.us. There are some things is DOESN'T do, but that's because it doesn't have to. It tackles one problem with a few social aspects, and it handles it perfectly.

AdSense for content? What do you mean by that?
"He excludes about 95% of businesses, which sell mundane goods like vacuum cleaners."

I don't understand where you are getting this from. Most of Seth's books are about mundane products:

All Marketers are Liars, Purple Cow, The Big Moo, Free Prize Inside...

Most of his best blog posts are about mundane products too. When he talks about stuff in the news he likes to talk about web startups, but that's about it. If I had to sum of Seth's philosophy in one sentence, I'd say it's about taking mundane commodity products and making them remarkable.
I'm sure people like songkick are already working on it. However, as always, building it and getting it to take off are different challenges.
It's okay. I'm a hypocrite and appreciated your upvote.
Yeah. I have high hopes for social sites. But it's why I prefer sites trying new models (like what Facebook was like before it went overboard) rather than sites that try to be "like Digg but for X."
MSFT was willing to pay Powerset for whatever it thinks its worth. So acquisition price is fair enough I think.
'I Am Rich' makes author exactly that, does little else
wow, that is meta
I am with MyGameMug and we are definitely moving out there. Can't be in the gaming industry without being near the big game publishers/developers!
I am still wondering why others like TechCrunch et al have not at least tried something like a quantitative prediction tool before.

Perhaps it was too much conflict of interest to their core reporting/news business model, or too much work?

Still it is interesting to observe the shifts from reactive to proactive process in that space.
Reinventing news on the web.
For better playback on older (>2 years) computers you're better off using the VP6 or VP6-S codecs over H.264 and Flash. If you choose VP6 your video will also play on client computers that have older versions of the Flash player.

FFmpeg or Mencoder are great OSS projects for converting video, and as someone already mentioned ffmpegx is a good front to ffmpeg on osx.

There is a new FLV file format spec in the works, but for now Adobe recommends your h.264 stay in MPEG-4 containers (mp4, mov, 3g2, etc).
Ask YC: accounting help
For those of you with small home based businesses or a business on the side. How do you keep track of invoicing and payables/receivables? I'm using Quicken Home and Business 2008 and it's nice and all, but I just want to invoice and know what's outstanding etc.. I don't need to micro manage an investment portfolio or know what the interest on $10 is going to be in 5 years.

An online solution would be ok. Better if it combines my home and business together.
thesixtyone.com, a social music site, has a clever way of dealing with this: You can "bump" a song, but it costs you "points," which you see a return on if the song becomes popular. It turns upward momentum into a currency instead of something tossed around in large amounts.
I was shocked to read that Chicago had torn down the Robert Taylor homes as well as the Cabrini Green projects. But, really, they had to go. I worked as an ER/trauma nurse in Chicago in the 90's. The year that I moved there, there were 994 murders within the city limits. That doesn't include the ones that we were able to patch back together. I'm sure that a large percentage of those murders happened within those housing projects. Between tearing the housing projects down, whatever Chicago PD is doing and the changing demographics of the city, the murder rate is half of what it was in the mid 90's.

I'm sure that people can't really understand what those housing projects were like, but to give you a couple of examples--people use to snipe at police men and paramedics from the top of the buildings in the Cabrini Green projects. Cabrini Green was about 2 square miles of 10 story slums, and within those two square miles, there were two full police precincts. Paramedics would not enter the Cabrini Green projects unless they were escorted by one or two police cars.

I worked two ER's within a mile of Cabrini Green. It was an adventure to say the least. One of them was a small 16 bed ER, and we staffed 6 security guards for our department. Every single ER stretcher had restraints to tie patients down, chained to the frame of the stretcher. There were a number of times that I got called out to the entry way to see a car parked, riddled with bullet holes. The driver and passengers usually had couple of holes in them as well that needed to be patched up.

And, the Cabrini Green housing project was about 1 mile away from the "Gold Coast" of Chicago, which was one of the most expensive zip codes in the nation when we lived there. Mayor Daley slated Cabrini Green for removal, and last I heard, they had built a hip new development for the neo-urbanites moving in.

So, they relocated thousands of the cities poorest people. And, they removed a bunch of gangs in the process. The crime rate went down quite a bit after that, but those people took their Section 8 vouchers to the local burbs. Those local burbs just don't have the resources or the tax base to deal with problems. Just Google for images of Gary, Indiana if you want to see what those local burbs are becoming.

But, even back in the 90's, there was a lot of gentrification already occurring. One of the things the article didn't mention was how beneficial to the city it was to have a large gay and lesbian community. Some of the first areas of Chicago to get gentrified were because gay and lesbian couples who didn't have kids and didn't have to worry about the school system. They moved in to neighborhoods in Chicago like the Halstead neighborhood and Andersonville, and really turned them into hip, trendy and safe areas to live.
I use blinksale and love it for invoicing. Not sure if that covers all your needs.
Quickbooks. It's almost a small-business industry standard.

The nice thing is every small accounting firm or contractor I've ever come across knows Quickbooks. This means you can often email them your accounting "database" to have them do a sanity check or cleanup remotely. Makes it easy to collaborate without having to pay for on-site consulting time.

I have personally used Quickbooks on startups through the first few million in revenue.

BTW, your "home" and "business" worlds are completely separate. Don't commingle them.