skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even if you agree to it, there are laws against storing certain information about minors. This could easily fall afoul of that.

One such US law is COPPA: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm

1) Post a clear and comprehensive privacy policy on their website describing their information practices for children’s personal information;

2) Provide direct notice to parents and obtain verifiable parental consent, with limited exceptions, before collecting personal information from children;

3) Give parents the choice of consenting to the operator’s collection and internal use of a child’s information, but prohibiting the operator from disclosing that information to third parties;

4) Provide parents access to their child’s personal information to review and/or have the information deleted;
Give parents the opportunity to prevent further use or online collection of a child’s personal information;

5) Maintain the confidentiality, security, and integrity of information they collect from children.

#4 is violated for sure, since they don't offer a way to delete the info. The others would have to be decided by courts, but I'm guessing that agreeing to Twitter's TOS does not automatically make you agree to Klout's services.
I'm not challenging you on this, but I still remember Buffet's comment from years ago that they were weapons of mass destruction. What is the risk and how do regulators ensure that any untoward risk is mitigated?
Nope. This is good advice. Although some have become aware of this in the last year or so and started cracking down in it requiring verification after approval. I learned everything about this from reading the forums at http://www.creditboards.com
You need to be a little more specific regarding your interests and background. If you are interested in theory, there are plenty of books discussing specific models. However, most practical or buzzword (e.g. HFT) books are rubbish (think about it: if you have a profitable operation, why would you write a book? Unless, like me, you have a screw loose :P )

If you want some practical discussions, "Trading and Exchanges" by Larry Harris is a bit dated, but nothing comes close. Most of the descriptions are still valid today (even if some of the mechanics have changed)

If you want something more along the lines of what a financial engineer would know:

- "Options, Futures, and other Derivatives" by John Hull (goes over basic models without delving too deeply into theoretical math aspects)

- "Stochastic Calculus for Finance II" by Steve Shreve (goes over the basic stuff but has enough stats to keep a grad student happy)

- "Monte Carlo Methods in Financial Engineering" by Paul Glasserman (much more practical, and goes over subtleties of monte carlo simulation and other stuff like low discrepancy sampling)

- "Modelling Fixed Income Securities and Interest Rate Options" by Robert Jarrow (walks through how to perform certain simulations, covers lots of little details most theoretical books skip)

If you want something more theoretical:

- "Introduction to Stochastic Calculus Applied to Finance" by Lamberton and Lapeyre (Nice little intro)

- "Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time" by Tomas Bjork (Slower discussion, larger breadth)

- "Brownian Motion and Stochastic Calculus" and "Methods of Mathematical Finance" by Karatzas and Shreve (Solid theoretical foundation, for the more mathematically inclined)

There was a good non-measure theoretic discussion of financial models but the name escapes me ATM.
Welcome to Internet Time Out
http://www.quantnet.com/quantnet-best-selling-books-2010/
Piano Teacher Provo Utah
Crunch Time in the Clouds: Networks and Data Centers
I probably should have replied to this post, but I gave some recommendations in a post to the parent
Are there really no prices listed in the Chrome Web Store? Many of the apps may be free, but I couldn't find a single listed price.

If I install an app that appears to be free, and then realize I'm on a free-trial or limited-freemium plan, I'd find that pretty annoying.
This might sound crazy but could you come up with a way to ask for the money on kickstarter.com and repay everyone with interest as soon as you get the allowance? I'm not sure how your allowance works or how fast the turn around but you would only need 500 people to spare 20 bucks.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure the FCC would not allow you to sell a device in the US that lets you modify the RF firmware. So even if we had full source code to the radio's firmware, it would be illegal to sell a device that could be user-programmed. Or something.

(I don't know how widely enforced this is, though. I've never had any trouble telling my wifi equipment I'm outside of the US to get access to extra channels. I guess this is a federal crime, but good luck enforcing it.)
It really depends on which angle you're coming from, when you mean "hacker".

Quantitative finance is all math, so in order to really understand it, you need a solid background in probability and statistics. Even the most basic concepts make heavy use of probability, so without strong fundamentals you won't get very far.

There are other concepts, such as risk-free returns, etc that also play a big part in quant finance. A book that I really enjoyed that gave a good background in a lot of these concepts was "Trading Strategies for Capital Markets".

One of the basic concepts of quantitative finance revolves around the Black-Scholes equation, which calculates a price for an option. I would suggest first looking this up as well as how it was derived, to see if you want to pursue this further. If you're having a hard time with this, then quant finance may not be what you're looking for.

A video tutorial website that seems decent for quant finance is Nathan's Lessons:

http://nathanslessons.com/?paged=3

-------------------

If what you REALLY mean is you want to program trading algorithms, that's a bit of a different beast. For that you really need to understand how algorithmic trading works, how the market microstructure works, how to place trades, etc. For this there are a bunch of books but the best introductory book is definitely "Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners". It's a bit old, but still largely relevant and gives you a lot of the history. I really wish they would update this book, because I would buy it again. Another decent book is "Algorithmic Trading and DMA".
We have plans to make an interface that's less bling-heavy and more power-friendly, but it won't hit production anytime soon.

Another way is to simply write your own visualisation. If you're interested in getting early-alpha-unstable-omg access to the read APIs (HTTP and WebSockets), shoot us an email to hello@ducksboard.com
Simple, Professional Client and Project Management In The Cloud
PG Office Hours at Startup School - "Streamlined" for skim-ability
Death by warfare is on the decline, poverty globally is decreasing, affluence is increasing, technology is rapidly improving, communications are knitting together all cultures and regions of the world in ways we can't fully appreciate even while it's happening. Compared to even two decades ago there are millions upon millions of people who are no longer in poverty. There are countries who have become part of the developed, 1st world. And there are more countries on the way. "Developing" isn't just a euphemism for 3rd world shit-hole, a lot of countries are on their way towards the same level of affluence and development as the G8/G20.

Certainly there are a lot of problems in the world, some of them unprecedented problems. But there's little cause to bemoan the increasing population of the Earth. Human civilization is becoming more and more capable of dealing with problems like poverty, famine, environmental degradation, and even global climate change, even as it adds more and more members to its family.
Eleven Startup Tips From Richard Branson
More at http://tech.streamliner.co
This seems really cool. I've been thinking about making a LISP interpreter myself and will definitely be reading your source code. Thanks for sharing!
Follow Your Own Path
Do you have a story for the name? The first thing I thought of was "duck duck go is going real-time?".
> We were not interested in online stores. Some of the problems were kind of interesting, but neither me nor Robert nor Trevor thought of Viaweb as our life's work.

'How to find your "life's work"' might make a great essay. I think the majority of founders find themselves a few years in working on ideas they aren't crazy about.

In a sense founders get married to ideas too young, realize it's not a perfect fit, and then an "acquisition" is basically a divorce between them and the idea.
Collaborative Consumption & Societal Operating Systems
Google About To Launch Website Mobilizer GOMO
How smug.
You can't train a cat like you can train a dog.
Show HN: Merge Data with PDF
I have to say their behavior is unappealing to me as well. Not only that, but it tarnishes my impression of YC. Naughtiness is one thing. Lying and trying to take people's name from them is another. I sincerely hope this kind of thing isn't informally encouraged at YC.
Kinect Effect - 1 Year Later (MS Video)
I like it. I used a similar idea for latency, but your example works well for why you need more ram vs a faster CPU etc.

Word you are reading = registers;
Page your reading = L1 cache;
Book open on your desk = L2 cache;
Book from library in your house = RAM with more letting you borrow more from the library.;
Book in the Library = Disk Space;
Books in other Library's you can get with inter library loans = Internet
Processing.js - a port of the Processing Visualization Language
The Noodle House Launch
Excited to test it out with Podio. Will save me writing my own dashboard interface and make customers pretty happy in the process
They're from here:
http://opengameart.org/content/zombie-sprites
That use case makes sense to me -- a quick attention-getter.
Show HN: PunchRank.me, our holiday project
One of these would probably work great: http://www.mimomonitors.com/
Buffett makes a great deal of cash flow from writing options, so take what he says with a grain of salt.

"The brilliance behind Buffett’s investment in Berkshire is astounding. He effectively used (and uses) Berkshire as the world’s largest option writing house. The premiums and cash flow from his insurance business created dividends that he could invest in other businesses. But Buffett wasn’t just buying Coca-Cola and Geico as many have been led to believe. Buffett was placing some (short-term AND long-term) complex bets in derivatives markets, options markets, and bond markets."

http://pragcap.com/the-many-myths-of-warren-buffett
I think Steve would now consider you an entrepreneur.
How social media carelessness can help criminals
There are all kinds of ways this could potentially be invalidated in law, depending on your jurisdiction: privacy laws, computer misuse laws, unfair contract terms protections/limitations on what would be considered reasonable in a contract of adhesion, and indeed the fundamental question of what legal status any given EULA has and whether it is enforceable at all.

Unfortunately, governments seem unwilling to legislate to provide any clarity on EULAs despite their vast scope. Until they do, what we have is a mixed bag of case law, which has little consistency between jurisdictions or even sometimes within the same jurisdiction, and which in any case covers only a tiny number of very specific cases rather than giving much guidance on the broader principles.

I suspect that means if this is going to be struck down, it's going to be in places that have worthwhile privacy laws, which sadly are few and far between in the world today since technology seems to be running at least a decade ahead of the law's ability to deal with its implications, particularly with regard to form contracts and privacy where the increasing dependence on conducting business via automated on-line systems has profound implications.
But the cycles (years) correspond to the seasons... so they are a natural way for us to divide a timeline. Because spring always follows winter, and summer follows spring, etc... we experience time as a cycle.
This photo of two of the founders when they were 12 years and 60 pounds younger should explain it http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18461275/Ducksboard-founders.jpg

Go, Anaheim Ducks!
Users Are the New Growth Engine
Most K-12 schools in the U.S. try to keep class sizes below 30. 20-25 is a good representative sample. Class size and the length of the school day are always negotiation points.

As you probably experienced, class sizes above 30 are challenging even for the best of teachers.
Maybe leading and inspiring talented people to build world-changing products was Steve's preferred lifestyle.
Below is a link describing the "netting" effect that occurs in the derivative markets.

https://derivativedribble.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/netting-d...
Most of what they want is exactly why I wrote lmbench, it measures latency and bandwidth of just about everything that you should care about.

One of our guys plotted the memory latency benchmark here:

http://www.bitmover.com/mem_lat.jpg

He shows you that and says "tell me everything you can tell me from this graph". It's usually a two hour conversation.
CherryPy, ctypes, and being explicit
Well, the other advantage of software is that you wouldn't have to re-draw your paper version of a calendar when the months change. Imagine having to move important events from the smaller "future" boxes to the now much bigger "soon" boxes.
Amazon adds 800 TV Shows, Disney-ABC to Prime Streaming
That may be true. I still think you're smart to clear away potential encumbrances before actually starting.

If nothing else, it will make your life easier if you ever want to take on funding for your new business.
http://paulgraham.com/love.html

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
Ask HN: Question relating to satellite television
I was just looking around to see if its possible to control user inputs when streaming video over satellite television.
I know fox active etc are there, but they use a standard remote for that, I am more of looking at a basic TV remote capable of doing that. What path does satellite use as reverese channel?

Also lets consider for a moment, that the television does not have wifi options or apps or other medium to connect to internet or telephone.

Any pointers or help?
It's true. But you have to keep in mind, nobody wants $2.56 from Knuth. The value comes from the fact that one of the most famous and respected computer scientists to ever live has sent you a thank you note for fixing an error that he made in his book.
Really want to try it out, but I've been waiting for an invite since 6/1/2011. :)

Anything you can do? george@illuminatikarate.com
Looks like a big move to put the hurt on Netflix.
I wonder how well this will work for web games...
People think all quant finance is the same as HFT. It's not.

A big part of algorithmic trading and stat arb is portfolio management, including deriving alpha, building risk models, etc.

The bible is: http://www.amazon.com/Active-Portfolio-Management-Quantitati...
A number of transhumanists respectfully disagree.
Don't forget about counterparty risk. This is something everyone forgot about during 2008 and ended up being one of the biggest problems.

This is what happened with AIG, where people thought they were adequately hedged on their position because they bought a CDS with AIG, and then it turned out that AIG itself had written so many CDSs that it couldn't pay back its obligations, which exacerbated the entire financial crisis.
Chart.io (YC S10) raises 3.2 million Series A
500 Startups announces latest batch
I really don't understand how people are afraid of email. It's no rocket science and smtp is a well documented and used standard.

Why would I lock myself into some API of a third party service (code I will have to change if I change services) instead of using practically any distributions default configuration of any SMTP server and then just talk SMTP.

If you own a static ip address not previously used for spam and if you have a valid PTR record, your mail will get delivered.

If you are in an ip block with a bad reputation (amazon ec2), you might need to sign up with an external provider but there are many more (and cheaper) smtp providers than there are json2mail services.

Of course if you need to track statistics, browsers, responses and bounces, it's a whole different problem which is solved by value-added services like Campaign Monitor or MadMimi and whatnot. But just sending mail?

Maybe I'm getting old. Back in my days, talking SMTP and setting up a mail server was nothing special at all.

(edit: just to reiterate: Even if you don't want to deal with the administrative issues, there is still the problem of the lock-in. Why not find a provider who does the work for you but speaks SMTP? That way, you can replace them if you need a different service level or if they go away. Using a proprietary API means that you can't easily change providers any more)
AMA: ADstruc founder & TechStars grad John Laramie on Sprouter
Show HN: Sometimes, it helps to offer an incentive.
this used to be indicated in the previous version of the Chrome store.

But if I remember correctly there was no option for freemium. So most freemium apps were shown as free (mine included)
> P.S. - Cheap and accessible fiber. Come on NYC, we need that if we’re going to win.

Fiber coverage is pretty good now. Many buildings still don't have it, but it's in most neighborhoods; my girlfriend has Fios and she's way out in Queens, but I don't have it down in the East Village 'cause it isn't run into my building yet. That said, fiber isn't the only game in town -- Roadrunner in NYC has DOCSIS 3, and $100 gets you a 50Mbit connection, which I absolutely adore.
Google to launch "GoMo", a tool to mobilize websites
I wish I had friends like you guys. :( The kind of conversations that I have with them range from mind numbingly boring to suicide inducing.
Beware of Startup Vampires
Body By Vi 90 Day Weight Loss Challenge Day 3 Lawrence Bland
This pattern has worked for me too - except for the crippling tendonitis I ended up with, not to mention finding out that my girlfriend (since high school) felt so abandoned that she started cheating on me. But you can't beat this system for productivity.
O'Reilly it is.
Most of the technologies I dream about killing are the ones that I feel are suboptimal and downright frustrating but I am forced to use for lack of a better solution or due to economic forces. I want to kill them because I want them to disappear by being replaced by something better.

For example, I hate most of the Microsoft Office suite, but there really isn't anything that's better for the average user to author documents. I dream of making something that's so good that people will switch and I won't have to deal with Office ever again.
What Are Joint Venture Giveaways?
Infographic: United States of the Environment
Microsoft is finally starting to design beautiful things, but nobody cares
HP Needs to Find a Plan and Stick to It
Have you ever tried configuring your own mail server? It's very close to black magic at times. Installing a mail server is easy, but configuring it to actually get mail into inboxes and not spam filtered or even blacklisted is complex. You could certainly do it yourself and supplement it with a galaxy of addons like you mentioned, but why bother when Sendgrid does all of it, through a simple smtp interface, and for pennies?

I used to configure my own mail server for scribophile.com. It took weeks to get it in a state I felt was acceptable, and even then it was through copy and paste without me truly understanding what was going on. When I had to move servers I said fuck it and went with Sendgrid, and I'm so glad I did! Instead of messing with DNS and domain keys and bounces and spam reports and user deliverability preferences I just dump a message to their smtp server and forget about it.
It's the suits job, nay legal obligation in the case of a publicly held company, to maximize profits.

No, it's the suit's job to run the company in the interest of the shareholders. That is not the same thing as 'maximize profits at all costs' (such as, at the cost of future litigation that will exceed the instant profit). This idea that if an opportunity for profit exists, the management is legally obliged to seize it is widespread, but without foundation. Otherwise shareholders would sue large firms for not entering hot new markets where the firms' resources would provide a short-term advantage.

Show me one lawyer who has no qualms about arguing that a corporation is a person, and I'll show you a person who's sold their soul.

Yeah, whatever. without the doctrine of corporate personhood, which lawyers are well aware is a different thing from natural personhood, you wouldn't be able to sue a corporation for malfeasance in the first place, but would have to try suing the officers of the corporation individually while they gave your legal claim the runaround.
Previous discussion from last week here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3154913
Ooops!

Sure, you'll have yours today. You had a bit of rotten luck, as precisely on that day we turned down the flow of invites.

Sorry to keep you waiting ;)
Obviously, this is marketing rather than a serious treatment of the topic. It seems to basically say: "in order to design a system, you should have a regular undergraduate Computer Science education" which seems maybe like a prerequisite (and maybe informative about their hiring process) but not very useful.

However, for what it's worth, the two best resources I've seen for systems design are:

Hints for Computer System Design: http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/classes/wi08/cse221/papers/lampson83....

How to Design a Good API: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw

What else should be in this bibliography?
I opened my inbox today with an e-mail from my mother:

Subject: I LOVE THE GOOGLE HALLOWEEN IMAGE!!!

XXXOOOXX,
Mom

I think people greatly underestimate the value of the Google doodles. They give off a sense of honest friendliness that is completely out of reach for most other giant corporations.
Diseno de tiendas virtuales
Perhaps but it's usually very damaging to your prospects to raise this issue during the hiring process.

Most employers don't want to hire someone who is running a business on the side - they want all your attention focused on their needs and couldn't care less about yours.
This argument used to be used all the time by WiFi device manufacturers, and it turns out to be bullshit. The truth is that you, the operator of the device, assume all liability for your modifications, but there is no reason you can't flash/modify your firmware to, say, improve your power-saving abilities or improve your scanning times.

We have enough source code for Atheros devices to be able to reprogram them as we see fit, and the FCC doesn't really care.
And "Everything I wanted to know about C.S. graduate school
at the beginning but didn't learn until later: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html
Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy
LunchMeet: it's like meetup for LinkedIn
Good argument. I would say it is not less of an issue, but I also think it isn't less of an issue than having a blob running on the main CPU. IMO, such blobs only become problematic if they do not work properly or aren't flexible enough. Whether they are made in soft-, firm-, or hardware is immaterial for that.

In the end, for almost every case (yes, you probably _can_ build your own 1kW 6502-class CPU from sand, if you are good, start young and persevere for a couple of decennia) it boils down to the fact that you will have to trust some other people. After all, you cannot reasonably verify that say a x64 CPU really behaves as its documentation states it does.
For your information, the site is using the 8x16 BIOS format font (also referred as IBM PC Code page 437) in order to mimic the look of textmode terminals.
Oh, thanks. I only realized that he was talking about checks. When I read `deposit', I only thought `deposit cash' due to my upbringing.
New Humble Bundle: Voxatron