skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
wow.. why the negativity people??
One primary concern I'm noting here. People talking of how it won't work with how they use the iPad already. The problem with this logic is that most products in the world wouldn't have been a success based on how people were using already existing products. This is a typical situation that people like Henry Ford had to deal with.

The whole purpose of designing this keyboard seems to be, to me at least, to transform how you currently use the iPad. To change it from a half hearted effort at content creation to making it a device that's ideal for content creation. Instead all I see is

"messes the experience of the iPad" <- read between the lines of the rest of the message and I understand that the thinking is based on how the iPad is being used already. The key board isn't meant for tiny 2 line email replies. This is for full blown document editing and blog posting and anything requiring a lot of text. Where else would you use touch type???

"separate keyboard. omg suckkssss" <- Did you even look at the video and pictures?? The darn thing folds with the cover!! This is part of its beauty. Taking advantage of the iPad itself and bringing about an experience which isn't intrusive but still works. And here's the best joke of the day. The answers provided for this issue?

"Might as well carry a wireless keyboard!" <-- Yes keyboard warriors. Can I see your products designed as a usability engineer?

Point is. It's easy to harp and echo the negative issues. It's what we seem wired to do (remember the echo chamber when the iPad was first announced?). Looking beyond that is tougher.

What the echo chamber seems to have missed here is that this brings about two things

1) touch typing <- You don't have that with the current keyboard. Not easily anyways. Please don't try to skirt this issue. There's a reason people are building keyboards everywhere

2) Integrates with the iPad experience <-- With easy snap on snap off thanks to the thoughtful design with magnets I see this as something that doesn't interfere unlike every other keyboard solution I've seen so far. Even the other kickstarter projects suggested here don't allow for quick pull of put on approaches. They are static/bulky/non complimentary half baked ideas.

Disclaimer. I'm just a blogger and an aspiring tech startup guy from Sri Lanka. I am not some PR person for these guys. I just call things like I see it.
And also, if you haven't seen musicmachinery.com, do check it out.
Awesome! Not only is this good business advice for me but it also gave me some dating pointers which I, as a newly single, rusty, guy, probably needs. Thanks.
Maybe take a look into threading replies?

My thought exactly. Integrate better with twitter. You're hopeless trying to build a platform of your own.
Credit Card Debt Management - Relief From Excessive Debt
Does this get any easier if you do the original incorporation offshore?
Thay took our jobs! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik
This is an article from 2010 that's already been submitted to HN in the past: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1815457

Personally, I find the sub-headline misleading. The subhead reads "Google uses a complicated structure to send most of its overseas profits to tax havens, keeping its corporate rate at a super-low 2.4 percent." But I believe that number refers only to Google's overseas tax rate. This more recent article http://news.yahoo.com/googles-tax-rate-still-seems-very-low-... says that Google's overall tax rate was 22.2% in 2009.
I think by "daunting" he means that the books do not look accessible to someone outside programming.

I would say "Learn Python the Hard Way" if you're absolutely new to it. It moves quickly and will give a good sense of what it's like to actually push the bits around. Most people who really like programming seem to have a similar first experience (like using BASIC on their PC or calculator); replicating that seems like a good first step, no?
I would suspect this to be true- Fitbit works in the same way. Sleep is an activity like any other so periods of movement above the threshold are seen as interruptions.
I think in addition to studying these books, the student should be put right to work coding simple tasks. The best way to learn is by doing, not by theory.

The student should get in and start hacking away at some non critical part of the code base. Perhaps the UI, or some reporting or tests. Something it's OK to break for a day or two.

Pair them up with a more experienced developer and make sure they do code reviews. Discus the code and talk about what went right and what went wrong.
I'm curious what is so different in Texas and California math where a full 1/3 of the curriculum is different? Is it manifest in the difference when these students get to colleges?
Oh thanks for asking that -- it takes about 30s to illustrate the million song set; we're working to make it faster!
So hypothetically if you have a very busy person who is mobbed by a lot of cold pitches, they might have a bit of pitch fatigue and assume that anybody cold pitching them is likely about as good a fit as the average cold pitcher, which is to say "total waste of my time." That very busy, selective individual probably has friends who are less mobbed by pitchers. Those friends might even be flattered to hear from you. Pitch them, with the goal of convincing them your startup/story/invitation to dinner and a movie/etc is so attractive that it is worth giving a warm intro to their friend. A warm intro in the Valley appears to be frequently a short two-sentence email: this is how I know X, here's why he's valuable to you, you guys take it from here.

This is how the real world works, over and over again.
There is something seriously wrong with the 'weeding out' mentality, in the hard sciences. I can't tell if its hazing, or some superiority complex. You end up with very hard boring work & teachers not being able to teach or willing to help, and everyone thinking 'If you are good you will figure it out yourself'. Hey, maybe math is hard, but you're not making it any easier & if I see a better opportunity I'll take it in a heartbeat.
The Best Credit Repair Company
Suffix arrays
Ask PG: Limits on competitive startups?
I've been running an early concept in the same space market as a recent YC graduate start up. I have been following the team closely. My approach is different and bypasses/solves much of the regulatory & technical challenges they have been encountering.

Does YC self-limit accepting more than one attempt at a problem? Basic reasoning suggests it would be counterproductive to fund two competitive businesses.

Also, are there any controls in place that prevent any inside game being shared with these competitive companies?
I'm curious about how an Amazon Publishing house stepping into the education arena might offer some disruption to the Texas Board of Education on their indirect grip on textbook standards. I suppose there is a chance of lobbing being replaced by a gaming of the system, as it were, but it might allow more visibility into the content that is being used in the your child's district. There is still the problem of the electronic media versus physical copies but maybe a Raspberry PI at ~$25 would make it more appealing.
Thank you. I don't get this reply people keep leaving :S
One thing I hope the technological advancement will bring is synthetic meat. With extremely cheap energy (both environmentally and financially) synthetic product should not be too expensive to compete with slaughtering real live animals. We are predators, yes, but that does not mean we can step up the ladder and satisfy our diet using a higher level of technology without any real animal suffering. This does exclude meat gained through hunting to keep populations in check.

Factory farmed animal meat is just something so morally repugnant to me. If there's no real need for it, why do it?

>And then they replace the mechanics and programmers with genetic algorithms.

I don't think this is logically possible. The job of a programmer is to transform human intention and desire into a computer readable input. How would you determine a heuristic for the genetic algorithm? The heuristic would have to be written by a human being on some level. There's only so far you can automate automation itself and I think you are grossly underestimating how difficult it is or will be.

Programming is a trinity between human paradigms, algorithmic mathematics and magic. The closer you bring the math and algorithms to the human paradigms and desires, the more it will resemble magic. It is an asymptotic progression. The magic will be never achieved.

What you are talking about is constructing the perfect programming language. People have been trying to do this since the start of previous century (Lambda calculus). You really think we will experience some tremendous leap in the close future?

In short: you will always have to have a way to describe what you want of the computer, and this is called a programming language.
Some guy posted some unproven random claims on pastebin, and people take it that serious? "It must be true, I've seen it on the Internet!" 500+ upvotes? c'mon.
I searched Bing for "New York Tech Startup Calendar" and got this:

http://startup-ventures.meetup.com/cities/us/ny/new_york/

Just start attending events, smiling, and introducing yourself to people. Make sure you are not shy about asking for what you are looking for. For example "I'm just figuring this startup thing out. I think I've got some great ideas but I don't have any mentors. If you know of any one I could talk to that would be great."

Good luck!
Which is my entire point.

You don't think I was advocating laws like that, do you?
Could you link to a free (and legal) version of K&R?

For anyone interested, I found SICP at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
Let me try a little experiment here:

While many of you will probably disagree with me, I find the trend towards writing in languages that compile to machine language somewhat alarming. The most notable of these languages C, and it's one that has gained a good degree of traction over the last year or so.

While I like and applaud the intention of these languages, I question their necessity and worry about the knowledge gap they create. More importantly, they all fail by requiring that you be an expert in two languages. Let's face it, you can't just program C without knowing machine language, unless you're willing to defer debugging to someone who does. If we're already willing to learn both languages and then spend time reading and debugging compiled C, why not just write good machine language from the start? For the extra effort you'll make learning C and its idiosyncrasies, why not put it towards really learning machine language?

Hmm?
"To offset that we should stop taxing capital gains at a lower rate"

I think this is not a bad idea, in fact, corporate taxes could be significantly lowered and capital gains/dividends could make up for it I believe. If not the money would usually go to reinvestment or some other sort of purpose. I think that taxing capital gains as if it was regular income would also be a fairer way to tax since a significant portion of high net worth individuals make most of their money from capital gain and pay less % taxes than upper middle class individuals.
Maybe you'll end up working for Hershey's.
MPAA Helped Police Seize 'Pirated' DVDs That Were Actually Fully Authorized
Thanks for the feedback! You mean that the blog is too text-heavy? Have you tried the product and you don't understand what it does?
Why STEM Majors Are Unhappy in the Sexual Marketplace
I think Math is easier than Science. The formula is there, you just have to solve it, done.
It's always been my favorite subject.
Spring 2012 Accessories Guide, Part 1
Thanks for the feedback! We chose the domain cause it has a good ring to it and because it was still available... gotta be scrappy with startups. Do you like the product?
Comic introduction to distributed social networks
I noticed these too when I last visited

+1 The fact that so much American cheese is coloured orange surprised me.

+1 Stars & Stripes everywhere and it's seen as perfectly normal to display the flag on your home
Apple CEO Tim Cook Makes Some Changes
WinX Free DVD Ripper for Windows 7
This free DVD ripper is able to rip DVD to MP4, rip DVD to WMV, rip DVD to AVI, FLV, MOV, MPEG, H.264, and easily convert DVD to iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, Android phone, PSP, etc.
Asthma Statistics
(As that is what they're doing) I'm sure its a smart business strategy for Growl, because it maintains Growl's momentum and developers have less reason to seek alternatives and introducing those alternatives to the users.

But its just not something I'm comfortable shipping.
Not everyone, but for every type of person I can think of, there's a different type of job that makes sense for them. If they're good with their hands, there are many things that will be hard to automate the repair of due to customization. If they're very persuasive, they can probably work in sales. If they're creative or artistic, there's a large need for good visual design.

If you find a way to make the marginal cost of educating someone near 0, then many more people might discover things that they're good at that they wouldn't have had the chance to otherwise.

I think this requires some socialist-style changes to what the govt. is willing to support, though, since many people can't afford to take time off. If this was bundled with unemployment benefits or welfare, though, I think it could be very powerful.

As leverage increases, the wealth disparity will almost certainly grow, just because some people will be able to create much more wealth than others. Not sure how to deal with that.
If you actually use Mongo in practice, everything needs to be in ram to have any kind of performance
Seriously guys? The website goes down and your first thought is that it's dead?
Thanks for the advice, I'll take that onboard and see what else we can come up with for the first slide - what you have said makes sense.
Nope. The Github project was just updated 2 days ago: https://github.com/sproutcore/sproutcore20
That isn't how math is done at a high level. That is mechanical rote computation, which in higher-level courses and in the real world is done by computers.

Real math is all about, roughly, creating the formulas that the software will use, which means you have to prove that the formula is both logically correct and does what you want to do. It's a creative act.

If you remember nothing else, remember that high-level math is creative.
Play Free Online Dating Games
Weird to recommend not starting on the most relevant language (C#) but instead with C and Scheme...

Sounds more like "old-hats" regurgitating their learning process.

Why the line is always drawn with C as well, is interesting. Not assembly, not Java, or Python... but C.

An analogy: Go and learn to use a mouse and keyboard, before you get an iPhone, otherwise things like the "On-Screen Keyboard" and the idea of "Touching (Clicking)" things is too difficult to grasp.
Besides working conditions, there's also the question of whether your work (and the company you work for) makes the world a better place.

I'm not naive about that - large companies have their own agendas. But someone working at a silicon valley firm still has a better chance of doing something meaningful than someone working at a hedge fund where the answer is pretty much "no" by the nature of the business.
Neat idea. I believe this is the second site I stumbled upon that has the pro/con threads laid side by side.

Once the traffic gets going, it might be nice to see some of the featured dogfights. Would be interesting to see whether a good percentage of the "dogfights" could be nonpolitical as well as political.
I'm surprised no one made any mention of what this bright person knows in the first place.

One of the best ways to teach is to map known concepts to new concepts. For instance, I might introduce methods to people who already know what functions are, but talk about messages to those who don't.
Thank you for your great feedback. Glad you like the design/functionality - we knew that had to be top notch.

Your Threading Replies idea is one that has been requested many times and will be implemented soon - actually we just wrote a post about it http://barklesapp.tumblr.com

To go into more depth here: Threaded replies will allow both sides to interact - so if you are on the Bark side you can still reply to a response on the Bite side - vice versa.
I struggled through high school never managing to get my head around statistics. I changed majors from chemistry to microbiology my first year of my science degree (because thats where all the girls where), and found statistics really easy. So what was the difference? the teachers thats all, some of the best tutors I every experienced where in the science area.

I had one tutor explain to me why he threw curve ball problems at the class. He would use it to weed out which ones gave up quick, which ones powered on, which ones just threw tantrums etc... he would then only really teach the percentage of the class that wanted the degree. The rest he said he'd get to passing, some just weren't worth teaching, but he'd make sure the real scientists walked out of the class with the best training they could get (albeit at the expense of others).

I'd hazard a guess that type of teaching behavior is endemic, so drop out rates for people who can't get the initiative to put in the extra effort get left behind pretty quickly and hence drop out.
Ritchey carbon
In many states, explicitly agreeing on consideration in the case of rescindment isn't required for a claim.

In contract law, there's a doctrine called "promissory estoppel" (see http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/promissory_estoppel) that basically says, "if somebody promises you X, and as a reasonable result of that promise, you do Y, and Y is very bad for you if promise X is revoked, you can sue for damages." The OP's case is a classic example where promissory estoppel can be applied.

Alas, New York does not recognize promissory estoppel (see Marino v. Oakwood Care Center http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ny-supreme-court/1371955.html), but many states do.
The Current and Future Ruby Platform
I would think that the Stanford open class CS106a with Prof. Sahami would be an excellent start.
Dissolving food stickers also wash your fruit
The magic market fairy can't help supply and demand equilibrate until the simple test exists, right?

My only point is that the problem isn't creation of a public good, the problem is that reliably identifying good people/good matches is really hard.
Upvoted for similar experience. It is much more interesting to solve arbitrary math problems than a specific arbitrary math problem.
I think it's similar to owning vs. renting a house. Working for someone else is like renting. When rats are running through your kitchen you pickup your crap and leave. But while you live in this rented house you might repaint the walls and generally take great care of the place.
Thank you. Good work on that site, the concept is the most important element to keep it going. Due to the amount of websites that could easily tackle this market (side by side) we needed the design to really step up the mark (that's what we felt was lacking in some of our competitors).

Due to posing a question on Nooges first you still have a strong model and all you really need is a design lift - keep going with it too!
It's "futile"? Really? Is that just shorthand for saying that you oppose trying hard enough to do it successfully?

I don't think it's futile at all. I think we lack the national will to do it, largely and obviously because of the folks who are in control of the relevant decisions.

I'd be more sympathetic to your argument (and just fyi, I am not entirely unsympathetic as it is) if I had some confidence that adopting a 10% flat tax would actually result in corporations paying that amount.

Taxing capital gains at a LOWER rate? Are you serious? Reagan/Bush/Bush trashed those rates to such an extent that it seems laughable to advocate lowering them any further. They're non-existent.
How to Break Captchas with Python
If I recall correctly, the Galileo probe (around 1989) had the same problems from anti-nuke folks that feared a radiation fall-out if the shuttle exploded while bringing the satellite into space.
Thank you for your comment. We are planning on showing some of the featured Dogfights on the home page (without needing to be logged in).

I'm actually suprised so far that of the 100+ Dogfights created, very few have been about politics.
What exactly does this have to do with GitHub Flavored Markdown? Literally none of GitHub's extensions to Markdown[1] work in this editor...

[1]: http://github.github.com/github-flavored-markdown/
FWIW, looks great. Took me a while to hit the maximize button on the videos...for a while I thought "man, they really didn't do a good job, I can't read any of the text"
fair point, i've never really worked in a trading company, so i have very little room to talk. and you do make your job sound like a lot of fun :)
Wow, this is a great resource. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you John! Simplicity and sexy design was our focus (based on the simple concept). Really looking forward to your Dogfights :)
And yet it is also fashionable to say ideas are worthless. so yeah, here's my great idea.
Very nice.
I really appreciate the dropdown formatting selector box. I use Textile in Basecamp and find myself intermixing/confusing it's formatting with Markdown because the two are CLOSE but not exact.
A talent shortage among U.S. citizens is actually quite feasible in high-tech industries.

Consider the discussions on HN and Slashdot alone recently about salaries and the value of degrees. If people really have been able to pick degrees that are "simpler" than science or engineering and find jobs making six figures in the U.S., it's not hard to imagine that companies might find it hard to hire enough qualified workers for the "harder" disciplines. In a job like software, the difference between an outstanding developer and an average one is orders of magnitude, so it's very unlikely someone else can be trained properly.

Also consider, if there were no visas, companies might not have U.S. offices at all. If you have an office of 500 people, 300 of whom are from other countries, the cost of the U.S. office may be justifiable. But suppose you weren't allowed to have foreign workers live here. The company isn't going to say "okay, looks like we need a big office overseas to hold local talent and a small office in the U.S."; they're more likely to say "screw that, let's put our one and only office overseas", and then you've just lost 200 U.S. jobs completely.

It is a common misconception that the presence of non-U.S. workers will definitely kill U.S. jobs. I can imagine that some companies in some industries may have this issue on a small scale, but they do so illegally.
For a paper that discusses the Google example in some detail see Ed Kleinbard's "Stateless income's challenge to tax policy".

http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/tax/symposia/Documents/Klein...
Dropbox's summer 2007 application to YC
Normalization is a tricky thing. On one hand, highly normalized databases have better flexibility in reporting, IMHO. On the other, you lose some expressiveness regarding data constraints. High degrees of normalization would be ideal if cross-relation constraints were possible. As they are not, typically one has to normalize in part based on constraint dependencies just as much as data dependencies.
How to outsource anything using 6 top outsourcing websites
ODesk, Elance, Vworker, Freelancer.com and Guru are freelancing sites that facilitate and streamline the process of hiring virtual (or remote workers).