skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No Need to use Venture or Angel Capital for My New Project http://blog.callandtalktojoseph.com/
http://www.mirasoldisplays.com/
Interferometric Modulator MEMS screens are about to enter mass production.
Where I live a 3br/2bth house can be rented for <$500.

How's the tech/software job market in that area? I can't say I've seen a whole lot of recruiting for jobs in the cheapest towns I've visited.
Most undergrads are only making ~$0/year

They're also generally not supporting themselves on that $0 income.
Youth Is The Power Of Tomorrow: Human Behavior Based on Sunshine…Part 5
Seems neat and I'd love to give it a try. I'm not a blog engine expert by any means, but it seems to be the the killer feature missing from this and other "this is not wordpress" blog engines is the ability to accept/read wordpress themes. Almost everything on woothemes and themeforest are available as wordpress themes, so why not? Is there a license issue with this?

Edit: I get the php issue here. It's not really an issue I don't know why everyone jumps to assuming you need. Php interpreter. Anything running node.js can run php. Im just saying that there are a ton of wordpress themes out there and Id be much more willing to try something new if I was able to reuse a theme. At least reuse parts or most of it.
Ah yep, thanks for that; just Googled it in a hurry and pasted in the first link that came up. Can't agree enough on the Maatkit tools, and I'm also in the process of moving a production database from MySQL to Percona after hearing such good things about it. Xtrabackup for consistent backups of innodb/xtradb live systems + incremental (delta) backups are also very useful.
I originally remembering hearing about this 'phenomenon' during undergrad. It's a common heuristic that we think the gap is much larger than $.01 when it comes to the $4.99 -> $5.00 jump.

Here's a link to the pretty extensive study that two guys from Cornell published -- Heuristics in numerical cognition: implications for pricing http://forum.johnson.cornell.edu/faculty/mthomas/HeuristicsI...

On a semi-related note, I remember telling all my friends in the music biz how iTunes was making a huge mistake by crossing the $1 threshold when they jumped up from $.99 to $1.29 ... at <$1, fans didn't think too much about the purchase. once they crossed it, it only accelerated the progression of pirating.
I've never been through either of them, but the stylistic differences highlighted in the article very much so reminded me of the difference in style between "Do More Faster: Techstars" and "Hackers and Painters." IMHO Hackers and Painters is a bit weird and subtle at times, but overall a beautiful piece of work that triggers inspiration from within (at least in my case). Whereas the Techstars book is true to its name, and recounts stories of people "doing more, faster." I could be completely wrong, but that's the kind of impression I get from the article.
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
With this attitude, they will hardly succeed. I've been through this situation in the past.

You will be blamed for 100% of the stuff going wrong on technical side, and will be given 10%. Moreover, I don't think you will be able to keep yourself motivated with this kind of attitude within the team. You won't be a considered co-founder, just a technical guy to finish thing off. Remember "Ideas are worthless".

Don't settle for 10%, not even 20%. Its not about money, but how much they value your work. Coming up with an idea is not a big deal, but execution is.
I will freely admit that Ada is not appropriate for all uses. But for the sort of thing you'd want to use Ada for (life critical systems, critical infrastructure, control systems, etc) The explicit type system, explicit declaration, statically typed system is ideal. I particularly like the ability to declare down to the bit level how my data is stored. Very useful for working with low level hardware.

Take a look again, with an eye towards large scale long lived critical systems. You'll find that explicitness a feature, as is the very strict static typing.

Oh, and they got pointers right the first time.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the coolness of the type system - you can declare ranges and other type information and the compiler will hold that requirement strictly.
for example type direction is range 0..359;
Declares the obvious, but now you can have the compiler error if you assign a direction type with a value that might be outside that range. Even if you don't set that option you can always use the foo'valid attribute to check that foo is within bounds. This is used to check for stray cosmic radiation (seriously!).

Yes it seems like overkill. But when you come back to 20 year old code that's still running you'll smile.
Agreed. I'm not a usual Apple apologist but this letter was the right thing to do.

App developers can breath easy and know that this non-technical understanding regarding their patents and the use of a fully licensed API is being incorrectly interpreted by Lodsys.

Apple certainly can claim PR victory. They are always so cool under pressure. Each time some sort of scandal comes up they hol up, think about it, gage interest and consumer intent, then act accordingly.
Yeah it feels a bit biased.
I'll give it a shot.

There are very few truly hard problems in starting a tech startup; the hardest of those is product-market fit. Put another way, it's successfully solving a problem that a lot of people have.

The other hard problems are hiring/growing a team to be effective at scale, and finding distribution for your products.

Some things seem really hard but aren't: Finding a lawyer, drafting or negotiating contracts, getting incorporated, adding full time employees to payroll, getting health insurance for the company, getting an office, generating financial statements, finding mentors, raising money. They're all orders of magnitude less difficult than the above 3 hard problems.

About raising money: It's hard but it's not the hardest problem you will face. If you have successfully solved a problem a lot of people have, you will have proof of that (traction). A company with a great solution to a problem in a large market with traction will not have a hard time raising money. And in fact, YC helps you do so with Demo Day, once you have spent time focusing on the really important stuff.

So, if you spin it as "Look at all the things TechStars does for you that YC doesn't!", it sounds like a better deal. But if you look at it as "YC helps you focus on your #1 problem", it sounds quite different.
As told by someone who hasn't gone through YC.

"TechStars' intimacy obviously gives you more attention, exposure, and access than YC." -- how can you make this claim having not gone through YC?
Nuance ScanSoft PaperPort Professional – Designed To Make Your Scanners
Nuance ScanSoft PaperPort Professional is software for scanning. When you want to scan papers in your hard disk then it helps you to make your work fast.
It's nice to hear about the positives of TechStars but there is an undercurrent of YC criticism in the article ("isolationist","cookie cutter" etc) that seems unfounded coming from someone who admits they weren't there and it distracts the reader from the positives of TechStars.
GolfScript: a language for solving problems (holes) in minimum keystrokes
Yeah ... Cause the arbitrar of what's mainstream is most definitely a dated game-show turned mobile time-waster.
Ballmer: Windows 8 Coming in 2012
I think they honestly thought they had a shot, and went for it. Their documentation displayed a stunningly nieve but logical interpretation of their patents and it was a low-risk move to approach a number of developers to gauge reaction.

Though nieve the documentation did seem sincere.
I'd say that simply because something is rational doesn't mean it can be codified into a computer program (yet). (Maybe my example code disrupted my point more than helped.) The design of most computer programs is rational, but a computer isn't sophisticated enough to program itself.

I'm actually having trouble thinking of an important human endeavor this was not in some way rational. Maybe some `Outsider Art` created by mental patients? Programmers who work in `BrainFuck` or `LOLCODE`? I guess I'd only think of something as irrational if I thought a reasonable person would not come to a given conclusion based on the same inputs (such as knowledge, skill, experience, etc).
Check out https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport and https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-arduino which provide you with the building blocks to do all JS implementation (especially in concert with Socket.io) Many people built some amazing things during JSConf with these libs.

Enjoy!
Hrm? That blog post is all about Google is using Clang to dig themselves out of a hole they fell into by using C++ with its weak type system, and doesn't suggest they have plans to change languages.
I heard/read about issues with very large cache directories (with thousands of tiny files).

I have an ssd so the speed isn't a concern for me, but as osx lacks trim support, I am concerned about huge caches.

Have you seen or noticed the cache being overly large?
I think you shouldnt waste anytime working in a startup on/with a idea/team that you dont believe in. Youre potentially going to be taking a lot of risk by going the startup route - an unimplemented idea from your cousin's friend is probably worth a week or two of brainstorming. I would say walk away.
Library support is aimed squarely at realtime life critical systems. You're more likely to find a library with some sort of safety certification than not. If you're expecting to use the latest web libraries or hadoop you'll be disappointed.

However, there is a small collection of oss Ada libraries out there.
When is assigning a pointer to be boolean false intentional and correct?
Ask HN: Review my startup: http://sparkwall.me
Hi All,

Just released our private beta of Sparkwall and we would love to hear your feedback!

Sparkwall is a visual collaboration tool that helps remote dev and creative teams communicate by sharing designs in real time.
The app is built on node.js, socket.io and MongoDB using Amazon EC2 and S3 for hosting and storage.

Some of our features:
- Upload files through drag-and-drop
- Support for 300 different image formats
- Write text and draw freely.
- 16000x9000px work space
- Point with your mouse, and ppl can see it in real-time <-- I like this feature :)

We are currently running on Firefox 4 and Chrome 8+ (Other browsers will be supported shortly)

Invitation Code: HACKERNEWS
Sign up: http://sparkwall.me

Thanks

Johan Ekhager
Co-founder / CTO

http://sparkwall.me
Amazon actually has a system for rating packaging separately from products (at least for non-digital goods), so it looks they are way ahead of you on that one.
A lie is a lie is a lie, no matter how small.
Link: http://sparkwall.me
What kids want | Old story but worth revisiting
Chrome uses way more memory than Firefox 4. So it may in fact not run all that well on some of the lower-end hardware....
I haven't read anything about Apple proactively blocking other companies, but it's believable that post-iPhone Apple is less shy about pushing the competition around a little. I know they did protect their multitouch gesture patents, which is why Android couldn't have pinch to zoom for a while.

Regarding the accuracy of my comment, see http://www.macworld.com/article/46460/2005/08/ipodpatent.htm... for a quick summary of how Microsoft patented a key aspect of the iPod's navigation UI 5 months after Apple released the iPod and then demanded licensing fees. Apple ended up settling for $100 million. This is an actual product company.

The article that you linked to, while interesting, is purely opinion. Its argument hinges on the assumption that exclusivity with AT&T was a bad business deal for Apple, which I would strongly disagree with. I didn't like the lock-in as a consumer, but the deal was excellent for Apple because it gave them control over the carrier in a way other phone manufacturers had only dreamed of until that point.
Tutorspree (YCW11) helps you find the best tutors near you
I agree, except I would say "web startup" instead of "tech startup". Tesla is a tech startup, and they have some damn hard engineering problems. Twitter didn't have engineering problems until they had to scale.
The Engineer and the Artist
I'm not sure how much natural talent there is for various skills but I do know that believing in natural talent is harmful.

That sounds like the argument that you should believe in God because religious people are happier. I don't see why the truth is harmful: you can get better at just about anything with practice, and the degree to which that happens varies with the individual and activity.
Great idea. If I were even remotely an industrial designer I'd build in a stand as well
Awesome guys. Great focus. Congratulations.
Ironically requiring that they make more copies, if this is true.
amazing! Google docs watch out this is way cooler
Any comparison beyond basic program structure will naturally reflect experiential bias. From the article, even a nominal effort at objectivity is difficult if not impossible for the author.
Could someone build a cash drawer/charging dock that is connected to square somehow? Or even disconnected from square but still offer charging functionality
Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A "Social Media Expert"
> a rational number

> a rational number between [0.0 - 1.0)

Those are representation errors.

The hard problems that I run into rarely have much to do with representation. The hard problems are knowing when it's okay to add apples and oranges and when it isn't.
Salesforce.com: Putting Lipstick on a Pig
I said that twenty years ago as a justification for not bothering with paying into a retirement account. This turned out to be a bad bet.
>IIRC, the primary reason that group selection is thought to be wrong is that it (apparently) can't yield an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) -- it will always be better for the persistence of any individual's DNA if that individual refuses to be altruistic.

I don't think that could be right, because the altruistic individuals altruism could include killing/punishing non-altruistic individuals. Shooting deserters comes to mind, as a real-life human example.
Honestly, if it would take you a couple months to implement it full time and they think they can get it for $7k otherwise its probably not a realistic estimate on their part and you'll never be respected for what you brought to the table. An idea is not worth 80% and making it come to life certainly isn't worth 20% if you truly want to do a startup you have a community right here to find friends and make connections.

You can set up a repository and both work remotely part time to see if it works out.

My point is mainly this, you are the only thing stopping you from doing a startup, so just do it.

But their idea (even if it's a good one) is not the only one that is a feasible startup so why work on it when you know going into it youre going to be under appreciated from day one.

Just my $.02
On my 1920x1080 laptop screen, I can comfortably fit 3 emacs sessions side by side, all windows on the same process, all frequently further split one level horizontally. This is a lot of code. I generally only use 2 and have a shell on the left, which also comfortably fits, but if I need 3 I have it.

(I would generally consider the need to have 6 views of your source to get your job done a code smell, but it isn't always my code, and lately we've been doing some client/message-bus/server code where 6 starts to feel a bit constraining.)

Technically I'm still neutral on the emacs v. vim wars and they're both good editors. But looking around me, the vim users in my office really need to get better about buffer management. I'm sure vim can technically do everything emacs can do with buffers and splitting and windowing, but "nobody" seems to do it.
I'm surprised no one's brought up the counterexample of Steve Jobs. He turned Apple from an unknown garage startup to one of the industry's most powerful players in just a few short years.

When Jobs was ousted, Apple went to the dumpster. When he returned, Apple once again rose to great success. Jobs was directly responsible for enough wildly successful products to make probably any other company or inventor in history green with envy.

It would be silly to claim that Apple's success is due to blind luck. Jobs' relationship with Apple and Apple's products appears causal and has been repeated in different market environments with vastly different product lines, which flatly contradicts the idea that _all_ successful people wing it and succeed based on luck.

Sure, some people succeed on accident. Some people succeed because they have real talent and just happen to get publicity at the right time. But some people succeed on purpose.
c'mon! while it is understandable that we all paid attention only to one lecture in the middle-school biology class - the one on human reproduction - one still is expected to remember that the life is almost 4B years old on our planet and 750M ago where would be various cell piles around thankful for the apple

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution
Definitely, although generally you could lump the engineering problems under the "product-market fit".

You need to (a) think of a problem and solution, (b) create that solution, (c) validate your solution in the marketplace, (d)iterate successfully -- not necessarily in that order.
WordPress themes can and do embed arbitrary PHP, so wouldn't you have to basically build in a PHP interpreter in order to read them?
Agreed. There is a major difference in the service that is provided. As usual, you get what you pay for.
This article seems deliberately targeted at putting down a lot of the attributes of YC without being well-informed on them. Example:

Now I've never been to a YC demo day, but it's my understanding
that the whole event is a lot less formal and the pitches
are basically cookie-cutter and done in a rapid-fire manner.

The pitches are very much not cookie-cutter, and YC has ~4 different days throughout the summer where we're supposed to pitch each other and investors. PG tells us to reserve the couple of weeks before demo day to work on and practice our pitches.

Have you read http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html or spoken to any YC founders? We're usually very willing to discuss the program, and will share the good and the bad. There are always areas where any accelerator can be improved, YC included, but this article seems to have pointed out the differences between the two programs and assumed that they make YC a worse program. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Use the spare time that you would have given them, for 10% of failure, to build your own side project, then either build that into a business or leverage the experience for the next thing.
Everyone lies. You lie - I guarantee it. There is such a thing as acceptable lying. You probably lie every day. If you have kids then you certainly lie constantly about small things.

The question is, for any individual, what do you consider an acceptable lie? What are your limits?

For me, lying on a resume is not acceptable. For others clearly it is fine.
DHH says: "Much more brutal takedown of $CRM than I could ever do."
It's not deferred by that much. The Four Hour Workweek has been a super-duper bestseller for a reason: Many people are actively working toward the goal of periodic mini-retirements. For those who can earn and save, leisure is quite possible today.

A second diversion of leisure, I believe, has been the priorisation of "a job you love". This is a reasonable tradeoff. Imagine you have the choice to work 4 days a week in a tar pit, or work 6.75 days a week to make it as a photographer. The Blackberry leash isn't so terrible viewed that way.
Ask yourself: WWZD?

Immediately start implementing the website.

Negotiate with them for as long as possible, so they don't hire outside help.

After promising them (verbally, no written communication) to start working on the website, don't do any work. When they ask about progress, be evasive.

Launch the website, owning 100% of it.

Profit.
Harj,

We know you might have stopped looking at new applications but trying to see if we still have a chance as there is 1 more week for the program to start.

The concept we are working on is www.yestot.com

Appreciate your time.
Maybe the op should have qualified those more, but the key point in that paragraph was as 1 out of 10 rather than 1 out of 40, there's more focus on you.
A person who isn't rational is going to always produce rational art.

A rational statement.
He has four points of comparison, so I want to address them below from the perspective of someone who has done YC.

Location: I really don't see the NYC advantage. It's even MORE expensive than SV, there are fewer angels and VCs, and the culture worships investment banking instead of startups. I would say NYC is probably the second best place to start a startup after SV, but it's a distant second.

Mentorship and events: This does seem to accurately describe a difference between the two programs. In YC you'd never[1] spend an entire month (let alone the first month) in meetings. And YC is mostly about advice from YC rather than from a larger group of mentors. [2]

Size of the program: YC is much bigger than TechStars. Of course, YC can be bigger because it gets so many more applicants. While you may share access to the YC partners with more startups, they commit enough time to make sure everyone has all the access they need.

Demo Day: If you've ever been to a YC demo day, you know it's incredibly intense. Three days of presentations to many of the top investors in the world, packing the house. The presentations may be shorter, but it doesn't seem to hurt anyone's ability to raise money.[3]

[1] There are probably exceptions to this, for people who somehow already have products coming into YC, but offhand I can't think of one.

[2] Of course YC can introduce you to pretty much anyone at this point due to the size of the network, but I don't think that's really the central point of YC.

[3] Side note: I find the complaint that the pitches are "informal" a little weird, since I think one of the things that makes startups so dangerous is exactly that they are allowed to skip the formalities and cut to the chase.
I don't think anyone is going to write a PHP parser for a couple of shitty themes
Simple math:
--Are you comfortable working for $70/hour?
--Do you think this can be built/polished/updated in 100 hours?
$7,000 / $70 = 100 hours

-- Can this idea be sold relatively quickly for $70,000?
-- Will you be willing to wait for your pay-off?
$7,000 is %10 of $70,000

Honestly though, sounds like you will be treated as a second rate citizen the entire time while also doing the majority work. If you're cool with that, that's your business. If you just want to start a start-up, but don't have any ideas, email me and I can help you come up with some ideas.

Lastly, family and business don't mix. If either party isn't completely satisfied with how the process turns out, you ( and your family ) will hear about it for the rest of your lives.
First of all, the vast majority of people can't even come close to replicate this "technological experience" of movie theater

Massively disagree. The huge screen is really not of great importance. Given a good-enough screen, quality audio is what sends the experience over the edge. I picked up fantastic NHT speakers and a variety of amplifiers for well under $1k. Surround sound adds nothing, while a center channel is crucial for dialog.

As for the environment, set your living room up however you please. I've never had anyone munching popcorn and nachos (!), talking to the characters, jingling their jewelery, or texting in my living room.

I agree about Borat, though a room of friends would have given the same experience.
Do you have a source for the nonhuman cell count? That would be an excellent water cooler topic to read up on.