skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am also old and have been around the block. There's a chance I hold the record for having the most kids of any founder in a YC batch, which I think is astonishingly cool...

I think it's rare that startups have anything as ground breaking as page rank, and even rarer that it seems ground breaking to anyone else at the time. If we had some specific formula for growing environment saving bacteria from leftover banana peels, we'd tell you for sure.

What we really have is a set of guiding principles, indicators that tell us we're pointed roughly where we should be pointed, and lots of things we want to try to get there.

The tech details weren't meant to be evasive as much as de-emphasized. They're there because we think good candidates might find those specific technologies interesting. We had variants on the description with many more specifics, but none of them seemed entirely important at the time. I do like talking tech, though, so here's an exhaustive look:

* We use CoffeeScript at several levels and happen to think it's pretty awesome. Anything that we could have done in JS has been done in CoffeeScript instead, this includes super tight ad serving javascript, the frontend code for our user facing apps, etc.

* We have two major classes of users, those who use our tools to do better advertising, and those who see ads. The "magic" for the first class is whatever the latest release candidate of Rails 3.1 is (rc5 maybe?), the second is the Node.js version that Heroku's Cedar stack supports (0.4.6 I think).

* Both apps feed copious amounts of information into a backend Mongo replica set, and the Node layer leans on Redis for some things.

* We've done limited data visualization with that d3 toolkit I mentioned. We feel that data viz is often underrated, but an extremely useful thing for us to devote resources to. If we could justify buying the entire New York Times data visualization team we'd do so.
YC is losing it's cool factor IMO. The startups are a letdown, especially this year. The ideas and business models are weaksauce. They're paraded out like rock bands but haven't earned that distinction with many of us.

YC startups aren't newsworthy until they earn it.
You're absolutely right, visual designers really do need to learn CSS.

But not for this. These examples are as relevant to real-world CSS design as writing a Reddit clone in three lines of Clojure is to real-world web development.
Thanks! That's all randy. =)
Stealing cleverly does not stop this from being theft. :-(
This is a parody of an old TV show called "Dragnet". Each episode ended with a dramatic narrator reading something 99.9% similar to the comment you replied to. Same fixed format, everything.

Kids these days :) :)
My apologies on behalf of YC. I deleted that job post, and asked the companies in this batch not to post this sort of thing anymore.
Extreme concentration of wealth in US economy has led to central planning
Because people focused on sleeping will find more efficient ways to get their awesomeness done. (Here, by "people", I mean "pandas".)
It actually gets easier to read over time - but I'll admit I didn't include it for legibility but rather how distinctive it looks. App sales seem to be a balance between well-implemented innovative features and flashy-looking hype.
There is a lot of complexity in that Event Sourcing document. The pattern can be simpler: https://github.com/iriscouch/follow/blob/master/README.md
Via mail in a security envelope. Will need to look into the potential attacks on that separately....
Intriguing... if true, I wonder if the 'central planners' could use this for good, as China did in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2875800 ?
Gesundheit?
I agree you could argue that. But rather than crunching numbers, I think his point was to illustrate the state of some cancer treatments today. How despite of everything and all advances in medicine,we still need to make HUGE improvements in cancer.

For example, pancreatic cancer. Prognosis is 20% 1 year survival and five-year rate is 4%. The best approved treatment so far is Gemzar, which was introduced in the early 80's. It's improve rate over other chemos was that it works in 23% of the patients, and improves the median survival to 5.65 months compared to 4.41 months with 5-flu chemo.

Over 20 years and some of the best we got is +1.2 months and for only 23% of the patients. That's what he's pushing for and I support,improving this rates.

In the end It's not about crunching numbers and making one disease or other look better tackled. It's about having hope for all this people and know something can be done, instead of staring at such a grim prognosis.
Honestly, that story sounds really vague and I can't see _anything_ in it that would even be remotely responsible for an account suspension. What do you think they got in trouble for? Sending a message to too many people? That certainly isn't a bannable offense, especially since there is a public posting option.
I kinda wanted to see it, though, so I had some context.
Sam Odio set up Freshplum ?
A startup to avoid.
Why does YC get these social retards ?
First AirBNB craps on itself, now Freshplum's founder steals and publically talks about his pride at the theft.
Great idea. Looking forward to my first candy.
Torchwood Season 4 Episode 6
ok guys today i will present serial tv Torchwood Season 4 Episode 6 - Day Miracle
this film aired on Friday, 12 August, 2011. Under the title Torchwood Season 4 Episode 6 - Day Miracle: agents who are the spoilers and have a clear idea
What happened to their old iPhone? If they sold it to someone who did not have an iPhone already, it seems fair to still count it.
How to Increase Your Likability
Are you a native English speaker?

I'm not the OP here, but I'm curious if you've never heard the idiom or the if the idiom just rubs you the wrong way.

> Replace god in this expression by gays, Allah, children, science, music, bits or whatever

That's just it, "for the love of X" doesn't really get a rise out of me for any value of X.

A less common variation of the idiom is "for the love of Mike", which I think points out how arbitrary the object one's affection is in this expression.

> And it doesn't provide any useful and constructive information to the main point.

Without commenting on whether the use was appropriate in this case (frankly I don't have much of an opinion either way), usually that expression is just a way of underscoring the importance of the part that comes after it. For example:

"for the love of x, please stop doing that"

implies more emotion and greater importance than:

"please stop doing that"
DangDeal - Penny Auctions 2.0
I appreciate RVM and Wayne offers fantastic, other-worldly support. That said, there's always room for alternatives and I'm intrigued by rbenv. The part that gives me pause is the need to run `rbenv rehash` after installing a ruby (not so bad and possibly fixable if the aforementioned change to ruby-build is made) or after installing a gem that has binaries (I predict I will forget to do this a ton).

I could definitely see myself wanting to override `gem` in order to detect binary installations and automatically rehash. At which point, it's not so unobtrusive!

Still interested enough to try it out and see if that is as much of a hassle as I think it will be.
Fuzzing at scale
Subjot is awesomeness.

Just sayin' ;]
Following your analogy, Facebook isn't kicking people out of an F1 race, they're disallowing competitors from adding their own engine parts to Facebook's car. Sounds reasonable, right?

Still, that's a tortured metaphor.
> I'm not sure the technical meaning of entropy in this context

Roughly, it's the logarithm (base 2) of the number of guesses that an optimal password guesser would have to guess in order to guess your password. It's a measure of how unknown your password is.

> it has so many possible combinations, that every speaker is continually creating sentences that have never before been uttered.

Yes, this is why all of the suggested alternatives like "choose a line from a popular song" are so much less secure.
YC S11 Company Seeks Uber Python Dev

We're a young company that's so hot, we melt ice in our sleep. Some of our investors even believe we're responsible for global warming. Out hotness is to be expected: our 5 founders hail from top engineering schools, and one even won $5,000 in a single night playing online poker when he was 13 (for reals).

Our users? Cooler than a polar bear's toe nails. Think Tom from MySpace, but even cooler. They're young, they love technology and they all have fat bank accounts. Oh, they're all beautiful people too.

Our trajectory is clear: extreme penetration of a lucrative niche market in Year 1, and world domination in Year 2. We've already grown 500% in our first 2 weeks after launch. See http://yfrog.com/kfu2tcj

We're looking for an awesome Python developer with a big ego and low self-esteem. Someone who knows he's the sheeeeet but doesn't want to prove it at a big company that does lame stuff like QA. Someone who can down a can of Coke and a box of Mentos and then go on to devour a four-course meal of web-scale challenges the likes of which no other startup has ever faced. Seriously.

What do we offer? Put simply, The Life. As an early employee, you'll receive a salary that will enable you to rent a condo in Palo Alto with 3 other startup dude roommates, a huge equity stake that will be massively diluted as we raise new rounds of funding from some of the most respected angels and VCs in the Valley, and the ginormous confidence that comes with knowing you're changing the world one unique visitor at a time.

If you're ready to take your awesomeness to the next level and think you have what it takes to hang, send us an email at socially.awkward.hipster.startup@gmail.com and tell us why we shouldn't laugh at your Github account.
I work at a social gaming company who currently has an app on Facebook and other social networks. When I saw that Techcrunch had quoted Alex St. John I started laughing out loud and made every one else in the office come and see because it's amazingly hilarious to hear Hi5 say Facebook is terrified of them. Hi5's user base monetizes incredibly badly, and their API and support staff are terrible.
Yeah thanks, I need to tweak apache workers
Why must you say anything at all? This is a centuries-old meme that serves no purpose. It annoys me slightly anytime says it to me, and I don't say anything to anyone else when they sneeze.
Darkest Planet Found: Coal-Black, It Reflects Almost No Light
Good idea, however might get vulnerable to DOS attacks.
This is a good idea!

You do lose a little entropy that way: you've merged "great" and "greatly", and "correct" and "correctly", suggesting that your modification process considers adjectives and their corresponding adverbs as equivalent. If those examples are typical, that removes one bit of entropy. But you've probably added more than that back in, if your choices of "a", "will", "the", and especially "inserted" are unpredictable. (Alternatives might include "the", "would/did/could", "a", and "removed".)
Still struggling? That's kind of depressing. Sorry, hope it gets better.
I think it's sad what Marco's rooting interest are here. It's not enough that the iPad succeed. It's competitors have to fail for him to be happy. If the tablet really is the future of personal computing then there will be more than 1 successful platform.

Marco and Gruber would be fine with the two successful platforms being iOS and WP7. They honestly believe that the mandatory walled garden model with heavily limited options is better for most customers, and that "open" platforms such as Android (and Mac OS X) are fundamentally incapable of providing the same level of user experience. I disagree completely, but their position is more nuanced than just Apple fanboyism.
> I believe the "real" interest rate on TIPS is fixed - while the nominal rate fluctuates with CPI.

According to that reasoning, interest rates almost never change because they're typically a given premium to inflation.

We don't accept that reasoning because you repay what the note says, not the relationship between that number and some other number.

> Your second point is, of course, right on. But if we have to borrow $x, better to borrow it now at ~0% than later at (likely) >0% interest.

Umm, no. Borrowing now at 0% and rolling that over later to a new loan at 10% is not better than simply borrowing later at 10%.

Yes, borrowing now is better if you do something useful now with the money, something that you'd delay by borrowing later.

However, there's little evidence of that occurring. We're running up lots of debt on dumb spending. If you want to do some smart spending, take the money from dumb spending.
My sibling commenter is giving me too much credit - I started before git came along, so it was either CVS or SVN. I wanted to be able to kill directories directly from the repository, so CVS it was.
Well good on you guys :)

I might take a look at this API, been looking for some good weekend things to play with.
How To Create/Find Graphics For Your App
For my last app i did all the graphics with out buying any software. You can do all your graphics for your apps with free software such as Gimp or another way is find graphics online that people allow others to use for free.
I think you've just given me a weekend project. Such a thing must be unleashed into the world.
What if we all changed our [Google+] account names to I am Spartacus?
I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned the lack of a web interface. I've been using AeroFS and Dropbox heavily but haven't felt that I'm at the point where I could give either one up completely. Dropbox is too costly for syncing everything on my drives and I'd prefer not to have sensitive documents on someone else's server.

But, AeroFS requires a client installation and sync to get any access. I've used the Dropbox web interface and iPhone app numerous times to look up a file or reference when I was away from the office. Sure, I could set up a web interface on my desktop as an alternative, but that's not end-user simple. It's also a problem in that, at least on OSX, changes made my system-level processes (such as file sharing) don't always register as modification in the File System Event Database, and thus don't get synced.
You only need to set up a cron job to create a reverse SSH tunnel into your home server. That way from your home server you could SSH into the machine, no matter where it is.

It's one or two lines of configuration.
A Different Side of the Success Stories of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
What's utterly silly about not having a "purchase first, warn later" system in Apple's case is that that of unlike credit cards, Apple can literally undo the purchase. Apple has done a great job of making the App Store's FairPlay DRM invisible to users, but in the case of a fraudulent purchase, I would imagine it trivial to make that DRM quite plainly visible to the fraudulent purchaser.
I'm also a recent Safari convert from Chrome after getting my MBA. I was missing 2 great Chrome features:

1) only 1 URL/search box (replaced by SafariOmnibar on Safari, doesn't work perfectly with Resume)

2) the search engine capabilities from the omnibar ("st mac" would search "mac" on StackOverflow) which I replaced with Alfred.

Don't miss Chrome at all anymore (still use it for its embedded Flash capabilities).
Thanks for the writeup and the honesty.
Pretty cool editorializing bro
There's ObamaCare for starters.

This week, we found out that they scored the subsidies based on single people with no kids while the coverage goes to dependents as well, so the subsidies will cost a lot more than predicted.

Every week or so, there's another $100B or so of spending in the bill that we find out about that wasn't scored.

Pelosi was right - we had to pass the bill to know what's in it.
I think that AeroFS only uses central servers to identify the IP addresses of participating hosts and negotiate a connection. AFAIK, the actual data flows directly peer to peer. So, even a malicious employee or government snoop would only know the IP of swarm participants. Presumably you'd still need to intercept and crack any encryption between nodes.
You deny the fact that English text can be attacked separately from your dictionary. English text is very predictable, for example e is much more common and q is almost certainly followed by u.

I'm not making this up on my own either. Please check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%2....
Let me quote the important part:
The entropy rate of English text is between 1.0 and 1.5 bits per letter,[1] or as low as 0.6 to 1.3 bits per letter, according to estimates by Shannon based on human experiments.[2]

Consider the following example: You have a wordlist of 100 000 words. It seems only normal that log(100 000)/log(2) is equal to 16.6 bits of entropy.
Now consider you take three words out of that list completely at random. You get the words "a no we". Assuming 16.6 bits of entropy per word you do indeed have to search through a space of 49.8 bits but only if you attack that via the dictionary

It is clear that in this case you can do a different attack. Instead of brute forcing the words you can brute force the characters on their own with a search space of a-z and space. This equals log(27^7)/log(2) or 33.2 bits. A lot less than 49.8 bits estimated when only considering a dictionary approach. In reality English text is so predictable that you don't have to search even close to 33.2 bits of entropy if you brute force it with an algorithm that is aware of English text. Assuming Shannon's 1.3 bits per character estimate this password has 9.1 bits of entropy.

I understand that this is an edge case with very short words. But I choose that to try and show that there are other ways to attack the password by using a 27 character dictionary. This is cold hard math and therefore much easier to accept than the magic entropy estimation of englist text. Once you see that this way can reduce your entropy calculation it's not that hard to accept that there might be more ways to reduce the entropy ever further.
What is this good for beyond wasting your time?
"Abuse" is a relative term. Denso may not have introduced error correction for the use case of inserting aesthetic elements into the barcode, but hey, it works.

MogoTix inserts its logo into QR codes as a form of branding and identification, and we have not encountered any error correction issues whatsoever.
MobileWorks (YC S11) is a Hands-Off Mechanical Turk
We definitely want to make sure our users are safe. Check out our safety page (which is linked at the footer) with tips on how to rideshare safely: http://burningmanrides.com/safety
Too bad the altruism was a ruse.
I don't seen the downside to verifying your account on a new device before being able to use it. If you have access to the appstore then you have access to Gmail and one simple email to say "Yeah, go ahead and let my friend's iPad buy this app on my account for 24 hours/7days/forever" is all it takes to prevent this sort of thing.

> We don't implement such paranoid measures either in other web-services or in real live, so I find it rather overblown to demand Apple does this.

Google Two-Factor Authentication, Facebook emails you when someone logs on using an unknown computer, Steam does the same, and I'm sure there are more examples.

It's only paranoia until something happens.
For those of you just getting into this book, there is also a great course with video lectures up on MIT's OCW site: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
There's a Mr. Turing here to see you about whether this site is really connecting him to a lady, sir.
Postal Service to eliminate 220,000 jobs, shutter 300 facilities
I think the value that you're bringing to the table is being eclipsed by other major players (most notably, Google). If you want to continue this project, you need to really differentiate yourself in a clear and specific way that would give your potential users a reason to buy in.

When I look at your homepage, I see you selling me features of your product. I'm not interested in what your product does. I'm interested in what it does for me. Read this post from Dave McClure: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/08/your-solution-is...

Your headline "What are people typing?" is probably not the question they are asking themselves. I'd suspect it's more along the lines of "Are visitors mistyping my URL?" It's a subtle difference, but you're facing the user with the question and making it relevant to them. Your headline is very unspecific and ambiguous.

Your demo let's me compare specific popular domain names, but I'm not sure what I'm suppose to be learning from this demonstration. Your value proposition gets lost and I don't know how this demo provides useful information to me.

I hope my feedback was constructive.
It's clever, and you can make at least as many variations on this as the Price is Right. Separate games for electronics, homewares, etc...

The ranking game is annoying me though. Some suggestions:

- if I fail to put them in the right order it should tell me how many are in the wrong position.

- if I ultimately fail after n tries it should reveal the prices. Right now I just sit there frustrated and unenlightened as to what I did wrong.

- audio cues for winning / losing. Really important for a game like this.
Investors yank $14 billion from stock
Please add a section for planes :)

Then pimp it on https://lists.burningman.com/mailman/listinfo/aviators-list

Yee Haw!
Wall Street Trader Bonuses May Drop 30%
Ping us off list to see how we can get Code Academy running up in SF! mike AT codeacademy DOT org
I'm enthusiastically behind the ridesharing idea. It's ecologically intelligent, saves people money and the hassles of vehicle ownership, and with looming fuel price spikes/peak oil/economic uncertainty, I see it as a futureproof business.

Looks like you've also got a solid team in place too (the importance of this cannot be overstated).

Btw, I'm in the "potential user" camp, and will use your service when I've got a chance.

In short, this is a startup I can feel good about. Good luck!
China recalls 54 high-speed trains over safety concerns
Lovely illustrations and great content!
> And the point about Democrats questioning Bush's legitimacy is a great one. Here's someone who actually was arguably illegitimate for his first term, and what did Democratic officeholders and commentators do?

They, along with the rest of polite society, when some "brave artist" ranted about Bush's assassination.

> if the Republican tea party is honest about their concern with deficits, where were they prior to January 2009?

Actually, a lot of us were screaming about the bush deficits, ,which got a big boost in 2006, when the Dems took congress, something that you completely ignore.

However, as I point out, there is a difference between $160B deficits and $1T deficits.

Sure, you want to blame the economy, but even if that's the only cause, why is it reasonable to keep spending as if times are flush when they clearly aren't?
Why I Returned My iPad
Energy policy chaos threatens Japan's economy
The unfortunate thing about structuring the card in that manner is that: 1) it's not the way the card is programmed to work and 2)the experiment was to provide a vehicle for those who can't to benefit from those who can. The moment the individual the experiment as designed for would end the experiment; the inevitable end of buy one, give one.
Depression Decade in Europe If Italy Defaults: Analyst
It's not only in the UK that communication services are at risk
(via https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1210530313... )
can you point me to something that discusses dataflow style variables in linq? (i don't use ms software and had missed this). thanks.
Clearly the company in the second example is making gigawidgets.
but does this not increase the size of your source control repository?
I thought the whole point of GAE is so you can scale up when you get stormed by HN
Very cool idea, I so need to do this for http://laserey.es! :)
Amazon Cracks Down on Some E-Book 'Publishers'