skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, it is a myth. Calories in versus calories out. It's as simple as that.

There may be some small differences in how efficiently your body digests food at night than during the day but 2pm vs. 11pm is an incredibly minor optimization. It's like optimizing your array structures when you should be using a hash. The only timing optimization I've heard of which has some scientific backing is the glycogen/metabolic window thought that's exploited for those trying to gain weight.

I think the reason you often hear about the "don't eat at night" advice is that it's easy to do which is what people want to hear. Most people will fallaciously rather follow the advice of "Eat ice cream at 2pm instead of 11pm" than the advice of "Don't eat ice cream at all."

The reason that "don't eat at night" will sometimes appear to work is that people will naturally eat less when you cut out a huge block of time in which they can't eat.
Ask HN: Funding for a teen startup
I am 17 years old and have had an idea for a new educational app for almost a year. I have been thinking about it and fleshing it out in my head and I want to go for it. There are a few problems though. The biggest one being capital to build the product. The education industry isn't an easy market to tap and I doubt I would be able to find good sales people to work for equity. I was wondering what I should do? Any advice or suggestions?
Depending on what your startup does, I'm not sure that the resiliency value will make much difference. If your site is down, in many cases you may be screwed anyway; the blog won't help you get new users. In a long-term sense, other people may be able to benefit from your blog if your startup is not accessible, though.
"It's interesting that you think that domestic travel and crossing a national border are the same."

You're deliberately missing his point.

His point is that if your objective is to catch criminals, and in pursuit of that goal you're willing to set up checkpoints to collect fingerprints, and you're the US authorities primarily concerned with US criminals - wouldn't it be far better to set up those checkpoints inside the country?

It would be, and so obviously these fingerprint checks are not to catch criminals.

And before you say it, no, I can't prove that, I am merely using deduction to make an argument for use in debate, which I believe is the point of this site.

"I know that Australia is concerned about young women visiting. "

Oh yes, from your personal anecdote about one (1) person. Australia is not perfect but you would be hard pressed to find much evidence, even anecdotal, that on balance it even comes close to the oppresive US border experience.

And personally I am firmly in favour of as many young women visiting as possible : )

"Does it also care about criminals? Does it have any checks?"

Yes, of course, and yes, it has checks. I am assuming you're a US Citizen - you'd need an ETAS visa; you apply in advance, pay some nominal fee, and the check is performed before you even get on the plane. Your visa is then automatically keyed to your personal information and passport number.

Australian citizens need a similar visa from the US, which is called USVISIT. The fingerprints are then taken upon arrival regardless, making everyone wonder what the damn point of the visa was in the first place.

And Australian passports are electronically encoded with biometric information, btw, and are very hard to fake. It would be much easier to simply fake the fingerprints, as Japan has discovered (one South Korean was recently arrested after entering Japan using fake fingerprints five times).

"And, if it does, I'm sure that you're fighting any that aren't applied to domestic travel, right?"

A spurious strawman argument which I won't respond to.
the reality is that aircraft wings are pretty well thought out by now and 'new' ideas such as this usually have significant drawbacks that are already known. usually that information is left out of the marketing hype of the 'new' concepts. the drawbacks usually include one or more of the following : heavy, active system (you don't want a airplane that won't glide when the power quits), difficult or expensive to build, and the ever popular flying-qualities-not-as-good-as-a-regular-wing-despite-overblown-claims.
Ask HN: Best practices for rapidly changing database schema?
Recent discussion has focused on using JSON blobs as the rows of "schema-less" databases (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=496946). Commenters note that such approaches are appropriate when the database is really just a glorified hash table, and advanced database operations like joins are not necessary.

I am developing such an application. In it, each record is a JSON object. The problem is is that as I prototype, my schema is changing several times on a daily basis. To compound the issue, the structure of the JSON object does not always correspond with the semantics I need expressed. I am considering using the adaptor pattern to abstract the JSON object using a class. I am also considering some sort of versioning system, to keep track of schema changes, but I don't know what.

Can people propose (or link to) best practices for agile development and prototyping when there is a rapidly changing database schema?
Sorry but the body doesn't burn just-eaten food that quickly. If you eat at 2pm instead of 11pm you're still going to be burning those calories when you go to bed at night. Ask any serious runner and they'll tell you that they do their carbo-loading the night before a race and that all those carbs still make a huge difference 12+ hours after consumption.

Unless you somehow burned through all your carb stores before bed you're not going to be burning much fat while you sleep. Plus sleeping itself burns very few calories so don't expect to be melting away pounds by sleeping.

and besides, who cares if you're hungry when you go to bed, you're asleep!

I think you hit on the biggest reason why this so-called diet works. People don't notice their hunger when they're asleep and thus less likely to cheat.
Google Health Now Lets You Share Your Medical History With Loved Ones
Respectfully speaking, I might have a different take on waterfall. It reminds me of what Churchill said about democracy, that "it is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". Sure, waterfall is not perfect, and bad design, like in the case here with IP address routing, leads to bad results. But its competitors like agile and so on really have not sold me. It leads to a perpetual mentality of being in beta mode, code does not get frozen when it should, and customers don't have a clear idea of what goes into what release. It is murky, and that means more work ends up being done for less money. Not to mention from a QA point of view that QA is an equal part of the process in waterfall, where it tends to be a red-headed stepchild in agile environments. In waterfall, at least you have a clear idea of what is going to the customer, and what the bugs are, and the customer knows it too. And of course sometimes poor requirements end up going out and that is just life, but rigor is the key. Rigorous marketing requirements lead to rigorous technical specifications which lead to rigorous architectures, unit tests, and actual code. Likewise, rigorous requirements and technical specifications lead to properly designed test cases which reduces bugs. Perfection does not exist of course. But clearly defined goals in a rigorous process helps towards that end. But this case is really not so much a failure of waterfall but it more brings up the issue of what technical standards to adhere to. Companies as big as Microsoft should be able to afford an R&D type department filled with PhD types to figure these things out, so when the time comes to turn marketing requirements into technical requirements the people doing that will have a clear idea of which standards to use for what tasks. Ad hoc choosing of standards is what created this debacle. The answer in my opinion is not switching from waterfall to agile. The answer is to ear mark a team who is tasked solely with the purpose of researching, experimenting, and so forth with industry standards, like in this case routing standards, and have that team interface with the design team. Which again big companies that make operating systems ought to be able to do.
A 24/7 look at Tatango a mobile startup.
Apply for funding from ycombinator:
http://ycombinator.com/s2009.html

And you will know.
Excel has a cell format called "TEXT" that prevents all of these problems. If you plan to use a range of your spreadsheet as text (and not as numbers or dates), format it as Text and excel will never misinterpret what you type.

You can also start the cell entry with a single quote to make a single cell store text.
I don't know why you think animation means you don't need actors.

I'm not saying it doesn't - it obviously does.. what I'm saying is that not all animation has to be film scale, nor does it have to have proper actors as draw cards for voice talent.

My argument was that WALL-E was a smash hit and the use of big name actors as voice talent to sell the film wasn't part of the equation.

You completely missed the point.

But you seem to be saying that since its animation, you can have lower standards. No: you need higher ones.

No, I'm not saying that at all - Going up against a studio like Pixar/Disney or Dreamworks Animations thats entirely the case, but there are plenty of films out there that you don't even hear about that are plenty profitable - if you were to target the film industry that is.

You just don't need to scale it up (in terms of budget) for it to work, that's my whole argument
Right below the title of the post they have
"15 comments Latest by Micheal" and I always think the author is the most recent comment author's name.

Truly one of the most objectionable UI choices on any blog anywhere I've ever seen. Shockingly bad.
I thought that ycombinator was more into the consumer web app side of things but I will give it a try. And the other thing is that I don't have a cofounder as of yet.
I'm a little bitter that I can't get the concise summary in the RSS feed. Or a real feed for that matter. A lot of links never show up at all.
Well, single founder is not good, but it's possible.

Just see if you can do it alone, if you can't, then try to ask one of your friends to do it with you.
It's not a great territory for startups, because the buying decisions are made by such bureaucratic organizations. There's no group of clever, poor early adopters for a startup to start with.
Fooled By the Final and Other Android Performance Tricks
One of the great tragedies (one of many) in Iceland is that for the last 4-5 year, these 3 big banks sucked up the larger part of the group that would otherwise have founded startups. There was just too much money floating around inside these crazy places.

As a consequence, there was actually quite a bit of decent software created within these banks. Unfortunately the business side failed to match the quality of the software!

(By the way, if someone needs some Django hacking and can pay in anything other than icelandic Kronas, give me a ping!)
Email Event Horizon
You guys look into someone like Viximo instead of inventing your own system from the ground up?
The Most Romantic Reaction During Sex
One thing to consider is if you go to bed hungry your blood sugar will drop during the night which will slow down your metabolism. Long term effects are that blood sugar will be harder to control in the future (not a good thing).
Some schools already do something like this. For instance, I know that Brown does not have pluses or minuses, and they only have grades of A, B, C, and NC (no credit). Furthermore, the NC grades do not appear on official transcripts. On top of that, you can take almost any course Pass/No-Credit with an option of a written evaluation instead of a grade.
Jungle Escapes: college students search for a way out monotony and their home countries
Get up. Go to class. Sleep in class. Study. Exam. Part-time job. Drink. Code. Sleep.

Repeat…and when you are feeling dangerous, you can mix up the order a bit.

This is not enough for students today. This life is too orderly, too boring for today’s students. More and more college kids are transferring schools or switching majors. There always is the interesting out that start-ups provide but what about the students whose talents do not lend themselves to such a field?

These students get internships and live large during the summer months. How can they make sure they are not just entering a new place that will have all the same boring problems? Many leave the country. Students are happy to volunteer or work in most places. What we need is some bright lovely young programmer/web designer/entrepreneur a set up a site for us other kids to find research and internships across the world.

There would be a lot of money in this, not in the finding and matching of kids to the positions they want but in arranging the trips. Nothing is worse than getting into a research group in Africa but then not being able to get there.

Just a thought, guys. Let’s get on that.
Udefn - free sms bots, earn $$$ for writing bots
The new Facebook homepage layout is similar to a change Twitter made last year as well - moving the filters from horizontal tabs above the feed to a vertical one running next to it. It's a bit more obvious when you look at the current and upcoming layouts side-by-side:

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/newprof...

Twitter made an identical change in September of last year, described in their blog post here:

http://blog.twitter.com/2008/09/changes-afoot.html

The interesting thing is that the rationale is exactly the same for both companies, yet Facebook users already have the ability to form adhoc groups and filters of their contacts, whereas Twitter doesn't. It's probably a big part of the reason why my Facebook friend list feels pretty manageable at close to 300 people, yet following a similar number of people on Twitter drives me a bit nuts and my Twitter feed increasingly feels like a crazy RSS reader with only big giant folder and no sorting abilities. I've been trying to deal with the info firehouse overload by going old school with browser bookmarks and grouping twitter pages by "friends", "designers", "San Francisco", etc.
I'm really interested to see how users will use Tipjoy on Inkling. It should make for (at a minimum) an interesting social experiment.
I can see so it's probably a problem on your side.
Well, maybe if it's about k12/high school education, but if it's about computer education/CBT for example, the situation might be different!

I had a website that I was selling advanced CBT on it, like PHP, C, cisco, perl training videos, and it was doing very good. I had to stop it because the items that I was selling were illegal, and this was the only reason. :)
Totally agree. I don't think this is Facebook trying to kill Twitter. I think it's more Facebook learning why people like Twitter and applying it to their domain of data. Facebook isn't turning into a microblogging platform.
I highly doubt they'll want to or be able to spend much time getting other "dyno"'s working until they've got a solid customer base with RoR. No reason to spread themselves too thin until they can demonstrate they can serve their customers well with what they already have.

That said, I do hope they eventually will.
By cents, he means "and the number to the left is less than a dollar!"
wow, that sounds really fascinating. computer science may have been the wrong major for me :-(
FDIC Chair Says FDIC Could Be Insolvent This Year
Ask HN: What podcasts do you listen to?
If you're an eternal optimizer like me, you hate idle time. So while traveling or waiting for public transport, I love to listen to podcasts to further educate myself.

Right now I'm listening to the Stackoverflow Podcasts and sometimes to this week in django.

What podcasts do you recommend, both tech and non-tech/business?
Yeah I can relate to that. Selling to teachers/schools can be very tedious, and they are sometimes "anti-business", they don't want to see someone make profit in the classroom.
You migh have an edge since your that young --> people will think it's very cool that you start something and you'll have "junior bonus". Try to capitalize on that.
That was really amazing. How do you get the expertise to design something like this? Or do you contract out most of the design?
Most people don't use Twitter over SMS any more.
My contract runs out in less than a fortnight; I plan on doing just that. I renewed my contract two years ago because I didn't want to buy the first generation of iPhone, but by now, I can afford one. Whenever I called to ask about how to disconnect, they certainly didn't ask me anything about the iPhone. Then again, when I make the actual call to do so, they might. We'll see.

Everything I've heard about the iPhone has been pretty good. I live in a city, so I'm not worried about coverage issues. My friends that own one love it, generally. I can't really think of a reason I'd want to stay with Verizon. The only downside will be that most of my friends are on Verizon, and 'in' calling was pretty sweet.
Gdgt Weekly and TWiT for 'Tech' as well as NLO (http://nobodylikesonions.com) and Stop Podcasting Yourself for comedy/entertainment.

Although none of these will help you learn anything they're really good at keeping you occupied/entertained.
Amazon caves on text-to-speech, a loss for accessibility
Facebook again?
I was surprised to learn the programming was a combo of C++ and Python. For some reason I had the image that Trevor Blackwell was a hardcore LISP guy.
Who needs funding when you have creativity?
Awesome and inspiring look at how Andrew Warner bookstrapped his first company, Bradford and Reed into a multi billion dollar engine. Andrew is candid, creative and sharp!
Explaining agile development using ponies
Canadian device allows deaf to 'hear' music through skin
RadioLab (http://radiolab.org) is simply the best podcast ever created ever. Other than that, I listen to This American Life (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/) for serious stuff and You Look Nice Today (http://youlooknicetoday.com/) for comedy. And for a little shameless self promotion, check out the Rails Envy podcast (http://railsenvy.com) for ruby/rails news.
You're probably thinking of someone else.
Add a captcha, if you aren't using one already.

Rate-limit link creation based on the user's IP.

Check submitted links against a URIBL. Prevent users from adding links which are on the blacklist, and remove links which appear on the blacklist.

Reject links to newly registered domains outright.
There's a way you can address him directly without causing drama: defend him! "Hey Bob, I'm worried that the boss will think you're wasting time bogged down in stuff he thinks are unimportant, and that your priority tasks get done by other people. I don't want you to get in trouble, we should figure out a way to avoid this."
More like guilt by association.
Last night's gathering was the most energetic, exciting startup gathering to date in this city. Go ATL. Go Shotput.
The app in question is an interface to the App Store, which (to oversimplify) changes the default sort order.

I think the reason that is getting the cold shoulder from Apple is that they're obsessively protective about being the One True Source for iPhone apps, and they do NOT want anyone gaining traction with an alternative method.

Think of it -- if you had a direct feed to iPhone users willing to buy apps, you could potentially use it to make more money from them than Apple. Simply alter the feed to include favored apps, and charge developers for preferential status. You could even develop a little affiliate structure without Apple ever being the wiser.

This goes back to something I've been saying about App Store for a while: they're not your customers. They are Apple's customers. Apple is willing to rent them to you, but ONLY on Apple's terms. If your business model threatens their business model or vision for their zealously guarded Apple Authentic Brand Experience, you will not be allowed to do it.
What if the teacher feels that ten homework assignments can cover more breadth than two or three tests, and therefore can give a more accurate picture of the student's abilities? Would you also redefine those homework assignments as "tests"?
radiolab is awesome (radiolab.org)

I like 'the brain science podcast,' and it's pretty much all I listen to on long drives: http://www.brainsciencepodcast.com/

Ginger Campbell, the author of the brain science podcast also publishes "Books and Ideas" podcast which is enjoyable: http://booksandideas.com/

edit: Not exactly a podcast, but if you subscribe to The Economist, you can download the entire issue read by actors on the day of release. I listen to that on drives too sometimes.
In that case it would be a pre-testing strategy, not a post-testing strategy.
If you have these pre-tests, you can then put more people in the right classes anyway, which would allow them to use their time well. you could then do something else which benifits you more, like a higher level, or faster class.
Also, it is important to mention that RCF3484 was drafted by MS Research.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/10/18/data-... may be interesting to you
I've watched a few of this guys videos and I'm really liking them. It's cool to see someone make it with a startup but do it "quietly". Who ever heard of his company? I guess it really doesn't matter because his clients sure did.
An RFC isn't an international standard, and this particular RFC was drafted by MS Research.
Well colleges use a combination of factors--grades, class rank, standardized-test scores, extracurricular activities, football talent--to decide who they are going to admit, and the practical difference between a first-tier and second-tier college degree is much less than most people are willing to admit. So one flukey B is not going to doom you for life.
I agree that sales are important, which is why everything I do should generate them. SEO, tweaking website copy, investigating advertising channels, program updates, etc.

I've got a million things to do and a fixed number of hours to do them in. I prioritize based on expected marginal sales generated by marginal effort. Anything which can't hit $100 in marginal sales per marginal hour gets eliminated, automated, our outsourced. (Unless I really like doing it -- however, running advertising campaigns is definitely on my list of "Shoot, I would do this for free" activities.)

In my experience, methods of advertising to my niche other than AdWords fail to generate sufficient sales per increment of time to justify using them when I could be doing much, much higher ROI activities. AdWords has insanely efficient ROI on time for me these days. I log in once a month for about twenty minutes and note "Oh, $600 in ads produced $1,200 in sales -- well, carry on then." and then pencil it in for another checkup in a month.
That is a clunky version of exactly what I'm talking about. Awesome.
AT&T's 1993 "You Will" Ads (excellent foresight) [vid]
I wish more classes used "portfolio assessment" to rate their students...

http://www.unm.edu/~devalenz/handouts/portfolio.html

...but given how labor-intensive it is to grade a portfolio, I can't blame teachers for shying away from the technique.
I would say that it depends upon your sense of obligation really, but that there IS no requirement.

My personal stance, evolved over the years, basically allows me to do anything short of blocking ads. The cost, I have decided, for accessing ad-supported content is the open-mindedness that while I will subconsciously ignore almost every ad on the web, that I am mentally open to the possibility of being intrigued by an ad enough to click on it.

It seldom happens, but not having blocked the ads, the fact that it happens ever gives me a clean conscience.