skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I kind of like all the trees that you see on the new campus. From the ground, the trees even obstruct most of the building. I don't think the extra distance matters much on a bike but I guess if you're walking in that area it's an extra 10 minutes.

Maybe Apple can build a maglev down that main street so people can more easily commute to work and really reduce traffic. Only joking, of course, but Apple does have enough cash to build the high-speed rail from LA to SF.
> there is a great sadness here at the demise of something that represented an effort by western scholars to "capture the world's knowledge."

Actually the original goal wasn't to capture the world's knowledge, it was to spread the enlightenment idea that man could learn about the world through reason. If anything deciding that they would be better off just generically capturing knowledge is what killed them.
Shrug I thought I made the case already.

If Google makes X on untargeted ads and X+Y on targeted ads then it comes out ahead by offering Y/10 of that money to the user somehow.

Yeah it's peanuts so you make it Google Play credit. For some people maybe it's only one song a month, for others it might be one movie a quarter.
If you were capable of actually reading my post and not what you wanted to read into it, you would see that I was referring to chiseling children out of large sums re the post I was answering. Selling a child $99 worth of cartoon pony feed is mere cretinous larceny. This type of behavior actually happens. This is what we are condemning. I was not criticizing in-app up-selling, which I presume you mean to defend, but maybe I presume too much. Perhaps you are in the cretin camp.
i've never applied to YC because of course the bar was always too high; but now i'm comfortable i satisfy their admission criterion.
If you have previously edited the regular form using this username, the link will direct you to the regular form. To see the "no idea" form, logout of your regular username, follow the link, and create a temporary username/password.

FYI, the "no idea" form is exactly the same as the regular form, except it is missing 18 questions that are idea-specific.
Given how many companies are being acquired now just for the team to be added to large-company engineering teams, is this really surprising? How many co's have Google, Twitter and Facebook acquired just to toss the idea aside and integrate the dev team?
This way Y Combinator can get a few really good people (who work well together!) for fairly cheap and flip them to a larger company. It's quite a decent short-term strategy and the cost of acquisition may even be less for Big Co™ than the recruiters they might normally try going through.
Isn't this kindof given on the west coast? I can't imagine a single hacker I know wearing a suit (and meaning it).
More Red Meat, More Mortality
It might be a non-issue, but I am concerned about the performance of Bootstrap on older/slower computers as well as mobile devices. The stylesheet is so huge, I assume there has to be some kind of performance penalty somewhere? Or maybe I'm just overly paranoid... thoughts?
Every company grows up. I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft was cool. I remember my first copy of Windows 286; all 12 floppy disks worth. I was excited. Now I fight with the MS sales team over MSDN prices. :)

My point; it's part of the process. Google's grown up. Do I like it? No.
The End of a Universe
They're replacing a massive campus covered in parking lots with orchards. They are building an underground parking garage. They're planting thousands of trees. They're building foot paths, they've hired an arborist to make tree selection, they're brining orange groves back to silicon valley. They've designed probably the GREENest campus I've ever seen....

What's not seen on these drawings is the underground freeway[1] that takes cars off of the streets and into the campus, to the parking garages, and other facilities. This means a lot of surface concrete that would be required to support these employees is hidden, leaving more room for grass and trees.

What's wrong with that?

These people would actually RATHER that hugely inefficient parking lot that HP built? Really?
If you're using Sass with Bootstrap, then you're probably using the compiled version of Bootstrap (i.e. the final .css file.) If that's the case, you're missing out all the LESS mixins and variables that Bootstrap provides.

If you're serious about adopting Bootstrap, you should consider switching to LESS.

The less-rails-boostrap gem makes it easy if you're working on a Rails app. It integrates seamlessy with Rails' asset pipeline, and has a generator for Rails scaffold CSS.

https://github.com/metaskills/less-rails

https://github.com/metaskills/less-rails-bootstrap
i love love love what they're doing with Gephi, especially the ability to generate a collaborative, web based graph UI.

HOWEVER, a word to the wise: I've had a LOT of trouble saving and opening saved files. there's a few tickets open, but I haven't seen any progress. that's sortof a dealbreaker when it comes to doing professional work :/
I think you've completely missed his point. The digital version has even more content than the print version, but only costs $40.
Ir. Joseph Yau
I've seen a few companies try to pull this off and personally knew someone who also attempted it and failed. Besides the chicken and egg problem they had a hard time proving to businesses that people were actually wearing the shirts.
I agree that the devil is in the details. But I don't think creating artificial scarcity is necessarily the only way to create a market. There is still a major social component to trade that is too often ignored by economists, and people will sometimes pay even when they don't have to.

I think the case of podcasts is illustrative here. Despite a lack of DRM, a convention of free-as-in-beer, and a zero lawsuits (that I know of), the field has been thriving for 10 years using incentive structures which do not require IP:

- Pure Promotion, such as comedians who put out a free podcast to attract fans for live performances.

- Up-sells, whether for additional premium content, apps, t-shirts, etc.

- Donations, which at minimum can defray overhead costs. (It's worth noting that Kickstarter is fairly indistinguishable from a donation/gift economy, assuming the reward isn't a simple pre-order.)

- Advertising, while a dirty business model for producer and consumer alike, still can pay the bills, especially if ad content is tasteful and targeted.

Now, these methods are by no means the only ones possible, and that's my point. Rather than to try to create scarcity out of abundance, I think we're better off embracing it, and finding new, indirect ways to profit. To re-use PG's analogy, rather than suing the smell-stealer, the restauranteur could invite people to enjoy some free smells, knowing that some would be enticed to pay for a meal. Or he could buy the land next door and rent the space for gatherings, touting free smells. And on and on.
The End of Britannica and the Role of Encarta
It bothers me too (especially this case), but i think it's relevant to note that the US has never refused an extradition to the UK, but the UK has refused several to the US.

OTOH, the US has made more requests, and capital punishment.
I think he's being sincere.

From http://www.thejach.com/about#sum

"Can you sum up your core views in a short package so I don't completely misrepresent you when reporting second-hand?

My real view is simple. I'm a transhumanist Singularitarian in the Good sense, or the Yudkowsky sense if you prefer. Anything that gets in the way of a positive Singularity is bad. [snip] Even though I'm an Anarchist you'll see me supporting national health care because there's a decent chance we'll get really long life this century and the less people who die the better."
Wasn't that included in the total? I wasn't sure what he said specifically.
"No Idea" application to YC
Yeah and its not like the USA does barbaric stuff like execute people.
Ooh, that's harsh. But I don't think that's the case at all, as that would be playing the short con. Too much of that and YC's brand will erode. The network-effect can carry companies pretty far but not far enough - they need to find companies with true intrinsic potential, so I don't think they're trying to take more risk at this point.
This startup literature reminds me of the best stuff that came out of the last boom... everyone seems to have forgotten about it or been too young to remember.

Two of my favorites:

Starving to death on 200 Million (The Industry Standard)

August (A film based on Globe.com)
The default theme makes it easier not to be original, but I don't see how it makes it harder to be original anywhere.
Flexible CSS Typographic Scale
I think in time this will bite Apple. Case in point is Google v. Amazon v. Microsoft in the Seattle area. Google: buildings in a funky neighborhood with lots of amenities. Amazon: buildings just north of downtown in cool neighborhood. Microsoft: commute to suburban Redmond where things get... blander.

I meet lots of go-get-em younger engineers who cross Microsoft off their list of potential employers on the basis of being in Redmond. Microsoft has to bus the hipsters from Capitol Hill.

For better or for worse, a more suburban kind of campus will likely scare off younguns in favor of older, more family-oriented, more car-dependent employees.
The very first words on the page say it's a FABLE, right there in the title.
Are they comparable in functions? I'd like to get nicer looking results than graphviz, but it's not clear from the website whether gephi supports layout or even batch/command line input.
It does however, have a graphviz plugin! https://gephi.org/plugins/graphviz-layout/

Installing now, to poke around.
A ridiculous post - this campus is GREAT for Cupertino... but then Cupertino isn't really Urban America.
I can also setup a guest login if anyone needs it.
Good on him/them :-) I was one of the early users a couple of years or so ago and both I and my wife used it for a couple of weeks and didn't really "get" it. Now it's going gangbusters and it's actually found its audience.

Finding the right user base can be as time consuming, or even impossible, as finding the right life partner IMHO.
They're doing digital right. They know that they will sell many more copies of the digital version, because it's digital and because they lowered the price mark.
Oh cmon, this is minutes from the rest of the Apple buildings in the area, they aren't moving to a suburban campus, they are consolidating their suburban campuses.
http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/randomarticle.php?lang=en&... selects randomly from their list of Good articles, which is the nearest thing I'm aware of, though still not quite what you're describing.
Did anything ever come of this when YC tried it back in 2007?
YC doesnt care about visa issues. You have a lot more than most people, visa-wise.

Good founders are resourceful. You'll make the visa stuff work, because you'll have to.

That said, it is a risk. If your cofounder quits, he may have to leave the country, and may not get back in on visa waiver since he has shown intent to emigrate.

So go ahead and apply to YC. They wont even ask about visas. But talk to a lawyer now, so you can get started on making this work.
This is why I'm excited about this experiment - without it we probably wouldn't have been able to apply (though we were going to try anyway).
It's not like my friends and I don't have ideas floating around, it's just that we have no one concrete idea to apply with. I do't think this means we're not good startup material. We have the excitement, it's just not directed towards a very strong idea yet.
With self-driving cars, a lot of parking lot hassles should (might?) go away.

A self-driving car can drop you off at the door, and then go park itself wherever the best location for cars is in the area, and probably have no problem reserving/finding a space mediated by various parking lot controllers, and finally, since the car is both unloaded and computer controlled, be able to park in a much smaller location.

The parking location doesn't have to be close and it doesn't even have to be a permanent parking location.

Hell, a self-driving car could in fact go back home if home was reasonably close enough.

Or head over to the airport and make you a few bucks as a taxi.
I'm also surprised at the negativity. If you have an idea in isolation, that you haven't tried to validate yet, what evidence so you have that it's worthwhile? At the very least, YC has heard a lot of ideas and, presumably, are better at spotting the ones without potential. So, if you have a good enough team, they can coax ideas out of you and then steer you toward the best one. You probably have a good idea and just don't know it, possibly because of the "schlep" blinder that pg has talked about. I get the impression people are angry that they can't be mediocre and get in on the merit of their idea.
Tether.com is cool and all but you *could* just use your phone as a SOCKS proxy.
Actually that's incorrect, at least for centralized wind farms:

http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/pubs/undergrad-honors/volume-4/...

The key takeaway from that thesis is:

"As determined in the risk characterization, a centralized wind farm does have a greater impact on avian mortality than the coal fired- power plant. "
"I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they weren't Facebook."

I absolutely do not understand this frame of mind. Why not just like a company for its products, rather than liking them because they're "not" some other company?

Life is too short to get caught up in the identity politics of corporations. Google is a business, not your buddy.
Grooveshark Fights To Keep Music Open and Unlimited
The entrenched winner in the late 90s right before Apple's resurgence was Wintel - cheap and everywhere. What does Apple do to compete? The name of the campaign was literally what the parent comment says a company needs to do - "Think Different" - backed by a line of products that were completely different than Windows: colorful vs beige, whole-stack vs licensed out to third-party manufacturers, premium vs commodity.

Now that Apple's winning, of course they want to try to convince you that different is bad, because different is the threat to their business. They don't want someone coming along and doing to them what they did to Microsoft and Dell.
If a Flex developer tells you don't need designers, punch him in the face
Two New, Useful Server Virtualization Technologies
Current server virtualization technologies are more sophisticated and powerful than ever. This year, Citrix Systems and VMware introduced new hypervisors that offer a slew of useful features.
https://twitter.com/#!/TimOfLegend/status/178928061285277699

"$2.7MM!?! And it looks like our hourly rate is going up! Um, people... three million dollars... that was the budget of Grim Fandango!"

This has been such fun to watch happen.
Larry Page is killing his company to chase after a market that is less profitable that the one he currently owns.
Its not just independents, we're working with one of the largest US companies and they don't want to license (and by license I mean happy to pay for) google maps (for a traffic app) because the Goog can't guarantee that the maps will remain ad free.
Trees on parking lots are nothing new. They're loved by drivers all over the world, especially when they're in bloom and you've parked under one for half a day ;-)
It doesn't. Sounds like there's a lack of imagination in that article or they're alluding to the inevitable result that people who possess neither the skills nor interest in making a visual customization of their site will leave it standing on the default theme, populating the web with a lot of sameness.

If it makes it easier for people to communicate faster, than I'm all for it.
No; in that case just apply with your best idea and list the others in the question about other ideas at the end.
You can also use the sass forks of bootstrap (700 watchers)

https://github.com/jlong/sass-twitter-bootstrap
As someone with a negative reaction to this idea, I think your characterization is off base. Nor is it a problem of fairness—I don't care who yc accepts nor am I interested in participating in yc.

I have a negative reaction because although I agree with the principle of funding people in general, I'm skeptical of the idea of people who "want to be entrepreneurs" rather than people who become entrepreneurs to achieve something specific. (I've already made one comment to this effect that was downvoted to oblivion.)

It's not that ideas are worthwhile and are what you should get into yc. I am skeptical that a good founder wouldn't be able to come up with scads of potential ways they want to change the world.
I spent a bunch of time in "outlier" Apple buildings (Bubb 5, and something way out near Moffet Field after the Loma Prieta earthquake took out Apple's main engineering building). While being off campus is good for secrecy, it's terrible if you need to cooperate with other parts of the company.

You really need colocation to make things work. I expect two things out of this building:

First, it will improve a bunch of Apple's internal processes.

Second, they will run out of room sooner than they think, and I'd put money on them not even releasing leases on many outlier buildings.
Q: How do you know someone doesn't own a car?

A: Don't worry, he'll tell you.
Some believe that equality means that the gap between the rich and poor is lessened, and if that was your frame of mind, then it does seem like global inequality has risen.

However, absolute poverty is decreasing just as you said, and i think that ought to be the real measure. Who cares if the richest of the rich is 100million times better off than the poorest, if the poorest is better off already?
There were probably a lot of people still buying it at that price, in sort of a captive market. I'm thinking schools, libraries, et cetera that need to service that population.

Why torture such a noble product as an encyclopedia by putting it in competition with modern internet distribution and price, better that they put it out of it's misery.

What we need are wikipedia ebook devices gets updates via rsync. Something like a Kindle DX with an SD card and wifi.
"I wonder why Less and SASS are not merged in a single project"

I've also wondered this.
Note to myself and guide for SXSW 2013
Ah, I see it. It's probably because most people will find what they need after scanning the first page; it prevents the user from accidentally eating up bandwidth by looking at all the results.
What's up with all the negative attitude at HN that's being up voted for things that until recently at HN would have been applauded. This announcement is one. Sam altman's exit also had a negative tone. Also fred's post on yahoo also had some BS comment about VCs encouraging patents being up voted.

This is a great idea and people at most should at least have a neutral approach.

edited- I didn't mean this as a comment to Daniel's comment. It was meant for the grandparent
It would be great if YC did more of these kinds of experiments that could be to their benefit.

For example, there are people who would pay to be part of YC and also fall in the gray area where it seems they aren't bad investments but it isn't clear that they are likely good investments. A handful of those people may be invited to participate in YC with the exception that their investment is conditional: a don rag would be held half-way through, and if they weren't doing considerably well, they would be cut (otherwise, they would earn the investment).

An argument against that example may be that the applicant ought to prove worthiness beforehand, but that's just the point: maybe all the applicant needs is the right environment (YC) to dominate.

"One might be tempted simply to take the best individuals and ignore the other. However, that would lead to a quick loss of diversity. Those individuals currently not doing as well as the others may have properties that will prove superior in the long run." Understanding Intelligence (ch. 8.2 / pg. 239; Pfeifer & Scheier)
If you don't feel or understand the sadness others express in regards to this announcement, pretend it's hundreds of years in the future and you hear that Wikipedia is finally shutting down, having become an irrelevant artifact of the past.
Professional animation for under $1,000, why not? 
Looking to spread the word about our company's goal to provide promos for any developer, company or anyone in need of an entertaining video.

Drop on in and look around and take care.
Secrets of the acquisition process from founders acquired by EA and Zynga
Factors that determine Tweet credibilty [pdf]
"Let's make a big book with all the stuff in it so people don't have to buy a whole bunch of books." Old people were hilarious.
In the Future, Maglev Cannons Will Shoot Us Into Space [Space]
FWIW, Michael Foord's mock library has been approved for inclusion in the Python's standard library.

See http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0417/ and http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/python/dev/973274
Experiment with the Different Styles of Human Hair Wigs
'Pirating' UK Student to be Extradited to the US
Hack or hoax? Jester brags of QR code smartphone attack against Anonymous
Actually, we once accepted a group wearing suits. It was for the very first summer batch in 2005. We told them to ditch the suits for Demo Day.
Control an Android with your IPhone check this out
You are correct. Our source files were originally a PNG sequence. JPG provided the best quality-to-filesize ratio.
My understanding of YC is that applying with more than an idea was pretty much necessary to actually validate the idea. Having an actual live product, with some semblance of customers and/or revenue, made for a much stronger application and a much stronger pitch in general. I imagined that a lot of startups that were accepted into YC effectively got feedback along the lines of, "this is a cute app with some impressive technology and it seems like some people like it, so why don't you pivot to this concept that has a much stronger change of scaling," or something along those lines.

So if these applicants don't have an idea, then are they expected to not have any sort of work on a product? And if so, doesn't that make it a lot harder to evaluate their body of work and quality of their team?
Not really. Though urban planners can be engaged in writing recommendations regarding conditional use applications for the city council, they can also be engaged in the same sorts of creative tasks as landscape architects or people who call themselves urban designers (my mentor in grad school, the late David Crane, always referred to himself as an architect and planner - his firm designed Sadat City and he cut his teeth with Ed Logue following a stint as a research assistant on Image of the City).

Anyway, his PHD is in Environmental Planning & Urban Design.

http://web.mit.edu/ebj/www/cv.html
Why are Target and Walmart creating their own mobile payment solutions?
Well damn. Now I feel I need to go out and buy a copy, so I don't get sent all the way back to the stone age in the event of a massive solar flare or nuclear war or zombie apocalypse.
Meh, I thought the article had some well-meaning but mostly overwrought handwringing, however the comments there were Youtube-level stupid.
I think we have twice funded groups that didn't include a hacker. One was a math major as an undergrad though.

One of these groups was Auctomatic, which did pretty well. Another is in the current batch and isn't launched yet.
Show HN: I made a CSS3 Interactive Calendar without a line of JS
If offered an interview, I would be tempted to show up in silk batik....
My first thought were the Japanese parking towers: http://youtu.be/QFHVukDUI2U
"We'll consider single founders too, but we prefer groups"

I'm surprised you're willing to consider single founders at all. No team, no idea/product... what's left?

(Disclaimer: I've applied many times as a single founder and have gotten justifiably rejected.)