skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How bad does it look to drop out of grad school?
I started Physics grad school this Fall, but I have recently considered dropping out, either to join an existing company or to start my own business. I am concerned about how this would look to future employers, both startups and non-startups. I know that getting an MS degree but no phD in Physics does not look great, as it shows that you quit the PhD program. But is getting an MS still better than nothing?

Also, will the companies (both startup and non-startup) take my grad school grades seriously? One of the classes is known to be very hard to Physics students, but I just don't have the motivation to study hard for the class, and I'm concerned about getting a really bad grade (possibly FAILing).

Recently I've been working on a programming project on my own, as a way to improve my programming skills, and I've been working on it with alot more motivation than studying for my Physics classes. I'm still fairly new to programming so I can't say I'm committed to programming over Physics yet.
Two Pandorabots Ranked Top AI by Junior Judges
The E-2 can be had for as little as $100,000

http://www.h1base.com/visa/work/Compare%20work%20Visas/ref/1...
As Melanie's co-founder for ToVieFor, it's true that they painted her in a bad light. She's super intelligent and very very good at grabbing onto a vision and propelling it forward. She may have hung on too tight to that vision at times, but I'd take that any day over a co-founder who was aimless and did not know what they wanted. We were up against a very difficult, entrenched industry, and she made as good of progress as I could expect any new entrepreneur to make.

I too am a bit disappointed in Bloomberg. The fact of the matter is that you have a lot of strong, driven entrepreneurs in the same program, and while some of what you saw is accurate, Bloomberg really made an effort to polarize and make extreme the various personality types. Reece does not always talk about sports or use athlete analogies. Jason Baptiste doesn't walk around constantly saying he'll own the internet (although if you prod him for it, he'll probably say it), and Melanie is not clueless. I'm super excited for her current startup, she definitely shows more wisdom in leaner methodologies.

In short, TechStars++, Bloomberg--.
Well, I'm glad then that we get to skip the bit were I have to spell out the facets of the argument I made. (Over on reddit bringing this up usually means me having to gently prod the other person to read up on hidden variable theories so they can tell me if that is what they meant by phrases like "something determines it we just can't see what".)

I'm actually a compatibilist about "free will", so I've no need for a ghost in the machine or to be flipping quantum coins in my head. The point of my comment was simply to point out that "our universe is deterministic", full stop, isn't a warranted premise by current evidence. If you only meant "adequately deterministic" by "deterministic", fine and dandy. However, I don't know anything that actually stops the two causal chains A and B in my thought experiment from being macroscopically very different. So skipping the "adequately", I feel, gives those not familiar with the details a misleading impression that we can unproblematically think of ourselves as just in the old clockwork universe. (Thus the kinds of phrasing I see a lot on reddit from the loosely-informed on such matters.)

(Edits: silly grammar and spelling stuff.)
It's actually not crazy small considering what you can expect from natural selection (strongly constrained by the bit error rate in reproduction, more weakly constrained by the total number of selection events in the population since some earlier less complex point). And remember it's specifying the learning infant, not the learned human.

(I plan to write more about the likely information content in a reply to another comment.)
Biographer: Jobs refused early and potentially life-saving surgery
Nice try. Now please excuse me while I return to watching the series that without "piracy" I would not be able to watch in any way, shape or form, no matter how much I would be willing to pay for it.

To be "constructive" about it as a consumer, I would first have to be allowed to be a customer. Never mind the fact that the industry has never, ever listened to customers.

BTW, as soon as you call copyright infringement "theft", and by extension me a thief, all constructive discourse ends.
China is starting a +1 billion dollar project to create a liquid thorium fission reactor (not fusion). The amount of thorium in the world is greater than the amount of copper, tin and some other metals, the amount of usable uranium is around the level of platinum. A working thorium reactor was created in the 1960s, and once china makes a few and show the world its a repeatable process, investors and banks world wide will be willing to invest in these reactors.

http://thoriumremix.com/2011/
There is a list in the law of things it does not apply to. One of them is "Private residential sales commonly known as 'garage sales' or 'yard sales' as long as such sales take place at a residential address".
Sad to see that Forbes blogs have become so obvious self-promotion outlets. Four pages and on three of them embedded links to his own Ivy prep business.
New science, engineering, medical graduates who have just finished a US degree/masters/PhD?
I don't think he gave them any other option. Seriously, after all the bad stuff he did when he was in power, after drumming up war when things got tough - did anyone really expect any other outcome?

I'm pretty sure he was determined to fight to the bitter end. Which he did.
I totally agree with examples being online but they have an example page listed at the top http://listjs.com/examples.html
Tom McEnery on Steve Jobs | New Tech Post
Three American Startups Out to Make Fresh Organic Food An Everyday Reality
I don't expect any of the core features of google reader to change. Why would they?

Sure, sharing and friends will be replaced by Google+ variants, but to me that sounds like a good thing. Instead of copying articles and pasting them into Google+, I'll be able to just hit share.
Why hasn't Dropbox extended its main service with something like this yet?

Incredibly simple apps like puu.sh and Skitch have taken off as separate apps and there has been a scattering of Dropbox-integrated third party tools, which I typically have to give away my Dropbox key to use. There's so much data on the web that is difficult to pull out of the cloud, and Dropbox is in the unique position of bridging these two realms.

Dropbox has a lock on the position of market leader in file storage, but they haven't built a platform. There was an article a few days ago which described how Dropbox is a feature, not a product, and the whole company would be put out of business if Apple/Microsoft/Google just rebuilt the functionality (a bit hyperbolic, but worth a thought). But I don't think there have been more than a few features since I started using Dropbox a few years ago, and it's not for a shortage of engineers.
I think all this attention on cutting-edge physics is giving arXiv.org a boost. Hopefully preprint servers can infiltrate other fields as well.
Maverick Empire
Maverick Empire offers short term housing in Boston, corporate housing in Boston and furnished apartments in Boston MA. Maverick Empire short term housing is superior to extended stay hotels in Boston for guests staying 30 days or more.
Not like they don't have any other choice if this proposal doesn't pass, if you look at immigration patterns to Vancouver and Toronto.

This would just put US in competitive position with other countries catering to these customers. Potential visa troubles are a non-trivial deal-blocker for many.
I guess it depends on your workflow. I've been using "Add Star" as a bookmarking service and "Share" as a way quickly Tweet things out. I then mapped "Send To" to Instapaper so I can send longer articles there (2 clicks for Send To vs. Single click for the other two). I've been thinking about a "Send To HN" one, which would be a great addition.

If you read a lot of feeds (According to Google, I have 347 of them), it makes it that much easier.
I'm mostly upset that Google Reader will now be blocked at work, because the IT dept blocks all social network sites.
Very nice, but why so slow?
"From a very subjective point of vue and from what I heard, Haskell is a node.js done as it should be."

I think you mean: "From a very subjective point of view and from what I heard, Yesod is a node.js done as it should be."
This is actually not true. See the FAQ on the Growl website:

http://growl.info/documentation/faq-new.php#1.3source

Where is the source code?

We will post source code. However, our bigger concern right now is fixing issues and providing support to folks on our discussions group, and on our support email address, and on Twitter. As soon as the flood of inbound requests slows down, we fully intend to push the 1.3 source over the wall.
So, what exactly happens there? Your device stops seeing satellites (loses lock)? Or does the reported uncertainty become on the order of hundreds of meters? Or does it simply give you confused directions when you're driving?

Searching for combinations of terms like "GPS, blackout, airforce base, lompoc" only brings up this thread. I find it hard to believe that if it were a real occurrence no one else would notice and write/complain about it.
None of us do "guardrail driving", but we still put guardrails on roads.
Samsung Galaxy S III Makes iPhone 4S Look Like An Old-Time Nokia
The iPhone 5 doesn't exist - but scams based on it do
That is really really cool. I tried it on many of the links on http://news.ycombinator.com/newest and they're almost all old. HN should integrate this into the submission process.
We have to stop spending so much time/energy/money on trying to prop up housing prices. The valuations were clearly in a bubble. Now that the prices are more grounded in reality how about letting supply and demand dictate the prices?
It’s easier to be more joyful and optimistic about peaceful (or at least more peaceful) revolutions.
America is broke. If you want to tax the rich you need to let them into the country. And people buying a house aren't that rich anyway. Besides, this is very similar to the immigration policy of Canada or Singapore, which also give points if you buy property and start a business in the country. Their economies are vastly outperforming ours and it might be worth emulating them.
Whew. That makes me feel better.
How to deal with peer rejection
Every creature starts from a single cell. At that point the only difference between a mouse and a human is the DNA, right? Isn't mRNA and tRNA is produced from DNA? It's been a long time since high school. So I don't see why it isn't 50MB.
So switch it to "On" then.
It's nice that newsblur is maintained by a HNer, but the aesthetics of it are a real turn off for me.
They probably paid good money for this.
Perhaps that Nobel Peace Prize was a bit premature.

I would rather Qaddafi had been brought to trial and punished accordingly.
Make money, get more customers than you can handle, then quit school. Or, why not transfer to a decent school to get your MBA? If you are that interested in business and you are young, consider it. If you are that unmotivated about Physics, you should get out.
>Do many people use these features?

I am a heavy user of the information on how many users are subscribed to a particular feed, which could be considered a social feature. (The information is behind the "show details" link in the "view onto" a feed.)

also, I am subscribed to one other user's "shared link blog" (a view assembled by Reader of that user's "shared items"), which the OP says is definitely going away, and three users are subscribed to my shared link blog.

The "shared link blog" that I am subscribed to is at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/patrissimo although admittedly it is no longer active as the writer (actually, "editor" or "sharer" is more accurate) has moved to using Twitter for sharing links (which I do not like as much).
It's pretty minimal. Notice you don't even see a logo when you're reading sites. The dashboard is a bit dense, but the browsing experience can be customized.
This article seems to be a bit "mainstream" for HN, IMHO.
The problem is that the marketing is all around "Android", but the enforcement is around "with Google". So vendors that ship garbage can still ride Android's marketing coattails (and dirty them).
People too. There's plenty of people that would like to move to find employment, but have a mortgage that they need to get out of first. The market is pretty terrible at the moment, and these people end up being stuck. I know a few personally.
MIT according to the project page on Github. It's a little strange that they didn't include the license in the .js file. I guess they wanted to save a few bytes...
They are already adding it to the export function - hooray, because I was sorely missing this in the split of my regular Google account from my GA account. The third paragraph reads:

We think the end result is better than what's available today,
and you can sign up for Google+ right now to start prepping
Reader-specific circles. We recognize, however, that some of you
may feel like the product is no longer for you. That's why we
will also be extending Reader's subscription export feature to
include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all,
and we want to make sure you can take it with you.

* Your subscriptions
* Your shared items
* Your friends
* Your likes
* Your starred items
Google Reader had social features before.

Github has social features, too; perhaps they should try to block that and see how well that goes over. :)
So perhaps they are building more like a platform and releasing it when it's ready? Who knows.

Ripping content out of a youtube might be denied in some EULA so maybe Dropbox just doesn't want to get involved due to legal issues. In any case, Dropbox does one thing and does it well. Anything else is extra and I congratulate them for keeping their game together.
Cleartrip 20% Discount Coupon Code
You think they paid the journalist? (that is unethical). Why do you say this?
the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under Clinton in 1993 being only one example

The removal of a regulation is quite different from co-opting the government to do the industry's bidding. Certainly, there are plenty examples of business having undue influence in government. But likewise, there are examples of government having undue influence in business[1].

The one thing I've heard anyone in OWS suggest that I can get behind is a separation of business and state.

Too often, the regulatory machine helps business (see Regulatory Capture[2]) -- and this cuts in many directions, like the governmental support of labor unions, as in the recent Boeing case. But it would still be a mistake to go to the other extreme and have the behemoth of government driving business.

It seems to me that the Economist is right, and getting the government to just get the heck out is the best solution. They shouldn't do anything to help or hinder[3] business.

[1] How often have we heard various content industries (movies, music, video games, comic books) promise to "self-regulate" lest government pass some threatened laws.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

[3] short of ensuring that business is conducted fairly, e.g., protecting us from fraud, helping ensure disclosure, etc.
The Economist supports closing tax loopholes... isn't that also what you want when you say "counteract tax dodging"?
> (how many of you even know where Singapore is? ;)

I'm quite uncertain that goading people based on a stereotypical notion that Americans are map-ignorant is the ideal manner by which to overcome initial resistance to one's proposals. Even if you're idea were a good one and perfectly executed, you still have to practically ram it down people's throats in order to convert them.

HN is not a great place to sell tutorials; video or otherwise. I looked at your site over the weekend, kept it open in a tab as a tickler and then last night decided that buying updated Xcode and Objective-C materials would be both a cheaper and better option. That wasn't based on your experience, lack thereof or price. It was based on my own process and interest in learning, and judging by the number of books people produce and sell on the subjects of programming, I'd say that I'm not alone in that category. You may have picked the wrong audience.

Also, in regards to this post, you've let your dissatisfaction with HN's receptiveness towards your idea get the best of you. One submission and a "lessons learned" follow up post five days later is not a sign that you've externalized negative feedback or that you've been able to collect sufficient data to pontificate over the HN submission process and provide useful advice for others. If anything, you should create a marketing campaign, gather and interpret your data and use it to back up your assumptions.

Either way, I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors. Based on what I've seen so far, you're far ahead than many people your age.

ps. Yes, I've been to Singapore. It's okay.
Maybe he takes the $17k and keeps 5% and you get 95% of the future?
For Bump CEO, learning from 60 million downloads (Day on the Job)
Pass this proposal and half a million dollars will be a bargain.
$500K minimum? Anything to breathe life into the higher segment of the US real estate market ;)

Kidding aside, are they also going to retro-actively award visas to all those that already own their own homes and do not currently have their paperwork in order? That would be a very quick way to solve another issue that was on the front page earlier today.

$500K is a bit stiff as a lower limit.
The Other Silicon Savannah
Sorry, I'm a bit lost. Is there an intrinsic difference between just following someone in Reader and "shared link blogs", or am I just getting tripped up on naming?
For god's sake. Sidwyn just experienced something only creators experience. Namely, that creating something often leads to a wall of hate rather than receptivity. It is useful for people to know this. It's probably the single most surprising thing about beimg an entrepreneur.
6 months since earthquake & tsunami hit Japan
I'm not convinced how effective this will be. The parts in the US where housing prices took the largest hit are also the parts where a foreigner with access to USD$500,000 is least likely to want to go in the first place.
I spent a good 30 seconds doing that and giggling.
It's also a big question as to what you can do to save your starred items moving forward.

Any tag/folder in GReader can be exported as an RSS feed. Go to "Reader Settings" > "Folders and Tags" and click on the RSS icon to make it public, then click "View public page" and on that page there's a link to its Atom feed.

Then you can import it to any other reader.
Where's dislike going to go?

I hope they take the Like button on youtube and make it Press +1 rather than getting rid of like and dislike.
“Applicants can spend the entire amount on one house or spend as little as $250,000 on a residence and invest the rest in other residential real estate, which can be rented out,” the paper added.
Yeah. I like tests because they let me export my mental state about a codebase.. and reimport it later. I can get the code back into my head faster.

I use lisp -- and half my code is tests.

http://github.com/akkartik/wart
I wonder if New Orleans looked this good 6 months after Katrina.
> White text on dark background is a complete readability failure, no matter how much contrast it provides.

I prefer white-on-black. To me, reading black-on-white feels somewhat akin to staring into a projector.
Thank you! I don't know why this sentence appears. I deleted it in my source. I should update ASAP.
NY keeps saying it has a good startup scene. Why wasn't it mentioned?
Between IDEs and other tools that autoformat code (ie gofmt[1])and languages that use significant whitespace, I wouldn't say programmers necessarily consider those things much these days.

Factoring might be a better example- picking the most convenient order for subroutine arguments, choosing how to bring together redundant segments of code, how to best use language constructs to express the problem. Ultimately I think it's difficult to draw a direct comparison, though- in my opinion, the similarities between graphic art and programming are rather abstract.

[1] http://golang.org/cmd/gofmt/
There's a HUGE difference between copyright assignment (required by FSF!) and a license agreement (Google, Apache, Mozilla, many others). The former means you are giving away ownership to your IP, which is what you describe. The latter only means that the project can relicense or similar (which is very important if there's a bug in a license, for example). You retain copyright to any contributions made under a CLA.

It's a big difference. I don't see anything wrong with CLAs, and there are (according to some more versed in IP than I) some really good reasons to never accept patches without CLAs, especially when you're a potential high-profile lawsuit target.
So by that metric, if every gmail user used G+ it would still be a failure? If it captured 70% of the online population, it wouldn't be that impressive because those people originally used search?

Wave was a failure, and it had plenty of Docs and Gmail users to draw from. G+ strikes me as a very different beast, and one that has already found its niche. It may not displace facebook, but it certainly seems to have eaten into Twitter's niche.
Cool! do you guys make schwag? send me a link to your website :)
I've had the same thought and have even sketched out what some screens/pages might look like. As a starting point, have you seen the BMT at http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/toolbox? And, Ash Maurya's book (http://www.ashmaurya.com/)?
Several comments here have mentioned that this applies to pawn shops. It does not. The bill explicitly exempts them from the cash requirement. It's a little hard to notice, because it basically says something like "the provisions of section X do not apply to dealers operating under Y". Y is an existing section of Louisiana law that covers pawn shops, and X is the section of the new law that imposes the cash restriction.

This bill, like many, is written as a list of edits to apply to the existing law. If you don't read the existing law, you can get a very misleading idea of what the bill does. For example, there's one place where the existing law has a list of 4 categories of exceptions to the reporting requirements. The new bill modifies one of them, and adds a fifth. The other 3 are unchanged, and so are not mentioned at all in the bill, and remain in effect. Someone who doesn't read the original law might get the impression that there are only 3 exceptions in the list of exceptions (although the fact that they are numbered 1 and 5 hopefully would tip most people off...)