skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Only it does run from the image. I use several apps that I don't move to Applications, because I use them so rarely it works to just mount them and run from there.
DVCS and Bug Tracking
People that put money into Sequoia get a lot of attention from Sequoia partners. If I were YC I wouldn't want to manage that.
Certainly excessive usury is wrong, but being able to walk away from debts causes it's own problems. Because of the ability for people to just walk away from debt, they acquire more of it without the attention of paying it off. This can cause lenders to be more wary of loaning money, as well as waste resources when that person spends the money on a house or other item they don't need and can't pay for.
As an Indian American, I appreciate the attention. I truly do. But comparing an IQ score derived from the average score of immigrant Indian American kids on an arbitrary memory test (it was 112) to the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews (110, claims the article) to show them in better light is scientifically wrong in so many ways, (not to mention, an indicator of nothing) it made me want to stop reading the article.
Speaking from 3 years ahead of you, you're going to begin feeling like you've lost things a lot more.

What sorts of things? Do you mean experiences, or opportunities, or...?

People often avoid hearing the bad things about their work and people often avoid saying bad things about it, but you need to hear every single criticism no matter how irrelevant it actually ends up being.

Actually, the start-up that I'm working on is a site devoted to making brutal critique easier, with the goal of eventually making a cleaner, more effective system for publishing works. I got that brutal honesty from a friend's mom, who worked as an editor for one of the big companies, and who I sent a manuscript at 13. So I guess in some ways I'm lucky: I got that motivation early enough to be able to develop a good system to handle that stuff.
The most important part of this for me is a 50% increase in the number of startups funded. I approve of anything which increases our chances.

Of course, in the long term, this will mean that Y Combinator will be more sustainable if it is drawing interest from outside investors.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sequoia is doing this just for the publicity, or just to find out more about Y Combinator. $2 million might well be worth the price for information about how Y Combinator is doing, since it is a very popular but secretive fund.
Can a Rails person tell us if this is a big deal or not?
Mobile Internet Use Up Over 100% In a Year
Texas Startup Dominates SXSWi
I second Beyerdynamic. I have a pair of DT 770 Pro at home and DT 231 in the office. A bit pricey, but great quality.
Ask HN: Review my site MusterBlog (www.musterblog.com)
I have posted this before but a lot of comments I received were targeted towards the bad naming which I have made consistent nowm it is still a prototype though. Essentially this is a microblogging tool that allows you to post items to groups, it will grab links, auto-filter video, and allow file uploads. Posts can also be cross-posted between groups and groups can be public or private. It is like a cross between Google Groups and Wordpress and in the future twitter. My question is, do you see value in this or is it just another blogging tool without any added value?

http://www.musterblog.com
You don't want the security PGP provides. You probably want a different one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

"The primary motivation behind the protocol was providing deniability for the conversation participants while keeping conversations confidential, like a private conversation in real life, or off the record in journalism sourcing. This is in contrast with the majority of cryptography tools which resemble more a signed writing on paper, which can be later used as a record to demonstrate the communication event, the participants, and the topic of communication. In most cases people using ordinary cryptography software are not aware of this and might be better served by OTR tools instead. The initial introductory paper was named "Off-the-Record Communication, or, Why Not To Use PGP"."
From previous threads, I know you don't like rich people and are personally offended by income inequality. But attacking one of the world's largest charitable benefactors for not doing enough in your not-so-humble estimation strikes me as petty.

Gates has the wisdom and guts to tackle such unsexy causes as malaria in the third world. Because Bill Gates exists, there is substantially less suffering in the world. That's not something you can say about many individuals with any confidence.

We could take away his money and spread it among the masses, but I guarantee you those masses would not use his money in nearly as useful ways. We could take away his money and spend it through the government, but the government already has much larger aid programs that do much less good.

I understand criticizing Gates for his business practices. But attacking him for how he chooses to fight malaria - it boggles my mind.

Do you have any EVIDENCE that Gates is being anything less than sincere in his charitable projects?
original post, with comments: http://mjg59.livejournal.com/108257.html
Make sense of your site: tips for webpage design
Ask HN: One YC application per co-founder?
We are getting ready to submit our application for YC Summer '09. I wanted to clarify if we should submit one application per co-founder (for the same project)? or do you create a separate account for YC application and everyone puts in their stuff?
Just want to be careful here.
BTW, anyone else applying for summer '09?
I have that feeling for anyone responding to me, I doesn't matter if they are famous(done "something"). Famous people are just people, like you and me. They aren't gods. Jeez you're more of a fame worshiper than your first post implied.[later reading made me doubt this observation]

When I was something like 13 I made a Flash video that turned into a sort of cult success. To date I've seen a few hundred reviews of the thing online, and I've had IM from a ton of people who want to talk to me about it. And the conclusion that I drew? Most people really aren't worth talking to. That's not to say they're bad people, or inferior people: it's that this world is choked with people and if you want to get something meaningful out of life you've got to figure out who's worth talking to and who isn't.

I think that the people who've done the sorts of things I want to do are people who have interesting things to tell me.

Hmmmmm, writing that out I can see that you might consider creating first big social bookmarking site is having "done something" (and therefor is not contradictory) I consider "having created a social bookmarking site" as something not much though. Being the first and being the biggest is just "having been lucky" and worth little regard.

There's also the fact that Delicious is a very good web site. I haven't seen a social bookmarking site that's as good at figuring out its intent. I agree with you: if the site's bad then I'm less interested in the person that made it.

Most people in the world who have good ideas and execute them aren't famous/don't get famous. I'm impressed by people who try. success is meh (cause if you haven't noticed I consider success largely attributable to luck)

That's another good thing about HN, though: the people that haven't made cool things are very often working on it right now.

That there is a strawman, mister.

The point I was trying to make was that HN has a more condensed group of interesting users than Digg does. I'm sure a lot of people here use Digg, but they'd be a lot harder to find.

And honestly you really don't see the rah, rah, rah hero/fame worship that goes on round here? Some days it's like a Apple forum just with different objects of adoration.

Sometimes I'll join in on the rahing. (I happen to adore Steve Jobs.) Sometimes I'll be more critical of the person (say, Mike Arrington or Seth Godin) and sometimes I'll to out of my way to state my dislike of the guy (Cory Doctorow springs to mind). I guess I treat it on a case-for-case basis.
Interesting. Instead of (just) a second monitor, you get a second entire computer.

Also, while Synergy does not allow screen sharing (?), I've seen descriptions of other programs that do. On Windows, there's Maxivista:

http://www.maxivista.com/

and the perhaps dubious ZoneScreen

http://www.zoneos.com/zonescreen.htm

Perhaps something similar is already implemented under other OSen? Although having two fully functioning/accessible computers seems preferable to me.
This is a significant release. Many of the changes include modularizing Rails' internals. This reduces Rails lock-in and keeps the core more stable.

I'm a fan of the performance tweaks in this one, but the important bits are the Rack integration and Ruby 1.9 compatability
The paper referenced by the story, from business professors at Northwestern, UPenn, U of Arizona, and HBS, is titled "Goals Gone Wild". (Since both the Boston Globe and the submitter resisted the temptation to use that as the hed, I had to mention it.)

The abstract and full paper (PDF) are available at:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6114.html
The suggested action ("A new immigration policy that prioritizes skills over family reunification could bring more successful immigrants to the U.S. By emphasizing education, work experience and IQ in our immigration policy, immigrant groups from other national backgrounds could join the list of model minorities.") is similar to Australia's immigration policies which is based on a point system.

They even have an immigration point calculator: http://www.workpermit.com/australia/point_calculator.htm
That's also why prosists tend to be older than poets. Poetry doesn't require the deep relationships between subject and style that prose (especially longer prose) does.

I remember trying to write about romance at the tender age of 13. Writing kisses without ever having had a kiss leads to hilariously bad results. For that reason, I don't write about sex right now: I'd not like to see myself made a fool of again.
Need a good city to startup?
Duluth, MN

I am shilling for the city I live in, but surely a place where you can buy nice houses for $120K and have 3 desk offices for less than $300/mo is a place to be. My startup is growing after our first year and we feel it is because first we've bootstrapped very efficiently and we've cut costs by being ecommerce only. The city is a perk in itself.

Duluth has a beautifully clear inland sea (lake superior), brilliant hiking along the Superior Hiking trail, it is 2 1/2 hrs from the twin cities (Mpls/St.Paul), and has a thriving arts community. There are whole buildings going for $200K and storefronts for cheap.

I understand why Silicon Valley is so cool, but you want to start a business not make craploads of money just to pay for a small apartment with nothing to show for it in the end.

Duluth has more than 5 river parks running right through town. The waterfront is beautiful. There are all of the amenities of any large town (mall, cool bars, theatres, history, condos and restaurants). In a couple years we will have a nice new high-speed train to the twin cities linking the greater metro area to one of the best city for outdoorsmen.

So, consider Duluth, Minnesota. There are real winters, hot summers and colorful falls. A 4 mile sand beach downtown (Park Point)! Duluth rated as one of the top 10 dream towns by outside magazine.

http://www.visitduluth.com/media/pr_view.php?id=5

So, spite me for telling you what to do, but know I am not making anything from this. I am just pointing out a great incubator city for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duluth,_Minnesota

http://www.duluthhomegrown.com">Homegrown music festival
no matter how much the 'prophets' miss - there's always someone that finds what they say relevant (and right). All hail the the marketing powers of cognitive bias and huge audiences...
I dunno about novels or plays, but Orson Welles was 25 when he made Citizen Kane.

I think it all matters on how accessible the medium is to young people. Modern music is VERY accessible, because there are so few limitations that you can really do whatever you want and while it may not be good, you've got a better chance of its being so since the concepts behind music are comparatively simple.

If we were talking about the world of composition, on the other hand, things would be much different. I doubt that we'd see many young brilliant composers, unless they were Mozarts (i.e. helped along heavily by parents).
I think he means "irrelevant" in the same sense as that by which Paul Graham considers Microsoft "dead".

The problem with the game industry (and much of the entertainment industry) is that anything with a $20 million budget is going to be designed by committee, in addition to being harmed by culturally semi-illiterate moneymen who let economic interests crush aesthetic concerns.
Thanks for that. Is this the release in which Merb becomes integrated with Rails?
That's a matter of setting the right goal. Perhaps "make better cars" would have been appropriate goal, insetad of "make more money".
I love cartoons. Specially bugs bunny, X-men & Avatar. People say it's childish watching cartoons but not all the cartoons are childish.
This inspired me:

Looking for a great city to start you startup?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=518379
Seriously you can buy a mansion for $300,000 in Duluth
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=518379
This one links to the actual article instead of the lame Slashdot discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=518342
Obama Will Try to Stop A.I.G. Bonuses
This is the first release to have major Merb influence. Rails 3.0 (possibly in May) will be the true merging of the projects.
That looks like it might be a worthwhile book. Thanks for the recommendation.

I'm not "so certain that the probability of success is higher in the valley," but there are two main reasons I think there might be something to it: firstly the fact that people whose opinions I respect are saying it, and secondly the anecdotal-evidence-based but sensible conventional wisdom about meeting more relevant people (whether for funding, employees, advisors, bouncing around ideas, etc.) in the valley.

I haven't noticed as much that "the majority of the people who say this have something to gain, directly or indirectly from this being promoted as fact," but maybe I haven't been paying enough attention. :-)
Yes, We Plan: How Altruism and Advertising Could Change the World
"It takes a Lightweight-tasks-with-message-passing approach to concurrency."

As someone who really likes Erlang's approach to concurrency, I think it is very cool to see it starting to become available in more and more languages.
the city sounds nice. i'm sure its a nice place to live.

but i feel i could play mad libs on this one. there are many cities/towns like this across america.

the argument that you should be making is that you shouldn't automatically want to go to SV. if you don't need the resources (VC, talent, services, etc.) of SV to be successful, it would be cheaper and more effective to build a company in a smaller, inexpensive town.

which is, of course, true.
112 was quoted as IQ score for Indian-Americans.
Not in the context that Zed is asking in. He's asking because he has no idea what is in the devices, not because he wants to find a new store.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that this solution, like others, is still constrained by Python's Global Interpreter Lock, ensuring that only one thread per process can be executing Python code at any time.

If you want true concurrency of Python code (like if you wanted to run it on multiple cores at once), you'd have to use something like pyprocessing, which spawns off new processes instead of threads.
If it is a cash/deal flow thing then the same principle swombat mentioned applies.
Small cities as a whole suck, but Duluth is like a small town with the amenities of a huge city. International Airport, full shopping mall, 2 universities, symphony, aquarium, tech schools, thriving downtown, you name it. There is talent as well and probably a lot less hotshot programmers like yourself.

Well, those other cities apparently don't have advocates.

This one does.
Silicon valley is unacceptable because Norcal has great white sharks, which scare the pants off me and I can't live by the ocean and not surf :(
Don't know about Gates, but Buffet still lives in a small 2 bedroom apartment. Take your words at someone else - MTV Cribs, etc.
Laptop reviews
I tend to avoid explicit recursion. It's nearly as much to think about as the iterative loops you are trying to escape from.

Combinators like map, filter, foldl/foldr keep your mind free of clutter.
I think you could have avoided a pain point here by use of A/B testing: show premium users the same page you've always show them. Show some percentage of free users the new treatment ("premium, but for free") and the remainder the old default ("like premium, but less of everything you care about"). Then measure conversions. If your "premium, but for free" users don't buy statistically significantly more domains (enough to offset the premium revenue), then you can abandon the test and your premium users never have to know you had a crisis of confidence in your business model.

Its easy to say. Its hard to do, particularly with dynamic sites. Google Website Optimizer is a halfway decent solution if you can get it to work. I hope to have another halfway decent solution available for Rails users sometime in the not-too-distant future, as I'm sort of fed up with the GWO "all tests incur 1.5~2 seconds of extra load time as we figure out what URL to redirect to, because that totally won't murder your conversions" problem.
I'd be interested to find out how other languages fair in similar metrics, both in terms of their code base and in terms of how their communities handled these vulnerabilities. Do Python, Perl, Lua, etc suffer similar shortcomings?
What I find hard to understand is why he did not even try to invest the money.

He had a parallel, successful and legit investment business, so it's not like he didn't know how to do it. He could have prolonged the scheme (and made it harder to detect) by doing real trades and just inflating the rate of return.

Was he just trying to get caught all these years?
Yeah, but then you have to live in Duluth
These things do exist everywhere. They're just invite-only.
The oddities of being a scientist-programmer
Y Combinator: Party Like it's 2009
A good supplement to this point:
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2058

Most businesses fail due to not understanding their customer, not due to the technical side of the product. One strategy to combat this is to prove that you're making something people want.
Yes you can, the book will cover all the electronics stuff you will need to build the projects it presents. I find it to be a nice intro to physical computing stuff.

Tom Igoe, the author, co-wrote "Physical Computing" with Dan O'Sullivan, which is a book used in NYU's ITP for teaching artists and other non-engineers about electronics, microcontroller programming, mechanical devices, etc. So that should give you an idea of the expectations the book has from the reader, if you haven't done any electronics you will still enjoy it and, better yet, learn quite a bit from it.

I also suggest you check out his site http://tigoe.net/pcomp/ as it contains tutorials, syllabi from his classes at NYU's ITP, and other resources.
Whatever the hints of further covering by Madoff in this statement, will anyone from AIG make similarly stark admissions? For example:

Your honor, for years I sold investment 'insurance' policies that I knew would have no hope of paying off in exactly that situation where they would have been most valuable, a general deleveraging and asset price bust. Rather than creating suitable reserves and hedges with collected premiums, I paid myself and my employees richly. By systematically underpricing the 'guarantees' I was offering, I engaged in unfair competition, ensuring my firm a disproportionate amount of the global business in our markets.

I had full knowledge that in the case of a serious business reversal, the implicit 'systemic' guarantees by US federal institutions would cover our obligations. Thus, for years before the eventuality of tangible federal payment -- an eventuality my outsized and reckless business practices made certain except in the precise timing -- I was enriching myself by fraudulent misappropriation of federal funds.
The templates feature ("start every Rails project with a default stack") is a godsend to folks who routinely start new projects, such as freelancers with quick turn around times or internal IT folks who crank out mini-applications.

I do a bunch of little utility projects for work (e.g. "Report X was previously generated based on five Excel files which had to be manually synched and executed, now the information is in one place on the intranet and updated every night via a cron job.") When you have a project which takes under a man-week a significant portion of the time is "Oh bloody heck I didn't install the auto-complete gem", "Oh bloody heck I forgot I'd need Google charts again.", "Oh bloody heck where did I put that syntax highlighter plugin", etc.

This lets me spend less time fighting Rails configuration and more time fighting Java XML configuration, like God intended.
Getting Seed Capital
I've been in the hubs at Kings X and Angel - Kings X is new, and has everything you would expect; Angel is at the top of a long flight of stairs, not refurbished to such a high standard but I get the feeling there's more of a community there, although more based in the fashion and media industry sectors. The person who set it up is a good old boy, totally genuine, and the rates are ok.
"When statistical adjustments are used to convert the backward digit span results to full-scale IQ scores, Indian Americans place at about 112"

I don't know how you can meaningfully relate a score on a "backward digit" memory test to an exact IQ score. Nevertheless, I am editing my comment to reflect that it's an IQ score derived from the test and not the score on the test.
As is Canada's: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/tool/index.as...
Samsung M8800 RED Pixon Unlocked Touch screen
The Samsung M8800 Pixon is the upgraded version of the Samsung Omnia and features much more than just a user interface tweak. The Pixon features a stunning 8 Megapixel Camera which is comparable to many high-end digital camera.
That for exist so people on slashdot can write a post before they loose interest. Half of your points assume _everybody_ is going to use this system and the other points are simply wrong.
Absolutely. I was being very general and would say that these are all covered in my "experience" category. Of course, all these are very fact specific. What do you need the most? What gaps need to be filled? Can you outsource your coding needs? Do you need investors or, if you already have investors, do you need someone that can keep up investor relations? I stand by my original comment that integrity and passion come first. After that, you need to make sure that the person has the skills necessary to fill in the shoes of the person you need. If you have more than one person with all these qualities, go with you gut.
I've toyed with the idea but sadly got a pay rise in my day job which means it's worth more to me (well, us).

(which I do consider a shame because I would love to give YC a crack and see if I am up to it! :D).

Let us know how you get on: I for one would love to see someone blog about the whole process from the get go right through. For those of us who are/were never funded like this it could be insightful :D
There were a few meetups last time I checked and a few people did present some software/ideas/whatever.

Unfortunately, not everyone likes to lead or to actually, you know, do things.