skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I understand your distaste for standardized tests. But I also sympathize with the impossible job of admissions officers sifting through thousands of applications to find the best students for their school. At the end of the day, an extra data point helps, especially if they find that data point is correlated to graduation rates or other student performance metrics in college.

You might be more awesome than your grades indicate, but it's hard for them to know that. I agree that what you do outside of class should count, and count alot! But as far as I know, they already do take that into consideration. Admissions folks are just trying to do the best they can.

Sure, the system sucks, but it is set up to solve a fundamentally hard problem for which there exists no good solution. But I don't think the grass is that much greener on the other side. The public schools you mentioned are very good, and it won't hurt you to go there unless you are trying to become President of the United States. I think you'll turn out okay regardless. It sounds like you and your friends are very bright and capable (It scares me slightly how smart the younger folk are on Hacker News. I blame the internet) . I don't think a top 10 college makes that much of a difference versus a top 20 college for a bright and capable person.

Bucking the system doesn't really help. Nobody in a position of authority knows that you are doing it, and if they did they wouldn't care. It only hurts you. Also, the irrationality of the systems you are involved in will only get worse after school, so you might want to start practicing your patience for stupid systems with power over you. You oughta see the application I had to fill out to get my passport (I think I got randomly flagged by the DHS. I had to provide a photo-copy of my high-school yearbook! And I'm 25! How the hell am I supposed to find a copy of my high school yearbook?!!?! As it turns out: not easily).
Hi Avi -- email me at savraj [at] wattvision.com and we'll see what we can do! And Gruseom is spot on with his answers -- thanks Gruseom!
Ignore the 'PCMark' bullshit benchmarks, the point of this article is random write latencies, which are ridiculously awful on a lot of common SSDs, several orders of magnitude worse than common spinning rust!

The only non-Intel drive that's not awful at random writes is the OCZ Vertex, and it's a few times better than an HD. The X25s are still an order of magnitude quicker than the OCZ Vertex once used.
I understand you're aiming to apply for this round but do you think you can get to know this person in the next 6 days? At least enough to trust and believe in them (and their capabilities)? I think I remember reading something from PG a while back that talked about how team dynamics were pretty important and I know I've personally seen businesses torn apart because of cofounder problems.

I guess it is possible but just make sure there is at least some team chemistry and that you guys are compatible, since if you get into YC you'll be living together for at least 3 months. Best of luck!
When Apple first released a developer preview of OS X back in 98/99 (IIRC) I actually emailed Jobs about using OpenSSH in the new OS (there was a lot of controversy about the munitions export act in the USA, and I was involved in the OpenSSH project - he said that they would be distributing OpenSSH, which was a big win at the time - anyway I digress), I also asked about POSIX compliance.

He said in his reply (and I wish I could find it) that POSIX compliance was a big deal for OS X, and part of the reason why so much of the FreeBSD userland was being used (I was also involved in some parts of FreeBSD at the time - there was a whole initiative around making it fully Posix compliant, way before any other free UNIX).

I knew some of the history with Next and POSIX, your comment tied the story together for me. It does show that Jobs learned his lesson when he went back to Apple.

Now more on the topic at hand. Apple need to handle security issues better. Not just in terms of disclosure but in response times and communication with the industry. You don't see many/any Apple reps at the major conferences, and no engagement at all. It was always generally known within the industry that Apple owed much of its OS X security to the fact that it just wasn't a big target. The commercial UNIX releases and Linux were targetted because they ran the worlds servers, and Windows was targeted because it was the worlds desktop. Now with OS X gaining market share they are getting more attention from sec experts and hackers.

Microsoft reformed their security policies back in 2000, after IIS 4 had a horrible run and the code red worm ran wild. Many top security and secure coding experts went to work at Microsoft at the time - it was a major shift (implementing security checks in every step of the dev process across the whole company). Apple have only had to do this more recently, and they haven't really perfected it.
Watch out. My 80 gig Intel X25m just crapped out on me. All data gone. Lost about a weeks worth of data (I now back up more often).

However I bought a 160gig Intel X25m in its place. Going back to a spinning disk was unacceptable (almost 10x slower). The drive f*$&ing rocks, even if it is unreliable (hopefully that was a fluke)
This is rather awesome, maybe if these new javascript graphic technologies, as well as speed enhancements, we soon will have a world primarily owned by more compliant browsers like firefox safari and chrome.
HTC Touch P3452 Windows Mobile
The HTC P3452 finger touch Smartphone phone has come out with its skin texture that you will see and have shock with its well premeditated structure.
(extension...) The main idea of the site to capture and access small structured data easily.
I'm a huge fan of IECollection (http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm). It's a single ~50MB download which can install multiple versions of Internet Explorer.

I run one VirtualBox instance on my Mac which allows me to test in IE6/ 7 and 8.
Also: http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/19/intel-x25-m-ssds-slowing-...

Not sure if its FUD or not, as I havent experienced any problems. But its a potential red flag
A Guide To Silverlight 3 - It is really starting to look awesome
"But in terms of “cost of business” and “business friendliness,” the magazine ranks it No. 48."
The ioDrive is targeted at people who already have a million+ dollars invested in their database servers.

Nobody's going to use it in their workstation, much less one running Windows, and there's no way to stuff it in a laptop.
Real time web analytics with chartbeat -- what are people doing on your site *right now*?
So simple.. yet so clever.

All the code runs in the parent window. It tracks the ball location in screen coordinates and transforms them to the window coordinates of each child window. It draws the ball in any child windows in which it's visible.

It's very fast in Chrome.
"Granted, you might not want to take the magazine’s findings too seriously; there’s no information about what, exactly “business friendliness” or any other non-quantitative ranking criteria means."

Nothing to see here; move along.
I agree that he has plenty of room to compete, but re: 'handwaving', this jumped out at me, too:

Google’s transcription is very low accuracy vs. SimulScribe’s technology

He's missing the Good Enough principle: "but we have X feature!!!" That might put him over the top in B2B, but not B2C.
I've really noticed a slow down in truly interesting startups over the past years/months due to a personal metric of mine. I'm finding fewer and fewer interesting announcements to share via google reader to all my slightly less techie friends that follow my shared items.

I used to be sharing announcements from Techcrunch, Venturebeat etc like mad but now there seems to be very little to get excited about.

Has everyone else been noticing this too?
Sure - this point starts with the idea that pairing is slower in the short term but creates higher quality software. We might also believe that pairs will create systems which are easier to maintain i.e. pairing leads to better systems design. So, we might believe that it will be cheaper to change those systems in future and we won't be spending so much time fixing 'technical debt' (solutions which turned out to be poor technical choices). Some advocates of pairing will claim that this means pairing will actually be more productive than solo work in the long term (since those solo folks will be spending more time wrestling with poorer quality code and less well-designed systems). In my (limited and subjective) experience I haven't found this to be the case.
Per the comments on the linked page, this isn't GM yet. It isn't even RC1. It's the same beta we've all been testing for months.
Why Dyslexics Make Great Entrepreneurs
Note that it is #1 in terms of availability of capital and technology. These features may be more important for a startup than the CEOs of established firms interviewed for the rankings.
"Ross Sandler of RBC has done what every good analyst should do, which is say something interesting." What he has not done well, however, is analyze his data contextually. Just because Google and Facebook are both popular web sites does not mean that they're in a competitive relationship.
Anyone switched to the developer-channel version of Chrome yet?
Dude, have you even had a cursory look at the research? I am betting you haven't. I am not basing my words on little data. There is ample evidence for my reply.

One study, from the first page of pubmed for CP:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18307171?ordinalpos=15...

There are plenty more if you go looking. We know there is a link between viewing rates (obsession) and acting.
They already do this (mostly): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21e...

It's a surprisingly underappreciated option.
"zombies are a metaphorical representation of man's consumism, herd behavior and contained aggressiveness - the whole 'brains' thing is nothing more than a representation of the deliberate consumption of our minds done by traditional media and general mass market byproducts..."

- my wife

ps.: I love zombie movies!!!
ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Released
Goodbye, Cruel Hello World
Simple guitar lessons | beginner guitar lessons classic rock tab
Various musical instruments such as guitars, pianos, drums and banjos have chord charts These charts describe the harmonic and rhythmic intricacies of music pieces. Knowledge of guitar chords is necessary for those who seek to join the commercial music industry or wish to improve their general guitar skills. Guitar chord charts are presented in the form of notations in chord charts.
Google muscling in is a good thing, it means theres money to be made there.

Why not say "Were simply going to kill google, they are way too big and way too slow. People will appreciate the extra depth of our offering and our nimbleness, along with our highly attuned personal service. We don't have a huge marketing budget, so people only use our product because its so damn good."

One can also gain traction by marketing the venture as a "David versus Goog^B^Bliath" battle - the public will empathize with the underdog.
Does Azureus count? It uses SWT...
Getting Ready For Franchise Business
Construction? Landscaping? Farming? Jobs with lots of secretarial assistance? I think you've taken it a step too far and ignored several sectors of society. Many scientists could benefit from programming, and anyone else who has to deal with information regularly probably could as well. That doesn't equal everyone.
Gold is Everlasting: Survey Across The Globe
Nokia 3110 Classic India: Price, Features, Reviews, Specifications
Ask HN: Best networking venues in SF to meet programmers
I'm an energy and environmental policy wonk in SF with a non-CS engineering background. I'm working on a venture and am trying to build a stronger network of CS folks. Here's my shtik:

I go to networking events, talk it up, occasionally make public pitches, and often meet some great people, the best of whom all have their own gigs. However, over time I start recognizing the same faces and begin feeling like I'm fishing in the wrong pond. I wonder if there are other good meetup venues not on my radar.

Aside from major conferences - often too costly for a mooch in my shoes - can you help add to my list of regular SF Bay area tech-focused networking events:

SF Beta
SF New Tech
SDForum events
Svase events
TiE events
Interest groups on Meetup (e.g. Python, Rails groups)
Open Hacker House in the Mission Dist. (which just came to my attention)
and...
It's a nice tool. Describing it as 'like Google Suggest' is probably misleading, in my view, since it doesn't make suggestions based on search tracking like Google does. It reminds me of the Inquisitor plugin of Safari: http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari/index_en.php

I think that showing immediate results is still a very useful property, and maybe even more useful than the suggestions. I often search obscure stuff, so Google Suggest is fairly worthless for me.
They all seem great. I'm particularly interested in Wattvision and Cloudkick.

"Wattvision says it’s the only one whose devices work with the existing power meters. That means it doesn’t need to wait for regulatory breakthroughs or technological advances."

I'm not sure if it got muddled in reporting, but this claim is incorrect. I have a device on my desk right now called the CurrentCost that measures my home electricity usage. It's very popular amongst the HomeCamp home hacking community. It's very cheap, being given away free by two UK electricity suppliers. There are apps that let you compete with friends for best or most improved energy usage, upload your data to Pachube or AMEE, tweet your consumption and make pretty graphs.
Body Hack: How to Lose 30 Pounds in 24 Hours
Haven't heard of these guys before, reminds me of popcuts:

http://www.musicane.com/

There's a handful of companies doing this now, but none of them have really captured the market yet.
College Chemistry Visually in 24 Hours
Teach Yourself Chemistry Visually in 24 Hours - by Dr. Wayne Huang and his team. The series includes High School Chemistry, AP Chemistry, General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry. Master Chemistry The Easy and Rapid Way with Core Concept Tutorials, Problem-Solving Drills and Super Review Cheat Sheets. One Hour Per Lesson, 24 Lessons Per Course.
Remember this ad? http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/newads2/seriouslyIBM_l....
Senator Conroy is now saying the the list is not the real blacklist

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/19/2520929.htm?se...
I do not go facebook to look for coding samples or help with code errors.

Likewise I do not make friends on Google, but I do google for long lost friends.

And for facebook to kill Google? How do you kill one that have no life?
It's not that I'm not interested in this, I am, but it is clearly reddit material. You wouldn't duplicate code, would you?
I have a better solution that is quicker and less costly:

Amputation
Samsung i900 Omnia White 16GB 
Touchscreen is the currently the most popular way of interacting with a phone. Using a physical keyboard seems so antiquated by this standard. The i900 Omnia has everything that the very popular iPhone includes feature-wise. At 127 grams this phone isn’t very heavy but is given a nice solid weight that lets you know that this is an important piece of technology.
I was going to write a long response to his obscure and reprehensible views. But this sums it up more eloquontley :) good show.
He makes an interesting point that Google hasn't been a category-killer, in anything but search. Perhaps the most dangerous thing about them is the fear they create in you, making you give up.

Did Google Video kill YouTube?

1. market win: YouTube's advantage there was mass adoption/network effects... which the article's SimulScribe doesn't seem to have yet.

2. tech win: I'm a bit leery of touting technological prowess, because through fast iteration anyone can catch up (especially if they have an example to work towards - tech history is full of these stories). The crucial exception is if the leading tech still isn't good enough. If that sounds counterintuitive, read it as "has room for improvement". Because as the new entrant catches up to where you were, you have moved ahead. The danger for you is if your product is already perfect - then you have no where to run!

The other way of protecting a tech advantage is through patents. The article doesn't mention patents, but perhaps that's because they create bad PR. People don't like patents. Some people hate patents. However, he's partnered with IBM, and he's talking about technical advantage in difficult field. If his tech really is that advanced, it's hard to believe he wouldn't have patents on it.

However, none of that matters, because he anticipates that the carriers' fear of google will drive them into his arms. He didn't say this, but an acquisition seems likely to me. If not by a carrier, then by google itself.
:) Nice to see a list that features only a few companies that might ever be on Techcrunch.
I happen to now that the largest energy supplier in Germany has a concept similar to what wattvision is doing. The dude who was working on it was working at the same lab as I was, and he told me about the concept. It's some type of infrared thing you put on top of your meter, and it sends the signal per wlan and desktop client to the web.

So, the wattvision idea seems like it's going to be the new hotness in coming months.
Seth's Blog: Advice on equity
Execution por: I mean snuff. I assumed that was what you referred to. I dont think images of simple executions would get you in trouble (tho 10G might).

> I specifically specified anonymous downloading with no ties to the "community"

Anon downloadings via P2P usually still seed the content for others. Via websites, well, it's hard to be anon and have access to the sites. You have to show a "face" on boards, IRC, usenet etc to be shown access.

And, anyway, you should take your own advice ;) and do the research. The majority of people do partake in the community.
Social Collider: reveal cross-connections between conversations on Twitter
I disagree with Seth. Any discussion about who contributed what and who more may absorb a lot of energy from the startup. Founders starting together should have the same equity because they can expect from each other to give their maximum to drive the success of their company. And they will have the same motivation and interest to give their maximum.
Pandora From Steffans
Best quality pandora available at steffans.
Well, yes, I suppose some are. But ones like the Mensa online tests are usually fairly ok in terms of fair marking.

5% is quite a high number to be above 140 :) I'd bet there are a goodly few people far enough over 144 to skew any results.
Cognitive Science and Coding: Automatic Language Identification using Python
Another issue might be that linux users are not used to paying for software.
I never met anyone who said "I want to be an analyst when I go up". Let's face it: forecasting one quarter ahead is already hard. Predicting where we will be in 3 years is voodoo magic. This article looks like linkbait to me. Just my 0.02 USD.
A great example of the power of simple explanations. I wish more of math and CS were taught this way. Right now those areas are overflowing with complex-sounding simple ideas.
Thanks for the link.

The Zfone FAQ page mentions, that Skype uses VBR codec for audio which is insecure:

"Johns Hopkins University researchers have observed that when voice is compressed with a variable bit-rate (VBR) codec, the packet lengths vary depending on the types of sounds being compressed. This leaks a lot of information about the content even if the packets are encrypted, regardless of what encryption protocol is used. We strongly recommend that you avoid using VBR codecs if you want to make a secure phone call.

<...>

...This means that Skype is vulnerable to VBR leakage regardless of the quality of Skype's built-in crypto."
The measure isn't whether something is hard, it's whether people will use it. It's great when that something is both.

There are tons of copy-cat websites because they are addressing huge markets with many different niches and until the demand curve is perfectly filled out, there will continue to be more of such sites. The most successful sites you see are as good as they are because people did use them and they gave feedback to make them better and fill in the holes -- they more often than not started out pretty bad. (check out YouTube: http://web.archive.org/web/20050428014715/http://www.youtube... )

I suggest taking your ideas and doing something with them. You'll find out that your ideas aren't so priceless after all. Fantasies made into reality are not necessarily solutions that work for other people. You have got to prove that your fantasies are really solutions, and repeatedly. You'll find out the sites that even bubble up to your attention have gone through many months/years of hard work and maintain themselves off some level of merit and integrity.

But even before that hard work, it takes time to develop skills and relationships that will prop you up when you need it. This is not just true on the web but in any profession. Your offline skills and the ability to communicate your ideas are extremely important and often overlooked by many programmers who aspire to be more than 9-5ers.
Maybe the "you" market isn't that large? Everybody tends to assume that their needs form a large market. In any case, presumably you did not find something like Weebly a hard problem -- most programmers don't -- yet we're undeniably providing value to quite a few people: 1.5 million and counting.

You can't criticize someone for working on the needs of a large market, just because that large market doesn't happen to include you.
FF, IE and Safari hacked during Pwn2Own contest
Terrafugia's flying car makes maiden voyage
Estate Homes - Utah Remodeling
Magleby Companies can help you remodel or renovate Estate Homes as well as commercial property in Utah.
That's worrying, I thought one of the advantages of SSDs is they're supposed to fail gradually...
Do not allow newly created accounts to create new threads
For the past couple of days I see that there are advertisements being submitted to HN.
For example.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=523061
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=523001
And the accounts through which these threads
are submitted are just created (2 hours and 1 day in the above cases).
I thought we can prevent this by not allowing
user accounts created within a couple of days to create new threads or by not allowing user accounts with 0 or lesser karma to create new
threads.
Any thoughts ?
I concur with this proposal.
Are they justified in removing a post from their web site forum that points this out?
Yes, because it's their property.

That said, law doesn't prevent private individuals from setting up a website to warn others, and then googlebombing the name of the company at fault.
Beejive IM Moves To Block Out iPhone Pirates
As a product owner, I am keenly aware of the correlation between sales people and susceptibility to this phenomena.
India Tech-startups News Blog
Equity equates to liability if the company folds and incurred debt. Hence all the shares must be defined at the point in time and not only 5% now and then another 5% when X is done.
Clean Coal Gasification
The basic problem with the coal and other carbon-based fuels are not really that release carbon - that is, that they release the carbon is not as quickly and efficiently absorbed by another process, remove it from theatmosphere. We are unimaginably huge amounts of carbon, hidden away for eons, and dump it in the air. It will remain there even before the eons the earth passes through several cycles of balancing regimes
A reducibly complex mousetrap
I assume that they're talking about the North American market, not Europe. With that said, I know next to nothing about CurrentCost... maybe it's available in NA too, in which case their claim would be incorrect.
Would You Buy This Business?