skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You seem to be suggesting that Open Source projects allow just anyone to modify their code.

Nobody is open to just anyone modifying their code, whether Open Source or proprietary.

Random people from the internet cannot have their code accepted into the Linux kernel, Firefox, GNU, Java, Ruby, or any other popular Open Source project. They do not have commit access, and the people that can commit code vet contributions quite extensively.

The only group who suggests otherwise is Microsoft - I'm surprised your comment has been moderated up.
Now let's hope the kitteh doesn't try clever replay attacks and other such things that often foil the brilliant algorithms in computer vision-based security systems without actually finding a weakness in the core recognition/processing technology. :) (Many fingerprint recognition systems can be defeated with rubber stamps, gummy bears, human breath, etc.)
Which college is that?
Based on my personal experience, I have to say you are completely wrong :)
He touches on something like that in http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html.

The other way to tell an adult is by how they react to a challenge. Someone who's not yet an adult will tend to respond to a challenge from an adult in a way that acknowledges their dominance. If an adult says "that's a stupid idea," a kid will either crawl away with his tail between his legs, or rebel. But rebelling presumes inferiority as much as submission. The adult response to "that's a stupid idea," is simply to look the other person in the eye and say "Really? Why do you think so?"

So they test flexibility as a sign on maturity.
Biotech is a huge and broad-ranging field. It could be a really old, staunchy industry (people have been making drugs and making biological modifications since forever), or a brand new thing, depending on your vantage point. You need a lot of specialized equipment. Results are slow. You pretty much need a PhD in order to do any sort of meaningful work in the field. Etc. It really depends on what you mean, but the national capitals for a lot of innovative biotech work in the USA are Bay Area and Boston.
Why Programmers suck at Picking Colors
We're just using Skype for conference calls. The cost of SkypeOut and SkypeIn is something like $20/year or something. Works fine for us.
Must co-founders live together?
My co-founder and I both live in the SF Bay Area about 30 minutes away from each other. We are both eager to start a startup and we are planning on applying for the winter program. We are good friends and we would have no problem living together during the startup's early period. However, this decision has become more complicated for me because a few months ago I moved in with my girlfriend. Although she's 100% supportive of my starting a startup and working crazy hours (as long as we get to see each other once in a while), she's unhappy about my potentially moving out and living with my co-founder. She's worried it would set back our relationship, and she doesn't want to have to find another roommate (which I understand). Plus, she's not convinced (and neither am I, actually) that this new living situation would only last 3 month, during the initial phase of the YCombinator program.

Is living together with your co-founder critical for the success of a startup? If YCombinator accepts our application, will I have to choose between joining the program and continuing to live with my girlfriend? Will YCombinator reject us if my co-founder and I don't commit to living together?

Thanks in advance for clarifying this.
Sounds to me like they're looking for cool judgement more than simple flexability; flexability without judgement being a third immature response to the challenge: unquestioningly doing what you're told.
i've been working with my co-founder remotely for years. We use email, the phone with a headset --so we can use the keyboard at the same time, and we meet every week on a regular schedule. This has worked for us really well. For me it has been great to be able to step away from each other in order to keep fresh, otherwise i find we over work the problems instead of execute them.
Not all threads here seek answers. Some seek data.

Counterexamples don't refute a pattern, but they often elaborate on it. After all, the original pattern is often derived from a series of examples itself. For people that are looking to draw their own conclusions (which is most of us, right? I'd hate to think that my or anyone else's contributions here are taken as gospel truth), this is invaluable. "Quit your day job" hides a lot of complexity. "I had this crazy idea for a suborbital flight startup while I was getting drunk with my chimney-sweeper, and we quit our day jobs, took on $100K of debt, then failed miserably when nobody would buy our flying broomstick" is a lot more useful, because then you can judge whether your situation is like the unfortunate chimney-sweep and decide accordingly.
Club Penguin: Did Disney buy a $350 million dud? (another fad)
Since I don't have kids, I've never paid any attention to this market... Are the only solutions available today things like NetNanny, which are (as far as I know) basically just preconfigured firewalls? Basically, what's the competition like?

If that's the case, then it seems you guys have a solid idea :)
So what do you all think are the best, high-growth sub-industries within the current software technology world?
> Even BitTorrent works over NAT.

Eh? Only if the person on the other end can listen.
Don't worry about it. I think it's so common because it's a cost saving measure, but if you have a comfortable living situation in the Bay Area already it would make absolutely no sense to move and would even cost you money if you have to break leases and such.
A Brief History of Slashdot Part 1, Chips & Dips
Three blog posts I'd love to read (and one that I wouldn't)
Subversion's Delta Editor: Interface As Ontology
Short, concise and readable code - invert your logic and stop nesting already!
The problem with the computer industry under capitalism - Free Software the answer?
I think that this is the most intelligent project I have seen of the "Just Launched!" news.yc stories. Well done. I think you could be very successful.
Open Thread: To Hack or Not to Hack, That is the Question
Do you like the captcha as well? I just checked it out and I was able to find it (as it is clearly labeled 'Feedback') and could enter whatever I want. But say you wanted to say something in a search result or your menu pane was missing something...would it all be routed through that one small link at the top of the page? I guess I'm going for how can I integrate it to be part of the user experience.
A Two Year Old Feature Request Fulfilled (by disqus)
No one likes being out competed, that's a given, but no one should cry about it publicly like they were wronged, especially if they actually won by not losing their partner. More to the point, never act like you own another human being and are somehow wronged by someone making them an offer, the same would apply to a girlfriend.

Fair game is exactly the right phrase, in business offering anyone more money or a better opportunity is always fair game, hell, that is the damn game. Want to keep your talent, then make sure you give them a fair deal and don't begrudge them a better deal than you can offer should it come along.

It's unbelievably arrogant to continually refer to someone as my hacker in such a possessive manner, you may as well be saying my ignorant slave. That hacker is likely much smarter than you are, give him some respect and stop talking about him like property.

No one is ever stolen in an adult relationship, only children think that, adults leave, there's a world of difference.
A pot of burning chilli sparked fears of a biological terror attack in central London.
I saw this site (including the cat) last year. I don't think a lot has changed.
Programming Language Video Lectures
Startup News or Hacker News?
Have anyone noticed that in YCombinator library (http://ycombinator.com/lib.html) the Hacker News link still appears like Startup News?

It's not so important but it is just a little HTML change, so I believe it must be done. :P
Narayana Murthy's dream for the future
Make it Pittsburgh, rms. Or Singapore, maybe? Don't bring any chewing gum or spraypaint, though.
Excellent - it will pretty much eliminate toggling between reflector and vs.net! This should greatly improve the blog post quality, documentation, books, and community feedback related to .NET.

This seems a bit out of character for Microsoft, doesn't it?
The Paradox of Choice Illustrated with Jam Tasting
I've never read any books on the subject, but one thing I like to do is, when a bug is found, ask yourself, "What's a test that would have detected this bug?" Then write that test. Run your new test and make sure that it fails. Then fix the bug. After that, re-run the test to make sure it passes. Finally, check-in both test and patch.
>> I'm extremely curious to see how Parakey ends up being integrated into facebook.

Five (hypothetical) bucks says it won't be. Just a hunch.
Internet Business is killing the 80/20 rule
"You can be more helpful if you can pickup the front end part (XHTML, CSS, Graphics, stock photos, logos), and let your programmer handle the hard stuff (programming the backend, databases, content management)."

I forgot to add - in most cases UI is not easier than the "hard stuff" (backend)
I'm sure facebook is benefiting from the two great hackers, but it would be kind of sad if they killed Parakey. Or maybe it hadn't come that far along in the first place before facebook got them.
Yes, but why didn't the author, given his new color choosing ability, not upgrade his grayscale blog?
Apple may wait for x86-based iPhone before releasing an SDK (2-3 years away)
One thing he failed to mention, whatever you do, make sure you are in the money "making part of the bussiness".

E.g. If you are tech person, work on a pure technology company, where the product you are making is the money maker. You will be treated much better, as the company will try to maximize your productiviy.

If you are a tech guy, working, let's say in a finance company, where technology is considered as an "expense", then you will never be treat as well, b/c you are less worth to the company, and they will always try to minimise your expense.
I learned this when I was working at US Airways in the maintenance half of the company. You wouldn't believe how much money the ancient software being used cost the company, but no one would spend money to upgrade the software because maintenance only cost the company money.

A rarely mentioned difference between the legacy airlines and profitable ones like Southwest is that Southwest is not running operations and maintenance on 70s era mainframe software.
Small correction: you need a PhD, several years of post-doctoral work, and a contact on the inside. Even then, after 13+ years of post-secondary education and slave-wage "training," you might very well find yourself un- or under-employed by age 40, because you're considered too expensive or (ironically) too specialized.

There are so many new bio PhDs minted every year that the labor supply is far out-pacing demand. Right now, the big names (I'm lookin' at you, Genentech...) are hiring extremely talented people into glorified lab-tech positions.

In short, biotech is no panacea.
This is flippin' awesome, you guys. I don't know if it's totally there yet, but I'm loving it thus far.

One thought: as a parent, I'd be very interested in seeing your privacy polic(ies) spelled out in detail. I would freak out, hunt you down and drink your blood if I found out you were tracking my kids' web history, logging unencrypted form submissions containing names, etc., etc.
Physician with a Slick, Web 2.0-ish Method of Practice
Is letting them dictate the course of the interview really a bad thing? It's an admissions interview, not a negotiation. I've pretty much already stated my case by way of the application. Any remaining reservations they may have seem better addressed by letting them ask the questions than by letting my preconceived notions of what they want to hear dominate the conversation. Plus, that way, even if we get rejected, we've still gotten a 15 minute consulting session out of it.
I really enjoy video game remixes:

http://www.ocremix.org/list.php?type=remixes&offset=0...

http://remix.kwed.org/
I know it's a radical suggestion, but something that works for me is actually spending time with your kids, and 'sharing' the computing experience together - that way you can make sure they stay on safe sites, and you get to teach them stuff/spend time with them. It's kinda fun :)
Being evil would be replacing adsense advert blocks with your own publisher code :D
I'm sure if not illegal that would be highly evil.

Children click on adverts, but do they 'convert' - leads or sales. If they do not, that click revenue is going to diminish quickly as advertisers start to realize.
Perhaps because they are hackers not painters? :-)
Couldn't a clever kid just hit the hardware reset button? I guess you'd have to have a windows password too.

I think it's a great idea. And for kids trying to get around it, I welcome all those little hackers learning tons about computers.
I has joined your group.

Also, this is me: http://www.last.fm/user/codepolice
If this takes off, every kid will know about the Ctrl-Alt-Home failsafe/loophole.
What do you mean, why didn't he not upgrade it? He did not upgrade his grayscale blog.
What are the Rails plugins you miss the most?
We were rejected because they didn't think we solved the design problem our product was addressing and I know we did solve said design problem. Instead of talking about design, we talked about the difference between our product and yahoo.com.

We could have had a shot if the interview would have gone in a different direction. Most people would be fine letting them dictate the course of the interview, just keep in the back of your mind that you need to convince them your product will be successful and that you can make it. 15 minutes is so short that if you go off on tangents not related to those two main goals you're really hurting yourself.
Is this guy bypassing managed care completely? Its like a return to the old way doctors used to practice, house visits and all. But this guy leverages modern communication to maintain a wider patient base than previously possible with strictly face-to-face visits. Interesting.
There is too much money to be made from advertising to ignore that revenue stream. Without it, all you've got is premium subscriptions and the premium subscription becomes more compelling if the free version has ads/doesn't have the adblocker.
Well, an advertiser is pretty dumb if they are trying to sell something to an 8 year old without a credit card. I imagine that a more likely target is a corporation trying to brand a child, like with General Mills's http://www.millsberry.com/.
What kids like to do online
They're going to dictate the course of an interview to a much larger extent than you are. That's pretty much the nature of the interview.

You should be flexible, I agree, but not wishy-washy. I don't think they'd respect anyone who was willing to totally revamp their idea instantly just because of their suggestion anymore than they would someone who was totally inflexible. There's a middle ground that you should walk, not just in trying to be accepted into YC, but in life in general.
A web operating system that you run on your... operating system. I love it and so must Microsoft. Distributed data storage and maybe even databases are great but unless if it boots my PC and runs my web browser it is just another web service (unless if it does that but from the article I gather it doesn't).
It's up to the parent again, if they tell their kids. And, remember this program is really for young children, with the manual dexterity to move the mouse around and click on things, not necessarily the kids who blog, have myspace pages, or join multiplayer online games and such. We will be refining our target audience as we get more user feedback. We could have removed that failsafe altogether if we found another mechanism that would insure parents could break out of the Kiosk Mode if they forgot their password. We are open to suggestions.
How to Turn Your VC into Your Worst Enemy?
VC's have been my best friends and my worst enemies, in ways that are not always within my immediate control. In the process, ironically, I have come to respect Venture Capitalist as a profession, which I believe is the least understood if not the most misunderstood. And I am convinced that mistakes I have made with VC's (eventually turning them into my worst enemies) were a result of my inexperience as a CEO compounded by a total lack of understanding of who VC's are and what they do for a living.
I believe PG said that they had spent some 3 months on another application when they should have been working on there main one, which would have put them further ahead.

Personally I feel they got good money for what they made. If I could throw something together and sell it for that much on ebay I would but I believe the price they recieved was linked really to Y Combinator and as such the right people saw there listing.
Yes. Everyone making interfaces or informational diagrams should understand that value contrast is the most important to human ability to distinguish colors, and should use a color model like Munsell or Lab to pick colors.

PS: this text box doesn't let me put (more than 1) literal *s in it; there seems to be no way to escape them so they don't end up emphasizing my text. Lesson: just use markdown.
From that synopsis, it sounds like you have more potential distractions than not living with your cofounder.
Can it be true that there is no way to monitor that one important property, the position of my website in the search results for certain keywords? Granted, allowing to check for this in an automated way would probably result in a lot of requests to Google's servers, but on the other hand, people will check for it anyway, so why not let the machines do it?
I recently follow a hybrid principle for my Rails apps: do not write unit tests, but write functional tests once your UI gets relatively stable.
Ballmer: Facebook risks being 'a fad'
> 2) know your co-founders well.

She says it's good when people have known each other for a long time.

Sigh... it sounds like so much fun, but that's just something I don't have.
By refactor he means to change the purpose of the code, not just the implementation. Your tests will not cover this.
Multitenancy and the network effect
Future of Web Apps - Malik and Arrington
Although commits to central repositories of os projects are guarded, open source means that random internet users can take the source and modify it as they like for their own personal use (as regulated by whatever license they've chosen). The ms license is read-only (according to the parent comments; I haven't read it) and so is not open source, by common-usage definition.
In Thrall to Scarcity - Open Source & Business
Nice writeup. It's a tricky area, isn't it? Open source is great - I'd spend my days working with it exclusively if I could, but in the end, it's all about scarcity, and where it turns up when the central thing (the code) is by definition, not scarce:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=62945
This is really interesting and refreshing to see a change in the way that healthcare operates ...

BUT, it seems like this guy is trying to bypass insurance companies completely. From the FAQ:
... I accept absolutely no health insurance at all and my fees may not be reimbursed by your insurance company.

We all know that health insurance is a huge confusing nightmare in the U.S., but I don't think its advisable get rid of it completely. I suppose if you don't have insurance, then this doc would be a really good alternative.
So basically, if you decide to toss out your method or class or whatever, you now have twice the code (or whatever the Test/Code ratio is) to throw away.

That doesn't strike me as an optimal use of time.

On the other hand, once I'm pretty sure of what things should look like, yeah, test cases are invaluable in demonstrating that everything works like it should, that corner cases don't break things, and that any new bugs stay fixed. Especially if other people have to work with the code, and don't know it well, they can wade into it with confidence that they can be confident they won't break anything (or at least are less likely to).
It's called a boutique practice. My day job is as an ER nurse (while I finish my CS degree), and it's totally the way I'd go for my medical care if there was someone around that did this.

Some doctors with a boutique practice take a retainer fee plus bill insurance. Sounds like this guy is going the cash only route. I'm sure he'll end up making more money that way, regardless.

The average GP in NYC probably makes about 120,000 - 150,000. But they have to carry a 5,000-10,000 patient load while each patient gets 15 minute appointments. Some docs routinely see over 20 patients a day. This guy is charging a $500 retainer for two visits a year. That means that if he has 300 patients, he's making what a regular GP makes at an HMO. If each patient has two visits a year, that means that he can have 2 appointments a day and make the same amount as an HMO doc. That's his break even point. Anything over that, and it's gravy. I'm willing to bet that he has a 500 patient load. So, he's bringing in $250,000 net plus extra visits and appointments. So, by going cash only, he's probably making twice what an insurance doc would make.

This guy also does house calls only. So, he doesn't have the overhead that he'd normally have with an office--staff, office rent, equipment, etc... He doesn't have to hire billing specialists. He outsources all of his X-Ray and lab work, so no overhead there. And, he has an unofficial network of non-jerk specialists that he can refer people to that he likes working with.

I'm surprised that this hasn't caught on more than it has.

If you're his patient, look at his appointment schedule. He's giving people a half-hour to one hour time slots. And, he does a lot of his consultations over the wire, via IM, video chat and cell phone. He probably doesn't have to see his patients most of the time, and it's a lot easier for his patients to get in touch with him. His patients are happier and he has a much better quality of life.

Brilliant.
> hell, people often don't even care who the top filmmaker in New York is, and quite a lot of films get made out of New York.

Picking nits, I would say that Woody Allen has a claim at that title, and is not exactly a lightweight in the film industry.
It reminds me Fromm's Escape from Freedom.
I thought so too, but apparently not so much:

"As his star waned and box office numbers dwindled, U.S. studios began to demand more control over casting and other major decisions."

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/FilmFest/article/256029
looks great, guys. i would bet that your chances are very good.
Do you think he's getting any kickbacks from his referrals to the specialists?
I wonder what would happen if you got a bunch of new, young, hip doctors and started the exact same kind of thing in San Francisco. You could have a really sweet centralized appointment and advice site with always-accessible doctors ready to chat 24/7, which is covered by the patient retainer fees and/or insurance.

Healthcare 2.0?

(PS anyone interested in seriously seeing if this is feasible?)
Of course. That's how the game is played.
Hey, this is almost a year old news.. and it was just the search where they deprecated soap. (-- because it was primarily accessed from a browser?)
Sure - I agree. But as far as I see it's harder to get 'branding advertising deals', than results based advertising.
Ah yes, thanks for that (too tired to properly negate)
Who is doing your icons - are they on the team? (Very nice work) Have you already had funding or are you guys bootstrapping?
ThinkGeek's Clip-on 8-Bit Tie: An April Fool's Joke Becomes a Real Product