skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The point of genetic algorithms is NOT to replicate evolution. Like you mention, evolution has no end goal whereas engineers usually have very explicit end goals. (Other problems include time constraints and computing power!)

The point of genetic algorithms is to exploit the principle of natural selection under very specific constraints and explicitly constructed utility functions that are likely to lead to a better solution to a given problem.

Of course we're cheating a little, but we have to. "Organic" genetic algorithms that consistently achieve engineering design principles (like robustness, modularity, compartmentation, etc.) without constraints are the holy grail of the field.
Using an automated day trader to generate income
I've probably learned ten times more from the internet during the time when I was in public school than I did from school activities. Those who didn't have access were, and are, at a massive disadvantage. If the kids in now unserved communities so choose to take that opportunity and waste it, it is up to them. But they should at least have that opportunity to seize.
You're right, a lot of GNOME stuff is superficial blind copying from Mac OS X, without much understanding of what actually makes OS X nice.

For example: the GTK file picker dialog.
looks nice, but seriously, what's happenin behind??
Same with Sam's Club/Costco kind of places. Their margins are below what those credit cards charge out of the gate (except for Discover) but their order volume is so high that they were able to negotiate with at least Visa or Mastercard.
+1 Thanks for the explanation. I can fully understand both the legitimacy and the desire to model the specific process of genetic propagation, but was somewhat confused how exactly that logically validates it as an accurate representation of its function in evolution as a whole.

It's pretty clear one model has a designer and the other does not, and you certainly agree that the existence of a designer is more than just a small issue when dealing with the validity of evolutionary "models". =)
The New Examined Life - Personal Informatics / Self-quantification
No, if they "dragged their feet" it was simply because Java's static OO-ness doesn't map well to Objective-C's fully dynamic nature. Objective-C is basically just Smalltalk semantics (minus control structures) bolted on to C.

It works surprisingly well, but you can't and won't believe it until you try it yourself.
Merb master/worker monit control setup
Do you have a secular definition of greed to offer, so that someone might have a shot at answering your question?
Merb 1.0.4 Released
Yahoo! has already released a very similar "BrowserPlus" ... http://browserplus.yahoo.com/
I'm looking to strike a balance, mostly. If I can match the 3.3% my savings account pays and do some good in the world, I'm happy. Currently I fire off the occasional small check to environmental groups; I consider that a good enough investment. But to commit a significant chunk of my savings, I'd want to see some return.
Why would you NOT want to redefine syntax if that new definition could make you dramatically more productive and or your code more readable? Sure if you are working on a large project for a large company (or even a large open source project) of course you want to make sure your code can be understood/maintained by johnny random but when you are talking about your journeyman type project - why would you compromise - and better yet why is it you aren't tackling problems which make you "up your game" in terms of abstractions and tools available to you?

Mechanics have wrenches with the edges ground off or thinned down, even heated and bent to fit special applications. So why shouldn't I have my own syntax which sits on top of a readily available platform?
yeah. sort of what I was implying. should have mentioned the reference image to be more clear.
Capacitors: Failures and Parasitic Effects
A capacitor fails when it no longer meets the application requirements. A capacitor can fail for many causes... so let's have a look to the failures and to the parasitic effects too!
Uh, do you feel that as someone who emerged from his/her mother's vagina on American soil you are deserving of more than someone who emerged elsewhere? Why shouldn't someone who is willing to work be allowed to come here to be hired by someone who willingly wants to hire them?

The US does not have open immigration, nor is it opening. Both Obama and McCain oppose(d) any meaningful increase in immigration.
So-called entrepreneurs who are anti-Rand are typically the types whose projects are not really innovative, and depend more on bubble mentalities than on actual value added. If all you want is to have a VC look at your degree and your buzzwords and write a check, then you have no use for Rand's philosophy or any sort of moral defense of capitalism -- yours is a world of saying what others want to hear and getting in good with the powerful.
That's inconsistent with how quickly Apple had Carbon ready using C. Just a matter of effort.
Announcing Viviti: Build websites with no code and no hassle (we hope!)
Please try to read down to the section mentioning Jon "Maddog" Hall. What he says is true.
Of all the places to give a slide presentation!

I think that the acceptance speeches of Nobel Laureates should be a refuge from the cult of the projector screen.
Really great job, i mean that. What were some of the challenges you faced? I've never captured a session before, sounds like an interesting problem beyond cookies.
Your point is that rather than worrying about principles we should just take a poll and only discuss things that poll at close to 50%?
Meet Early - Demonstrate A Trend
Firefox 3.1 beta 2 released
Not necessarily, although you won't be doing any JIT.
I see your point but if YC is about entrepreneurship then one's understanding of the morality of capitalism determines whether one views the entrepreneur as a greedy scoundrel or respectable citizen.
Challenges for the New Genomics
They don't look that similar, since BrowserPlus doesn't appear to run arbitrary untrusted native code.
Viviti, our beloved new CMS/sitebuilder, has been under development for several years now. The CMS market is crowded, but we're going for a level of simplicity and flexibility that hasn't been achieved by any of the solutions out there right now.

Feedback is always welcome!
I think we know more about Google than Twitter does.
A customer decided they wanted each order placed on their site to have an 4-character alphanumeric designation.

It took surprisingly little time to encounter "SH1T" during testing.
Uhm...having a hard time finding an about page (both company about and people about).

I love reading about the creators of a service :)
The problem was not necessarily the home loans themselves, but that these high-risk loans were classified as extremely low-risk by credit rating agencies. The government did not make these classifications, nor did the government force exuberant optimism on financial institutions.

The current situation may have been avoided by saner lending guidelines, but it could also have been avoided by better government oversight of the shell games being played by the investment banks. It's blatantly false to claim that the only problem here was federal economic policy, and that the only solution would have been less governmental involvement.
Maybe this would be a great upsale for clients that don't want to muddle through the videos themselves (cough, Fortune 500 marketing folks who love reports, cough) -- have the videos cranked thru Amazon's Mechanical Turk and then the Turkers can summarize events.
Google Alerts is super helpful for tracking mentions of your company on the web. You should also check out search.twitter.com for mentions of your site/brand on twitter.

I haven't been as successful with using Google Alerts for broader industry news. There are too many false positives unless you are in a very niche category.
Uh, I think everyone here is pretty much ok with entrepreneurship. Also, your sentence is kind of a run on/non-sequitur:

> if YC is about entrepreneurship then one's understanding of the morality of capitalism determines whether one views the entrepreneur as a greedy scoundrel or respectable citizen.

... but only because YC is about entrepreneurship, right? Otherwise one's understanding of the morality of capitalism wouldn't determine his or her views of the entrepreneur?

Once again, I think this site's users are on board with capitalism (and if they aren't, well go talk about it someplace else), so we don't really need to go there.
Lesson: in a world of 6 billion people, everything is massively popular.
> oh come on, it is well known that apple intentionally dragged their feet on their java support for years

Apple (or more, exactly, the part from NeXT) did initially bet a lot on Java adoption. They ported the entire WebObjects stack from ObjC to Java, only to watch the technology get abandoned by those in the banking and eCommerce communities. The conversion was so total that when the Cocoa-To-Java bridge in OS X was deprecated, it was no longer possible to continue using the original WO tool chain. (What WO development outside of Apple exists made a new chain based on Eclipse, from what I read.)
I've used this and I have to say it's more awesome than I expected. And it is kinda old news since we announced it was coming months ago.

Sometimes it's pretty frustrating not to be able to tell the communities you inhabit about the cool stuff down the line.

disclaimer: I am the Tech Evangelist for all of the real work Isaac does
Which really is too bad, by the way - the language designers seem to have done a brilliant job of shrugging off potential design warts otherwise. It's a very clean language.
Shamiq,

We're planning to put up an "about" page (as well as a more extended explanation of features) as soon as our designer can get it all put together visually. Should be sometime later this week.

In the meantime, check out the blog: http://blog.viviti.com/

There's quite a bit of info about the development of Viviti in there, plus links to the personal sites of all the developers.

Thanks for checking it out!
I've seen the daily media feeds that several PR companies provide, from as small as a 2-man shop to Ogilvy. They weren't any more useful than a few terms thrown in Google alerts.
Tweetbars: A "test something out" service I wrote. Comments?
An interesting thought I had from this was the difference between Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming.

Genetic Algorithm is what we are seeing but Genetic Programming would tell us that the car might need 3 wheels.
Ah good point. For some reason I was reading as "a billion dollars will fund 40k people".
I dont know if anyone uses Twitter?

But I find this little app useful for pushing my tweets to forums & blogs etc. where usually they dont make it.

Please - comments and feedback much appreciated. And do test it to destruction :) (it's a tech demo for something more secret I am working on and it needs testing ;))
I hate to troll in such a fashion but dear God change the font.

Otherwise, nifty idea.
What is SPIFF?
I think that Ian Howards point that the local "computer support person" resented a solution because it was too easy to use is the wrong conclusion. I've found that frequently, people reset linux simply because it's unfamiliar. In remote african villages, I would wager that this unfamiliarity is amplified by the lack of widespread technology in general.
He provides no examples of "this is bullying" and "this is teasing." But I'm able to figure out for myself which is which from the distinction he makes in the beginning.

The point of his article is to explore the good kinds of teasing, why it exists, and the benefits it has. I think you're faulting him for not doing something he never set out to do.
It's obvious there has been a tremendous amount of development time invested in the project. Looks great, feels good. There are many site builders out there, so I think execution counts for a lot.

Two quick suggestions:

1) Get a demo video up on the homepage. Show a person what they can do.

2) Get a demo video up after a person has signed up. If my dad were using this, he could walk through the wizard up to the point where he arrives at his site. Then he'd get lost as to what he should click on next to accomplish whatever task is in his head.
A nice idea.

I like the concept. The execution is good too :D

Your right pictures would be nice if you can get them in.

Also I would push the content to the right and put a slim sidebar with some more info and links to stuff you can't syndicate (perhaps).

One killer feature (not sure how far you want to go with the site :D) might be to allow accounts and then for us to save our favourites or memorable content for future reference (like a personal search.yc).

+woot though :D
I also recommend Backtype Alerts (http://www.backtype.com/alerts), which tell you when something is mentioned in a comment.
Seems like a site like this will live or die by the curation. Its not clear to me why I would visit your site versus Hacker News since the community here culls out the startup related posts from the sources you have listed on your site already.

Also, "startups" is a pretty broad topic and there are lots of sites which aggregate startup related content. It seems like you could be more successful by picking some aspect of startups and focusing on aggregating content related to that specific aspect.

As far as video, vator.tv has lots of startup video content. I am not sure about pictures, but sites like slideshare.com have interesting startup related presentations.
Make any website behave strangely in your browser
definitely wouldn't call that trolling! Good feedback :)

Which one? The site font or the actual bar font? any particular suggestions for a replacement? (for sites I always use Verdana or Georgia out of bad habit :P I cant remember what the bar font is - It's whatever I used on another web->image service I did a while back)
AppJet http://appjet.com/
Maybe Don’t Count Yahoo Out Just Yet
Good points. Getting a demo video up on the homepage is a priority at this point; for orientation after sign-up, we're thinking about doing a quick overlay/popup that explains how to edit and add content. I don't think it should take more than a few hints to help people through creating their first few pages.

Thanks for checking it out.
Ikariam does allow some greasemonkey scripting. There is also Kronos that is now against the rules but used by a large # of people.

It is against the TOS but TBH as long as you dont make it obvious they dont care about simple hacks/scripts.
Government regulation for strong authentication on the internet.
The problem with CFLs & LEDs is not that they theoretically last a long time, it's that they're electrically fragile. Incandescents can take worse electrical conditions a lot better, and thus can last a lot longer.
I've been thinking recently about how it would be cool to have a service which allowed you to try different trading algorithms.

For instance, it would have a few algorithms built in, you could choose which you want and with what parameters and then it would monitor how it performs. Also available would be the ability to see how this algorithm would have performed in the past (to see how it worked in bad markets, etc).

It could also have a generic API to allow you to run your own algorithm on your end and simply make calls to BUY and SELL certain things.

(In the future it could even allow _real_ trades, etc. One other cool way to make money off this would be to actually invest in the best performing strategies as they occur over time.)

I'm guessing this is all available to the big firms, but haven't ever heard of anything geared to the hackers who want to try things out.

Does anyone know if this sort of thing exists? Would anyone else think this is neat?
Cannabis could stop dementia in its tracks
I haven't had this much fun on a demo since some random Flash app from the late 90s. Well executed cte, while some may discredit your app for providing no concrete application, I for one salute you, I would have never thought to pass a user's intuition as input. This puts the voyeurism of a Trojan virus into a web app, which is what computer illiterates love to look at. This could be a very bankable idea.
And that blog links to our personal blogs, too :)
Fantastic editing experience, well done.
How does this development affect the issue then?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389857
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiff
http://www.tradestation.com/platform/overview.shtm

This should do the trick. I've never tried it myself but certainly looks interesting. I know of a few people who use it to try out different systems.
Very true. My best investment so far has been Illumina a few years ago, which I found because they were blanketing the job boards. Why hire like mad unless you expect to blow up soon? However, I'm not really willing to be a full-time investor at the moment. Index funds and a high-yield savings account do a good enough job of keeping up with the market for very little intellectual investment.

Regarding high-risk, high-yield investing, the Kelly criterion comes to mind. It says that given some bias in the outcome of some bet, and a return proportional to the expected result (without the bias), there's an optimal portion of your principal to wager in each round to get the best yield over time. And it's surprisingly low -- in the case of a coin toss rigged 51% in favor of heads, for example, you should only bet 2% of your principal. If you go all in each round, even though the odds are in your favor, you will probably lose everything.
You know what would be cool is a Pandora style learning system for Google Alerts. "Yeah, like that", "No, not that one", "Add variety", etc.
For Tipjoy, I use:

- Twitter search in a client like TweetDeck - multi column is awesome
- google alerts
- backtype alerts
might wanna send him an email, to pg@...
The tool itself is wonderful. I'd switch my blog from wordpress to it, if it had analytics, and I knew you'd be around a year from now.

Minor thing on signup:

Password: ancmthdnvu
Password Strength:
You're kidding, right?

Password: 123456
Password Strength:
Admirable
I just did this because I got inspired. What does it count as, genetic programming?
It uses naive mutation and crossover(don't know if they qualfiy as real crossover and mutation) and a simple fitness function.
It is fairly pointless since all it does is find a list with ones but it does so in just around 400 generations while random guessing takes forever.

from __future__ import division
import matplotlib.mlab as M
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random as R

def crossover(a, b):
new = []
for x,y in zip(a,b):
if R.random() > 0.5:
new.append(x)
else:
new.append(y)
return new

def mutate(xs):
xs[int(R.uniform(0, len(xs)))] = int(R.uniform(1, 10))
return xs

def fitness(xs, goal):
summa = 0
for x,y in zip(xs, goal):
summa += abs(x-y)
return summa, xs, True if summa == 0 else False

def nFittest(xs, goal, n=2):
fittest = sorted(fitness(x, goal) for x in xs)[:n]
if fittest[0][2] :
return fittest[0]
elif fittest[1][2]:
return fittest[1]
else:
return fittest

def init(fields, n):
return [[int(R.uniform(1,10)) for x in xrange(fields)] for y in xrange(n)]

def newGen(a,b,n):
next = [crossover(a,b) for x in xrange(n)]
mutated = []
for x in next:
if R.random() > 0.9: mutated.append(mutate(x))
else: mutated.append(x)
return mutated

def run(printing=True):
n = 0
first = init(15, 10)
while n < 1000000:
n += 1
next = nFittest(first, [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1], 2)
if type(next) == tuple: break
first = newGen(next[0][1],next[1][1], 10)
if printing:
print "Nbr of generations: ", n
print next
return n, next

def plot():
trials = [run(False)[0] for x in range(100)]
print "Done trials"
averages = [sum(trials[:x]) / len(trials[:x])\
for x in xrange(1,len(trials)+1)]
print "Done averages"
plt.plot([x for x in xrange(len(averages))], averages, 'ro')
plt.axis([1, 100, 0, 1000])
plt.show()

def test():
goal = [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1]
c=0
while 1:
c += 1
x = [int(R.uniform(1,10)) for y in range(15)]
if sum(x) == 15: break
if c % 10000 == 0: print c
print x
Very cool indeed! That's a good point about admin pages. Perhaps you can have some kind of flag or config setting so that we can set which pages or directories we don't want to be captured.

I have a question about SSL sessions. The video mentioned that replays are done through you since the web page is crawled, so are you spoofing and logging in as the user in order to do the logged in pages?
- or - You can try the free metatrader if you're less serious.
FWIW- I did a ton of research on friend to friend sharing in a previous gig. I found time and again that site based currency (like your points) was the most attractive motivator to encourage users to refer friends to a site. If you do incent users, you'll want to make sure you have suitable fraud tracking system since users will go out of their way to figure out how to game the system.

Your site design is really clean versus other flash game sites I have come across in the past. Nice work!
I think that ditch just coincides with a time limit of about ten seconds on most cars. I wonder how far they'd get if they weren't time-limited.
1. Show more features, or show them more in-depth. (It doesn't need to be a video, but it could be.) Unless I'm really interested, I'm not going to sign up for something just to find out what it can do. Or maybe create a shared demo account with a public password, if collaboration is one of your features.

2. I'm wondering what this has to do with Panic's Coda, since your logo looks eerily similar to theirs, from the wavy light-green leaf right down to the water droplets and veins.
As the mouse squeaks to a 40th year, its creator roars on
If you want full-text search in the data store Google gives you App Engine you end up doing about the same thing. One thing though, when indexing text you definitely want to stem the words and remove the duplicates. You can implement a Porter stemmer (probably the right thing to do) or use a quick and dirty one something like this:

tails = 'ally ion ive ing ies ed ly al es e s n y'.split()

def stem(self, s):
slen = len(s)

for t in tails:
if s[-1 * len(t):] == t:
s = s[:-1 * len(t)]
break

if len(s) > 2 and len(s) < slen and s[-1] == s[-2]:
s = s[:-1]

return s
$0.02: I would prefer to try the site or view a video before I hand over my email address.
Despite Macworld withdrawals, conference organizers say they are not worried
> It's blatantly false to claim that the only problem here was federal economic policy,

How fortunate I do not make that claim. In fact, the only claim I made is that our economy is not based on Randism. You projected the rest out.
Well, when it costs Verizon $750+ per person to connect, (see http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/a-bear-speaks-why-v... ) It's kinda easy to understand why Verizon wants to get the areas that have large amounts of people grouped together first before moving on to rural areas.

Verizon is still first and foremost a business whose goal is to turn a profit for shareholders. There is nothing wrong with this. If they weren't trying to make money, the board and shareholders would be ticked off. Hell, they already are ticked off because of how much FiOS is costing to lay out..
True, we obviously didn't get rid of the post office or its legal monopoly but we did get rid of its practical monopoly with companies like FedEx, UPS, etc. and of course with email.
US: Excuses people make to skip office
A coworker: "Yay! Google is re-imlementing ActiveX!"
The author of this is actually demoscener (Fairlight).
Thanks for the feedback. We'll keep working on the password strength checker :) We're trying to make it a little fun so people will voluntarily choose stronger passwords.
You forgot a div there. Those are 627 minutes. So more like 10.26 hours. Your conclusions stand though :)