skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I guess real vs everything else economy can be kinda defined as... take all 'economic' activity. Put everything into one of two groups. The group for which you can eliminate without harming your physical ability to continue to operate the other group is the 'not real' economy.

Or in the words of my econ prof, the real economy is an engine that runs on the lubricant of money/currency. In other words, -any- currency market is by definition 'not the real economy'.
US Dollars are backed by the US government who requires that taxes be paid in them, and pays them out to employees.

This is what makes dollars valuable. Their scarcity is far less relevant.

Bitcoin needs to be backed by some kind of utility to have value. Scarcity alone is not enough.
Open source Worms:
http://hedgewars.org/
Yes, Miami, is not a techhub by far isn't.

Then every conference should be in your backyard right? (I take you live in the bay area). I find your opinion very selfish. You guys have conferences all the time, we (I live in Miami), never. Having this conference in my backyard is cool because I'd get to meet more programmers (I'm being selfish too).
Some FPS additions:

AlienArena - like UT, Q3A. Graphically impressive, seems to be actively developed.

http://red.planetarena.org/

Nexuiz - like UT, Q3A. Also decent graphics, seems devs are working on a commercial sequel now, so the last major version was in 2009.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nexuiz/

OpenArena - like Q3A. Seems to be an attempt to recreate Quake 3 Team Arena from the GPL source with new content, some graphical improvements.

http://www.openarena.ws/

Tremulous - like Gloom, Natural Selection etc. Sci-fi FPS/RTS hybrid.

http://tremulous.net/

Urban Terror - like Counter-Strike, but a little more arcade-style.

EDIT: free but not yet open source

http://www.urbanterror.info/
Ask HN: How to remotely disabled Dropbox?
I feel silly for asking this on HN, but I can't find the answer on Dropbox's support or on Google.

Suppose I'm in the situation where I have 2 machines configured with Dropbox and my laptop gets stolen, or I otherwise no longer have access to one of the machines. How does one go about remotely wiping the Dropbox folder on that system considering that it has internet access and my user account is logged in (i.e. default single-user account on a Mac).
I got it too. Not something I'd ever hope to see in a trading market.
That seems hard to believe. The buttons seem to show up fine on tech crunch and google search.

It's difficult to imagine that Google has been 'slashdotted' due to serving up a javascript widget...
It's a big difference to risk starting a company vs climbing Mt Everest. That's actually a big mental block people have - they are afraid of risk, but starting a company or asking a cute girl out and failing is more of an ego hit than a threat to your existence.
Ask HN: When you are getting acquired does documentation/code really matter?
How important is documentation to any acquisition? Does it make or break the deal? In the long run is it important to build things on traditional stacks (Rails or Django) instead of rolling your own custom stack?

And finally, is it unheard of for a big company to be interested in your product, look at your code, then laugh you off?
The first chapter of K&R is a tutorial introduction, it explains the entire workings of the C language for someone familiar to programming in a small number of pages(It misses pointers, but it covers a lot).

Every book on a language needs this. The best I have seen was in a python book where the author stopped and told the reader enough had been learnt to write any program. The closet to the K&R model I have seen is with the Big Nerd Ranch books.
Now +1 Gets Interesting
"...an ounce of gold would always buy a nice suit and a pair of shoes. That seems to hold true today."
I certainly agree, it's not like I don't use google to host jquery, or any other number of things.

However it was seriously hanging on that one js call. Perhaps it's just my experience, but I'm going to wait at least an hour before I try again. I like my site responding.
FYI - the overall rate is ~9% but has been declining significantly in recent years...

http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKillerMountain...

"To date, there have been 1,924 ascents of Mount Everest (more than 1,300 different climbers), and 179 people have died. The overall fatality rate is thus about 9% (fatality rate is defined as successful summits compared to fatalities). However, since 1990 there has been an explosion of summiteers and fatality statistics have changed. Up to 1990, the Everest fatality rate is a whopping 37%, with 106 deaths and only 284 summits. Yet from 1990 until today, the rate has dropped to 4.4%; 73 people have died, and 1,640 have summited. Thus, the rate decreased to about eight times less than the pre-1990 fatality rate!"
True, but this behavior prompts people to hoard rather than spend. It won't really be used as a currency at any scale until it stabilizes.
One more credit to BYTE magazine. I remember no magazine as influential (or as fun to read) than BYTE.

Let's hope CMP does it justice and turns byte.com into something amazing.
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There is a time and place for everything, so we are told. personally, I believe that HN is not the place for this. And if HN is now the place for this, then perhaps HN's time has now passed.

Other people's personal lives are their own. They make their choices, the people they share their lives with share their choices, by choice or otherwise.

Leave them alone. Leave it alone. Go build something useful.
"...so far at least the great majority of VC investments in YC-funded startups have been by the better firms. I'm not sure exactly why, since bad VCs are more numerous than good ones; perhaps the bad VCs assume the companies at an event as public as Demo Day will already have been picked over by the time they get a shot at them."

Or perhaps the lower tier VCs just can't compete with the "better" firms.

I find it interesting that you so readily equate "lower-tier" VCs with "lower quality" VCs. Is this a reliable rule?
I made a bookmark toolbar folder called interesting projects and hit ⌘ + d... should do the trick.
https://www.dropbox.com/account#manage

Go there, deauth. a machine. You can't remotely wipe it though, as the files actually exist. You'd need an alternative solution for that.

Edit: also, use drive-level encryption and secure your user accounts. =\
Add Option for Commenters to Subscribe to your Newsletter
Me too (although I preferred Borland's Sidekick Plus: it had a great outliner (my favorite still)).
he isn't dignifying the notion that scarcity automatically connotes value

Sure. But if we are speaking about competing mediums (media?) of exchanges, scarcity matters. Not the only factor that matters, but one of.
Would you post a link to the referred post?
The digital drug wars. by ghost
sooo....who would win a digital drug war?
Google is trying to throw it's weight at something it's competitors already do better. Even if it does catch on, we all lose with the social sharing craze that is littering the web. More clutter, slower loading pages, and gimmicks to get to you upvote a site.

This has happened before, first it was the syndication format craze with icons for RSS, RSS 2.0, atom, xml, etc. Then it was the aggregator craze (Digg, Reddit, StumpleUpon, etc) and now it's the social craze (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

There's a clear need for sharing what you like, from the perspective of the user and the publisher. I've put these buttons into my design, but I'd rather see the browsers' favorites revamped into a searchable database that allows easy sharing and get rid of this madness.
Every time I try to learn Scala I get the feeling that it's too big.
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Put the script tag after the content of your site.
Google +1 is Available Now: Why it Matters & Why it May Not Work
Ask HN: Seeking Startup? Seeking Cofounder?
I thought this might be a nice complement to whoishiring's "Hiring?" posts today to help match up cofounders.

Please lead with either SEEKING STARTUP or SEEKING COFOUNDER, your location and whether remote is a possibility.
could this position be working remotely?
thx.
1M/1M: Message To Incubators
Ask HN: Retacts, an Etacts alternative?
My friend and I are looking to build an alternative to Etacts (just registered Retacts.com), since there doesn't seem to be too many viable alternatives at the moment.

I wanted to ask what features were most useful to its customers.
He's not a bug finder. He's a bug fixer. (dev rather than QA).

His methods are crude yet effective - from logical elimination to black box testing.

Sometimes not even he can save the project.
As a guess, it's probably the same reasons medical conferences are in places like Hawaii.
An actual IBM-PC could reliably be rebooted using the keyboard controller (as mentioned in the article). The issues come with IBM-PC "compatible" machines. I'm sure commodore would have the same problem if anyone had bothered to clone them.
Either potential equity or the potential to get hired.

Make that a stated goal for them, and have regular meetings/mentorship as to how they're doing.

It sucks to bust your ass on the offhand hope that one day your boss will say "you're hired!". It might not happen, and you have no idea. You get burnt out. But if that's a concrete goal you can achieve...
That's nonresponsive to Cowen's point, which is that as soon as Bitcoin stops being an efficient way to conduct anonymous transactions (and "probably before then"), Bitcoin's scarce fiat currency will be worth near zero.

You say, "yeah, sure, but scarcity matters". Well, actually, Cowen says it doesn't in this case.
Yeah, I did have it in the header, when it readd it in an hour, I'll have it at the bottom.
$4.7 billion / 210 = $22.4 million, so the average value of startups we've funded is about $22.4 million.

Of course that could be cut in half tomorrow. Startup valuations are even more volatile than ordinary equities.

Couldn't one argue that startup valuations are sticky in a downward direction? The 21 largest companies are highly valued because they're generating tons of revenue (or even profits). Nothing short of a market collapse would hault that revenue generation, and it's hard to imagine such a collapse in the market of, say, peer-to-peer vacation rentals or cloud-based multi-platform storage.

It's entirely possible, though, that by "cut in half tomorrow" PG meant that Winter 2012 will include 210 companies. :P
YC invests more like $17k on average, since most startups are 2 people. So your base is wrong there.

You also have to assume dilution since almost everyone raises money. So they might have started with 6%, but they probably have more like 3% in a mature company (assuming 50% dilution for no particular reason).

So if you wanted to estimate returns at this point you could say (3% * 4.7 billion) / (212 * 17k) which is 39x (or 3900%). Not half bad!
> I care that people are professional in their work.

I feel the same way. But this isn't work, this is play.
Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling).

I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but that is a horrible pun.
Historical DC Comes Alive Online
I'm long over worrying about that. For public policy discussion posts I made on an old commercial online service, back before I had a true Internet account, I got harassing phone calls. Just in the last year I've received harassing phone calls for my Wikipedia editing. (This, by the way, is one reason I don't trust Wikipedia as an information source on some controversial subjects. Some ideologues fight dirty to control the content there, and Wikipedia management does nothing about that.) I just go on being myself, and cherish time in the real world with my real-life friends.
It seems safe to say that Y Combinator's expectancy* as an investor is currently unsurpassed - no private investor, mutual fund, hedge fund, VC, etc. I've ever heard of comes close. Congratulations!

* expectancy = (probability of win * average win) – (probability of loss * average loss)
Interesting, my post gets down voted and then someone later makes the same point and doesn't get down voted... hn, you confuse me.
Ah yep, works for me now. Is working well :)
This looks and feels great. Great idea and concept. I've already requested an invite. Best of luck!
In-the-box, a Dalvik port for iOS that lets Android apps run on iDevices
Fairfax, VA: ThinkGeek

If you love getting the latest ThinkGeek swag and can sling some serious Perl, we'd love to talk to you!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/jobs#pwd
US Dollars are backed by the US government who requires that taxes be paid in them, and pays them out to employees.

That's a lot of trade outside of US which is done in USD and not in local currencies. Are you going to argue that USD is not used as medium of exchange outside of US because you cannot pay taxes with them?
There are lots of very good (security) reasons this information tends to be kept under wraps. The best thing to do is to involve the security and networks teams in your project at the planning phase so you can identify collab points before they become problems. Yes, I have faced this many, many times and it is incredibly frustrating, especially in controlled environments.
6% is undiluted, you have to assume YC has been diluted quite a bit during fundraising. But even assuming a more realistic 3%, those are great returns.
Tasteless? I don't think you're getting it. He risked his life completely unnecessarily while he needed to be a father. What he has done is categorically selfish. Your defense of his actions is that "It was his lifelong ambition." If you believe that then you already acknowledge that his action is selfish; <i>his</i> ambition caused him to abandon his responsibilities as a father and husband.

I don't see it as much as criticism as it is a simple fact. I posted not because I wanted to make a change so much as because I was utterly surprised by someone defending this person. Furthermore, my comments are in reply to your post and not directed at any members of the family, but I would hope that at least the wife realizes the moral implications of her husband's decision at this point.
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If anyone here remembers the game Netstorm, we're doing a remake of it here, http://risingstormhq.com. It's not entirely opensource at the moment (and built on unity), but I'm the only coder and I'm releasing components (especially generic ones) as I go (as they are cleanly separable). In the end, I'll release all the code I feel I can without making the team unhappy.
Personally I cannot learn from a book where I am just given concepts and supposed to find a solution. I find reading other code to be a much better learning method.

I have seen most students prefer to presented with a whole working program and then expand on it in the challenges the book provides. The author of this article was expressing a desire for shorter books that give full code listings rather than code snippets and challenges that you seem to prefer.
The 21 largest companies are highly valued because they're generating tons of revenue (or even profits), and nothing short of a collapse in their market could halt that income generation.

I don't think valuation of startups are strongly based on revenue and profit. At least not in a way where their revenue/profits force a certain valuation, rather than simply suggest that the potential and growth is there. (if that makes sense).
It’s Not About You: David Brooks’ Contrarian Advice for College Graduates
It's also worth noting that the Mongols were turned back by the Germanic tribes because, well, compound bows simply don't work in damp European forests whereas francesca _do_. Phallanx tactics versus maneuver, as the author has it, is meaningless in the face of the inability or unwillingness to adapt to your environment.
I'm currently following 866 coders and watching 356 repositories. My feed provides me with an immeasurable amount of value.
On a slightly different vein, if you still have the old games you can often find an open source engine to play them with :-

* Old Bioware games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, ...) - GemRB: http://www.gemrb.org

* SCUMM (Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer, ...) - ScummVM: http://www.scummvm.org/

* Transport Tycoon Deluxe - OpenTTD: http://www.openttd.org/en/ (this has optional free replacements for the graphics/sound/music, too)
Far better than I would have expected, given the various spreadsheets, etc. that I had seen floating around. I was a bit skeptical about YCombinator's growth and the ability to mentor new startups, but with numbers like these (esp. the 34/36 number) I've a lot more confidence that they will be able to do just fine with more startups in each class.

In many ways, it also makes me comfortable saying that the "Harvard of startups" description is appropriate. Sprinkle in a bit of elitism based on merit, give people some general framework, a bit of advice, and a lot of free reign, and brilliant and hardworking people will make things happen. Much better to be a bit hands-off and cultivate excellence then micro-managing the actions of the less focused or ambitious.

This, even more than recent acquisitions, is the best news I've seen out of YC in awhile, and truly excellent. Congratulations!

btw, to pg or anyone else, would be a little bit interesting to see more about the power law distribution as it applies to investing. I'm assuming this is true across the field, but don't know for sure (do all vcs get the same distribution, or is it simply true of software startups, or is it simply true of software startups that manage to include big hits? Moreover, do you simply get big hits by funding enough decent sluggers, or are there other strategies to make sure you have a decent shot at the next Dropbox, Twitter, Google, etc.)
How the Patriot Act affects my small business and makes me racist
No, that's not his argument at all. You can't pay taxes in Bitcoins in any industrialized economy in the world. Nobody is arguing that the Euro has no value, just that Bitcoin won't.
A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hrs of Forced Focus
A case in point where Bitcoin makes it insanely easy to do illegal activities. Hence, the provocative title. The potential for bad uses far outweigh the good ones.
My speculation is that relatively few iPads have been sold versus the size of the total market in coming years.

They may stay on top but I speculate it'll be like iPhone market share before Android was a real contender.

Nearly all the Android tablets that are out now are down-market compared to iPad. This could really shake it up.
You should checkout the 'Pop Grants' at ROI Pop ( http://roipop.com ). We specialize in PPC campaign management for nonprofits.
All the restaurant-related startups and announcements lately are an almost-daily reminder for me that when you have a good idea, jump on it.

Ah well. I didn't have the contacts to pull it off, and it was only half an idea. :)
oDesk Professional Services is hiring Python/Django developers to work on some very interesting and high performance applications. We're a diverse team of developers from all over the world and all of us work remotely.

The tools we use run the gamut but are primarily based on Python (and usually Django, though we also use GAE/tipsy, flask, Pyramid etc.). We use nginx, MongoDB, Redis, MySQL/PostgreSQL and more.

The full job description is avialable at https://www.odesk.com/jobs/Experienced-Python-Django-Develop.... Apply there or contact me (email address in my profile).
Recap: Gary Vee in Big D
Where is your post? I'll upvote it. :)
Publishers that I have learnt to avoid (overly verbose, code snippets instead of working programs.

Addison Wesley

Appress

O'Reilly(cookbooks fare better)
Search+Photos
The "de la" means "some" or "some of," while "la" alone just means "the".

"Folie" (folly) is an amorphous, uncounted quantity, like water or sand. War is a one-of-a-kind entity, like "Peltier effect." So you speak of "some water" but "the Peltier effect."

When thirsty, you could say that "I want to drink the water," but unless there was an antecedent already set up in the conversation, it would sound a bit silly.
Your product looks like Geckoboard: http://www.geckoboard.com/
> whoa, wait, the columns SLIDE OVER?! Wow...brilliant.

FWIW, that's how Reeder works on OSX (though Reeder is relatively new).
Using your own platform with 2 Giants already out in the market is ballsy to say the least. Another way of putting it would be "not very clever". I'm going with the latter here. Unless WebOS is extremely innovative and porting an app from another platform to this is ridiculously simple, it's surely going to fail.
Firefox with Twitter
> "Again it seems like some high-brow Google engineers, based on statistical evidence that humans have feelings, decided to employ some grandmother type to filter all their marketing through."

It seems like you, based on unstatistical evidence of Google Engineers, decided they were all Borg and incapable of feeling.
Ask HN: Which functional language should a beginner learn?
I was tempted to just go with Scheme, but I'm also kind of balancing pragmatic concerns with it. I feel that there's more use for Functional Python or Haskell perhaps these days.

So, any suggestions?
At least, unlike a lot of dead fathers, he (presumably) left his family well provided for, financially. That's something.
We want software patents abolished
AskForIt is my startup, by the way. :)
Thanks. Glad to see cool new services coming from Europe :)

But you should think heavily about differentiating from Geckoboard. For one I would add some kind of Apple / Android appstore metrics. Geckoboard doesn't have those and I would be glad to pay you if you did.
AskForIt is my startup, by the way. :)
Jon Matonis on BitCoin vs central bankers
New York, NY
Lead Front End Engineer @ Profitably.com
We just raised $1.1M, and we are looking to bring on #7. Our third co-founder was UX & Visual Design. We couldn't take design more seriously, and we need someone that loves making design a js powered reality. We've got cash and equity for you if that's in your wheelhouse.
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It is difficult to launder huge volumes of $20's and $100's.

It is trivial to launder huge volumes of forged Bitcoins; they are as liquid and convenient as real Bitcoins of any denomination.

Similarly, while you have to read interesting long-form journalism to learn about Iraq and North Korea counterfeiting operations, the whole world would know if either country could trivially forge Nasdaq transactions.
Is Microsoft's Future Data As Service
Having actually known John in real life, I disagree with your description of him as a narcissist.
Interesting. Though I imagine that a lot of people who die climbing Everest die because they did something stupid. What's the death rate for people who are sensible? (This guy doesn't seem to have done anything stupid, his brain just didn't like the altitude).

I wouldn't do it. But I do want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro sometime (much less dangerous).