skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If I understand it right the first rule of NDA is you do not talk about NDA.
installed AP Mobile. I think there's still gems out there, for example I love Planet Money.

I'll give AP Mobile a try, thanks!
Wael Ghonim interview on Charlie Rose
Wael is an inspiration.
Actually, it's not draggable either, so it's now (at least) a CSS background image, on a <span>. I'm not sure if it was an <img> inside <a> up until today or not, but in that case, I suppose you could say that CSS was involved.
If I remember correctly, in 2007, the Sanger method for sequencing (which involves nucleotide-by-nucleotide, laborious, gel-based sequencing) was quickly replaced by cheaper methods. We started using laser-based sequencers, along with statistics, to determine longer sequences quicker, and using computers instead of legions of grad students.
this made me chuckle :)
Wow, I have to admit I hate this. I've also admitted to myself recently that Twitter's interface drives me nuts after the rehaul a while back. What would help? If these guys would release a thorough write-up and details about the user testing and philosophy for such huge changes. We geeks might be swayed in the face of reason.
I am working on this very thing, and in fact it's called Whybase (http://whybase.com).
If I had to guess, it'd be the rise of distributed computing.
He borrowed a great deal from NLP.
How I should Argue
Greatness of Mass Effect that I was able to exterminate Arachni, kill the council and give collector base to the Cerberus. Humanity value in the story is that they are new enough to challenge the order of things. Cerberus is the ultimate startup accelerator!
Ask for permission not Forgiveness
"You may want to look into the school segregation lawsuits of the 70s"

I'm quite familiar with the subject, thanks.

Those lawsuits dealt with de facto segregation based on neighborhoods, not de jure segregation based on race. It had a similar effect on the large scale, hence the lawsuits, but that doesn't mean that Obama himself wouldn't have been allowed to attend. Obama didn't live in the 'hood. His grandparents, with whom he lived in Hawaii, were white and well-to-do, and he attended an expensive private school (current tuition: $18,450/year, not including fees).
Vinay Gupta on Hinduism, Feminism
On the other hand, the number of GOOD people with GOOD business ideas is almost always far less than the available capital. Angels don't want into any old deal; they all want into the best couple of deals. That is why YC Demo Day is so well attended.
People host malware anywhere they can. It's not uncommon for people to hotlink malware to googlecode project files. googleusercontent is exactly what it sounds like, a place for google to host user content. its fairly reasonable that someone (likely many people) is/are using to host malicious software. I'm sure that google is identifying and removing this when it identifies it, but it doesnt mean it isn't there.

If you provide a place for people to store bits it will eventually be used to store illegal and/or malicious bits :(
http://www.genome.gov/pages/der/sequencing_cost.xls

It's off this page: http://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/
It seems that the government(s) make a lot of noise about how valiantly they pursue these 'dangerous' hackers, but they won't go near the state sponsored industrial espionage that appears to be coming out of China. Why are we so proud of persecuting our own citizens while we ignore much more damaging actions carried out by another government?
I would tend to disagree. I am an avid reader of history, and having read news about world events and then read books about them, I would say that books usually have an agenda. Even if they are unbiased, you are still at the mercy of somebody else to make an opinion for you. While my greatest joy of reading a new thing is how it adds to or reinforces my mental model of an event.
Developer happiness aside -- there are plenty of folks who like JavaScript just as much as Ruby -- and assuming that we're talking about an non-public-facing app (like Basecamp Next), is there still an argument that can be made in favor of doing your UI on the server side?

Sure.

1) Client side UI frameworks are still immature. For example Backbone is minimal, while Ember is more featured but with bad documentation and not proven yet. Big frameworks with UI widgets never caught on and are too restrictive. GWT is also on the down and out, etc...

2) Same goes for the tools you need for debugging, unit testing, automation, etc. Nowhere as complete as the server side tools that have been honed for 10+ years.

3) Client experience can be extremely different, when JS performance differs widely between Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE versions. Not to mention not everybody supporting the history state API.

4) JS performance for long running pages can also vary, due to memory management.

and it can't be close to as flexible (you don't have a model of state on the client to perform logic with)

And on the client you don't have a model of the server (where the actual data are and where the actual actions are performed) to perform logic with.
Seems to work in opera and elinks. So they want to be different from the rest of the internet... but only for some browsers?
What's the matter with these people?
Living in MTL? Google-sponsored challenge
Big Tobacco doesn't sell ecigs, yet anyhow. The more open opposition is from Big Pharma and those who make their living pushing "quit or die" vs. harm reduction.

I just found a way to better serve consumers what they wanted.. pretty standard entrepreneurial story. If everyone let the 90%+ fail rate of businesses scare them from trying, the world would seriously suck.

Part of what I need to do to succeed is recognizing the threat of legislation and finding a better place to do business. My point was that the ridiculousness of SOPA and such isn't new and hurts other parts of the economy too. (and I am genuinely curious what #0 means)
I have been watching Mixergy for last two years as a non programmer and I can say it is worth watching. It has forced me to think what entrepreneurship is and motivated me to learn programming.
If you criticize then do it constructively. I mean show me a site/blog which has brought so many founders (both successful and unsuccessful) to their knee to spit out their real life experience and I will take your word.
And I am sure there are so many niches out there screaming to be exploited in other fields (biotech, pharma, commodities etc).
Yahoo Shuts Down Decade-Old E-Mail Account, Shrugs
My favorite programming music:

Any of Brian Eno's ambient stuff
The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
The Field - Looping State of Mind
Luomo - Vocalcity
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise
Burial - Untrue
At three or four sigmas we could be pretty sure it's true. At five sigmas we're willing to bet the next generation of scientific research on it.
And you work for "Mozilla Labs"? As a volunteer, or do they go ahead and hire nerds with no manners and silly notions about entitlement and technology?
Recently I bought a Sanza Fuze. Largely because I wanted an audio player, and not a locked-pocket-computer that happens to play music. What I learned from the experience is that touch sucks as a universal interface.

0) It is not always obvious what gestures to make to have the device perform a certain action. For something that I will pull out many times and interact with while doing something else, I should never have to think about how to do something.

1) In the cases where there are multiple gestures one can make at one screen, it is very often that you will make the wrong one or the machine will interpret your gesture incorrectly. This sucks. Having to memorize gestures brings us back to the era where most applications were navigated by keyboard shortcut. (In fact, I would prefer the keyboard shortcuts. At least those are non-ambiguous.)

2) Touch screens are quite possibly the best way invented by man to smudge display hardware. Even when a touchscreen has been forgone in favor of a touch pad below the display. Between greasy, sticky, food, dirty hands, and just plain wear, I basically have to constantly damage my display to interact with the device. Which is why most people end up getting a case. (Case-hell is its own subject really.)

3) Specifically for the case of video games, there is nothing more frustrating then the interface effecting your ability to play the game. Considering that the latency of wireless controllers is considered too much by the most hardcore of gamers, it stands to reason that touch interface will be universally looked down upon by anyone playing anything more complex than say; wii bowling.

Addressing your concept of a touch pad on the back to save the poor screen. Your forgetting that most people hold mobile devices in such a way that a touch pad on the back would be constantly triggered simply by holding the device with a firm grip. (And encouraging people to hold it with anything less is a bad idea considering how fragile they are.)

I expect buttons to be around for a long time to come.
This is also true in Google+ and Google Reader. It really throws off my flow. Whenever I try to go back to the main page, I click the logo a few times before I realize it doesn't work anymore...

A few weeks ago, in G+, the logo would give a menu of services, which was also not useful for me.
It will go back to being clickable when Google has a graphic/special logo.

Hopefully Larry will put back the aliens... :)
This is far better: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36724189@N05/6892887709/in/phot...
I have to offer an alternative perspective; the number of angels greatly exceeds the number of opportunities they are collectively going after. The best entrepreneurs are often in a position to choose one angel over another. Unlike the PGs of the world, most investors must market themselves to have access to a stream of quality deals.

This event is a marketing tool for angels to garner the attention of as many startups as they can in areas they are interested in investing. The title of the event makes it seem as though the tables have been turned on the entrepreneur and investor, but in the end everyone can guess who is going to be approaching who.
Well, that's in the US. Fortunately, a lot of people live in countries where you can do whatever when stopped and the officer will never suspect you are trying to pull a gun on them, or pull a gun on you.

That's because, in those countries, it NEVER happens (i.e for someone pulled over to shoot the cop). So you can go get your ID or whatever, and then you have a chat, and they maybe give you a fine for speeding or whatever.
"You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but I must warn you that if you fail to mention any fact which you rely on in your defence in court, your failure to take this opportunity to mention it may be treated in court as supporting any relevant evidence against you"

F.U.D. made law. Well done England.

Fortunately England still requires a Jury, and Jury's still acquit people despite the police and prosecution spouting outright lies from the moment a person is arrested. If you naively believe that the police do not do so, see if anyone in your circle of friends is a defense lawyer/solicitor who has represented people at police stations and have a candid conversation with them.

If you get arrested in the UK (or anywhere) shut up and say only "I invoke my right to silence. Get me my lawyer."
> I just wish that more people did this. Most everybody I see in stores these days seems perfectly happy to carry around a dozen of those cards.

I'm perfectly happy to get the discounts they provide, as well as occasional targeted coupons. Often times those coupons are appreciated!
Nice thing, I think people need such a thing, because news number is great, but interesting and relevant news number is not that great. Information filters are the future.
Apple posts guide for iOS development newcomers
Illumina acquired Solexa, and shipped the first Genome Analyzer (the ancestor of the HiSeq). Clive Brown was a central figure at Solexa during their rise and acquisition, and has been at Oxford Nanopore for the last few years (he's the one who gave the talk).

There's a lot of hype in genomics, but Brown is one of the few who has delivered, which is part of the reason why MinION is getting the benefit of the doubt. Very exciting announcement.
Maybe the fact that it is not typed is a key to it's hidden meaning. Maybe there are reasons that only parts of this letter are clarified...

In all seriousness, this pdf basically unreadable. It would be nice if there was a readable version available to the general public. If there is one, please let me know because this is very interesting.
Thanks for this, but this was not really what I was looking for. I already have all my server implementation done and all coding for the geofences is pretty much done, I just need a way of making it more efficient. There is not point in signing up for a monthly service when 90% of the stuff the service provides is already done by me.

Are there really so few docs out there about efficiently coding for geofences?
The Mac sales are not diminishing at all. They are INCREASING. The fact the iOS is also increasing, and increasing at a much higher rate, doesn't mean Mac sales are decreasing.
So the opportunity is to create a video news network based on a streaming / store model rather than the 24hr model. Lets say you put together such a network, as you cover stories you put them up on your server. Your customers click 'the news' and they get a newscast of all the current news, but once they've seen a story they don't see it again unless there is actually additional information.

Things like sports highlights, weather, and finance have a regular 30 minute update cycle. So push the button and you can watch a 'show' which is probably 30 - 40 minutes long of the current news. If you watched the news this morning and its a slow news day the icon indicates no new updates.

You click news you are interested in and it tailors your broadcast to you're interest. Don't care about entertainment? not there. Don't want to hear about the latest hijinks on the debate circuit, not there. Interested in updates on NASA's budget? there.

You can surface potential stories of interest in the 'crawl', click/press it and that story gets added to your newscast.

Same basic organization as any other news organization, but the transmission is network based.

News transition Nightly -> Morning + Noon + Night -> 24hr

Differentiation Liberal leaning / Conservative / more local / less local / more weather / more sports / etc.

Monetization - advertising.

Disruption - remove transmission costs, pull cable networks out of the middle, move to NetFlix/AmazonPrime/Hulu with a higher revenue share. Product hook is "like a Tivo that watches the 24hr news channel and only records the new/interesting/current bits." Value add - saves time for you, no need to wait around for the top story to repeat, press go and its there. Partnership opportunities with business hotels for additional monetization revenue (they pay for your feed (probably generic version, not customized) and insert hotel specific ads into the video (rev share). The customer value proposition is news now, no repeats.

When it happens it will disrupt the crap out of Fox/Cnn and will add a missing service to the NetFlix/Roku/Amazon/Hulu's of the world.
Am I having a Deja vu?
Basically unreadable? It's perfectly readable to me. Perhaps my own poor handwriting has given me better handwriting recognition.
The fact of the matter is "the best" companies naturally have investors competing to get a piece.

What defines "the best" and what creates true competition is quite fickle. The private equity market, despite all recent changes, is still inherently inefficient. So I'd venture to say there are several dynamics going on:

1) Social Proof: Many investors are just lazy and won't look beyond who is introducing or vouching for the deal. Nothing wrong with that, it is a legitimate defense mechanism, but this limits what they actually pay attention to and creates frenzy around half-baked projects with "superstars" onboard. Think Color.

2) Right Fad: This is closely related to the previous point. If an investor has a theory that something "just like XYZ" is the next big thing, they might be willing to overlook a LOT of legitimate red flags. This could create a frenzy around a certain space or make them avoid another because "it is played out", which is often wrong.

3) Their Knowledge: On one hand this is what they legitimately understand about the space to make their own intelligent judgement of why there is an opportunity. That is the type of investor with the most potential to bring something useful if they can explain: "because I've done this and this, I can contribute this". Flip side, experience often means pre-conceived notions, with Exhibit #1 being YC's bias against solo founders.

4) Actual Metrics: If your numbers speak for themselves quite a few investors would want in just on this basis. The flip side it might be too late. Another flip side is investors might think a deal is overpriced or they cannot get enough control, etc. Best companies though are able to execute regardless of who invests or not invests. That's where you can have a legitimate competition on who is allowed to invest, based on what they offer.

5) Hidden Gems: Investors can often get the best deals by being early enough but that's where you have to find something new, that has a good chance of success, bring something to the table and get a better deal. But this requires to pay attention and do some actual work, so not everyone wants to do this vs. try to co-invest in the latest syndicate someone else is putting together.

If you are an entrepreneur you want to maximize your outcome, but if you focus all your time on jumping through the hoops of investors who do not actually understand what you do or have much to contribute you are being distracted from actual business. Note, I am not using the word "startup" here, because every successful startup is a business. Ignoring this simple fact is what gets people into trouble, leads to bad deals or puts them on the road to failure.

So yes, investors pitching to entrepreneurs could be a great idea but it works only if both parties bring the right mindset to the table and can articulate their value proposition.

PS: As entrepreneur you have to be extra careful with people who invest mainly based on social proof / fads. Do not expect them to do much for you, though their involvement might be a social proof for someone else who would make an actual contribution.
Novels require descriptions, comics require painstaking drawings, films and television require either hours of expression deadening makeup or expensive CGI. In a video game, rendering an asari or a hanar requires the same amount of work as a human.

It is easier to have alien life in both a novel (descriptive) and a comic (visual) than in a video game (kinematic).

Want a cast of thousands? No problem. Need a mob of hundreds of individuals representing fifteen different species rendered inside an colossal ancient space station? No sweat.

Clearly this person has never made a video game.

I don’t need to explain why the option to have a non-white, non-male, non-straight person as the main character of a blockbuster action science fiction story is important.

But you do need to be explained the difference between shared and tailored culture. Having a "diverse" hero of a popular television show has an affect on society. Having a "diverse" hero of the instance of the video game that you are playing has an affect on a single individual (and maybe some friends).

One can spend hours tweaking physical appearance (not mere a few options of “races”) to get a character of any ethnicity and build. Oh, and sexuality is an option too. Shepard is yours to design.

That's just windowdressing the choose your own adventure. The backstory that you change won't affect the plot any more than picking a "race" in those "unimpressive old games".

I opened this hoping for something insightful, but was presented with an adolescent boy's wonder of a story written in a shiny medium. For all of the alien diversity, every picture on the page is humanoid. For all of the glory of the malleable video game, a descent novel would have twice the depth and ten times the perceived diversity. He purports to appreciate the humility of the portrayal of humanity, but it sounds like the whole story is about a rise to power.

If you like Mass Effect this much, do yourself a favor and go read a good book.
Ask/Show HN: I created a task manager/scheduler and need some alpha testers
Backstory: I created the application as just a command-line one because I'm completely scatterbrained about remembering simple tasks, like taking out the trash every Monday. I told a couple of folks what I'd made and they asked about a web based version, which I now have the bare minimum functionality for it to be really useful.

I need some additional folks to start using it to make sure the core is there and performance/load is where it should be. It's hosted on appengine for now, so rather than risk hitting the free limits posting a link for people to sign up, if you're interested, shoot me an email at ismarc31@gmail.com and I'll enable the account you email me from. It currently uses the Google auth, so you'll need a gmail account to sign in. I'd just make it live, but I intend to charge for it out of the gate and haven't completed the billing portion and want to make sure it's usable by other folks before fully setting it loose.

Description:
Finivus was inspired by the number of applications that exist to help people manage lists of things they need to accomplish. Rarely is such a list used only for the things necessary to accomplish today and rarely do such lists provide a reasonable mechanism for determining which tasks need to be done today, tomorrow or on any given day. Following from that, most tasks have a lifetime or window when they should be accomplished. An application that allowed you to annotate when a task can (or should) be accomplished would make the management easier but puts the burden on the user of the application.

Finivus is an entirely different approach. When a task is added that needs to be accomplished, the period it should be accomplished in is added as well. Finivus then distributes the tasks amongst available days. The system does not allow reordering of tasks or delaying tasks. Instead, if a task is not accomplished on the day it is scheduled, it is merely added back to the pool of tasks to schedule starting on the next day. The resulting schedule is deterministic, but is not guaranteed to change. The rationale is that tasks that are due today or are overdue should take precedence over other tasks and that a task would not be added if it didn't need to be accomplished.

The system of no penalization, even distribution of tasks and disallowing the picking and choosing of which tasks to accomplish encourages the user to accomplish the tasks that are scheduled, even if they are unpleasant or the user would rather not do them. This new approach becomes much more of a task manager rather than just a todo list.
Google Science Fair
Tangential, but is there an easy way to get growl to stop advertising its new paid version every day, without paying?
I don't agree with this view of things. All creative acts take a certain impetus to get off the ground, and it can take serious resolve to take that initial step. Sometimes it feels like you're dragging ideas out kicking and screaming, but eventually things start falling into place, but the process can take determination. Finding what you love and being productive at it has a lot to do with your willingness to face challenges and tedium.

Sure, there are times when I love the process of writing or programming or creating in general. But sometimes you have to jump some hurdles to get in the flow.