skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Rummige - Community for sharing items with your friends
Hi guys, I've been working on a startup for a little while and have just hit the stage where we really need to test our assumptions, just so it's not just a waste of time!

I'll start with what I consider to be crux of the website (including its value proposition, etc, etc) and then, if you want, i'll send through the URL.

Our startup is called Rummige.

On Rummige, you can build a community for sharing items with your friends. In terms of how it works, the easiest way to understand it is probably by thinking freecycle.org, but social.

Items are essentially transacted on the basis of 'reasons.' That is, one user gives the other user a reason why he or she should have the item. There is absolutely no restriction as to what a reason might entail - it could involve the telling of a convincing story, the arrangement of a swap, or a person may give his or her item to someone just because they are friends (or know about each other and their interests.) Our assumption is that this is attractive because the scope of what you could get from a transaction is much greater than just money. It also has the whole community vibe going for it, and, in a sense, you're making and growing relationships that may serve you well in the future. In addition, by involving your friends, the experience becomes a svpply.com for repurposing items.

It's also localised. Our assumption is that this is attractive because it alleviates the hassle of postage and shipping and also adds to the community feel. ie. people can actually meet in person when items are dropped off/picked up.

Your thoughts on what I've written would be invaluable, given objective feedback is the best way to go! I do see value in a concept such as this, especially following the global recession when people are trying to strike a balance between saving money and staying satisfied.

I can link you to a version we’re currently testing if you’re interested!

Thanks so much in advance,
James.
As mentioned in another comment, the OP is a bunch of excerpts from the book: "The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups", written by Randall Strossen.

Tim Ferris does a small intro.
Go doesn't have non-blocking receives anymore.

value, ok := <- ch

will block, always. Iff the channel is closed, ok will be false, allowing you to distinguish between a zero value sent on the channel, and the zero value you get back if you try to receive on a closed channel. Receiving from a nil channel always blocks.

Select statements allow you to check if a channel has had a value sent on it.

http://golang.org/ref/spec#Receive_operator

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/Z63l4LDOlsI/54uT...

http://golang.org/ref/spec#Select_statements
There is no indication (neither anecdotal nor peer-reviewed) that this poses a problem. All the quackwatch page says is "Well we found no objections, but be careful nonetheless, even though there is no indication that it it's dangerous to take MSM". That's a speculative conclusion based on assumptions, not exactly what I would expect from someone debunking quack myths based on scientific reasoning.
http://www.netmarketshare.com

Mobile browser share

Safari: 66.2%
Android: 19.4%

Mobile OS Share:

iOS: 65.7%
Android: 20.2%
We tend to hang out on Silicon Beach, http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia
4 Reasons Facebook Dumped HTML5 And Went Native
For now, it supports only few languages. That's sad.
Ehh no. Paypal obviously had and still has a huge impact on global ecommerce. SpaceX launched a rocket into space and landed a contract with Nasa. And Tesla set up a factory line producing fully electric cars for (rich) consumers. Elon Musk is without a doubt one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever.
There is but I don't think it has the glamour of its US brethren. Make sure to post to /r/newreddits and/or /r/australia, /r/sydney etc
(Weeks is actually an accountant by education)
It is in that movie, but I think it is a general sales term that they borrowed. I don't believe it was invented for the film.
Great analogy, it seems like you live right next door :)
What do you think if worth more to Google? Being on every platform or only having their own platform? Why do you think Android is so popular now? Or how Microsoft was able to ride the IBM clones to dominance? You guys think too small.
This is almost as old as automated theorem proving. There exists systems for mathematics, programming, music, essays and various analytical fields of study.

I think labeling it an "expression" checker is a good thing, as it narrows down its purpose and scope.
To those who liked this article, I recommend Net Smart[0]. It eschews doing away with digital media altogether, acknowledging their unprecedented power, talks about the need for intention and focus when using the web and social media, and explains using basic literacies and mindfulness techniques to that end.

0. http://rheingold.com/netsmart/
There's a serious discussion here which seems ignored. It is: "what are the pros and cons of government forced 'terms of life'". Without that discussion, it seems to me that most of the complaints in the article remain a curiosity.
An easy way to automate your browser
In some locales, sure, but not in general.

Worldwide: Android beats iOS slightly. http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201108-20120...

Europe: iOS beats Android slightly. http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-eu-monthly-201108-20120...

North America: iOS beats Android by 10% http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-na-monthly-201108-20120...

South America: Android beats iOS by 28% http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-sa-monthly-201108-20120...

Asia: Android beats iOS by 10% http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-as-monthly-201108-20120...
Slightly off-topic, but if anyone wants to read an interesting blog about sales and sales techniques, I would recommend Sales Source by Geoffrey James in Inc Magazine:

http://www.inc.com/author/geoffrey-james
James Dyson calls for reform to patent system
I need an co-founder (php mysql programmer). 
I want to submit to Ycombinator my startup but i don't have a good programmer. I give 7% equity.
Google charts (https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs...),
Flot (http://www.flotcharts.org/) are some of the popular options
I would recommend Highcharts - http://www.highcharts.com/. Their api is great, really simple to use with a shit load of graph options.
First, it's not the wood that's recycled, it's the paper.

Most paper you can get is made from tree that are grown specifically to be made into paper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_farm) - those are managed and replanted just like any other kind of farm. They are also brilliant CO2 sinks (as long as the paper isn't burned). Look for any of the organisations mentioned in the WP article -- ATFS, FSC or SFI -- next time you're in an office supply store in the US, similar schemes for other parts of the world. You'll be hard pressed to find paper that isn't certified as being sustainably farmed under one of these schemes.

I can't speak for Russia, but the disappearing old growth rain forests in among others Brazil isn't for paper production, it's getting cleared for farming or harvested for the exoticness of the wood (for furniture etc) - not for paper production.

To be fair, I was only considering the fiber-end of the equation. Processing fiber (from wood or recycled paper) is energy, and (in particular) water intensive.
I noticed that... he does lack some communication skills but .. in the end, the important thing is what you say and what you do, not how you say it. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there with very good presentation skills and use a lot of buzzwords and get everybody excited but in the end, they don't produce anything.
Facts before words do it for me and this guy won me with his presentation :D
Do you think Google is close to eradicating the iPhone? Do you think Google is close to eradicating the iPad or even the iPod? Google Maps is one department and Google Android a total other. Whether Android is a success or dies tomorrow, Maps will still be around and driving ad sales. In case you forgot, Google is an advertising company, not an Operating System company.
Rakuten bought play.com (uk site) and priceminister.com (french site) recently. In Paris, the priceminister ads in the subway have Rakuten's name on them.
So I think Rakuten has already started to expand.
I really wish someone would install some of the dye packs used to prevent theft in stores/banks in shipping boxes and mail those to scammers. it would be interesting to see if walking around with blue dye on their face would decrease their desire to scam others.

bonus points for a cheap cell phone camera that uploads a pic after the scanner is sprayed with the dye.
Can't you simply renounce your citizenship at 18?
It's very easy to make assumptions that the reason Apple chose to roll their own was because Google hiked their prices, but where's the smoking gun?
Just because he's 17 doesn't mean he has grown up. He obviously hasn't and treating him like a grown-up and expecting him to take responsibility when he obviously hasn't reached that part of his mental development would be very detrimental. That's why the article writer made sure to impress upon his parents that the boy needs counselling - to work through and correct whatever mental/behavioural issues he has.

That argument of course only holds if your goal is utilitarian with regards to the well-being of society as a whole and that family in particular. If you just seek to satisfy your inner craving for "justice", by all means - call the cops, destroy his life, create another criminal and drug user and watch him and his parents lose any hope of normal life, while you laugh and twirl your moustache from atop the moral high tower.
you're thinking of po-po-po-powerbook.
This hits very close and I guess you only realize it if at some point of your life you live where you'd rather not but have no way to get out.

I need permission from my government if I want to leave
the country. Being given a passport is apparently not a
right. Oh and they cost quite a bit of money and are
valid only 5 years. That works out to a certain amount of
money per day just to be able to exist outside the
borders of the country I was born in. Good thing it
doubles as an ID card, I can save a bit there. Now I’ve
never done anything from the list of offenses that would
stop me from receiving a passport but I really wonder who
gave who the right to stop anybody from going where they
wanted to go. It makes very little sense to me, all these
countries each with their own set of laws, borders,
border guards to keep people out of one place, border
guards to keep people in another place and so on. It
feels as though they’re all prisons, just large enough
that you can’t see the fences on the edge. But the fences
are definitely there. And you can only buy your way out.
Never mind that to go somewhere else you are also going
to have to buy your way in.
The underlying idea is that you have silently agreed to a social contract by participating in the society. Of course, children are not likely to understand the reasons why this is a good idea for most people. One can freely choose to live like an outlaw or outside of society, with all the pros and cons that come with it.

This kind of nostalgia is similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz
New entrants into markets with innovative new technologies often have products that are worse off in many areas than existing companies (ie. existing gas car companies), however are vastly superior in some specific new way(s).

That is true for this product. The expectation I bet is that the technology will continue to evolve, and will over time improve to the point of overtaking the incumbents on more and more key metrics until gas cars just won't be able to compete any more. Tesla is betting on the fact that their value proposition is good enough today (or within 3-5 years) to allow them to gain enough market share in whatever vertical they're starting with (e.g. luxury every-day sport vehicles) to really cause a major disruption -- and expand from there.

Key reference from: The Innovators Dilemma
Interesting that Dyson seems calling for an easier patent application process and more protection for patent rights holders. He almost seems oblivious to the problem of patent trolls.
Or perhaps Rust, which is both simpler than D and has more features in common with Go.
When I think back to the decisions I made as a 17 year old (and an 18, 19, 20 ... year old) I think it is perfectly valid to call a 17 year old a child.

At that age I would guess a large proportion can barely cook for themselves, have never lived alone, probably never paid a bill or shopped at supermarkets.
you can also add just after import "fmt" add: var _ = fmt.Println

That way it will never complain that fmt is imported but not used.

Still, I never had need for this. Once you have written a bit of code the import list remains relatively stable.
Do you think kids should be trained like pets? It seems a lot of people do, they also think they own their kids somehow. Sad...

As I said in another comment: personally I hope my kid will end up doing what is right because he believes it the right thing to do, not because of fear of punishment.

Not saying that punishment is never necessary (I am not sure). Obviously it works, because people (and animals) can learn from pain. You learn if you touch the stove that it is hot and will burn you, so you will not touch it again.

Smart people might realize that their parents or society punishing them is not quite the same as a stove burning them, though. The one is a law of nature (heat burns), the other is just man made laws that can be resented and broken. Once you have installed that resentment against society and obedience in a person, you might have a real problem on your hands.
...under the assumption that something does not depend on too many cgo packages.
Do many of the major sites actually use StatCounter though?

Akamai's stats show a very different story - http://blog.cloudfour.com/explaining-the-ios-and-android-mob...
VINTAGE FENTON AMBERINA POPPY 3 LIGHT TENSION POLE LAMP
As long as you aren't Julian Assange. Or a boat person. Or a refuge. Or an aboriginal. Or not white. Or like fast good internet from overseas. Or want to raise money.

There are many reasons why Australia is great, but there are still problems.
I don't think a single statement is enough to define someone a gentleman or not, but anyway, he did resign from apple's board to avoid conflict of interest. Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/03/googles-eric-schmidt-resi...
What executives don't know about big data
Adobe's CSS Filter Lab
Honestly, electric cars are never going to be completely practical for people with a daily commute beyond 150 miles or so.

But if you're commuting 3 hours a day total, you have bigger issues with your life, to be honest. Move closer to where you commute!
Being on every platform is better than just their own. But being on no platform is even worse.

Without Android, Google may have ended up on no platform.

I think the reason why you are annoyed with my comment is perhaps you think I'm saying Google shouldn't release maps for iOS? I think they should, and will. I'm just disagreeing with you when you say that Android isn't that important.
Unfortunately it's all this sort of "cute idea" that makes Go seem rather half-baked. It's like they designed the language in a brainstorming session in a bar, mixing ideas from a bunch of people without strong editorial control, and then just released the result without actually understanding the repercussions of many of their decisions.

This is as far from the truth as I can imagine.

Yes, "subtle presentational differences" can make code hard to read, but in this case it doesn't. When I reference another package I know that all exported variables begin with a capital letter. When I'm writing a package I know whether I'm calling a function that's "private" or "public" without having to look it up.

It's one of some of the Go Authors' favourite ideas in use in Go, and I wish people would stop armchairing about the effect some language feature has without trying it.

The likelihood of mistakes is not really increased, because they will be caught at compile time, or you'll end up with an exported function you didn't realise you wanted.

A confused beginner should be able to understand this concept within seconds. And it's prominently mentioned in the Go tutorials.
Pandora: Join Us to Stop the Discrimination Against Internet Radio
Annoyance at the lack of assertions

In 10 years in the industry, building distributed systems and server-side software, I've never seen assertions work out well. In two of the jobs I was at, we ended up making the assertions always-on, even in production, simply because people were too scared to run with them off. At another job, we simply never used assertions.

I've come to the conclusion that if you think you need more assertions, what you really need is more unit tests. There are other benefits that come from designing for unit tests, like modularity. Assertions are just a crutch, and they're often a sign that you're not thinking things through clearly (if a is always false when b is true, why do I need two booleans? etc.)
There isn’t one, why should there be?
I think the problem is that without signing-up, there's no indication that it's a paid service, let alone what the price actually is.

A "Pricing" page in your navigation would be ideal, IMO. Even an entry in the FAQ ("How much does this cost?") would suffice, especially if it's the top item.
It certainly does, but they're both blocking.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4569456
The big advantage of Myspace (for me) is that I can access the songs of bands much easier without logging in.

I still don't have a Facebook user - and myspace worked for me all the time without a user, but Facebook didn't work.
It's the - "hey there is a show with some bands I don't know, let's go on Myspace and check them quickly out" - that Myspace excelled in. No login, just listening to some of their songs, maybe watch some pics, check out their tour dates and that's it.

But they have lost their edge - now everyone is on FB. But most of the bands still have a (mostly) unused Myspace profile.
REBOL to become open source
Running VirtualBox 4.2 On A Headless OpenSUSE 12.2 Server
Also, Steven Hawking has a B.A. in arts (thought the Oxford system may be a bit different - Arts can mean just about anything).
Haha!

No. Well, yes. But it’s more complicated. Google wants eyeballs, so ignoring a big platform like iOS completely is not really an option. I don’t think you understand the business Google is in.
"It turns out that I get to keep my American citizenship"

I'm not sure if it works the other way, e.g. if an Aussie tries to become a US citizen I always thought he had to give up his Aussie Citizenship.
To be honest, I'm not looking. I'm only commenting that the original statement - that webgo is something like RoR - is incorrect. Thanks for the confirmation.
[Google removed India from the list] Indian app developers CANNot sell paid apps
Other stats from Akamai show yet another story http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html#stat=mobile_br...
The usage is similar, but (my guess) Android users prefer to use a notebook at home rather than a cellphone
While some of the complaints are fair, the conclusion is absurd. The rights already clearly outweigh the obligations, which the author confirms himself by stating that "given the option I probably would/should have signed it [the contract".

It seems to me the author takes many benefits of having the "Life as a Service" subscription for granted, and thus believes they are not part of the service - that they would persist even if there was no overseeing organization. Just to provide an example, the right to own property is only enforced by the service - without it, you only have the 'right' to own whatever you can defend yourself (or convince someone to defend for you).

Thus in the 'LaaS' you have to pay taxes, or your property will be confiscated. Without 'LaaS' you have to be ready to fight for whatever you own, or your property will be confiscated.
Seems like a win for me.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201108-20120...

Android: 28%
iOS: 24%

It's easy to find web brpwser stats that validate your opinion.
> "most of the Web sites sampled for the Akamai IO Beta are focused on a U.S. audience."

Also if you aren't a "major site" how much do you care that most their mobile users are on iOS? Maybe that means you should be pushing Android compatibility even harder if Android users are more willing to try out smaller brands?

The lesson here is not that iOS rules and Android drools or any other nonsense. It's that you should know your market.
It pretty rich for a Greenpeace activist to accuse others of buying into propaganda. Greenpeace is nothing if not a propaganda organisation.

For the record, I didn't suggest that replacing old growth forest with fast-growing trees foreign to the ecosystems is neutral or sustainable.
I think it's pretty clear from the quote that Google did not offer unreasonable terms.
Missing "var", and a bit ugly, but could be used if it's annoying you :)

http://play.golang.org/p/vVnZWobca9
Crowdsourcing using smartphone
OpenBrand launches a unique delivery service for designers
Wow! 7% for the person who actually creates the start-up. Generous to a fault I would say.
Thank you and signed up. I have interests in too many things that cross over, but this is one area I do need to step back a bit and learn the lingo a bit more. Looking forward to this course now.
>>If Tesla doesn't let others to use their connector

It must be the other way around. If you want free power, design your car to use their connector standards.
Except it also works with the Mac via... iMessage (formerly iChat). Sadly I have a really old Mac so I can't use it there
I agree with one minor quibble: I don't think it's a conflation of education with economic utility, but rather a convergence. To put it another way, it's not so much a new perception of education but rather a new reality colliding with a 50-year old perception.

Modern employment markets are simply more efficient in pricing the various components of human capital than they used to be; it used to be enough to be smart and good at anything challenging at all (the classical liberal arts value proposition is, I submit, fundamentally based on this idea). The "learning to learn" and "critical thinking" components of this education were valuable enough to demand a price premium relative to 1950s vocational education, but it's much harder to compete with a modern degree in (say) mathematics which, I claim, is at least as powerful in developing said meta-skills as a degree in literature (and has the added bonus of having direct economic value in many industries). Over time, market forces will adjust the prices for these two different investments accordingly.

Thinking purely economically (obviously, there's more to life than economics), education in a subject for which no one will pay and which has no measurable positive externalities is indistinguishable (to the market) from consumption. So I think the future for these kinds of degrees will hinge heavily on finding evidence of positive externalities, or accepting that a degree in medieval history is better compared to a seminary (i.e. no expectation of economic reward) than a medical school.

Edit/Note: I realize that mathematics degrees, done in certain ways, can fit inside the framework of a liberal arts education. However, all the mathematicians of my generation I know took as many math courses as possible within the requirements of their degree programs. I speculate that, even at liberal arts schools, mathematicians pursue much more concentrated curricula than the typical student.