skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know about the BOLD delay being "atrocious". We get good temporal resolution and it's getting better and better (hundreds of milliseconds for some paradigms). I agree though - the biofeedback stuff is very exciting.

As for below the first few centimeters, that's where the control network is in mid-brain structures. That's kind of important, and if EROS can't penetrate deeper and with precision it's not likely to be widely adopted.
How Many Founders are You for Y Combinator's Winter 2008 Applications?
PG and many others have insisted that it is not recommended that a team should be comprised of only one founder.

how many co-founders are you?
our team is comprised of 2 and our combined age at this time is 53 years old.
New study yields instructive results on how mindset affects learning
The default in the browser was gray. White looked wrong when browsers started to have that default, because the 0000ff blue links were too bright against it. Since then a lot of sites have grayed down their link color to compensate.
I think the biggest gaping hole in contribution to the world is the absence of leadership. It could very well take 10s of thousands of scientists another hundred years to solve our energy problems, but it only takes one person to stand up and convince us all to drive better cars, turn down our air conditioners, and purchase eco-positive products. Then we'd have 300million people working on the problem, making a difference now. And it would be a BIG difference.

During WWII the president asked the people to make sacrifices in order to win a war against some fairly bad people. If the president today asked people to stop eating meat for a day, the cattle lobby would have a cow (pun intended). They'd start tossing around money and it would be over. That's not leadership, that's middle management at best.

Maybe its too difficult (or impossible) to be a good leader these days, which may explain why most smart people really don't want the job. How can a leader spend 5 minutes on TV and tell everyone to eat better and even hope to compete with an evening full of fast food commercials. I don't think those are bad people, either. They're just another group of people, like many of us, trying to find a way to get ahead in this world so they can finally do some good. We're all a little aimless -- we need a leader.

So here's what I think any and all of us could do today:

1. Start making the sacrifices of a leader and getting people behind you to move the world in a positive direction.

-- or --

Accept that you aren't the person for the job (even for now) and rally your big throbbing brain behind someone who can and will lead.

2. Start working on your todo list.
Festivals: how web stuff can be
It's a practical (especially for small to medium sized data sets), effective way of doing machine learning that has a highly sound theory behind it and doesn't require arcane tricks that are rarely or never written down, unlike old-style artificial neural networks.

The interest in kernel methods is proof that there's nothing more practical than a good theory. :)
Spaghetti all'Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino:

1) Make spaghetti (don't overcook them like lots of americans do)

2) You can use the same pot you cooked them in, once you've dumped them out (less stuff to wash): put some olive oil in it - not much, maybe enough to cover the bottom, but just barely. Be sure to use extra vergine - life's too short for anything else.

3) Crush a clove of garlic with a garlic crusher, or cut it up finely, add in some red pepper (not too much though - it should be spicy, not hot).

4) Mix the spaghetti into the whole thing, until the garlic and peperonci and oil are evenly distributed.

Serve hot, and grate some Parmesan cheese on top. If your startup is successful, buy some real Reggiano Parmeggiano - otherwise, it's going to be too expensive, most likely.

Very quick, simple, and filling, and it tastes pretty good. It's a real recipe from Italy.
My mortgage is a fixed contract, while my salary is fluid.
GOOG trying to get into the CPM market: Gadget Ads
Here is an example:

http://www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads/success/sixflags.htm...
Tuna Ramen

Just make the ramen and add a can of tuna. You can also add a mix of frozen vegetables. (peas, carrots, etc.)
YComb have a couple of very good questions in their application: "What is the problem you are trying to solve?" and "What do your users have to do now?"

With these guys I am not sure how to answer those two, especially the 1st one. "Share! Access Everywhere!" on a company's front page used to be cool... like 5 years ago.

Sharing and accessing from everywhere IS NOT a problem anymore.
Great Side Dish:
Spicy asparagus

1 Pack Asparagus
Crushed Cayenne Pepper
Salt
Pepper
EVOO

1) Throw some olive oil on the asparagus
2) Add salt,pepper,and pepper
3) Throw in a frying pan preheated on medium heat
4) Cook until the cayenne starts burning your throat (you'll know what I mean)

I was working on a blog (graduatedTaste.com) for a while until I became swept up in a project. I also found a site that does the same thing (cheapeats.com)

Along these lines, you also have cookingforengineers.com
The Exponential Power of "Chindia"
Before or after we invade Iran?
> His posts about "harm of exceptions"

So am I officially the only person who agrees with Joel on this?
UX Design as Communities of Practice (Slides + Audio)
3 founders; 60 years old.

Interesting fact: 1 founder already has a bachelors in computer science(he's only 20).
You're right, that's what I'm talking about. A dollar fall would hurt my purchasing power on imports and when I travel, but that is short term. My original point about PPP is that these exchanges adjust to match levels of wealth. There is little reason two countries with similar wealth should have different purchasing power on imports because of their currency.

I don't know enough about inflation vs. currency fluctuations on comment on the differences.
It makes perfect sense if you think about it. Being charged for sending text messages is ridiculous. Look at the iPhone plan, it costs $20 more a month just to have unlimited text messages. Its just TEXT (and only 140 bytes per message maximum).

I dont think users will tolerate that kind of rape much longer when they can send emails (of basically unlimited length) for free. SMS either needs to die or the carriers need to be realistic with how much they charge for what is essentially 15+ yr old technology.
Take a look at the Frugal Cuisine Blog: http://frugalcuisine.blogspot.com/

Here's a quote from its author:

Frugal Cuisine began when I was out of work briefly, earlier this year. The basic background strategy is to buy just what I need of the best values in my local grocery stores and markets. I often find creative ways to prepare them on recipe websites and food blogs. Though no longer out of work, I continue to cook frugally since the budget makes me focus on getting healthy things, using what I have on hand, and minimizing waste.
Ugh... I want to downvote this just for putting that Huey Lewis song in my head
Stir fry meat:
Cut and Marinade meat (chicken, beef, pork) in soy sauce, corn starch, pepper for about 10 minutes.
Add meat into a hot (8-9) wok, and start stirring. Add onions, pepper, mushrooms or any other supporting vegetable for enhanced flavor. Continue stirring over a 8-9 flame for about 10 minutes. Turn everything off, and dump your concoction over rice.

Grilled Chicken: Add spice to both sides of a chicken breast. Different spices I've used are Old Bay, salt & pepper, soy sauce, Spike. Put the meat into a Foreman grill, and cook for about 7 minutes, depending on the thickness of the chicken breast. Serve with noodles or rice.

Stir fry vegetables: Clean and Chop said vegetable. This works for napa, spinach, celery, string beans, zucchini, snap peas, etc. Cook on 6-7 flame. Add salt, oil, chopped garlic, dried shrimp to the wok. Add vegetables. Stir occasionally, and add a bit of water in the beginning to make sure the vegetables do not burn.

If you have two woks, or one wok and one grill, you can cook the meat and vegetables at the same time, and be done and eating in about 20 minutes.
Lived across the hall in college.
Thank you, whacked_new. Haven't stopped thinking about this all day.
> Determining the dark energy (70%) / dark matter (25%) / regular matter (5%) breakdown of the universe to a few percent.

Translation: We've figured out in even more detail how we have no idea wtf is going on in the universe
Older than 15 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm#History
Celery and pepper sauce taste quite a bit like chicken wings. I'm guessing that a good mix of meat stock and MSG would make them indistinguishable. Marketed correctly to the weight-conscious...
this is going to be really really handy for my app
2. Combined age: 51.
i just have my mom cook
My Public Expertise Rankings Facebook App (looking for initial users & feedback)
Keep track of your public expertise rankings as determined from your friends' endorsements. Endorse your friends to contribute to their public expertise rankings.

Note that these rankings are global and you may end up being on them without ever using the app.
this sounds pretty tasty! thanks for the recipe.
I don't use downvotes to mean "I disagree." If I disagree and am too lazy to say why, I don't give a downvote.

Downvotes mean: "I find this especially uninteresting"
After we're beaten up and attacked with Tasers at the door of Best Buy for failing to show our papers but not before we've seen the best picture of a tree we've seen all day.
Nobody is qualified to judge algorithm novelty. There is just too much public information. It's as if there were a machine shop in every home, and millions blogged daily about their mechanical inventions.
Despite all the questionable spaghetti we've all whipped up in college, well made spaghetti and meatballs is a true dish.

If any of you Silicon Valley guys have time, try a little joint called Emmy's Spaghetti Shack in SF Mission. It's on Virginia Ave. Eat there all the time, Spaghetti and Meatballs is killer.

http://sanfrancisco.citysearch.com/profile/11572574/
"We are required" by what? Mandatory notices in workplaces cite statute. Mandatory spam emails ought to do the same (statute, or TrustE requriements, or whatever it is).
Awesome! There is nothing like mom's cooking. I just wish I had my mom around :(
Depends. Does it serve alcohol?
Yeah, had girlfriend cook before... but that will never be "for free".

Before that, mom. Now, pre-cooked chicken from the microwave. And beer. Too much beer.
You stated that before Heraclitus 'Greeks thought reality was essentially chaotic and impossible to understand.' Thales is a counter-example who is earlier than Heraclitus. See the IEP http://www.iep.utm.edu/g/greekphi.htm or Edward Hussey's excellent book.
It was better than the early web trend to have awful tiled background images and unreadable text colors over it.

But now, thanks to the power of myspace, the trend is back and you can see what surfing "homepages" was like in 1996.
How long do you expect all of this will take? Will we see full SVG support in one year, two years, ten years?
i'd like to hear your stance on the ip system.
hit me up at seiji.t@gmail.com
Emmy's is awesome. If you have more time/money, you should check out their other spot, The Front Porch, which is nearby.

The cornbread is awesome.
Maybe, second to the phone (less spam)
I just watched the whole thing on youtube. He's amazing. A great speaker, a great teacher, and I've heard nothing but good things about him as a person. The moment near the end where he brings out a cake for his wife is incredible.

We have a lot in common... same advisor, similar dreams. He's just older and a whole lot smarter. It just brought his whole message home for me. Brick walls are there to make you want it.
I think that's very noble of you, but I have to ask why you're willing to do graphic ads instead of just text ones?

If you're starting a new site, graphic ads can be very jarring to new users, especially if they're just trying to figure out what your site is all about. On the other hand, textual ads can be very subtle, but still useful to any startup - if anything, just to help them out in terms of Page Rank.
> things that haven't borne their fruit quite yet.

Well, what about web 3.0?
tried to read this all day but it's been down...google cache version:

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:http://www.post-gazette....
We will be rolling out more invites soon. You can sign up to be notified on our homepage www.xobni.com
Update: I just received a very generous offer from Adpinion (a YC company). If your ad is selected then, in addition to the 2-to-3 week period your ad will show on my web site, you'll also get a $40 worth of free advertising on Adpinion's network at large. I think this is a great opportunity to get publicity for free. Don't delay.
That book was OK, but the later parts (where he talks about CAPM and so forth) are uninformative to anyone who knows about modern mathematical finance.

If you're looking for pop-math/finance books that could change how you look at the world, I'd recomment Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness" instead. Taleb is smug, but he makes an important point: people are way too eager to see patterns where none exist.
Doing Business Online. BusinessWeek Special Report.
All you need to know is right here:

NY Times 101 Simple Meals ready in 10 minutes or Less

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18mini.html?_r=1...
Six Apart: We Are Opening the Social Graph
I don't know about noble! I just have this big empty space on the right side, and the layout looks unbalanced if I don't fill it. I do use text ads on internal pages, but I prefer images on the home page because they go well with the design. I don't believe it'll have a negative impact on the user experience, otherwise, I wouldn't have done it.
"The Wall" by Jean-Paul Sartre deals with these issues. I read it in some BS French Lit class, but "The Wall" was one that stuck with me. I'd recommend reading it (no long at all) as it gives a good depiction of what it's like facing death secularly.
read the article - there is a code within. as of a minute ago, it's still usable.
Going Mobile: How to Choose Target Platforms and Devices?
Agreed. SPAM, phisihing scams, 419 etc is the Achilles heel of email. I often watch/ask how my 12 and 9 year old cousins use Internet... neither of them use or like email. They all use either IM or msg through sites.

Email will never go away but its use will be reduced as the new generation grows up.
yeah, this raises another issue - whether algorithms should be patented in the first place.
No way. Didn't someone figure out cold fusion in his kitchen sink? ;)
2 founders, combined age 55 years old.
rock & roll stew

(makes enough for 10-12, you scale it down)

10 packs ramen
2 cans peas
2 cans corn
1/2 small bottle hot sauce

heat, mix, eat. rock & roll.
she wanted 10% equity to stick around. i talked her down to 5 though.
i think for the case of ruby, being invented by a jap influenced its adoption
If I were running a financial-based startup, I'd be worried too. Large companies like Ameritrade have security departments that are more than 3-4x the size of some startups. It makes you really wonder if consumers will be taken aback by the whole thing.
What's OpenOffice's Niche?
Last week the newest version of OpenOffice was announced, and the new release revived the discussion whether or not OpenOffice is better than Microsoft Office. Although I don't particularly like Microsoft and normally don't care about office suites, this latest release did get me thinking.
My god just apply! Your time is better spent working on your startup rather than cracking the PG code.

The last few days have been filled with posts like, "does PG prefer blonde or brunette founders?"
You get either food or success. Forget about food.
This is categorically false. I am working on three projects that will each do a lot of good with teams of engineering students. Like all students, none of us know a damn things about the real world.

One is an effective, inexpensive system to stop the spread of waste borne disease in the developing world. Another is a means that makes distributing complicated AIDS medications to illiterate populations practical. The last is an inexpensive system that can be deployed on the most primitive electrical grid that will curb the theft of electricity (which runs at 12% of all electricity sold in Algeria for example).

When distributed over our small teams, all of these projects combined require less work than a single engineering course.

Software is powerful. Engineers are powerful.
I have a history in publications, and the thing that annoys me most about web standards is that a lot of stuff that Quark and InDesign have made absolutely mundane in print isn't even on the horizon for CSS.

Little touches like easy rounded corners, smart text wraps, and detailed text formatting are what make a site. In desktop publishing, that stuff has been easy enough for a kid to do for almost a decade.
For running text itself -- as opposed to posters and advertisements -- try The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780881792065-1). It goes well with Tufte's books.
PB & J is ultimate
+1 except use Mac & Cheese instead of Ramen
Has anyone made an ad-trading site for small web sites? It doesn't even need to be direct swaps: you could make a little marketplace sort of thing (without real money).
I was going to mention Dune. That series taught me an important lesson: the techniques of mind, and the mind-body interface, are a technology - and we are still in the dark ages. We do not know how to learn, how to teach, how to make best use of our brains to analyze or synthesize. We are generally blind to our own minds and bodies and running nine tenths of the time on autopilot. When individuals get these skills, it's by aptitude or discovery. We haven't systematized them, we haven't made a science of them, we certainly don't teach them in school. There's a lot of room for improvement.
I know I was. I had a unique e-mail for Datek, which got bought by TD Waterhouse then Ameritrade. Started getting the same spam in both my unique e-mail and my very private (at that time) personal e-mail that was a backup contact. Ameritrade refused to believe they were the problem despite the obvious signs.

Back in July 2006, I posted an entry on my blog (http://www.billkatz.com/node/77) and the comments showed a lot of people having the same problem. The most troubling aspect was their constant denial of the problem and the length of time it took to find the cause. Ameritrade said this in e-mails to their customers over a year ago:

"We thoroughly reviewed our systems and data sent
to third parties with access to e-mail addresses and found no misuse or compromises of any of our systems or storage
mediums for e-mail addresses. Additionally, after further
review of our systems, there is no indication that your account information held with Ameritrade has been compromised. Please be assured that we regularly contract leading edge security firms to conduct network and application penetration tests to test the security of our network and web presence. We also employ a staff of full time employees solely dedicated to Information Security."
I'm going to provide a voice of discontent here ...

Although I agree with the author, for the most part, there's a flip side as well. There exists GOOD enterprise software. Difference between good enterprise software and open source software is enterprise software HAS to work. For open source software, it's "cool if it works."

Of course, I'm horribly overgeneralizing open source software (kind of the like the author does with enterprise software), but hear me out. A valid analogy would be enterprise software is an adult, as it does things out of necessity, and doesn't care about looks, code elegancy, fancy algorithms, etc... And open source software is the cool kid on the block, who doesn't really need to do anything, but does it for the coolness factor.

Sometimes with pretty bad results. For example - back in 2004, we here at large Dilbertian financial company that I'm working nights to escape have tried using Groovy. It worked pretty well, and we were happy.. until we went to production. It was then we discovered that Groovy had a memory leak, and our mission-critical application hung every day during crunch time.

Moral of the story? This kind of thing is NOT tolerated among enterprise software (at least where I work)... and that memory leak in Groovy hasn't been fixed in a couple of years, and I don't know if it has been fixed at all, actually... I haven't checked Groovy in a while.
More importantly: will it get you laid?
Ho-hum, yet another straw-man of the Semantic Web.

Misinformation about the Semantic Web seems to propagate faster than understanding these days.
gonna frame that and put it on our empty fridge.
I'm on a ridiculous e-marketing "OMG YOU CAN BE A MILLIONARE TOO" email list and got a message talking about this ad-trading service for blog posts.

http://www.blogrush.com/
Uh... it's nearly as powerful as MS Office at 0% of the price?

Sounds like a pretty good niche to me.
I agree with uuilly, but... 3 and 66
So then, conversely, how about Reddit?
I just added a Try it button, thanks for the suggestion =)
"When the transistor was first introduced in the late 40s there was quite a bit of hype surrounding it, but I wonder if anyone fully appreciated the significance of the development at the time."

Uh. From what I've read, it was on page twenty-something of the NYT, with a blurb about how it might be used in hearing aids.
Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers
Why Hulu is Screwed, Part 1
Caution as gadgets enter the workplace
Amazon launches configurable widgets
Tripedal robot swings itself into action
N.YC is now one step away from becoming another reddit. All we need now is one "bush/cheney is evil" story on the front page and the transformation will be complete.
Does Kenya count - located in SF though and dabbling intermittently with a number of ideas ksjhalla @ g-m-a-i-l if there are any Africa based Silicon Valley meetups or anything .. :)
Maybe, but perhaps your cousins will start using email more as their social circle expands.
Computer model may explain toddlers' chattering
or facebook
> Are there any examples of husband/wife teams in successful startups?

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, Flickr.
Canadian dollar at par with American
Then falls back to parity
Nobody used white as default, but sites that explicitly set their background color used white quite often. Here's a site that I made for my dad's real estate project back in 1997:

http://web.archive.org/web/19980529222609/http://www.cypress...

(The snapshot is from May '98 which is when the Wayback Machine first discovered it, but I built the site earlier than that)

The background color was actually a point of contention. I thought the default gray looked better, but my dad's perception was that most big professional sites seemed to be choosing white, so we went with white as well.
Inflation doesn't mean income goes up (unless your job contract guarantees inflationary increases), it means prices increase.

So while his mortgage may be fixed, the prices of all other things will increase, while (more than likely) his income will stay flat.

It's not a recipe for eliminating debt, so he shouldn't be cheering that scenario.
i can twit you, chat you, email you, or send you my blogroll. it's all just formatted text meant to communicate. and albeit mail and chat being the stickiest apps online, to say that email is somehow better than facebook is a farce. there's no set standard mode of communication.

if someone makes an utility that can auto-scale your message though, that'll be nifty. so if i type less than 140 characters, i want it to show up on my twitter list. if i address it singularly i want it to be sent via email. if i type a long winded essay i expect it to be published somewhere somehow.