skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bjarne Stroustrop showed in a presentation a while back that std::list never becomes more optimal than std::vector regardless of size.

Edit: Sorry, I read your comment incorrectly. Instead of std::set I would use a sorted vector without thought for anything up a thousand elements or so. After that it's probably worth profiling. Vector is probably still good even quite a good way after that depending on your use case.
Actual response to the original question:

Do some research. It's surprisingly easy to find out what the rate of attrition is with your competitors. If the competition have a noticeably lower rate of attrition then it's time for some introspection.

Exit interviews are drastically underrated. Done right they can reveal a huge amount about why your attrition is higher than most.
As part of the 99% of developers who work for other people, I resent troll-bait comments like this.

Twitter, in addition to being a genuinely interesting social phenomenon, has always posed technical challenges that were sufficiently interesting to attract some top-notch people. Give them the respect of judging them by their technical work, and not their employer's latest unpopular business decision.
My point is clear, simple, rock solid, quite explicit, and very well supported: Again, yet again, this time just for you, my point from DoD research is that DoD research shows that research can find powerful solutions to important practical problems. Examples include a long list of astounding military technology from the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, sonar in all its forms, radar, now a deep and astounding field, laser guided bombs, GPS, stealth, high bypass turbo-fan engines, e.g., first for the C5-A, carbon fiber materials, CAD, originally heavily for aerospace, etc.

What is "practical" is the unique power of research to find powerful solutions to important real problems.

I omitted all my peer-reviewed, published research results. But if you want some examples of research, try the shelves of any research library.

My post, if actually read, directly addressed the main problem in PG's essay, how to evaluate projects. My solution was my three steps. That is, start with an important problem and do some research to get a powerful solution. That solution addressed PG's issue.

For how to evaluate some routine application of software for a simple case of some social, sharing, mobile app, my solution is don't try and, instead, go with projects that use original research to get powerful solutions for important problems.

If you want to know what research is, get a Ph.D. in a technical field from a good research university. If you want to know how DoD does research and applies it, then get a job in a DoD laboratory that does such work -- the DC area is surrounded by such labs from NRL, NSRDC, JHU/APL, and many more, and there are many more such labs all across the US.
...in purely financial terms, there is probably at most one company in each YC batch that will have a significant effect on our returns, and the rest are just a cost of doing business.

Clearly you don't look at YC in purely financial terms, but it would be an interesting thought experiment to consider whether there would be more efficient ways to generate returns if you did.

Among other things, there may be more efficient ways of testing variations of ideas around a theme, or testing/ranking skills, or assessing likelihood of success for various experimental team combinations.

To use a casino metaphor, it seems like you're taking a 50-100 completely binary and largely independent bets per class and hoping to beat the house on average. As opposed to, say, trying to create the MIT blackjack team to beat the house systemically.
> the one thing you can measure is dangerously misleading [Demo Day fundraising]

That this is misleading follows from the thesis that the best ideas look like bad ideas. But - historically - didn't the best ideas (dropbox and airbnb) raise funds after Demo Day?

Footnote [4] http://paulgraham.com/swan.html#f4n says airbnb did get funded; and dropbox was unanimously voted the best in their class (according to one of them http://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/When-Dropbox-first-present...)

So this is an intriguing thesis, but not supported by the (admittedly scanty) evidence of the two biggest outsize hits. Do the other outsize hits support it (i.e. by not raising funds after Demo Day)?
I think that is somewhat intentional. C++ obfuscation gives folks a false sense of security about what they are doing. C programmers come out of school realizing they have to be careful. Nothing quantifiable mind you, just my experience in hiring them.
I think that there is growing body of clues indicating that our current understanding of big bang is flawed.
RemoveFromList is a private method. All the public methods, other than the destructor, that call it also modify m_prevLink.
> there isn't a big market for watching videos of murders.

This market is already saturated. Just count how many murders you see on TV every day.
Someone like that, except imagine that half the pages you end up landing on from Google searches are "marked for deletion".

Literally over 50% of the SO pages I end up on are closed questions. If I'm lucky, some kind soul got off a good buzzer-beater answer before the Content Police showed up.
Having to listen to the full song (or, alternatively, not going after people who are just distributing ten second excerpts) and having to know the law before beating people with it don't seem unreasonable demands to me.
If companies like apple would not restrict non-native apps to only use the slower JS engine I think a lot of performance issues would go away. HTML5 should almost always be enough for most usecases such as chats, shopping apps, award apps etc.
If an app is restricted speedwise to an IE 6 type of Javascript engine and HTML5 Apps heavily use Javascript. The problem aren't the Apps but the JS engine powering these apps.
I love listening to music from the 60s. The 1760s, that is.

(joke stolen from GTA, but it's true)
The question title should have been:
"Dealing with management that drives off our engineers"
Because the ability to write to a directory in a user's PATH makes it easy to trick this user into running arbitrary code. And /usr/local is a particularly poor choice for package management in a system like OS X without a "universal" package manager, because lots of prepackaged, precompiled third-party software already uses it. It's also not a particularly good idea to put your package manager's paths ahead of the system paths in PATH unless you want shell scripts to mysteriously break when some package pulls in an unanticipated dependency that includes newer, older, or different tools by the same name as system utilities (two examples that come to mind are HEAD from libwww-perl on a case-insensitive filesystem and xattr from the Python module of the same name; also GNU foo where the OS ships some GNU-incompatible version of foo). Instead, create another directory to hold symlinks for the few utilities you want to override system defaults (on my own systems, these include python, emacs, and git).
I've heard good things about the HP Proliant Microserver.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-42...
I responded to your post about large numbers and utility functions only because it was your most recent one. I would've sent you a private message had the site supported PM functionality or if you had some e-mail address in your profile.

The point that I am making is about your general behavior in this thread. You have broken multiple guidelines:

'Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.'

'When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."'

'Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.'

'Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.'
Show HN: FeedsAPI delivers every rss title as full email article
Google Talk uses straight XMPP, so any XMPP-capable IM-client should suffice. And there are lots of those.

I don't see a problem with this.
I guess by now we are so desensitised to murder and violence by watching action movies and playing video games that it became normal activity for us?
I kind of like Dolphin browser on iPad; have been playing with it for sometime. It kicks Safari's ass big time, except for the no_file_upload option the web standards' way.

I've seen a couple of posts from people comparing iPad's Safari with IE6 (although, Safari has been improving in past few releases...) so not sure which is the favorite browser for people on iPad.
Avoiding difficult problems
Here's an access key for test purposes: hackernews

I will appreciate your feedback
Google Glasses & Sergey Brin on the Runway
Correlation is statistical evidence.

You broke your own example by inserting the word "cause" into the sentence. Of course your example is a cause-effect relationship.

Statistical evidence suggesting correlation of two factors A and B are enough for one to say "The presence of A predicts B" as well as "The presence of B predicts A".

Please, don't warp the meaning of the word "predict".

"I predict tomorrow is going to rain" There is no way that sentence suggests a cause-effect relationship.

"This specific color pattern in the image is a great predictor of the presence of rain when the photograph was taken" Neither does this sentence suggests a cause-effect relationship.

No one here is confused between correlation and causation. I'm simply insisting the word "predict" has to do with correlation, not causation.
>On iOS you are, as you say, SOL because Apple has literally crippled the options you have down to one: The one they supply and update, once a year

Especially egregious given Steve Jobs' memo about not supporting Flash on iOS.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Some choice quotes:

>Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member

> If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript

>New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind

It's been two and a half years since that, and still HTML5 has major issues. Given Apple's engineering prowess, I doubt that HTML5 is a priority for them, or else they would've had a great implementation by now.

They know that all the apps in the App Store serve as excellent lock in against Android, Windows Phone and RIM. Why make it easier for people to switch instead of dragging their feet with a small update every year?
"Nothing concrete"? SURE there is. Just read what I wrote.

I said to pick an important, unsolved problem and then to do some research to find a powerful solution.

For what is 'research', get a Ph.D. from a good research university. For how to do research that yields a solution powerful for an important problem, get a job in a lab, e.g., a DoD lab, that does such work. For how to take a powerful solution to an important problem and make money with it, be an entrepreneur -- that is, write some corresponding software and start a business.

If you will lower your ego and read, you might learn something, e.g., a solution to what PG, VCs, SV, and LPs are struggling with, i.e., how to get "big wins" and how to know early on that a project has high promise of a big win.

A war story: The SSBNs were well on the way to sea, and the question of navigation was noticed. An SSBN didn't want to have to surface for navigation. So, there was inertial navigation, but something more accurate was desired. So some physics guys worked out navigation satellites. Their derivations and proposal were short. The Navy evaluated their proposal, approved it, and the project was 100% wildly successful. The lab where the work was done navigated its position to within 1 foot. The GPS system was later, by the Air Force, and better, but the original Navy system was quite good. At one point, the Navy system, to have a better means of measuring the gravitational field of the earth, wanted a satellite with no drag. Some research found one. I will leave for you just how to do that!
That is one possibility. But with subtle things like that, the trick is to come up with an experiment that either supports or falsifies them. Until such data exist, it remains a mere hypothesis.
Very cool :-) I just tried it for Buffer and the numbers were a little off, but love the thinking!
The author is wrong, you can build up a HTML5 app and use everything that a native app does (using PhoneGap/Cordova & custom native bridges), so that is not the point at all in the HTML5 vs. native debate.

To me the real issue is will Apple & Google keep holding their browser perf because hybrid mobile dev could hurt their profit & often breaks UI guidelines.
We are hiring Perl developers and DevOps/Sysadmins
This ain't true, at least for the original iOS Google chat solution. It was a deliberate bet to do it as a web app, instead of a native app. I was there and disagreed, but I still understood the willingness to make that bet.
As awesome as PyPy is it isn't going to give you anywhere near the sort of speedup you'll get from dropping down to C for you critical functions. The best I've seen on actual code I've written (as opposed to benchmarks) is 4-5 times speed up, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but still a long way to go before you can start comparing with C. For what it's worth In the contrived example used in the article I only got a 1.2-1.3 time speedup using pypy (pypy 1.9 vs python 2.7).

(of course you can use ctypes from pypy as well, so you can get the best of both worlds)
Many of YCombinator founders have smart but little ideas, in my opinion you should always apply because YC is open to all sort of ideas, you don't have to be a wanna-be billionaire who "radiates" winner, that only happens once in a long time
Dropbox (the idea, before implementation) sounds like a very good idea. Maybe not a $7b idea, but still very good

I don't think so. My first encounter with DropBox was very similar to my first encounter with Google... but it was "Oh look - another way to share files" rather than "Oh look - another search engine".

Or indeed many, many people's reaction to the release of the first iPod ("Oh look - another mp3 player").

Predicting their current level of success from the point of initial investment - pretty close to impossible without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Their success depending so much on how well they executed and the smart changes of direction that those companies made along the way.

(with, maybe, the exception of the iPod which was a bit more obvious for those that paid attention to iTunes)

E.g. Would DropBox be anywhere close to their current position if they hadn't figured out their freemium / recommendation based model for customer acquisition?
man, 0-20,000 users in less than 3 years? damn. I've been at it for what, seven now? eight? and I've achieved 1/10th that. Even if we only count from the time when I kinda figured out the hardware end of things, 2007 or so, that's still five years.
The problem with HN is that threads in the New section can get ignored too easily. In my exprience, 4/5 posts I make are never answered.
Ask HN: Is there a Tokyo Hacker News meetup coming soon?
I'll be in Tokyo in October and would love to join some folks for a get together. Ideally I would like to know the planned date so I can make some plans.

http://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/ unfortunately doesn't have any details.

Any ideas?
Yes it's annoying. Perhaps there needs to be another alternative on the web which actually values users. People with useful information don't bother with it any more.

Its also incredibly fragmented - its impossible to pick the right instance for a question without getting in trouble.

its a proper power struggle.
It's right there in the closing message:

We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion

Seems to be according to the SO "rules".. no?

Edit: davidlumley points out that this is not SO, and he might have a point.. Anyway, I don't think ppl should be mad at SO for not being what they expect or want it to be.
The article itself doesn't imply that it "shouldn't" exist, just that it's likely due to a combination of factors that would make such galaxies rare. Not open-access unfortunately, but the abstract is actually a reasonable summary: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7407/full/nature1...
Django based helpdesk
A good project to study
Her TED video: http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/
I agree with this. Right now I have turned off notification sound in my tablet, so the phone is the only thing that makes noise. But if I receive an email I still have to dismiss the notification on one device even if I already dismissed it on another.
Lessons for uncultured web developers
I was attacked strongly for no good reason. Basically this UID was ruined because I am now an enemy of the HN mods. In the future, they wouldn't let me comment in positive terms about apple pie.

The main reason for the attack was clear: I was commenting on how venture capital could do better, and that is a sensitive subject on HN. Further, the VC community is wildly arrogant and just insists on pretending to be the smartest guys in the room. So, no way do they want public comments on their work, comments that presume to tell them better ways to do their work. And, since the venture partners are rarely significantly technical, they are insecure and defensive about their qualifications and, thus, especially fear and resent a technical Ph.D. commenting on their work. Especially the VCs don't want comments that go around them to their LPs, who now are unhappy with VC returns. So, in the end the issue is VC and HN ego.

The HN mods are hot on slapping down any commenter who fails to bow deeply enough before the VCs. So, they slapped me down. In the end, that is the shame of HN and its mods and a display of their absurd ego. I did nothing wrong but defend myself.

The world is what it is. It's too bad that HN is run by some nasty people. But, so be it. Users can read this thread and draw their own conclusions, at least while my posts are still available and not yet 'hell banned'.

I've got nothing to lose here. But HN and PG have lost, and by attacking me for no good reason they deserve to lose.
BTW, there probably are some viable claims someone could make against a person convincing third parties to remove their work from the internet, particularly if they could show financial harm. However, recordings of natural bird song and the like are unlikely to get protected via expensive lawsuits because the upside of that is incredibly limited.

I suppose we might see litigation whenever DMCA notices start getting used for election-related hijinks, though.
I don't think profit per year per founder is a good definition of "lifestyle business", a better definition would be "can you make money while you're sleeping/on holiday?". If you're a consultant, then you don't make money while on holiday. I don't even think you need €1,000,000 per annum to count as success, I'd set the bar at €100,000. I'd be quite happy to make that amount per year in my sleep.
LOL, but I don't really mind that much. Like I said, I like the book and think everyone should enjoy it.

I also have a crapton of out-of-print books that are available nowhere, that I would put online for free if it weren't for the dang copyright laws. Some I have attempted to find the copyright owners, but I just find deadends.

It's really a sad state of affairs.

My personal opinion (and I make my living selling copyrighted software) is that copyrights should be good for 20 years. After that, you can keep the copyright going only if you're willing to send in a $1000 fee every year for each copyright, and that fee should go up a percent a year or so.

That'll put all the abandoned works into the public domain.
Ask HN: Domain name for home improvement, diy app
Hi All,

This is probably a slightly unusual question/request. We are working on a shopping app for home improvement and diy products (for the American market). Everything is "reasonably" on track (in terms of development), but we are struggling to come up with a domain/app name (I know, sounds silly, but it is true). Thought HNers might have better suggestions/directions for the domain name. Thanks for your time!
If you are trying to start a traditional sustainable company, in many ways, it's easier to do during a downturn.

This was basically the message of PG's recent leaked "bad times" email:

"The startups that really get hosed are going to be the ones that have easy money built into the structure of their company: the ones that raise a lot on easy terms, and are then led thereby to spend a lot, and to pay little attention to profitability. That kind of startup gets destroyed when markets tighten up. So don't be that startup." [1]

What I take away from all this is: have a revenue model built into your startup from the start. Use it. Generate profits of some kind. Not only will this help when you need investors (since they like businesses that can stand alone), but it will help you even more if they don't come.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fallout-y-combinator...
I can totally relate with your comment. I've found myself converting from web to native as well. Mostly because webkit is still slow for UI operations like resizing elements that require some Javascript to be processed and so on.

The downside of this is that you start to have lots of subclassed objects just for a gradient or slide-up/down animation that you could do with 2 or 3 lines in js or css.

I wish someday simple view design could be done in html/css and leave the logic and core functionality to the native language instead.
THE reason to use "intrusive" containers is to let a piece of data to sit in multiple containers, none of which is primary. I'll give you an skbuff and you show me how to put it on several linked lists and a couple of hashmaps with STL-style containers.
BTW, Amazon asked me several questions about the book before they allowed it on their site, and evidently they found my answers satisfactory.
Maybe someone has mirror it?

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
I wrote an article on SRS as well, with some reference to using it for geeky coding things:

http://www.writemoretests.com/2012/02/how-to-remember-everyt...
What if other civilizations terra engineer galaxies to keep their form, will this hamper our physical understanding of the universe?
Looks like the bookmarklet code was copied from Instapaper.
> The sentence "They have to work" could only be justified if the participation rate was 100%

Seriously? It could mean "many of those 76% have to work so that they won't starve" since, as I said, a lot of them are working on subsistence agriculture. As opposed to a lot of those 58% of women in US, who could stop working and still not starve (for instance, see Japan's figures).
If I were selling my database to spammers I would process my entire list to remove everything between the plus and the at sign.
i just wonder that nobody mentioned http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/ yet.