skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You know, that's a question I think about quite frequently. Companies like MS and Google have all the money in the world, and yet it seems they are not able to hire teams of designers that can really nail a usable interface. I play with my Android phone and at times wonder who came up with the interaction flows, OS patterns and conventions. It really boggles my mind. I am inclined to say that they feel the market doesn't demand of them good design.
This is why good game hardware (CPU/GPU) benchmarks measure minimum framerate in addition to average. There was some site that measured 99th percentile framerates too, which seemed like a good idea.

edit: Example of better measurements: http://techreport.com/articles.x/22151/6 Notice how Radeons have lower avg fps but the framerate seems more stable.
we offer commercial licensing that allows devs to bypass the AGPL requirements. I'll update the site info soon to show the subscription pricing options.
I wasn't referring to the opinions, I was referring to the logic.

As for implying that he is right in general because you have read an article that says that some people would like to be able, in the future, to look at classifying some racist behaviour among a very narrow class of people who already are displaying symptoms of schizophrenia, as being a part of their symptoms. Well, you seem as bonkers as he is.

From your referenced article:

"At present, the state of research is inadequate to suggest one course or another"
I wonder which programming language's syntax requires the least shifting? On my (en-US) keyboard, the following punctuation does not require shifting:

`-=[]\;',./
6.5 years in, still learning everydate.

Enough to be useful and -basic-? 2.5 years of self-study and classroom. Classroom gave some fundamentals while self-study gave practical techniques, and more importantly, a practical language to say 'I know'. School never covered one language long enough, never pushed into the underlying libraries.
Hype Up Weekend - a vaporware hackathon
Maybe true, but both design and liberal arts degrees are missing the true technical skills that a tech startup really requires: back-end development, experience with servers, databases, etc. That's been the toughest part — it's all well and good to ideate, but implementation is where things really matter. I waffled on the title, but decided that if YC considers myself non-technical, then it fits. :P

Thanks for the compliment! It's really fun being the tech person because at least I'm learning something new every day.
Zynga's Engineering VP for New Gaming Platform Moves On
I had the same problem too and solved it by writing build rules for WAF(http://www.l-vu.com/2012/03/21/Using_waf_to_build_web_assets...)
I disagree with this assessment. People on Facebook tend to use the name by which they'll be most recognized. If your legal name is William Jones but most people know you as Bill Jones, you'll probably be on Facebook as Bill Jones. I don't think there's evidence Facebook has thought it out well, they simply haven't been nearly as idiot in enforcing it.

One point I want to clarify: I do think Facebook knows what they are doing in collecting marketing data, in the same way Bank of America knows what they are doing in holding bank accounts. What they are not doing well is creating an accurate representation of identity online. If you follow Chris Pool's thesis ("Identity is prismatic"), then nobody is doing this well right now.
I think if RIM was an Asian-based company, that might hold true. RIM's culture is tied to North America. Developers for their platform are mostly in North America/Europe. When there's no apps, there's no users - eventually.
Backup for Google Apps
17 days.

No, really, I don't think you ever stop learning really, or you shouldn't at least. You might be able to attribute a length to how long it took you until you felt you were proficient. But it's all relative. I could say it took me 30 seconds to learn how to program because I could get something to return "Hello?" but is that really programming?
In addition to making all the necessary steps to deal without a technical cofounder (problem: can't iterate without code, solution: crash course in Python programming then), Tracy also really, really works angles that many technical founders wouldn't consider. I did a wee bit of work with her at 500 Startups -- my favorite example of several is that she produced an actual, honest to God, on-dead-tree photo book of her paying customers' wares. It was extraordinarily compelling, both as a product (I have recent experience with wedding product photo books, mostly produced on 1000x the budget of that), as a sales channel for her company, and clearly the hackiest use of paper I've ever seen in a software company.
Interview with Mike Migurski about Stamen's Watercolor map
Ha yeah — I wrote an article about finding a cofounder the traditional way a year ago (http://www.limedaring.com/technical-co-founder-wanted-for-di...) — well, that didn't work out. This article really is my followup to that article, that I should have just jumped forward then and started working rather than doing a few months of searching for the "right cofounder"!

Thank you!
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With Tablet Plan, Google Goes After Apple and Amazon
Agreed. I'd like to see the same benchmark run with Varnish + Apache. No W3Cache, No Nginx. I'd bet this synthentic benchmark would show the same performance, meaning it's all just hitting Varnish anyway.
Netflix Sharpens Focus On DVDs With DVD.com, But Don’t Cry Qwikster.
Might be unrelated but I've noticed an awful lot of YC "hype" (press, news, coverage) since the Sequoia investment.

I hope Sequoia is not being a negative influence to YC by dis-proportionally "banging the drums" and ultimately being a distraction to the goal of building and developing lasting and meaningful companies and businesses.
agreed - I was pulled up on this here last year when we published our benchmarks :) The other thing to remember is the low-level language we use sets a lower bar to entry than say C - the benefit of designing for a specific set of goals (ease of use, performance and security). That said, if you're familiar with C or JavaScript, then KL will be very familiar.
Just found out my father's work does all of their EDI transactions via unsecured FTP. This is like billions of dollars in orders, checks, etc that are being passed around via FTP.

Stop doing this people. There are far better formats than FTP, and yes, even better and more appropriate than SFTP.

(Further, even if Drive supported it, are y'all going to be uploading your private keys to Drive?)
The Internet May Be Shut Down Tomorrow
Good job tracy!
To reply to posts without bothering to understand them is... not worth responding to.

I think that I've done a passable job at understanding the argument and providing sound counter arguments. To each their own opinion.

I have a PhD in CS from an Ivy League school BTW, so spare me the "solid academic" lecturing.

One remark is hardly a lecture, but great to appeal to credentialism. That's the Ivy League spirit! I on the other hand have a mere bachelors degree; from a public school no less! I would jokingly admit defeat, but my school taught me that defeat is for the defeated.

I won't ask which Ivy League school - their reputation in computer science is low enough already.
If this is well designed, I see this as very useful. If the barrier is lower than callouts to a C library or using cython, and if it's designed in a way to make it easier to write correct critical section code, then this encourages the "right" way to program. (Where right is any area of development where building quickly in a high level language, then optimizing later is one of the better ways to go.)
Using Ubuntu-One With Command Line
You might as well ask, "why can't we just make ourselves smarter?" Our brains don't always work in the way we want them to work; what's wrong with proposing a brain hack that results in a desired emotional output?

Wallace's hack is particularly cool because it uses the prefrontal cortex (over which you have at least some level of conscious control) to create stories that trick your limbic brain into generating the preferred emotional response.

I've seen this referred to as "riding an elephant", because the "rider" (the conscious mind) can skillfully manipulate the "elephant" (the bulk of the brain), but ultimately remains at the larger creature's mercy. Great image.
I understand your concern.

- Agree sending dumb quotes over SMS if it really does still matter in the real world is best

- Do not believe it would be worth keeping denying the feature request altogether just because some legacy systems barf on unicode is smart. Especially if it’s an optional feature.

- Also note that nothing stops you from pasting in or manually entering (e.g. tap-and-hold on normal apostrophe key) any number of non-ASCII characters in the SMS or other contexts.
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This would have never happened on Bitcoin.
Ask HN: programming by voice feasible?
I've recently started to get pain in my arms after a month of working most hours of the day. So I was wondering if programming using voice recognition software would be possible. I've used dragon naturally speaking several years ago but it was clunky and didnt really work too well with my ide at the time (netbeans)

Does anyone have any experience with programming by voice and if so, what software they would recommend
I think it's pretty clear that they will use some sort of signing process to validate swfs, and in some respects it'll be pretty similar to DRM.

In the original announcement, they say, "When the premium features licensing terms go into effect, unlicensed content will continue to run but will no longer have access to the premium features tier". Which implies that somewhere in the player they're planning to have a if(date() < August 12, 2012 || signed()) bit of logic.
Just another point of the Xfinity app's disregard to Net Neutrality is the sensing of "viewership". By "viewership" I mean switching video inputs and finding a nice network error upon returning to xfinity app's input. This was tested yesterday with an HD enabled Samsung and 1st gen Xbox360. I imagine this is just a preview of what is to come when Kinect enabled commercials stop entirely if you are not physically looking at the tv and restart the video so, you have to view in full in order to progress. Can you imagine starbucks making you have to watch a commercial before you drink your macchiato?!
Oh goodness, thanks Patrick — that really means a lot.

Funny, we just announced the 2nd version of the Lookbook a couple days ago, and it's going to be a whole new challenge, since we're working with over 3x the number of vendors and in multiple wedding verticals rather than just invitations. I'll have to send you the new one once it's released in a month. :)
Rust allows unsafe code and pointer use in the absence of GC.
If you want to call something a "regressive tax", please make sure that doesn't mean the exact opposite of what you're describing. A flat licensing fee would be regressive. A huge upfront cost would be prohibitive for small developers, but no problem for large companies.

On top of that, it only comes into effect after $50k revenue. If Flash reduces your development costs (not making that argument one way or another), then this is a great deal for small developers and will only be pushing away the large developers who can afford to invest in other technologies.

Is this a good idea? I don't know. I'm guessing this is the same type of licensing that a game engine would offer, but it does sound very expensive.
I think this article title is misleading. It's not 10 million hits a day on Wordpress, it's 10 million hits a day using Varnish to a single URL. Might as well say you can serve 10 million hits a day to a static file served out of memory.
I think CMS engines like wordpress are great for semi technical people who are curious enough to set stuff up themselves.

However whenever I've had a website to develop I've never seen the point of using one.

If the website is going to be very simple the chances are it doesn't really need a full on CMS.
All it needs is an HTML/CSS layout and some content that can come from either static HTML files, a few form handlers and perhaps some parts that my client can update themselves. Most of the time this can be solved by simply creating a part of the site behind a login with a few text boxes that update a database and are then displayed on the site or the ability to create lists of things.

I can create this sort of functionality myself from scratch in an afternoon or so and it is usually much easier to use for the client because it will have less buttons on the interface and be designed around metaphors that they are actually interested in (for example types of cake or whatever).
I gave a client Drupal to use once and the result was that they would just call me up every time they wanted an update done to the site.

If it's something non trivial then I'd rather not have to work around a clunky PHP codebase and worry about the plethora of security updates I would have to do when I could just create something much more flexible in Java/Scala/Python.
Easy and simple server push with JRuby and JWt
I use both platforms with a MacBook Pro/Lion being my main machine. I have always felt that my Windows 7 machine is snappier in starting apps and generally moving around the desktop. In fact, if Windows 7 were *nix based I would probably switch to it as my primary. The command processor situation feels pretty hopeless to me in Windows.
Phenomenal article!

I like how it really brings to bear the idea that we (humans) don't really see the world. Excuse my semantic arguments... but what you see through your eyes isn't quite what's infront of you. Your vision goes through so many layers of neural processing that what you see is really an artificial representation.

The best metaphor is that we live inside a theatre. The theatre emulates the real world fairly well, but it is still a theatre.
car2go? I moved down in October and was lucky enough to borrow a friend's car for awhile. It feels generally necessary, but I don't have one yet either. Are you downtown/soco?
Connections are opportunities. The more you make, the more you have, and that makes social skills a commodity.

Having a great idea doesn't inherently make a strong company too. You have to have the right people, and it's the founder's job to attract the best talent.

Incubators want founders that are in high demand or are "popular" if you will. Plus, as Y Combinator says, they have dinner with you every month so they want to know you're a cool dude/chic.
It takes steps towards doing so mechanistically, but it's silent where there aren't any answers in that area yet.
Anyone have a guess to how the iPhone calculator computed 2?
"...and pay irrational amounts of money to experience. "

"Investors pay a shockingly high price to get into highly competitive funding rounds, but they're happy that they got in at all."

Surely investors are getting a good deal despite these statements? I mean they're going to pay more to invest in a company that's been through YC than if they invested in the exact same founders prior to them being in a YC class, but look at what they're getting in return:

- Vetting by pg and co.

- Plugged into an invaluable alumni network

- Automatic investment from Yuri Milner (in most cases) meaning the company has more runway with which to survive lean times

- Media coverage

- Massively reduced risk premium and due diligence due to the above factors

- Etc.

So surely the higher price is still a price worth paying?

Edit: spacing
I'm guessing it's like "Zynga's making $1.4B a year on the back of our technology, dammit, and we're giving it to them for free! We must do something about this problem of uncaptured revenue."
Setting up a IDE to play with GO on Windows
#SiliconValleyProblems
Article completely fails to even attempt a somewhat technical explanation or provide an obvious link to one.
Having an "in" at Sequoia meant that they made a couple introductions that proved very helpful for us.
Well if they are going to be getting that amount of traffic either they have a very poor conversion rate/profit margin or they could just afford a proper dedicated server or two.
I find it the first two. Identifying prospects and finding who to contact. Especially when we don't yet have a mentor. I think if we had a mentor who knew the right people, how the industry works and what works, it would be invaluable. Building something was the easy part for us (well, not easy) but making a profit is the hard part.
Good Luck!

I'm amazed that you don't have sites like this in the US. Price comparison websites are very popular in the UK. Not just for insurance (car; home; etc) but for electricity bills and cell phones and Internet service provision and etc etc.

There is a problem in the UK of "referral fees" - insurance companies selling on details to no-win no-fee solicitors.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8742611...)

And there have been other dodgy practices by insurance companies.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014lzz1)
> ...insane amount to pay for housing.

SF is definitely cheaper but not that much cheaper. I have friends who share a 2 bedroom for $2400 not far from Golden Gate Park in a shitty apartment. I can find any number of shitty apartments for $2400 in the city if I want.

Another point: you earn higher salaries in New York than less urban areas (this is true of SF too). If I earned even $30,000 less and lived in the Midwest, financially speaking I'd be worse off. It may even be $20,000.

> Eating fast food <$7

Who said anything about fast food?

> Bull...

During the day, that's the time. Out of hours trains are less frequent but isn't that kinda the point: they're still running. Caltrain stops at about 11. Not sure when the muni-buses and BART stop.

> Also, NY culture is a consumption culture.

Nonsense. Or, rather, only if you want it to be. If you want to keep up with the investment banker set, then that's your choice. If you want to go to expensive bars and drop $100-200 on drinks, that's your choice. You're able to do that in any number of major urban centers.

I don't feel the need to go down Fifth Avenue and do my shopping at Prada or Bergdorf Goodman (Gap/Old Navy/Urban Outfitters are just fine with me). If you do, that's your choice.

A friend of mine once took us to a noodle bar off Union Square. The music and noise was so loud you could barely hear yourself think. Me and a friend said "screw this" and went somewhere else. Later he was like "you have to put up with waiting and noise". No, you don't. If you want to hang out at the hipster joints, then sure. But again, that's a choice.

I find this with New York (and London) in particular: you either decide to like it or you don't. If you've decided not to like it, you'll notice certain streets smell like urine, the garbage smells, homeless people on the subway, homeless people defecating in trash cans or urinating in phone boots, the lack of space and so on. But that really is just a state of mind.

I know people who are addicted to their large houses, having a back yard, their cars, etc and look past their long commutes, the costs of car ownership and so on. That too is a choice.

Your post comes across as very bitter. You've decided to not like New York. You probably have your reasons. Fair enough. That's your choice. But in no way are you presenting anything remotely objective about New York.
I should caveat subsequent comments by saying that I would have given my childhood for this toy (and therein I would have learnt the meaning of irony too, but I digress).

Anyway I am wondering what this could really be intended for. If it is indeed meant to carry a camera payload for cheap soldier surveillance, then I have an alternative suggestion: http://www.amazon.com/Parrot-AR-Drone-Quadricopter-Controlle.... This $298 quad-copter with two mounted cameras seems like it could do the job just fine. (Incidentally on the subject of cheap RC toys saving soldiers' lives and proving themselves viable short-term options: http://www.rccaraction.com/blog/2011/08/04/traxxas-rc-truck-...). Anyway, especially with Petman (http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_petman.html) purportedly being for chemical suit testing (which in my opinion is like saying crash dummies need to have guns and machine vision), Boston Dynamics has shown that it likes releasing potentially mid-path projects for other-than-ultimately-intended purposes (makes perfect sense from a testing perspective). So I wonder what Sand Flea could be working towards other than surveillance? 11 lbs./30 ft is not bad considering a quad copter of similar size would be probably max 4-6 lbs. So maybe they are gearing it up for heavier payloads. Nothing like the 400 lbs alpha dog carries (at that point, assuming similar tech, the Sand Flea would have to be big enough to basically just roll over single-story buildings), but perhaps an explosive payload or something in the neighborhood of 10-20 lbs.
Interesting and not so uncommon these days.

A bit of inspiration once the day-to-day job hunting grind sets in.

"Man can't find work, ain't lookin hard enough." - Jayne Cobb

Keep looking, good luck.
I had to remove the font-family: 'PT Sans' declaration from your site's CSS using Chrome's element inspector in order to read it. Chrome 16.0.912.77 on Fedora 16 here. I believe PT Sans is a readable Russian language font (but I don't know that). It's not (especially when italicized) a readable English language font: http://imgur.com/jqA36
When I see someone in a hurry I usually give them the same kind of pass.

Really, we've all been there. In an absolute hurry. I don't necessarily imagine them in a scenario where the hurried pace is necessary; I just know that in the moment things feel far more urgent than they need to.
OK, I get the first two. Strictly speaking, mult and div have the same precedence (6 / 2 * 3 should be the same as 6 * 3 / 2 , both 9), but in one case, the calculator interpreted the multiplication in 2(1+2) as having higher precedence than 2*(1+2). Arguably a bug, but nothing crazy.

But ... the iPhone gives 2? I don't get it.

(FWIW, Android says 9)
I would have liked to have seen how the Windows Phone marketplace stacked up against the other two, and how much better (or worse) it is in those categories.
I wonder what the school board would have done with Fahrenheit 451.
This is another one of those "If you know what to do with this tool, you probably don't need this tool." instances.

I wonder what the real world cognate of that is.
Restarting the fire
This is for USA only.
Well done. Just tried it out and love it.
HTTP 2.0: The Google Way or the Microsoft Way?
Great job Tracy! Keep it up!
Starting from the other end of things, it clearly is possible to synthesise organic compounds from atmospheric concentrations of CO2 as nature does it already, the question is what sort of yield you can get.

My understanding is that using algae to do this via photosynthesis is limited by the fact that with wild strains you need to harvest and extract the biomass before you can get at the fuel, and you need to spread things out in a very thin film to get enough sunlight. Using modified strains helps solve the first problem, using (more efficient) synthetic photovoltaics, or another power source, with a process like this potentially helps solve the second.

To respond to another reply to this post, I don't think complex structures that maximise surface area would be necessary - you could just bubble air through the tank. As mentioned above, bubbling CO2 rich waste gasses from a power plant would likely be even more efficient.
http://www.pigeonal.com/
Hubs? Does anyone still make hubs?