skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're absolutely right, though I think we're talking about slightly different things. Continuing with my example, men throw better than women mainly because men throw more than women; men throw faster than women because men are stronger than women. You could say that they are "second-order" and "first-order" biological effects, respectively.
Google founders cut deal to use NASA landing strip for their 767
Google's Guide to Distributed System Design
Read this if you geek on geeking out about socialness.
Well, the current structure of web goes like as follows :-

1. You have some structured data.
2. You convert it to structured data to unstructured data, and render it on the browser in form of xml
3. Then search engines crawl your pages, and work night and day to build heuristics to convert this unstructured peice again to structured data. which is never optimal.

Can't this be completely avoided? Isn;t it quite unintelligent to go through this loop?
Richard Stallman: Don't Follow Linus Torvalds
Startupmatcher: added search co-founders within a chosen radius
I am still having trouble at 27 :(
For Google's Founders, A Coveted Landing Strip
The idea that Global Warming may not be human caused is a radical idea these days, completely non politically correct and disruptive - hence a good candidate for YC news. I don't know anything about the source of this release, but I have read now at least 10+ scientific articles with evidence on the likeliest cause of warming being the Sun, especially given the fact that all the planets in the Solar system are also warming up at the same time (as reported by NASA), and the fact that this pattern has occurred in the past countless times.
from what journals?
Google's Genetic Start-Up
I agree! I have favorite films that I have never seen shown in a movie theather and would pay a large but reasonable amount for the experience.

Who wouldn't?
Just think he shouldn't have used math as an example.
How Linux is being subverted.
Consumer Reports on Licit and Illicit Drugs
Mountain View and Sunnyvale both have a decent number of "reasonable" areas, though that's all a relative term. I moved out here about a year ago and was looking for something with a balance of affordability, comfort, and location (near Stanford). Most of Palo Alto was out of the question because of price, and I never really felt comfortable (safe) in East Palo Alto or the parts of Palo Alto near 101. Going north, Menlo Park and Atherton are even more expensive. Redwood City can be somewhat cheaper but neither the area nor the apartments were in great shape.

So, that leaves Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Both cities are very safe and quiet (maybe too quiet for some). There are a lot of apartments in these two cities which aren't ridiculously expensive. However, most of the apartment complexes are relatively small, so your best bet is to come down here and drive around and see which complexes meet your needs.

I personally moved to Mountain View near Rengstorff Ave. and California St., an area we call "apartment city" because the housing is so dense. It's quiet and residential and there's a lot of shopping within walking distance. I definitely recommend this area, but you should still come down and check it out before signing a lease.

As an aside, I've got some experience with startups in education. I worked for a couple successful startups in higher education, and almost founded a K-12 company in the spring. Drop me an email if you'd like to share war stories -- now, or after you move.
How far can you go after the gas light has come on in your car?
In Tucson, there are multiple theatres (art houses, mostly) that do this. They usually get a good showing. (I remember a midnight showing of beatlejuice that was great fun. In fact, a large group of us sat on the floor before and played duck duck goose...)
I read that in Michael Crichton's "State of Fear". Isn't that as good as any scientific journal?
I think this would be an awesome opportunity to build an ebay killer with the financial and management backing of Amazon.
I can't believe NYT actually used that headline.
Hey man! Thanks a lot. This is all great stuff.

We actually visited a place very near 'apartment city' today. Not bad. I like MV a lot, despite it being quiet. I figure we can also go into the city and, without distractions, work is bound to flow.

I'll stay in touch!
TrustPlus - uses your social network to provide a universal reputation
I second that. It's good to give users content right away, but add something to explain to people why they should dig in. Your About Us section is still a little vague, but it's a good start. Shorten it a little, clarify it, and give it more prominent placement.
This made me chuckle. The thing for them to worry about is that there's not much reason to come back to the site (Zillow has a milder form of the same problem), but maybe they'll figure something out for that.
The Xobni blog had a post a little while ago predicting that Facebook would become a reputation engine. I think it's more reasonable that a person's whole social network, from Facebook and elsewhere, would serve that purpose, but the general idea is the same. And it's a very good one.
No more than the web can make you dumb. The study was about what social news users choose to focus on. That's a choice that all web users make, and on balance, most are probably better informed as a result.

It's also quite possible that social news users get a lot of mainstream news, but just not at reddit or digg.
damn. from the official rules - First prize gets: "one-hour mentoring sessions from an AWS Technical Expert (ARV $500)"

I need to become an AWS Tech Expert.
I hope this isn't milestone fever talking, but I'd put Wikipedia at just about the top of a list of the most important websites ever. It's tough to think of another site whose value is so unique (and so massive).
Di-positronium created from electron + positron; one step closer to "gamma-ray annihilation lasers"
Hey, that is interesting information indeed.
Inspiring. Thank you
For this to be accurate, everyone who is voting has to have driven their car until the gas completely ran out. I'm assuming most of them haven't.

Do I have too much faith in humanity?
Yahoo Launches 2 New Hacks - MapMixer & Shop By Color - Interview with Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo
wow what a giant mess of ignorance and generalizations.
I can write an entire article refuting every point he attempted to make.. there are so many Western "innovators"
in the artistic field who were "inspired" by Eastern "copycats." Then again, their innovative works were partly
influenced by previous artists who were, interestingly enough, Western. Point being, there's no difference in the willingness of one to be innovative, East or West. There are standardized social constraints in any culture but to those with the will to innovate they are irrelevant in making their decision to execute.. results and consequences are a different story. Sorry if this sounded like a rant.. I was just upset by the reality that people with this kind of uneducated views are still abundant. New York City with slanty eyes?? come on
If I were a dictator of a country, I'd take 10% or so of the GDP and mandate the creation of gamma-ray annihilation lasers in 10 years.
Sounds more like they are overvaluing what they are giving away in this contest for tax deduction purposes.
Making svn accessible to non-software fields
we're still brainstorming about our project and currently one of the proposed components is a front-end for users to initialize,manage, and access their own svn servers with click-drag-drop ease to allow anyone needing to collaborate to easily harness the power of svn. Mostly looking to get some feedback from the bright folks who hang out on this forum. Also if anyone's interested in taking part, or just wants to talk about it.. drop me a line at seiji.t at gmail
I didn't have time to read to the end. However, one question: isn't it kind of dangerous to store the data as code? Suppose the log file would be written as a LISP program, wouldn't it open the door for all sorts of nasty code injection hacks? Sure, you can make sure to always escape the text properly, but I prefer the defensive kind of security (only open up the ports you really need) rather than trying to anticipate all possible hacks.

Also, there is something like XPath for Java classes, I think it is called JXPath, but I am not sure. I guess one could also use the query language from Groovy as an alternative.
or, you could estimate it fairly accurately using the following formula:
(fuel tank capacity - gallons needed to fill tank when gas light turns on) * (average miles per gallon)

I have about 4 gallons left when the light turns on. 2 gallons left when the needle dips below the "empty" line. The emptiest my tank has ever been is 0.5 gallons left.
Alexis responds to the PEJ study on social news sites and delicious
I remember watching a TV programme a few years back that contrasted the medieval engineering culture of Western Europe with that of China. I can't for the life of me remember the historian's name, but his theory seemed to have some merit.

His basic argument was that there was a fundamental difference in diets between the two cultures. China was primarily a rice-growing culture, which meant that they needed a large amount of space and irrigation to create paddy fields. Once the rice was grown, it was simple to harvest and the only further treatment it needed to be rendered edible was boiling. All in all, the Chinese culture had quite a low-tech solution to the problem of feeding large amounts of people.

On the other hand, rice was not native to Western Europe and impossible to cultivate there anyway. In order to feed its population, European culture grew grains such as wheat, oats and barley, which were not only far harder to harvest but required grinding / milling and baking into bread before they could be rendered edible. Compared to the Chinese rice-based solution, the Western Europe model required a lot more technology. There was, therefore, a much higher demand for technological, engineered solutions to the problem of providing mass sustenance. In turn, this demand led to the adoption of such advances as horse collars, mills, ploughs, crop rotation and horseshoes. All these things were expensive and often required collective solutions.

The historian's main hypothesis was that the effect of this continual (and necessary) improvement of farming techniques was to engender a culture of engineering in Western Europe. Regardless of where the innovations came from (and they were often cribbed from other cultures, often Middle Eastern) the continual and expensive process of re-engineering farming practices led directly to the development of engineering as a discipline.

I really wish I could remember the guy's name.
in other news, 1000's of professional climatologists have amassed 10's of 1000's of peer-reviewed literature that is consistent with anthropogenic enhanced warming. oh how can i decide who to trust in this crazy world?!! won't someone please just tell me the answer, preferably one that is simple and just plain common sense? i promise i'll believe you if it seems plausible and means i don't have to change the way i view the world...
counter argument - i loathe people that interview me with $hit puzzle questions and pat 'where do you see yourself in 10 yrs' type questions. that kind on non-thinking and non-personal behaviour will extend right through to your actual working conditions.
Thread: what's the best line you've ever whacked back at muppets during an interview?
1. Q your worst habit?
A a toss up between on-selling office supplies for profit and my cocaine habit
2. Q where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A hard to say for sure but approximately half way through my 10 year plan
Hey, I'd love to talk to a chemical engineer about some things. Send me an email, you don't have it listed in your profile.
"... For this to be accurate, everyone who is voting has to have driven their car until the gas completely ran out. I'm assuming most of them haven't. ..."

I've tried. In a 3Ltr, V6 I've managed to get a good 20Km of travel at a very slow 40Km/h. I won't go into the details but the gauge was empty when I left and by the time I made the destination I wasn't going to risk it driving to the service station to fill it up. I cannot believe the average of 47miles ( http://tankonempty.com/viewcar/Toyota/Camry ) the gauges must be out of calibration or they are the 4 cydr. models.

Here's an interesting article about "Justin Davis" the creator of "Tank On Empty" ~ http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/16632
In the meantime I made up my mind: presumably the only way the text would be written would be through some kind of serializer for LISP, so it would be easy to ensure that everything is escaped properly.

A slight uneasy feeling still remains, but I guess it could be overcome...
There you go. The business model sells itself purely on the idea but for the doubters in the audience there's practical proof to be found.

As I said in the article, art houses are exempt from the 'WTF is wrong with you???!???' nature of the rant. They pull creative stunts all the time. Probably because those aren't run by an oligargic chain of idiots.
"...I don't think YC.news has many readers in this corner of the world ..."

yep not many ~ http://hackrtrackr.com/forum.php?region=&country=AT
Reddit-like news aggregator for Business Professionals
Hmm... is this the redditisation of news.YC?
Those other guys are all from Vienna, which is about as far from Vorarlberg as you can get, and still be in Austria:-)
The constant complaints about inappropriate posts bother me more than the inappropriate posts themselves. Why is it even necessary to comment? If you a new item is not interesting, just don't vote it up?
FYI: Bruce Lee was an American of mixed German/Chinese descent.
Also unbelievable was the level of mind control that the public was amenable to. The media cheerleading, people screaming, "Shut up! Support your troops!" All the predictions the objectors had came true, and yet a large segment of the population is still drinking the Kool Aid. Scary.
Simple ain't Easy: Myths and Misunderstandings about Simplicity
"... Does Social Media Make You Dumb? ..."

It might better inform you especially if the mainstream media ignores issues. But far too often the articles posted are from mainstream media anyway. Independent news sources are far and few between so there is a reliance on trusted writers or chance. So in some way you could argue it doesn't really inform you any more than traditional media.

Aggregation of good stories, writers may change this. What is driving this social media? In a word, technology. Traditional Journalism is in the process of either dying off, morphing & changing into another type of job. A lot of it to do with the lack of dollars coming from advertising revenue. As Journalists, bloggers and news sources learn to harness this new technology a new "status quo" will emerge. The question is will there be any money left for the traditional Journalist, news gatherer and filterer of news?
I'm from Porto Alegre and would like to hear your ideas. Have a blog ?

Our interests should be somewhat related anyway because we hang out on yc.news. ;)
Dilbert on Marketing
Well, you probably would have to watch out if you are EVALuating some user input... other than that i don't understand your doubt.
The blog does a good job of explaining whats going on. Try lifting & editing some of the content from there to explain what the site is about ~ http://blog.eser.org
Oh, i just found it out on your profile.
If press release from this right wing institute is meaningless, then I may also say that the New York Times and Time magazine are left wing think thanks and no information from them should be trusted.
Why are you hiring an outside CEO? (Note: I'm not trying to second guess you. I just think your story might be valuable to people on this forum.)
From the article:

"But Lisp is directly executable, so you could simply make the tag names functions that automatically transform themselves."

I don't think we're talking about taking raw strings and doing evals. You control the function implementations so you have control over any danger. Writing the data as a Lisp program saves you the overhead of writing a parser and lexer and all the other tedium associated with building a compiler.

Anyway, languages that can be interpreted really illustrate that it's a blurry line between code and data. Consider Actionscript. It's a scripting language interpreted by Flash, but it's nothing but XML. You could consider it marked up data describing a specific Flash application rather than code. When the interpreter sees the code, it knows how to use the description to generate the app on the fly.

The thing that's really nice about Lisp in this respect is that it makes defining your own domain-specific language (and Actionscript is really a DSL for flash apps) about as easy as it can be. The only downside - if it is a downside at all - is that you will start creating DSL's for every app you build. Maybe that's as it should be. I think so.
Why Startups Fail and Why Gigamon Should've Too
By all measures, Gigamon is a spectacular success which is all that more remarkable consider that they have taken no VC money. Like so many entrepreneurs before them, the six co-Founders of Gigamon built their company the old fashion way.
In general I like this essay, but I do see how it left the impression that Lisp is about making all your data into executable programs. Most data would be read and written with the same functions that read and write programs, but the data would not be evaluated as a program. Among his examples, only configuration files seem suitable for that.

That being said, even if you did make log files into programs, there's never an issue of escaping text properly. The function that writes data always escapes strings so they'll read back in as the same string, not as any kind of structure.
I think it's a good idea, however I think you'll find there are two types of people, commmand-line junkies that just svn everything anyway or people who don't understand/care about version control.

That said I'm a middle ground svn'er and would love to see something like what I think your getting at.
Probably the most bicycle-friendly city in the world
Mathematics and mathematicians are both over-hyped. Actually, in my opinion the mathematical notation is the worst 'language' ever.
I have a question, why does the square piece in tetris make a sound when it rotates? (GameBoy version - if it matters)

it doesn't rotate on the screen. think about it.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think it's important not to conflate the concepts of Lisp's ease of reading/writing arbitrary data and Lisp's ability to read/write programs using the same facilities.

Using Lisp to read and write a configuration file means you don't need to worry about lexing and parsing either. If you don't use Lisp, or if you don't use S-expressions, you will need to lex and parse the configuration file just to read it, compiler or no compiler.

Depending what domain you program in, a Lisp programmer may not ever need to think about lexing and parsing. I tried a little googling to make sure I was remembering their definitions right and actually didn't come up with anything. From memory, lexing is splitting the input stream up into tokens, and parsing is structuring those tokens into a parse tree. If I'm remembering wrong, re-read the prior paragraph temporarily using those definitions and it will make sense.
Cooking for yourself definitely saves time. Are you counting travel time and time spent waiting in line? But it does take slightly more effort, and require the right tools.

You can always stick to the basics.
Ramen takes ~10 minutes for boiling water and clean up.
Chicken breast takes 2 minutes to season, 14 minutes to cook and clean. Tuna takes no effort right out of the can.
Boil or steam vegetables for about 5 to 10 minutes.
Rice or oatmeal are cheap sources for carbs.

With these ingredients, you can eat well for under $10 / day where I live (Providence, RI). Just make sure you invest in a good spice rack.
A Unified Theory of VC Suckage
Boston is also quite good. An avid cyclist friend in SF was very jealous of our minuteman trail. I certainly love it, and there is talk of extending it all the way downtown.
This note was great:

Since most VCs aren't tech guys, the technology side of their due diligence tends to be like a body cavity search by someone with a faulty knowledge of human anatomy. After a while we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice.
TechCrunch40 Tickets To Sell Out; More News
5 Ways to leverage Last.fm's successful learning curve.
Viral marketing, randomness and the difficulty of controlling growth in social media
In Oakland there is one also, called the Parkway and they go one step further in the comfort area, they serve real food.
Low-cost Personal DNA Readings Are on the Way
Yahoo! Shopping is a Steaming Pile of Crap
Point taken. But I don't think voting will be enough. This topic isn't the worst, but some topics are really bad and have momentum. To fight the momentum, not up-voting doesn't seem enough.
i need to use the word licit more in conversation.
If you don't have an NS subscription, the full article is currently on the index page at edge.org (right sidebar).
Fair Redistricting.
I tried to write a different viewpoint. Does the West innovate more? - http://www.nilkanth.com/archives/2007/09/13/does-the-west-in...
This talk was really good. I think O'Reilly is right on this point:"it's fairly naive to think that our representatives want the process to be fair"

Other interesting tech developments in government I'd like to see:

1) Constant & open surveillance of government employees, to the extent that it doesn't violate privacy. Justin.tv goes to Washington.

2) Direct democracy with online voting. Security is paramount.

3) Receipts for my tax bill. I want a big list of what I paid for. Put it online and allow users to up & down mod things they want more/less of.
I liked Maeda's book. You can read his blog for more:
http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/SIMPLICITY/

I think making something simple and good is a matter of great effort and focus. The process can also be simple, but it isn't necessarily easy. I think lots of folks get hung-up on the difference.
Fred Reed's (the articles author) website: http://www.fredoneverything.net/

Well, first impressions are often the last impressions.
my point was not about food cost alone, but opportunity cost?

how much do you loose by not meeting new people?

I go out to talk to people while i work, most of our team does not, they are introverts, but I need to be the extrovert for the group, plus if these guys are bringing their wives or traveling back and forth, they can spend some of the food budget.
great points, i need to consider that more.

sometimes those deliverables are true, and sometimes i do it more casually than maybe i should. in milwaukee its about real relationships, in the valley i would think more people understand simple networking.
thanks for the info, great response
What's wrong with the standard undergraduate computer science curriculum
I wonder how much socialization occurs in marketing, where people treat them like liars and then (surprise!) they meet the expectations.
I hate being mislead as much as the next guy, and the article is depressingly short on citations (probably to rally skeptics to buy the book) but I'll quote Peter Norvig here and say, "do your own research": http://norvig.com/oreskes.html
I don't care where the ideas come from if they're verifiable.
He seems to sum himself up in his latest column: http://www.fredoneverything.net/Brains.shtml

"Thinking About Intelligence: More Trouble Than It's Worth"
the stress will probably improve your sex life, the money and attention might break you up.

but if you have as great of a gal as many of these guys on here you will be in good hands.