skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This really hits home.

I'm 33, wife, son, well paying job. I'm also passionate about food and have 'just' launched a recipe scrapbook web application. It's been tough. Last night at 2am I was writing e-mails, and coding, while trying to rock our newborn son to sleep.

You mentioned risk. That's interesting. I'm by no means successful in my venture (yet!), but I've been able to get this far on about $100 and amazing support from my wife. So my risk has been on the extreme low side. Now I'm trying to drum up some interest, and marketing is new for me. So where do I go from here? Find a foodie co-founder who is awesome at hustling? Stay the course, try my best, and see where this goes? Quit my job and just go for it?! Not sure yet.

So I guess I'm just saying, go for it! Don't quite your job yet, get your wife on board, give yourself 6 months, and see what you can do! It's going to be TOUGH! But your passion should carry you through.
It looks _anyone_ can download the developer preview; I am looking forward to trying it!
Jetset Spanish Review
Yes, in some sense (see below) you do care about A.

But back then, everyone was worried even about well-conditioned systems. As of the mid 1940s the best error bound on cumulative roundoff error was 4^n where n is matrix order. That 4^n would be a multiplier on top of condition number (which at the time had not been formalized, it was Turing who did that).

Anyway, the dependence on matrix size turned out to be order n^2, and in practice more like O(n).

* * *

Also, the bounds on solving

A x = b

for x, knowing b and A, work differently than solving for the inverse of A.

Sometimes for a given A and b, you can compute x above quite accurately, but you can't compute inv(A) accurately and multiply by b to get x. It depends on the how the "difficult directions" in A interact with b. This is one reason numerical analysts always ask, "Do you really need to invert A?"

Because of this, the actual condition number of A (i.e., the norm of A times that of inv(A)) does not enter into the bounds on solving A x = b. The bounds depend on a different norm.

In fact, there are several forms of the error bound -- known as backward and forward errors -- depending on what you need.

* * *

Incidentally, this is the kind of stuff that's covered in Golub and Van Loan, or in Trefethen and Bao, but not in a standard Abstract Linear Algebra book. For instance, Strang's book spends only one chapter on numerical linear algebra.
Hey bradfa, Zak from upverter here. We hear you! Layout will be one of the next things we launch (we are working on it right now, hopefully just a few months away).

The hope is to also add a "print button" to connect users designs with rapid manufacturing suppliers.
Great post on Gladwell
I agree, that the HN community would downvote folks who complement Microsoft seems very immature indeed.
I don't know why you're making a big deal of this in multiple posts but the specs were shown in a slide in BUILD, so it's not like a big secret or conspiracy to hide the specs.
Compelling Maps with Public Data & MapBox Open Source Tools
Woooooooooooooooow
Everything Has a Fingerprint: The Case of Blank Paper
Nope, any request that fulfills DMCA requirements has to be obeyed. Any exceptions risks losing safe harbor, and that means you're responsible for all content on your servers.
But the App itself is in the position of the TV. The stream is 'broadcasting' from cbc.ca and the App is receiving it. Nowhere does he claim that he built a proxy that then 'rebroadcasts' the stream to his App.
On Easter we hunt for eggs.

On Halloween we dress in costumes.

On Festivus we air grievances and perform feats of strength.

On Programmer's Day? We argue about the naming of things!

(Though we have to figure out how to turn it into a drinking game.)
No tears over here! We've known this was coming for almost a year—Google announced their ITA acquisition before we even launched. We've also been preparing some sweet responses :)
Hey rcfox, Zak from Upverter here. We are planning to release import/export and an open file format by the end of the month. We have altium, eagle, kicad and geda converters in the works too!
What's interesting is that you linked to an ITA Software presentation, and Google own ITA Software. So it's almost certain that some of the people who put that document together worked on this pre-computed solution.
"Expected Release: Nov 21, 2011"
Memory Layout of C Programs
Google Introduces Flight Search
I'd love that! Other improvements would be to have account and allow us to tag artist we really dislike or really like/know, etc.
Another last minute thing, it would be nice to clear the background when performing a new search! I had the bad luck of launching a new search right when the previous clip displayed a lovely woman in underwear and I wouldn't love to see this at work :p
Not bad, but hipmunk's visualization seems far far better than Google's tables. The graphical representation of the flight path seems nice, as does the highlighting of cities involved, but that doesn't actually give me information I need to make a decision; Hipmunk's time-oriented chart of departures, arrivals, and layovers tells me exactly what I need to know to book a flight.
Ask HN: What would you like to see in a social news site?
I'm currently working on a new start up, called Athesyn.
It's a new kind of social news site with some new innovative features.
I thought it would probably be a good idea to see what people here would like to see from the future of social news sites.
In case you're interested in Athesyn and the progress we are making, you can sign up for our private beta and news letter here: http://www.athesyn.com/
A really important factor is reputation. Some of the firms you have listed at the top of the list for me are cheap but have jet-black records.
AngelSoft Relaunches as Gust.com, Now Connects Startups To Investors
The worst side-effect of this is actually "If you were really passionate about your last job, I don't want you."

I have old pet projects from times when my work at previous jobs was interesting but not all-consuming. The work I do for my current employer is so interesting and fun to me in so many ways that when I have spare coding time on non-work-hours, I'm still working on these work projects. My work projects are my pet projects.

Granted, someone like me is less likely to be in the market in the first place because I love my job, but if I suddenly were in the market (there are many very hypothetical reasons this could happen -- company runs out of runway, company is acquired by company that shifts focus in ways I don't care for, etc, etc) a filter like this would cut me out for all the wrong reasons.

Having said all of that, I think people hiring employees do need to employ some arbitrary filters that could potentially filter out stellar employees as a side effect, and I don't think that's a horrible thing.. it probably helps more often than not and is thus worth the rare corner case situations where it ends in a tragic mistake.

If I'm in the market looking for another job I have more than enough contacts with people I've worked with in the past that such arbitrary filters are a non-factor for me, so the take away is that if you're a great developer, develop contacts and then you don't have to worry about things like this.
What’s The New Bra Fashion Trend?
Virgin America Unveils Plans for Next Gen In-Flight Entertainment
the browser that shipped with WP7 initially is based on IE7 and doesnt have any HTML5 features. the one with mango is based on IE9 with a lot more HTML5 support.
Here's one that didn't work for a trip I'll be making later this month:

http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LGA;t=MYR;d=2011-09-...

No flights. However:

http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LGA;t=ATL;d=2011-09-...
http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=ATL;t=MYR;d=2011-09-...
A somebody who does .Net development as a day job. This is very exciting!
In CA at least, there are rules about a regular salary going to the insured employee.

That said: If you have a startup paying you regularly, I believe there are non-exclusionary laws preventing the insurance company from excluding employees which makes it a good avenue to pursue. I know folks that structured buyouts so that they would continued to be employed (and paid) by a shell company simply to maintain insurance.
Complexity of flight search
Agree: great start on possible plans in the area, but the leg work is in filling out the application (that can be tedious/long if you have any medical history), obtaining a real quote, and then comparing the plan details.

Another leg work item is understanding the plan details. While it is great to see initial set of plans, it is hard to compare plans (how does United Health "Saver 80" compare to the IHC Group "Freedom HDHP"?). Possible feature enhancement: provide me a table compare of the details.

Lastly, many of the details of picking a plan for families centers around the current health ecosystem: Is our pediatrician participating in the plan, what is really covered, and what is the track record of the insurance company paying claims. That deeper information, if offered early, could help in the search for a plan.
Don't Try This at Home: Overclocked AMD FX Chip Breaks Speed Record
It's interesting because most of those conditions (except discrimination and union-busting) are completely normal, sadly. What happens, generally, is that a company will under-staff because they can't predict their workload and then try to make it up with temps when they get slammed. Except that the temps can't do any of the semi-skilled jobs that involve special machinery, so the people can use them end up with mandatory overtime and weekend shifts. They may also be forbidden from taking vacation days. I know a guy who just had to cancel his daughter's birthday party because the only other production worker who can operate that machine was injured.

I don't know anything about how unions fit into the equation having never dealt with that, but I know quite a bit about how production works at this point, and it's not pretty.
I just took the really short tour. Looks like a neat tool, as a web-based schematic capture package. I've never run across one of those before. I mostly use Altium in my work, but have considered Eagle and gEDA for this. I don't know how you'd collaborate on schematics though, seems like only one person can work on a schematic at a time.

I don't see any support for hierarchy in a design. For scaling things you need that. You advertise pages that are as large as you want, but that's more a hindrance than a help, I think, because you can't print an infinite-sized page. And how do you print? How do you get the data out at all - is that possible? In order to do layout you'll need to be able to produce a netlist, and the community-provided parts library is not so great if it doesn't carry over into the physical world of PCB layout. It would also be good to be able to do a simulation, but that is going to really be tough on your servers.

It would be really cool if you didn't have to sign up to try it, that stopped me in my tracks even if it did look like an easy form to fill out.
Well, they're not really Jekyll plugins -- just Javascript plugins on the front-end (hence disqus comments instead of your own database of comments, google custom search instead of your own internal search engine, etc.)
The story kind of smells. He harps on pitching it as an alternative to their flash-based player, but what was stopping him from using the same streams he's repackaged in iTunes (or music player of choice)?

All in all, I don't really approve of his repackaging of our public content for personal profit. If he'd had to build a service to scrape the flash audio and then made it accessible via regular streams, that would justify this app's existence and price, but as it stands I find myself mildly unsympathetic.
That's a hell of a business model! Congratulations.
> Why is there a giant search bar at the top of the screen?

This will be (if it isn't already) integrated with their search product. In other words, it'll be a part of search. You'll search for "flight from ny to sf" and that's what you'll see. Perfectly natural for them to have a consistent UI in their search product.

> Why is there a giant map at the top of the screen?

It's interactive. Try pulling the marker from one location to another. Very cool. I can also see the exact route that the flight will take. More intuitive.

I may have a general area of where I want to end up, but this lets you choose exactly where through a visual map. Again, very cool.
Singapore domainer gets beat up and jailed for .XXX domain registration
ChromeWebApps - turn a website into a native-like app on your Mac [alpha]
So when does interop. with Octopart happen?
True - but unless your extremely lucky or well connected the probability of success is super low. Throwing together and app to find a sandwich shop is one thing - building a viable business plan and launching a business is entirely different and requires a lot of time to think, understand, research and evaluate to improve your chances for success. Use this time to do the research, talk to your prospective customers, observe and learn from potential competitors, it'll help you understand your market ( or if there even is one ) and find your niche. Once you have all this - at least you'll be better informed to make a decision to pull the trigger or not - at a minimum you'll be able to make a case for yourself to friends, family and potential investors.
good luck
Thirded. We used an earlier edition at my school for Linear Algebra, and in spite of having a Professor who was retiring at the end of the class (complete with "I'm getting too old for this shit" demeanor), the book was approachable enough for us to get by.
I'd argue that you can hand an iPad to your grandmother with severe arthritis or your toddler for the first time and they wouldn't have nearly as much trouble as the presenter in the video.
New person on the block 
Live in Fresno, California. Two and a half hours away from Silicon Valley.
Ever since I installed Wappalyzer in my browser (detects what frameworks and technologies a website uses) more and more often I come across websites that I am shocked use so many backend and frontend frameworks. I'm shocked because that means they are spending unnecessary amounts of money, time and effort on hosting (e.g. Wordpress hosting), development and maintenance when the entire site would be perfectly well-served (and faster!) with static pages.

The problem until recently was that there weren't appropriate tools for the job, but this article should prove that's now changing.
Ask HN: how do i delete an old comment?
http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=2655492

i use a throwaway account as a login for pretty much everything to obfuscate my real identity.

i posted my email address in a thread not realizing it would be indexed so thoroughly by Google. now when you search for my throwaway account on Google, this comment shows up, linking the throwaway account directly to my name.

since i can't delete the comment, i don't know what to do. and i don't feel like emailing PG just yet.

any ideas?
If I remember correctly, it's mentioned in Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach that this problem is not only hard but in fact formally undecidable in the general case.
There are two other things here that I think are important:

1. He's charging for the application. That really moves this from a "Big content bullying little guy" to "straight forward infringement".

2. As far as I can see, there's nothing that indicates that the application was not an official CBC app. An uneducated user could have bought the original version, thinking that it's an official app, and never knew that it was not.
Sorry, I was referring to these plugins: http://octopress.org/docs/plugins/
TechStars Cloud is Coming to Texas - Apply Now
Bad memories are now flooding through my head of silly complaints to various products over the years (a few of which I'm quite guilty of making).
Stephen Few has pretty good books on the topic: http://www.perceptualedge.com/

He is very good at explaining Tufte's work. The best part of his books and website are comparisons between a typical charts or dashboards and his re-designs.

Following is more relevant, his article on pie charts (PDF): http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/08-21-07.pdf
First off, some of us have lives and families. Some of us work more than just 9-5 and commute for more than one hour each way.

Secondly, none of my pet projects are OSS. I have a lot of pet projects, some in their infant stages, some pretty far along. And they are not for public viewing, but for my pleasure, which is why they are not OSS. [edit: and some are a collaboration with other people who would prefer that code stays closed]

Thirdly, is there such a thing as a passionate .NET programmer!? (half-joking)
功能性服饰策划
I guess I just want to start by saying hi. That I am new to this forum.
It's really amazing when you think "I never hear about anyone that has made it, or is even trying to do this with wife/kids/mortgage..." and then someone posts on hacker news and all of a sudden, there is a support group.
Really? Google gives you a sort-able grid which doesn't seem that helpful to me.

Hipmunk gives me a "heat map" style presentation which I can understand multiple factors at once without scanning text:

Color = carrier / layovers

Line length = total travel duration

Timeline position = flight start/end time

Ordered by Agony (or whatever)

I can take one quick look and grasp all the flights without a second thought. In my opinion, Hipmunk's UI is genius where Google's looks like a school project.
Some of Southwest's profit comes from fuel price speculation, which could backfire on them much more quickly and easily than their core business:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines#Risk_managem...
If you spend a disproportionate amount of time on HN, you can easily be led to believe the "typical" startup founder is an early-20's hoodie-wearing recent grad.

The reality is that starting a company in your 30's is probably the most common first-time startup founder age-range. It partly depends on market and business idea though. I wouldn't want to be a 38 year old guy pitching an idea for a social viral bar-games scoring app. But, for the sorts of ideas that tend to require bigger money and a more refined approach, I think I'd rather pitch that at 35 vs. 25 in today's market space.

Also think about hiring good talent in general (assuming you want to build a "business" and not an "app"), many people would rather work for an experienced CEO in their 30's, but the mid/early 20's set seems to have an edge on very refined "apps" (be it Android/iOS or small webapp) type of businesses, where 4 or 6 people may be able to makeup the core of the company for a significant amount of time.

Just my opinion, as a late-30's guy who has been rolling through various startups (my own and working for others) for about 18 years. YMMV.
Completely agree on #2, having better defaults (a base template and basic things like an archive/categories page) would make switching to jekyll a lot easier.
If it wasn't for your plugins (thanks) my switch to jekyll would have been surely postponed until i figured out how to write a plugin for the missing functionalities...
Exactly. It's hardly as if there's a lack of time. The average geek, in my experience, seems to waste more than enough time playing computer games, watching movies, or bunkum on the TV. It's not a giant leap to suggest that people actually using their spare time to work on aspects relating to their career are, and should be, doing better than people who treat it as a 9 to 5. (Oh, and posting on HN.. hehe)
http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...

This is often referenced when a question like this comes up.
You're absolutely right: they just need to deliver at work.

At the same time let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that having side coding project is the best predictor whether someone can "deliver at work". If that's the case then it's perfectly rational for an employer to look for people who do that.

Is it the case? I certainly think that when I look at someone's non trivial code, I can better tell whether he's a competent programmer than from reading a one page resume or even an hour long interview.

Important note: it's not the existence of the code that is important but an existence of good code.
Fun Hacks for Getting More Out of YouTube
Depending on what your business idea you should find folks that you mesh well with and who bring skills that you lack - you can't be everything to everyone so find experts that share your vision. If you need a sales or marketing guy, you can find them too - but be sure that's what you need. Know your market, know your product and then figure out how you'll make your business work - only then will you have a better idea of the sort of marketing, and sales folks you'll need. Start by reaching out to friends and trusted folks to leverage their smarts, reach out to their networks for help and build on that. Good luck - I love foodie stuff - sounds like a cool idea.
Paravel and Chris Coyier released fitvids.js last week which solves the fluid video embeds issue pretty nicely (fitvidsjs.com).
Really interesting look at games, and while I'm one of those players who loves crunching the numbers, the whole thing is still telling.

Part of me feels the fighting game scene has it right, they release the #s so the players can access them, but in the game itself it's all about pounding the other guy without that information being beaten into your head as actual #s.
Why would you give your grandmother a prototype tablet that will never see a production release?
Trip length duration is currently limited to 14 days.
I'm afraid that the user, expecting something (from bad error reporting in other places) like "Resource 0x23498382 failed to close", will interpret the error message as a further malfunction.

However, it does remind me of something pgp did, where a bit string (a key hash, I think) was converted into a sequence of words pulled out of a phonetically-distinct dictionary.
That's the number of distinct values you get with 8 bits. Since there is no "zeroth" day of the year, it makes sense to have it on the 256th day instead of the 255th.
It doesn't use much disk, CPU, or brainpower.
IPhone App Measures Your Happiness
i've been a prime customer for a while as well.. and i love the convenience and guilt free shopping.. but i did notice that prime items are almost always more expensive then very similar items not available for prime shipments. so, the shipment cost is more likely split between amazon and the customer...
I make good money from job ads so this does me a disservice but.. stop discriminating against people by getting them to send in their CVs. Headhunt!

I'm selfishly in support of preferring to hire people who show a strong out-of-hours dedication and passion for their work but it's not a realistic expectation for a regular job ad. Instead, hit GitHub, hit mailing lists, find the top blogs on the topics you're hiring for, and approach the people who pop up and seem to know what they're talking about.

You might have to let people work remotely, pay them more, or come up with other ways to pique their interest, but if you really want 24/7 passionate programmers, you can get them, with enough resources.

It's amazing how few employers do this, even those who do have the resources. Grab the top talent in your areas and find them by their byproducts. Why Google/MSFT/etc aren't trying to scrape up every seriously prolific developer on GitHub at $250k+ a year or whatever is beyond me.
How many ways to dissect a square? The series is finally complete.