skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Please review our site FourthBranch.us
http://www.fourthbranch.us

We have been working on building this site and just launched it a few days ago to meet the YC deadline. We are now looking for constructive criticism and suggestions on how to improve the usability of the site and advance the concept of bringing social networking to the legislative process. Thanks and we look forward to your feedback!

- Kris Neuharth (krisneuharth) and Ryan Manley (ryanmnly)
Leaked Photos: Tesla Model S Sedan
Every MBA I know is in consulting... presumably trying to fix the problem.
What Could Go Wrong With Google: The Slideshow
I've come across this argument before and it fails to make sense. What the author calls the ancient Greeks and Romans were the tribes that managed to appear in the power vacuum left behind by what we now call "the sea peoples." I think that they were more appropriately called "the city burners" as they engaged in a multigenerational war to destroy every city (several more than once), and to kill off everyone who could read or write. There were only 2 cities that survived: Memphis and Thebes. The Egyptians mentioned that the war lasted about 30 years on their front, and weakened the Egyptian empire to the point where it was later conquered from the south.

If it were not for this pol-pot-like elimination of all civilizations, then there would not have been any chance for the greeks and romans to be more than minor tribes. But you don't learn that in school. Western history starts several hundred years later, pretending that the bronze age didn't exist except as myths of gods and giants.

Of the cities destroyed, you've probably only heard of Troy among the 45+ cities that were wiped out. Even the cities in what is now called Greece were totally forgotten. And the name for the wiped out civilization is called "pre-mycenean" after the name of a city built near the ruins of a now nameless city that was destroyed by the city burners.

http://www.amazon.com/End-Bronze-Age-Robert-Drews/dp/0691025...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples

What sort of anger would draw people from regions as distant as what we now call the Baltic and Afganistan to engage in a war that lasted longer than most people's lifespan?
That looks exactly like the Jaguar XF. I wonder if Jaguar will sue Tesla
I'm corrupting the term "nonce" regularly, but OK, I'll stick with "token". I think "URL" leaves the mistaken impression that there is some way to pull a Google doc out of thin air; something else has to have gone wrong for these problems to impact you.
or maybe they licensed the body model
> You can't have an attorney represent you in small claims court

Laws vary by state.

In Massachusetts, you CAN have an attorney.
Perhaps they might find http://despair.com/consulting.html appropriate.
What do you mean by "the right district"? You don't have to file the claim in Google's juristiction; you can file in your own juristiction.
What do you do if you find yourself having to wear all these hats, while the founder forwards emails and reads FastCompany all day? I don't see a hat for that.
The pruned down list seems to be missing the very important "business development" role (which generally is mixed into other stuff.) Who's calling leads, creating deals, making contacts (substantial ones, not marketing-based ones) in the local business and technology community, understanding new feature requests, and basically making sure operating costs and revenue projections are on track?
Google trusts algorithm, not people, and this is what gets them into potential PR disasters like this.

Whether the closing of the account was right or not doesn't really matter here, what does matter is that this doesn't convey trust in Google at all. The accountholder is left with no options, and money that has outright been stolen from him by Google - at least this is what the the rest of the world sees.

The interesting thing here is that any competent PR or HR person would be able to tell you that this code of conduct was a PR disaster waiting to happen, but apparently the engineers got the last word.

It's OK to do regression testing on which words in a CV makes you a potential succesfu hire based on past history (which Google does), but it's not OK to let it replace the hiring process completely.

That's what seems to have hapened here. Google should hire some good people-people. They need it.
Put the ebook up on Lulu / CreateSpace / Cafepress and keep selling it, at slightly lower margins?
You can use mine:

https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE4OTk5
Why not just sue them in your own local small claims court? You are more likely to win by default.
At the risk of being a shameless karma whore, let me note that Levchin's interview in Founders At Work is great and includes a lot of discussion of this issue. Here's a quote that leaps out at me today:

LEVCHIN: It's one of those things where, in the end, fraud is so nondeterministic that you need a human or a quantum computer to look at it and sort of make a final decision, because, in the end, it's people's money. You don't really want some computer saying "$2.00 for you, nothing for you." You need a human with a brain to say, "Hmm. This looks like fraud, but I really don't think it is."
...and just two days after Aaron Hillegass said he wouldn't go on those dates: http://www.possibleprobable.com/?p=203
Real IT Video Blog - Joe Discusses A Workaround For Testing ASP Logins
I started my business many years ago with no formal business training and no business experience. I've learned a lot along the way. I am now completing an MBA, and my experience is very different than what the article's author describes. I'm going to school while running my own company (read working 12-16 hours a day), attending business and tech events, speaking, and trying to spend time with my family. My experience with the MBA program I am in is that it has made me a better business person from the standpoint of knowing what to look at and measure with my business. I didn't understand nor pay attention to any of that the first go round and the company did horribly. Having said that, anyone that comes out of business school expecting to know everything, and acting like it, is sorely mistaken. That's not how anything in the real world works. As with anything, you need experience, and that takes time. An MBA gives you a fundamental business education, not experience.
You realize you're working for a lifestyle business; his.
Sounds like the Japan is preparing regulations whereas Toshiba is trumpeting it's own future robot building horn.
Multiprocessing with Python
This depends entirely on the program you are enrolled in, and the electives you choose to take. I have an MBA from Babson and every elective I took dealt with entrepreneurship. Some of the professors were better than others, but at least 1/4 of my total courses were taught by people who started their companies from the ground up. Real entrepreneurs that made money, cashed out, and are teaching because they want to help others; these were the people I found worth listening to.

These courses were by far the most valuable, and they absolutely focused on how to run and grow both small businesses and enterprises. I even started my first (failed) company and got independent study credit for it.
imo, just right off the top of my head, the design and presentation needs work. what exactly does the site do? what is it for? how do i use it? etc..

i can't really tell just looking at the first page, so, you're probably going to have a high bounce rate (especially since its such a crowded-with-information, not-aesthetically-appealing page). you want that first page to explain and draw people in. you have more leeway for ugliness and untidiness once people understand whats happening.
Real IT Interview - Joe Hicks Talks About Best Practices With Enterprise CDNs
Linux kernel advances
Thanks for that term, hadn't heard it before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business

That's exactly what it is, and I want out.
I don't think ahoyhere lives in a US jurisdiction.
I second this. I know that you are addressing bills going through congress, but I don't know what you want me to do. I also had a hard time trying to reading the bills in the list.
One obvious lesson here is "read your TOS agreements carefully." In this case, Google seems to reserve for itself rights that most people would find absurd. It's too bad it took an incident like this to publicize them.
Agree in a general sense.

He introduces the list as "...that I see as important to making a new site come together."

Not "startup", "site."

I could be wrong, but Twitter doesn't need to focus on lead-gen...
California Code of Civil Procedure 116.540 [1]

"116.540. (a) Except as permitted by this section, no individual other than the plaintiff and the defendant may take part in the conduct or defense of a small claims action."

Most of the exceptions detail that the person appearing has to be a regular employee of the plaintiff, if not the plaintiff themselves.

[1] http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=ccp...
Given how heavy and otherwise problematic batteries are, I've always wondered why not use water.

You would split it into H and O using a capacitor, most likely at home, but possible also at gas stations.

Then when it's turned into H2O again, don't dump the water, store it in a tank, a closed system in other words.

The only tricky part here is that H is very explosive, but gasoline ain't exactly gravy either.
Cloud Computing - Bright or Stormy Future?
Take whatever you are eating for lunch and immediately cut it in half. Eat the first half and save the rest for as long as you can, eating it ideally 3 hours later. For instance, I eat 1/2 at about 10:30-11am and half at around 1-1:30. You will no longer get the food coma and over the long run it will help you speed up metabolism, lose weight, etc.
Liquid gasoline is actually fairly stable; gasoline gas on the other hand, combusts fairly violently.
We are in the process of adding a landing page right now that will better explain how the site works. We really focused on just a quick and dirty approach to getting the site working with the basic features we wanted to showcase for the YC application demo and let the look and feel suffer some as a result. I agree that we are a little overwhelming with our current information representation, we are working on streamlining the content.
Both are good, have their strengths.

I went to TC50 last year. Only drawback I saw was that there were so many companies, many got lost in the crowd.
Ask HN: Are we undermining our own evolution?
We've all seen numerous documentaries and stories about the marvels of modern medicine available to us, and on a personal level, I think almost everyone would agree that these are positive developments. But by short-circuiting the natural mechanism of evolution that helps weed out these weaknesses, are we undermining our own future evolution?

A simple example: infertility treatments.
I couldn't read the video but I am pretty sure that most biodiesel algae processes are and will remain based on algae farmed on land in shallow pools rather than some kind of system for straining the ocean.
I don't believe thats true. Almost any terms of service agreement specifies that any lawsuit takes place in the company's jurisdiction. Read any credit card contract, and you'll see that if you sue, you gotta go up to Delaware.
Good point, that's why I'm thinking of a VERY robust tank, sealed to the outside world, except for the electric connections, which contains the H and H20.

I'm assuming it's not very hard to make a tank that can survive almost any collision.

It would be a lot more expensive then a gas tank but I'm guessing less costly then all those lithium batteries?
You're usually required to file in the defendant's court, and with good reason. The judge will likely toss the case out unless you have a really good reason for not filing here.
And someone to pay the bills and maintain accounting...
Yeap. uncertain times. anything can happen.
How much does DrupalCon cost? A line by line examination of the numbers.
I agree. Commit to writing 3 pages a day, even if it is just repetitive nonsense and ramblings. Feel free to burn the notebook at the end of the month. After a few months of this, you just may find you have loosened things up a bit in terms of the old "the best is the enemy of the good" problem.
How can you recognize that you have a "people problem" if you and your coworkers are not "people-people" to start with? This is not a simple problem.
it was only created today, I'm sure once this makes its rounds on digg/reddit/twitter etc, he'll get some clarification
Write paper 1.0. Then work on 1.1. Then, instead of having one paper, you have two, and are that much closer to tenure. :)
just want to point out that this would be the plot to the movie "idiocracy"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1597642154209383351 (naughty language warning).
Ms. Hoy is a gal! :)
Hottest tracks to cost $1.29 at iTunes starting April 7
Very very good point.

Basically it's the same as non-hackers not being able to recognise good hackers.
From selling apps through iPhone app store - there are always people who can't figure something out and instead of contacting the seller they lash out in comments and then leave without a trace. Sometimes they just give you a one-star and leave and you have no idea why. Happens all the time, could have happened to you as well.

Do what briansmith suggests, you just can't be too cautious.
JQuery Plugins to Manipulate TEXTAREAs
Ask HN: Anyone use GoGrid? Cloud Competitor Cheaper than Amazon?
Got two questions:

1. What are your thoughts on GoGrid?

2. If you do use GoGrid, who do you use as your registrar for domain names or does gogrid act as a registrar as well?
Are you a 2-person company?
I heard your brain starts to decline after 25.
I would love to see some social website experimentation with online voting, and caucusing/solicitation of voters' desires, correctly tracked to one per registered voter.

Might they not already exist?

If we can make one robust enough and popular enough, maybe it can be the model (or the actual tool) used by our wonderful pols...
If google wants to close accounts, that's their right, it's not evil (though it may be a good reason to choose their competitor), but they should pay out the balance on the account first!!
Facing Legal Pressure, SeeqPod Plans to Spawn Clones
Added to my list :)
I'm using a Mac and use Macports for almost everything. Fink was the best choice back on OS X 10.2 but MacPorts generally has the latest versions you'll be wanting to use. My hierarchy is usually /opt and then /usr/local for stuff I don't want the MacPorts version of.
Yeah. I'm employee #1.
Dealing with the Spoiled Star Syndrome
Interesting stuff. I'm not sure why, but Erlang and Scheme show strong periodic effects with a wavelength of about 1 month [1]. Looking around, I see the effect in other articles to some degree, but nowhere near as severe as these.

[1]http://wikirank.com/en/Erlang,Scheme#size=3
They launched the pay service after acquisition, but I think it may be a little too late for the free site.
Google: IPv6 is easy, not expensive
You can't arbitrarily declare who can sue you and how. The court will decide whether the case has merit.

I'd be willing to put money on the fact that if you live in the state in question, you can use your local small claims court.

EDIT - Especially given that you could argue that Google provided the service in your home state to your home address.
The Apps/Enterprise divsion has a support staff and they were helpful when I setup our domain email accts. and with our enterprise licensing of gMaps API.
That's great that the kernel has all of those new features, but I don't feel better knowing that the kernel is now 2M lines heavier than before.
Babson looks pretty good -- i'd not heard of it before. although, i've not looked, either, admittedly.
I was taking issue with the definition of a "rational" decision in terms of environment as merely a cost-benefit analysis.

I'm, frankly, sick of cost-benefit analysis being applied to everything. It has become the hammer that's turning everything into a nail. It's led to a pretty ugly state of software in a lot of different arenas, because a CBA doesn't support spending much time running down memory leaks, or trying to reduce software footprint.

The problem with using CBA in software -- and more to the point, in the environment -- is that it ignores the cumulative effect of lots of small decisions. Each individual action may not make "rational" sense in terms of CBA, but the consequences quickly add up.

To go back to my specific example, you're right that our hauling out some of the trash probably had very little positive impact on our environment. However, it is the cumulative actions of us and others like us who ensure that our trails stay clean.

For yet another example, if you climb Mount Rainier in Washington, you are expected to pack out all of your waste. I would guess the average trip time to the summit and back to be about three to four days, so that means that parties must carry their poop in their pack.

From an individual cost-benefit point of view, that's ridiculous and not rational. It requires a lot of effort for -- on an individual basis -- little environmental benefit.

However, it's the cumulative impact of thousands of summit parties every year that has a very real, and very detrimental, impact on the mountain's ecology.

Basically, cost-benefit analysis is a stupid, shortsighted way to make decisions.
You can't reserve rights that violate the law. Just because a lawyer writes it in a TOS doesn't make it valid.
Google To Cut 200 Jobs
Its evil since they did not give any prior notice AND are witholding monies.
"Uses web framework, creates functionality; knows Python/Ruby, Javascript, AJAX, Flash(?), HTML, databases."

This is a very weak description of what a hacker is by the way.
Is it a surprising choice? Do you think they would have been better off targeting more hackerly type language, since companies aren't going to be too quick in moving to AppEngine in the early term?
Reread that section that they cite again.

It says they can "restrict access to Service," not that they can take my money. It doesn't lay out reclaiming or claiming funds at all.

And, as the other commentor says, you cannot opt out of most provided-by-law rights.
Tabletop fusion per se is trivial:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth_fusor

Or whack a piece of palladium deuteride with a hammer.

Breakeven is another matter.
I'm also quite surprised to hear this about google (of all companies), considering their Do-No-Evil claim.

Terminating accounts without notice would be such an obvious and unnecessary evil that I wonder whether perhaps the mail just got lost in this particular case?

Still, providing no obvious contact info for inquiries is a showstopper either way. How am I supposed to trust someone with my money when that someone isn't even willing to talk to me in case of problems?
This sounds like the google algorithm for account termination has some hair-trigger based on chargebacks.
It basically means that a disgruntled (or just plain vindictive) customer can take you out on a whim regardless of the truth of the claim.
The google model is not based on wetware or 'operators standing by'. It is based on arrays of machines running code that will spit out notifications (if their fraud alert is triggered) that are designed to discourage you from ever calling. There isn't anyone back there. In this case you get what you pay for and your business is just hanging in the breeze.
I am an American citizen with a US business (Delaware inc.), living in Austria.

And I'd probably have to sue in CA, as the other commentor points out. Most agreements do specify which districts. Or specify arbitration.
In general, isn't it pretty obvious when a site has its origins in Photoshop versus being layered up from smartly used HTML/CSS/JS?

I tend to shy away from many company sites where this is obvious, am I alone? (I guess it's because I feel like: Hey, if you are cutting corners on real design, what else are you cutting corners on?)
I somehow managed to say the exact opposite of what I wanted.

What I meant to say is that physically coding every bit of what every neuron does in software makes zero sense. As in, having X lines of code for neuron one, X for neuron two, etc. Which is what the original article seems to apply with the 'lines of C++ code' estimation -- that you would have to write unique code for every neuron.

What makes sense to me, is to build a software model of a brain, and let that grow in the same way brains grow naturally, just in a virtualized environment.

Hope that makes sense now.
I used to work with the anti-fraud folks at PayPal. Most of them jumped ship to Google about 2 years ago. PayPal was data driven, but required a human to verify the results. Google is simply data driven. That should help explain why they seem even worse than PayPal.
Well, even if you don't keep it in the cloud you don't really know if its 100% secure. And if you do "know" its 100% secure, you're wrong. So its just a choice of who you trust more - google, your own company, some other company, etc
Then, if what you say is true, why do you put up with it?

Does he pay a salary? Did you receive an appropiate equity share for the work you put in relative to his? Or, to put it bluntly, what do you need him for?
I guess it depends on what "good" evolution looks like. Should evolution be humans that can procreate most efficiently?

In general, I think the question is 'yes'. Because all humans can "connect" with all other humans in society, it doesn't leave pockets of evolution to take hold.

I suspect that in the next few hundred years, as real space journeys become normal, that we may see evolution start to do it's thing again.
Blows my mind costs associated with AV and wireless. Someone is making a tidy profit.
Yeah, dealing with money is a tricky business, and I could understand them being very harsh about terminating accounts. But there must be some contact and process of winding things down (getting the money owed from google, etc.). Just like you said - You can't trust someone unwilling to talk to you if there's a problem.

But then this is google, and they've worked hard to automate things more than any other company. In some cases, perhaps they've automated things farther than their technology is ready to take them.
Windows 7 haste means mistakes
It will not show up on searches if they own the search engine!! ;)
I believe it because it happened to me as well.

A year or two ago I used Google Checkout for an online product which sold a few hundred dollars worth. I got a couple of emails from Google saying to "Make sure to ship the products" or something like that. Since they were virtual goods, I didn't bother to go to Google Checkout and click "Shipped" or whatever.

Fast forward about a year, and I log in to Google Checkout to a message that says "Your account has been closed. We can't tell you why. There is no appeal".

The funniest part was I was trying to BUY something with Google Checkout.

I think it's bad practice to not tell someone why their account was closed. I understand if it was because I never clicked "Shipped" or whatever, but I don't even know if that's the reason.

Luckily there are alternatives to Google Checkout. I just wish Google treated their customers nicer. Especially because myself and my company spend over six figures a year on AdWords.