skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The thing of it is that a bubble is not the right time to start a lifestyle/sustainable business. During a bubble there is all sorts of investor money floating around driving up prices on things you might want to buy as a sustainable company, and as a sustainable company, you can't compete with investor money for inputs.

So yeah; right now? PG is absolutely doing the right thing. But if I'm right, after the crash? assuming he comes through financially able (which I assume he will; he doesn't seem the type to bet the farm on facebook stock) and wanting to continue investing, at that point? he will look for sustainable companies. If you are trying to start a traditional sustainable company, in many ways, it's easier to do during a downturn. There is little competition for inputs, so you can get everything you need much more cheaply, and there is a lot less competition, so if you come up with something new, you won't have 5 other 'me too' companies copying you in the first year.

Really, there's less opportunity cost for the founder, too. I mean, right now, the temptation to get a job at facebook or google is really strong, even for me; I'd get to work with some really great people, and probably make about 3x more 'profit' than I do now.

During the downturn, getting those plum jobs that pay really well while letting you work with really great people is a whole lot more difficult, so taking the pay cut while you get your business off the ground is not as big of a deal.
The site itself doesn't give much of the introduction or what Bower is all about. Github page is much better - https://github.com/twitter/bower
The article suggests this is a new idea. This isn't a new idea at all, it's been kicking around for years.

Interesting but untestable, and has no effect on our scientific understanding of the world. Fun thought to have but ultimately useless.
> I had to go back and armor it by pre-empting anything I could imagine anyone willfully misunderstanding to use as a weapon in comment threads

This is perhaps the worst thing about discourse on the internet. If you and I were having a conversation in room, you'd never pretend to not understand me to rip into me (maybe to understand my point better.) But on the internet, so many people are just trying to score points that it's nearly impossible to have a conversation.
It's worth mentioning that while Postgres does promote the idea that the database is the gatekeeper to the data -- where you're supposed to manage data with stored procedures, triggers and so on -- it's not in any way mandatory, and not necessarily the way people prefer to use Postgres.

Personally, I lean towards treating the database as a passive data store controlled by the application, as opposed to using the database as an application platform. For example, validating and normalizing is done in the client application.

While I would also be happy about putting logic in the database, this currently requires a split of the data logic between the application and the database in a way that I don't like: Stored procedures, functions, triggers and so on are all persisted alongside data. (Internally they are treated very much like data by the database, in fact.)

This is unlike the form of the application, which manifest itself in its source code, which resides in a Git repo, and so on. The database code is always "live", whereas the app code runs at my behest. There is a reason why the article uses "create or update procedure", not "create procedure".

So if I move some of my code into stored procedures, triggers, rules, checks, etc., I have to push this code to the database using SQL scripts. This drives the code into a kind of dark, murky hole with respect to visibility and versioning. What code am I running? I'd have to look into the catalogs to see.

Also, can I run different versions of the code concurrently? Not in the same database, apparently?

And how do I seamlessly, elegantly upgrade the code? Sure, I can manufacture SQL scripts that do the "create or update procedure" dance, but what if I removed a procedure? Or what my database schema changes -- then my code has to move along in tandem with the schema.

As far as I know, current database migration tools just aren't very good. In other words, for me, personally, I don't think the toolchain is quite there. It sounds like a nightmare to manage. Having dealt with libraries such as PostGIS, which are built on functions and stored procedures, I know how gnarly this system can be.

Personally, I would like to see a database that supported non-persistent data logic. It could be plugging in actual source code (put foo.rb in a folder, database will run it and export its methods as database functions) or interfacing through an API (instead of "create trigger" to create a trigger, have the database call my REST API /user/validate for each row) or similar.
Former Patent Examiner’s Perspective On The Current “Patent Hubbub”
Couldn't it extend package.json instead of using a separate file? Something like

"clientDependencies": [...]

would be nice - most projects I work on these days already have a package.json file.

The ./components path could be configurable too.
You not only have to solve this hard problem, but you have to do it with no indication of whether you're succeeding. When you pick a big winner, you won't know it for two years.

That's a lot like distilling whisky - you have to wait at least a decade to find out how good a batch was.
Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs
April 23?
Ask HN: Any book recommendations to learn sound engineering/editing?
I'm interested in learning sound engineering. To be more specific I want to learn how sound editing softwares like audacity works and theoretical things like what is compression, equalization etc.

Any recommendations for books that teaches both theoretical and practical aspects of sound editing?
The site is an exact copy of the README.
^^ Well said, my friend. Well said.
I love this tech stack.
> I don't see any reason to assume that the "base universe" has remotely similar beings or even physics as ours

There are plenty of reasons. First, it's much easier to just copy a known world than create a complete new physics and beings. Just that, creating s coherent set of rules governing the universe would be a major undertaking. And I'm not even convinced that there are multiple types of intelligence, ie. I think all intelligent beings are fundamentally similar to each other.

Secondly, simulations similar enough seem to be more entertaining. Thirdly, mostly simulations similar enough would be useful as experiments.
I'd give bonus points to #2 if the idea seems so bad that you go though periods of doubt yourself, but keep on returning to the view that "it's great".

If you're absolutely certain of yourself, chances are that there are others out there who are just as certain, so you will have competition. If you're uncertain, and feeling lonely, there's a better chance that you have the field to yourself.

My experience of this is being involved in the development of the first WiFi (802.11a) system. It was only with hindsight that the significance was clear. The reality at the time was an isolated toil in the dark, not a high flying roller coaster ride.
I thought so too but then scrolled down more — the design of the page made me think it was just a splash but there's tons of details underneath the big header. :/
A smartphone today can talk to all sorts of other devices:
TV remotes over WiFi, watches and headphones over Bluetooth,
health-sensors and car stereos through dock connectors, and
TVs over AirPlay. All this is beyond the reach of HTML apps.

That's almost the entire point of PhoneGap and similar frameworks, exposing these via APIs. He's confusing using HTML/CSS/JS for UI in a "native" app with making a web app.
This is probably true also for evaluating entrepreneurs where blindest is even greater (I call it "young white male syndrome").

It seems like if an entrepreneur is a little different (black, hispanic, women, little eccentric, older, etc.) he/she need to act and behave like "white young male" in order get noticed and funded. However, in that case he/she might be hiding the characteristics which will make them "rock star".
Indian IT companies among 10 worst paymasters in world
The specific laws this admittedly "non-friendly" (which honestly, to me, was already kind of ludicrous and should not engender a positive response: the OP is simply calling out everyone who browses this forum as people he feels need to be reminded to follow laws, a stance that can only be construed as insulting) rant that started this discussion (and that I am thereby responding to) is discussing have absolutely nothing to do with sending large quantities of email: it has to do with specific ways that the user must have available to unsubscribe from continued messages coming from the same source.

This unsubscribe requirement is fundamentally, and frankly quite obviously, not superior to a killlist from the perspective of a normal user for the companies that the law could possibly apply to: it is unnecessary and does not solve a problem we actually have. Your comments about how this stops anyone, anywhere, from sending "massive amounts of spam", therefore, need to be defended, as otherwise they seem off-topic.
hm. do you know where I can read more about them? or is this stuff you know personally?

They did seem to grow... very quickly. My impression was that they grew much faster than linode or I. Of course, I have no numbers to back that up either way.
Hashed Pass-phrases
HTML5: How to rethink your web strategy
This. Also look at windows phone 8 and blackberry 10 to see how the web stack can be used for native mobile apps.
I didn't even realize this until I saw your comment. Definitely could use a "scroll for more" or an arrow or something.
Actually, the web URL you're looking for is https://github.com/components/jquery (note the "components" vs "component"), which does seem to be officially associated based on the members of the "components" organization.
Or that when the NPCs in our hyper-realistic video games start creating their own video games we'll run out of stack space.
Free exercises to learn pentesting/security
Hi all, I just released these exercises for free, thought you may like it :)
Seeing "tunes.io" reminds me -- I'll share something cool with you all. I was using the .io domain name search tool that I made (http://iodomains.nickmcnutt.com) and I noticed that songs.io has not been taken yet! Can you believe it?

We'll see how long it takes for someone to grab it now ;)

EDIT: Holy cow that was fast! Less than 4 minutes!
https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit
very much agree with this. writing things down help a lot. as another way, keep associate things with other thing in a funny way (even if it doesn't make sense, actually that even help more). I've done those two methods and found it very effective.
"Early birds get the worm, early adopters get the shaft" to paraphrase my brother.

But we all need early adopters.

Sure HTML5 isn't ideal yet. Writing multiple apps for separate platforms to do the same damn thing on different devices isn't ideal either, though. Unless you want to take one on principle I think its almost too context dependent to bother wage a conversation over it.

I think that the conclusion of this blog post is all too broad and so circumstantial that the title seems a tad silly. It amounts to something that everyone already knows. He gives an NB in the middle of the article that amounts to "of course if your app works well with HTML5 then you should use HTML5," and before that he mentions that native apps have more functionality (sensors/webcam/etc).

If you like the idea of a native web and you can make your app practical today in HTML5 then I think you should. On the principle of it I agree with the actually-pretty-butchered[1] Gandhi quote, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

~~~

For more talk on the topic see Paul Irish's post from the other day. It's not a rebuttal, more of a plea for HTML5 instead of native, but I found it and the comments interesting:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/113127438179392830442/posts/fR3i...

~~~

[1] From a NYT article: The closest verifiable remark we have from Gandhi is this: "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do." http://goo.gl/S29tx
Ah, so when they said 42 is the answer, they meant it was the seed number.

(If you've played Minecraft, a world simulator, you know you need a seed number to get the world started. It's the "let there be light" and ensures your Minecraft world is unique.)
In Google Attack Aftermath, Operation Aurora Keeps on Hacking
No, I never claimed that academic research and Ph.D.s have high average value.

The "value" of these two in nearly all cases is low. But, the value in particular cases is astoundingly high, totally blows away nearly everything else. What is crucial, then, as I explained very clearly, is EVALUATING the research. Then what the "value" is in most cases is irrelevant. Instead, what is relevant and crucial is the value after good results from a careful evaluation.

I didn't suggest investing in research and only suggested evaluating research that has already been done.

The US DoD has a fantastic track record both in evaluating projects to do research and in evaluating research already done.

The US research universities are also good at evaluating projects to do research and also research already done. Believe me, in technical fields, the US research community is quite good at evaluating both research proposals and completed research.

The information technology part of Silicon Valley won't even attempt to evaluate research even that is already done.

Does Silicon Valley get a lot of project proposals with such research? Likely not. But, as PG's essay explained, so far Silicon Valley nearly never gets project proposals for projects that are "big wins" and that SV can tell with good accuracy are "big wins" early on.

So, since, as in PG's essay, SV is struggling, especially in project evaluation and refuses to evaluate research, I mentioned, as in my Step 2, that research can yield powerful solutions to important problems from my Step 1 and that the US DoD does well in evaluating research. So do many other parts of our economy, e.g., essentially all of aerospace and huge fractions of all the parts of our economy involved with challenging engineering, and in these cases the evaluations are for high financial ROI.

In simplest terms, the ROI averaged across Sand Hill Road and Winter Street sucks; as PG's essay explained early project evaluations are shot in the dark; research can provide powerful solutions for important problems; research really can be evaluated with good accuracy; but SV refuses to evaluate research. As PG's essay explained, to get SV's returns up takes only a tiny number of "big wins"; well, the US DoD has done well evaluating "big wins" with high accuracy for over 70 years. So, I made a contribution, but I got attacked with heavy down voting. There are people on HN with a lot of power who don't want to hear about different ways to operate that promise to solve the problems they are struggling with. Piss poor.
I'm sorry, you believe the physics of this universe could be simulated but still accept that the p-zombie argument is valid? So in p-zombie land, there's an Xcelerate making claims about being conscious for exactly the same reasons you are (ie physics), but only you are actually correct? Moreover, you're correct entirely by accident, because your reasons for making your claim to consciousness (ie physics) have nothing to do with the actual fact of your consciousness? I just can't take that seriously.
How do you know they are truly random, and not just simulated?
It's public knowledge which I picked up in being an early customer and fan of the company. I think much of the story is summarized here:

http://37signals.com/founderstories/slicehost
I don't recall arguing that our criteria are the only criteria one could use. I would love for someone to start the venture firm that focuses on non-technical founders with weak personalities! It would either be highly profitable or highly entertaining to watch...
Given the small number of companies that 'return the fund' is the YC dataset even statistically meaningful for 2 events out of all the companies accepted?

Would the outcome possibly be better by using an approach similar to index funds. By focusing on repeatability would it be possible that one might be able to put together a fund where 30 to 40% of the return is made up by 'average' companies and then take the outliers as bonuses rather than focusing on an event that's unpredictable given the amount of statistical data available?

Or is YC as close to an index fund as it gets?
"From my limited reading experience the dartboard rarely wins implying people do add value"

This is wrong. If the dartboard consistently underperformed most stockpickers (i.e. say it ranked around the 30th percentile year over year) then you could make the case that (some) people add value. If, on the other hand, the dartboard is near the mean of the distribution of outcomes, you could make a case that it's all luck.
The article actually states quite clearly that it is not a new idea.

This hypothesis—versions of which have been kicked around for centuries—is becoming the trippy notion of the moment for philosophers, with people like Nick Bostrom, the director of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, seriously considering the premise.

Are we really sure it's untestable? It seems like something that might be worth thinking about. If we look in the right places (theoretical math, physics?) might we be able to see reflections of a world "outside"?
Language: Nothing holds it in place
I've actually employed this exact strategy.

I created targeted hit-list of bloggers that wrote about my competition or similar competition.

I also created a field that had sentiment analysis, so I read the previous article they wrote to see if the were PRO our type of tech or CON against our type of tech.

This would then allow me to send a more personalized email, and either give them fodder to support their PRO stance, or reasons to persuade them away from their CON stance.

In addition to this, there are different ways to reach out to them, wether it be via email, or other methods. I often find that starting some dialogue on twitter non-related to the subject and getting them to respond to you before "pitching" them works incredibly well.
Thanks. I'll add privacy policy. I do not know how to write one, but a compile of a few sites should work initially I guess.
That is a shame. The chairs I have are from the 1960s and have no moving parts. I expect them to far outlive me.

Perhaps their quality has gone downhill over the decades.
Because so far it appears that the non-randomness falls off sharply at macro levels.

i.e., so far there seems to be no support for the idea that the universe is actually chaotic in the mathematical sense from the quantum level to the relativistic one; Brownian motion doesn't change the weather.

(I'm speaking specifically about the laws of physics in our geological era; the physics a few microseconds after the Big Bang would likely be different in this regard.)
Use https://github.com/component/component instead. Better modularity and interoperability.

https://github.com/component/spec/wiki
imo.im is alright, but I found it to be a battery drain and to, for some strange reason, just straight-out refuses to stay disconnected (which is really annoying for stuff like Yahoo IM, which can only be signed in on one computer at a time). The latter is also a problem on Android, though I haven't seen the battery drain problems there.

I love it on the desktop, though - I try to avoid installing distractions on my writing netbook, so when I really need to talk to somebody I just go to imo instead of starting up an app.
"What this means is that YC is not looking for sustainable businesses, but homeruns. Which is entirely fair, that's the business they're in."

Not really. He's saying that going by the numbers _should_ be only looking for homeruns but, for a number of different reasons, they don't do that.
Persistent_httparty - Persistent http connections for httparty
hm. I would think that a large number of boomers are starting to retire. My parents all retired in the last few years, and one of them got an 'early retirement package' to leave slightly earlier than she otherwise would have been able to.
Good question. I'm not sure. Maybe it's economics, or maybe a combination of economics and zoning. The one area in SF which got the 'stamp of approval' for that vision, is the China Basin/Mission Bay area. Those tend to be 6 to 15 floor developments. I think that's a good direction. It's not super tall but also does not despoil land with awful low-rise ininspired developments with the collapse-prone first floors (the ones with 'garages' on the first floors).

On the economic side, I think cities prefer single family devs because they can levy more taxes (as they do it per acre, I think). I don't see why they don't tax by livable (inhabitable) space and land, that way they can compensate for the greater density in required services.

Anyway, I've begun reading Jane Jacobs's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"[1]. It provides interesting insight into the suburbanization of America (and other places, of course, but she looks at the American side of it) and its impact on quality of life and how it may be time to rethink the suburbanization and revitalize cities to make the inner cores actual livable places, not just places where people drive in for work. It's an old tome, but it's still very relevant today.

W:re Soviet style (and even section 8 in the US and Council Estates in the UK) the planners were kind of utilitarian and naive. They more or less saw them as solutions for housing people as if they were storing objects. Little in the way of allowances for human nature. The plans were a bit too abstract. For example, let's say they thought it'd be nice to have a community area. They'd afford a room somewhere in a building, but put little thought on where might be optimum or how people might use it and have equally easy access to it. So they might end up being dingy unused areas which might just get defaced or used by low level criminals.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/06...
They use similar roadbooks in the Paris Dakar rally for use on the motorbikes.
http://www.sbs.com.au/blogarticle/108976/Behind-the-Scenes-R...
Do you think it might be possible to run this kind of program under a separate brand, similar to the relationship between Touchstone and Disney?
Instantaneous nonlocal action does not make it nondeterministic, it just makes it unpredictable.
"the sound" that I think he wants to suppress is the startup chime, which can't be turned off because it serves a very specific hardware debugging purpose related to the boot process. There are hacks that can turn down the volume of the chime but it cannot be completely turned off.
How Not to Get Copied by China: 2 Important Tips for Developers
How is that overzealous? That's exactly why the CP laws are crazy.
I recently read on HN about how Stack Overflow is being taken over by the editors and that questions are being closed all too often. Is this an example of that?

"this might cause debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion." is a bad set of reasons to close a question. Surely that's the desired result? If people start behaving like children, close the question, but until then, let the discussion grow...

I think the question is relevant for programmers though. I'd be leery of joining a company with such high turnover.
Spread Wants To Turn Everyone With An iPhone/Android Into A Photojournalist