skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Call them and ask for references. Please be sure to come back and tell us what you found out :)

I don't know anyone that has used them, but I do read Wil's blog often.
If you're looking for 100/100, plug in ZIP code 10001 (no address -- puts you around the corner from Madison Square Garden).

83210, in rural Idaho, gets a donut.
I would like to see this expanded with a Streetwalkers category, worth up to 6.9 points. They are a natural fit for hackers, with similar hours.
Andrew Chen: Do you ever say, "MySpace is sooo ugly?" This blog's for you...
myspace is gorgeous.
I doubt it. go big network is 90% bullshit.

However, in Silicon Valley, there are a number of guys who are well connected in the venture community and can help you find funding. We had such a guy help us out for a year and I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have found our great funding deal without his help.
Not sure if it's the one albertcardona was referring to; but this sounds like Thomas Ray's Tierra simulator. Details at http://www.nis.atr.jp/~ray/pubs/tierra/tierrahtml.html

From his abstract: "Digital organisms have been synthesized based on a computer metaphor of organic life in which CPU time is the 'energy' resource and memory is the 'material' resource. Memory is organized into informational 'genetic' patterns that exploit CPU time for self-replication. Mutation generates new forms, and evolution proceeds by natural selection as different 'genotypes' compete for CPU time and memory space. In addition, new genotypes appear which exploit other 'creatures' for informational or energetic resources."
Here's a story that illustrates how I'd like this to work, at least with regard to the encoding and the searching:

Alice tells Trent of a list of identities that she'd like to meet in real life, one of them is Bob, whom she's seen online, but never in real life. Trent agrees to send her a notification when one of them is nearby. At that point, they can chat online and mutually decide if they'd like to meet up or not.

Trent runs the public location database. He's a well-meaning do-no-harm kind of corporation, but deep down, neither Alice nor Bob nor anyone else in their right mind really trust him with all their location data. Even a company that is never evil could have its share of bad seeds and pitfalls, like a lurking serial-killer on the payroll or a secret court order.

Periodically, Alice encodes her location and uploads it to Trent. Bob also has an account with Trent and does the same. Both happen to be in midtown Manhattan this afternoon...

How can Trent tell Alice that Bob's within two city blocks (and vice-versa), knowing as little as possible of their whereabouts, if possible not much other than "Planet Earth", and couldn't tell you even if they had to.
i used that before, my job is 93 and where i am going to move is 97.

p.s. its west palm beach (downtown)
What's missing in reddit/digg:  a way to see which side won an argument in discussions
Although you can vote up/down individual comments, there's no easy way to see which side of an argument won overall.

Any ideas on how this could be done?
Why is MySpace popular? Why is trashy tv popular? Why is McDonald's popular?

Wait wait wait wait...

You mean geeks really don't get what most of average folks want but are snobby shits about it? Wow! Here in the valley that's called echochambering.
Xobni HQ: Walkscore 98/100, 211 Sutter St, SF, CA
A Semi-Pop Non Mathematical Tutorial on Hilbert Space in Quantum Mechanics
Ian Stewart: Does it really matter if there are some things that science will never solve?
Well... lucky you, SValley residents. :-) We're based in Austin, TX and so far has not developed any connections with valley people.
"The simple and the complex", interview with Murray Gell-Mann (Nobel laureate)
You can't identify Black Swans; you can just assume that a lot of assets are priced as if they don't exist. So you could do what he was doing as of a year or two ago, and bet that oil will go to $10. Or $400. These are cheap bets, and he doesn't expect them to pay off -- but if he also bets that housing will double again or drop 20%, and that treasuries will yield 1% or 20%, and that a third party candidate will be elected to the US presidency, and that the US will experience net emmigration within ten years, and that global temperatures will decline over the next fifty... make enough of these very, very cheap bets, and you wind up with positive exposure to all the future events you didn't think of.
Interesting Tidbit
My wife has been doing PPP (pay pr poost) for the last couple of months or so. Last week, Google downgraded the pagerank of any blog with the text for PPP (hence the misspelling)

Now she is getting sales pitches for people willing to simply pay for specific sentences. Is this the new front on the search engine war? Is there any way to search for or discount people willing to take money simply for including certain sentences in their blogs?
"The domain squatter serves no beneficial function at all to society, so nothing is lost by banning that behavior except a sliver of economic freedom."

I like how you glide right past the argument I made. You note that you disagree, and then note that you disagree, but I see no refutation, so I'll illustrate it again: toilet-seat.com gets registered by a loving toilet-seat fanatic. He posts pictures of all the awesome toilet seats he's seen, and writes a fantastically detailed blog about the aesthetics of toilet seats. He is in the 99th percentile for Adsense users, earning upwards of $10 a month.

He realizes, however, that Global Toilet Seats, Inc, a massive conglomerate, could earn $500,000 a year more from their Internet operations, just by buying his URL. They offer him $5 million to give up his hobby site. He'd rather have $5 million than the URL. They'd rather have the URL than the $5 million.

You'd rather both sides walk away sad, because you can't see the value in reselling a domain to whoever can use it best, given that this sometimes benefits whoever thought of a good domain name first.

"You're entitled to your principles, but don't expect everyone else to share them."

I don't! That's why I argue them with examples, rather than. Um. Flatly stating that I'm right. I know of plenty of economic libertarians who do just say "Not allowing people to sell domain names they own violates freedom of contract," as if that settles it. But the people they're arguing with largely disbelieve in freedom of contract, so it's a wash.

Duelnode, we need you: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/10/duelnod...
It's time consuming if you prefer it to be something more than gibberish.
Easy. The losers are usually the ones who participate.
I downloaded this a long time ago. I lost interest in lisp, but I keep it around at work and home because it makes a damn fine calculator, especially when you have a multi-step problem. You can just type it in in the order that you would say it out loud, whereas on a normal calculator (like calc.exe) you have to rearrange it to suit standard order of operations.
Or on Ubuntu:

apt-get install slime sbcl emacs cl-asdf

:-)
"Winning an argument is like winning at the Special Olympics. Sure you won, but you're still retarded."
Better Copying: A Proposal to OS Makers
There's no way a field of study should be telling you what to do with your study. Computer science has always been about application-level creativity, its about studying the methods by which computers can be made to do useful things. Coming up with these useful things is your job.
jealousy.
"marry"

how quaint
So how come we have people studying art, music, and writing in university?

And note that such studies do not normally involve learning about the chemicals used in the paint, the electronics used in sound equipment, or the software architecture of the word processor.

At the very least, students should be taught how to be social scientists so that they could figure what sorts of apps are likely to succeed in a particular environment.
Step 1. Cut a hole in your tarball
Those ConnectU people are worthless jokers and they have no idea.
I believe what you're referring to then is the need for an increase in informatics programs (like at my school www.informatics.indiana.edu). However, I should stipulate that this is use of a computer to do tasks related to information, not computer science per se.
"I'd say blogging helps you be concetrated on what you are working on."

This makes no sense to me.

Working on what you're working on helps you concentrate on what you're working on.
I'm utterly unconvinced that formal studies in art and writing produce great artists. While I imagine it gives a lot of interested people, some of whom with great talent, an opportunity to explore their skills, the research and accumulated bodies of knowledge are mostly a cataloging of the works of talented people and not a how-to guide.

Formal studies in computer science teach the accumulated knowledge of building systems with algorithms. Its like learning the language, the grammar and vocabulary, a great writer needs. You're right, it is like learning about the chemicals in the paint, or more importantly the properties of your paint, your canvases and the brushes and techniques other artists have used. My point is that that is the useful knowledge.

Don't confuse universities offering a socially acceptable outlet for aspiring artists as a model for study and learning. You can probably build a great application without being a great computer scientist, but why would computer science want to be one of these sham fields of study when their are real tools and knowledge to be discovered.
You don't need to call it computer science. However, as far as I know, such undergraduate degrees don't exist.
I studied music. I took a 1-credit course in composition, and sang in the choir. The rest was studying history, theory, and technique.
move? or fly and visit? There is no lack of networking events in SV.
The point of an online discussion is not to win or lose, it's to learn and hopefully educate others.
Online discussions can go on forever.

But if you keep score, one side might consider giving up if it is obvious that it is losing.
So you think the work done at the MIT Media Lab is completely useless?

http://www.media.mit.edu/

See for example:

http://smg.media.mit.edu/
Great image search:  add tags or click on images
Awesome. Very impressive, great concept, and glad to see more people using django (i use it for almost every site).
if the posts are related to the things you are working on, then writing about them, during a break, it could help you not get distracted in case you did something else totally irrelevant.
The media lab has very high standards for the computer science (or other field) knowledge of its students, and they produce great computer science research. Yes they orient their (entirely graduate) program around creativity - but at its core they expect real research in fields like computer science or psychology.

Your criticism of computer science, that they should eschew algorithms and theory in favour of applications, is entirely at odds with the media lab.

I don't understand why you want academia to steal your thunder so to speak, and take on the job of creating applications.
cutting hair...seems hobbie more than time saver.. it takes 10-15 minutes if we go on odd time..so, i don't think it is time saver..
What if the side that's losing is right?
OK. I guess that logic works.
Nothing wrong with understanding computer architecture/algorithms/os/etc before you exercise your application-level creativity.

Anyone learning a sport has to master basic things before they go on to the advanced (eg in volleyball, you learn how to bump/set/spike before you learn how to run offensive plays). I think the same applies to CS.
i guess how much time is spend depends on the nature of the blogging someone is doing and if there are any good thoughts to communicate. When someone has an audience I'm sure then don't feel it's a waste of time.
No uploading, big surprise!
If you dong mind me asking, how did you meet this guy? Were his referrals done at a cost or for free?
From the name I assumed I would get more points for being creative with my flying.

Here's my idea: Sky write with their trails and get uber bonuses for making certain shapes.

Make a star out of smoke, it flashes solid and you get invulnerability for a few moments. That kind of thing.

-Ian
As I'm sure you've noticed, Austin investors are too conservative anyway :(. VC money is still dried up post-bubble except for Austin Ventures and supposedly they are starting to move away from higher risk investments too.

You might try to meet some angels through the Central Texas Angel network events around Austin. CTAN probably wont look at you unless you have solid revenue (conservative bunch), but you might be able to convince an angel to seed fund you privately.
An ounce of loyalty is better than a pound of cleverness
I used to be in academia and perhaps I would have stayed if it were more creative at the application level.
I've been using TrueCrypt and I'm very happy with it. It's probably less secure than the PGP's solution, but my main concern is not really hackers, but some thief stealing my notebook and getting access to my scanned documents, Quicken files and so on.
An asymmetric attack you may wish to consider is to talk to the larger law firms who represent VC/PE firms. Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. on Congress (downtown Austin) is very well connected and could point you in the right direction. Alternatively, go to a http://www.bootstrapaustin.org/ event and see what other entrepreneurs suggest.

Austin is an amazing city.
They did not make their case well or perhaps the forum is not an appropriate one. They can try again in another debate.
Another solution is to use a TrueCrypt hidden volume:

http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume.php
Come on, everyone's had this idea.
The middleman approach to funding doesn't appear to work too well--none of the successful companies I know went that route, but many of the trainwrecks did. It's probably not impossible, though.

You would do well to remember that investors need you much more than you need them. If you've got a good idea, market, and team, raising money won't be your problem. Lawyers, professors, other companies, even networking events--it's a very solvable problem.
I think of karma as the "game" part of sites like this. The winner would be the one with high karma. It's just not very satisfying to win.
Last time I did this there was a place on Boylston street in Boston with a score of 100.
I tried a bunch of searches and only the first 2 worked. Then I realized there's no search only form. It's constantly adding tags.

Annoying for now.
Yes it is quite the dilemma. I know one or two people who are self taught and great coders. However, the majority of people I have worked with that are primarily self taught aren't good.

I guess the key to competing against diplomas is making separating from the herd - perhaps with pet projects, a blog showing your expertise, etc.
Or alternatively, going the startup route!
This comment is no more funny or insightful than it was 5 years ago. Worse, it discourages positive contributions as well as negative.
The key to competing with anybody is to show recent experience. I don't care what kinds of certificates you have -- what have you done lately?

It doesn't matter what you did last year. Programming (and startups) are all about what you can do this year.
Woow. Yet another local resource I had no clue about. Thanks a lot.
Try to meet potential funders in person. Or try to meet people that will recommend you to a funder. That is the way (I'm told) that the vast majority of deals happen. It's all about networking, which is best accomplished in person.
"But the rest of the world is not like us, and that's the problem."

That's why analysis is still more important than development. Doesn't matter how slick it is, it HAS to be something people want. If you don't know what that is, ask.

I could cite many examples of great products that we loved and nobody bought, but I forgot them already. (That's the whole point.)
Network benchmarks between EC2 nodes and from EC2 to S3
"That's why analysis is still more important than development"

Absolutely. In the last ten years, this is the thing missed the most.
Official: Facebook Flips On Beacon
You mean just as speculating in the mortgage securities market has led to economic prosperity? Oh wait...
That erroneously assumes that it is possible to win an argument on the internet.
Personally, I think most online discussions are bankrupt. It's time to scrap the whole approach and start fresh. It's not close to how we share knowledge in the real world and simply stating and reading opinions is nothing more than good entertainment.
Wrong.

Plus: You just participated.
Maybe you should do this in a meta-site like Disqus, that'd be interesting. I could see why a site like Reddit/Digg wouldn't want to add a feature like this, it would probably encourage the wrong sort of behavior.

But human nature is human nature, there's always going to be a market for a pissing contest, why not capture it? :D
Warning signs of a U.S. recession (video)
Interesting, I'd normally pass this over, but I've been researching Hilbert curves for a solution to this hard problem in geospatial privacy I've been trying to work out (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84525). Maybe there's something to apply from quantum physics?
First Justin.TV tech talk, archived
Agree with ivan here. We received our first VC introduction from a cold e-mail we gave to another entrepreneur. She's been instrumental in our development and is a great person to have on board.
@oditogre:

That is truly one of the dumbest things I've ever read. Thanks for exploding my brain.
NYTimes: Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking
Positive contributions usually don't spark arguments. Even if they're controversial or unpopular, they tend to spark discussion instead.
Thankies! For some reason I just get a kick outta these guys. Love em.
My area of Columbus is only 62/100, north of campus.
From the other side of the fence: http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/how-to-get-clients-to-com...
Google in your Brain?  PageRank is a Decent Model of Semantic Memory
"Shedding" Web Requests for Performance
Sure, it was all well and good for Genghis Khan, but when we discuss the modern employer/employee, the loyalty expected is a bit one-sided. The employee is supposed to work as much overtime as the company wants, yet the company can fire/lay off the employee with nary a warning. Where's the loyalty in that?
wohoo! 98/100 - University and 9th st. in NYC.
Amazon launches info sharing Web site Askville.com
Bonus Gladwell of relevance, if anyone's interested:

An article about Stanley Kaplan, the original teacher of the "unteachable" SAT. Thesis: "ability cannot be separated from effort."

Examined Life:
http://www.malcolmgladwell.com/2001/2001_12_17_a_kaplan.htm

And then, on raising kids in general... well, maybe you, the parent, are a lot less important than you think:

Do Parents Matter?
http://www.malcolmgladwell.com/1998/1998_08_17_a_harris.htm
Such a a function is possible, if the "proximity" is fixed. Try xsin(10x).
Advertisers spend $1 billion on word-of-mouth marketing
You can't always judge an eBook by its cover: a review of the Amazon Kindle
Interesting Behavior of OS X: Does Leopard Have Basic win32 Loading Capabilities?
U of W programming contest (Scheme,C,C++,etc. supported)
That was incredibly dumb. How would eBay be rewarding investors by ditching a lucrative, growing segment of its business? The synergy between the two is incredible (as is the lack of synergy between eBay and Skype) so as a shareholder, that would be the last thing I'd want.

Also Amazon's business must be pretty defensible, because competitors like buy.com and overstock seem to be getting nowhere. Reputation is worth a lot for an online retailer.
Yes. Yes. I love you. Yes.

This is actually a large part of the tech talk I plan on giving on justin.tv. It's a symptom of a much bigger problem in the valley.
Arrests made in botnet crackdown
Perhaps comments could be tagged and any +1 or -1 to a comment would trickle down to all of those tags? Would people take the time to tag comments?

You'd need a way to boil down the answer choices in order to declare a clear cut winner. By boiling it down, you take the personality and shades out gray out of the comment you'd be voting on and therefore much of the value.

Also, if the winning side is a "pro life" tag and you are pro choice, you are unlikely to see much value or be swayed by the vote. I would see such a vote as dumbed down and dig into the comments for the 'real' content.
It's a hassle. Every string displayed in your site (aside from the user created stuff) now becomes a bundle of strings, one for each language. Also, how are you going to organize the different versions of your site? Will you just use the same URL for each page and just have some global user language preference that makes each page render accordingly? Now the smallest change in the text of your site will now require consulting with your translators, which in practice means that you no longer do small changes. You accumulate lots of changes and send them off to your translators in one chunk, then update them when all the translations get back to you. Slowing down the iteration cycle can be fatal to a startup.

To avoid this, you can instead maintain a different site for each language and bring your non-English (well, non-whatever you're comfortable with) sites up to date with the English as you do translations. Now you have forked your code.

Hassle.
Andrew chen I agree, teen market is quite difficult to tap
I can give you many examples of people not knowing what they want.

Better to measure than to ask. Critical difference.
A Competition Site I've Been Working On, What Do You Think?
This is a site I've been working on with a friend. It's still needs a lot of work. However, we are at the point where it would be more productive to see how people interact with the site, instead of persisting in isolated development. News Ycomb has a very constructive audience. Tell me what you think. Thanks.
I'm kind of glad that myspace is so ridiculously ugly. Design best practice snobs need an abrupt wakeup.
Foobity still needs a lot of work. But it's at the point where we think it would be more beneficial not to work in isolation. This community is always very constructive, so please tell me what you think. Thanks.
I'm looking forward to being able to do a programming contest in scheme :) The problem looks fairly simple to code up a really basic solution. I wonder if its possible to send in multiple solutions....
look I just walked over the equator line painted on the ground!

yeah, I thought this would have more significance.
The best text I've read so far on that topic is the one from chalmers: http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html

He made a strong argumentation for the difference between experiencing something and having a experiencing state.

After that he also gets somewhat speculative, but at least reading the first 2 points is worth it.
In the context of starting a company, this is pretty wise advice.

Do you hire people who are brilliant but ethically questionable (and might stab you in the back one day for an advantage), or do you hire people who are merely great ... but will stay and struggle with you when the inevitable hard times come?
This is awesome. This is the first thing someone put into the Foobity feedback form:

"Yellow white and blue

Foobitiy now what to do

I am hacker new"

Hacker Poems for the win.
I find that with Rails especially you end up working with multiple files at once, in addition to wanting to have a rails console, and a browser visible at all times.

I actually find myself in want of a third screen fairly often.
How science-fiction writers weave tales from GIGO models
It can't be done. The truth doesn't become falsehood just because it gets voted down.