skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The issue of administration and bureaucracy is definitely one the best questions and hardest challenges for new startups trying to tackle these kinds of peer-connected problems. There are entire systems of middle-men built up over long periods of time that up until the internet have been how systems like medical treatment, education, and research funding operate. The biggest factor of inertia in these systems is the system itself.

Sites like Watsi are now making people realize two things: which inefficiencies we can cut away, and that simple experiences like funding medical treatment can be enhanced. Those are two very big revelations that will fuel so much of peer-to-peer funding.
I wonder if the font size issue is because of display resolution. It looks perfect on my screen, but I usually have to zoom into pages to make them readable.
Previous discussions about Watsi. Good to see they're getting more exposure.

"Thank You HN: From 30 people whose lives you saved"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4815006

"Show HN - We just built a site that saves lives"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4424081
I think we should get cheap internet to everyone. I really thought the plan to use television white space[0] was interesting. Funneling money into something like Google Fiber would also be amazing. Broadband, like the postal and telephone systems, should be available nearly everywhere to everyone at a reasonable price.

[0]: http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/google-wants-to-put-wireles...
It has to be a little terrifying to redesign one of the most popular sites on web design.
I live in Jersey City. Unfortunately I have to use it because it's all my apartment building is wired for.

It's an overpriced service, in my opinion. The reliability is good, but I'm paying $60 a month for their slowest speed. When I lived in PA I was getting twice the speed for $20 a month. Maybe that isn't unreasonable when you're also getting cable and phone for not too much more as a package, but I don't have a TV and don't need a landline so they're just gouging me.

One of the things I really hate about this area is how expensive everything is.

e: side note - when they come to set up your internet make sure all your machines are booted into linux (if you dual boot), otherwise they will attempt to install some of their software on your computer. They don't have a linux version of the software and will just give up and leave. If you have windows or osx running they won't leave until you let them install it.
Im thinking about taking this class, thoughts?

http://generalassemb.ly/education/85/front-end-web-developme...
That's not true, unless you're a grad student or an independent, and can take advantage of PLUS loans. As a senior, I can only take out 10 or 11k in subsidized, and 2k in unsubsidized loans. The rest has to come from family, aid or private loans.
Yes, it is. I don't know whether or not I will get used to it, but it certainly qualifies as the advertised "heavily art-directed".
How To Test Your Business Idea for Less Than $100
That was my thought, too: This is a fairly simple but apparently effective bit of dating advice.

Don't invite someone out "sometime". Propose having dinner this Friday at 8 pm. Or better, dinner this Friday at 8 pm at Chez Whatever.

If they don't like Chez Whatever, you can negotiate on this point. Or maybe 8:30 pm is better.

Anything other than a clean reason for declination, including the proverbial "Perhaps another time", is "no". Well... You might still follow up to be sure. Again, with a specific proposal.

I also like the idea of a sort of "non-date". I'm going to be doing some (cool to me, at least -- I'll be having fun) stuff. Want to join in?

If you're enjoying yourself, you're probably going to be a lot more attractive, anyway.
Indeed, mega-monsters like C++ and Python are old enough that Google sends people away from SO to more traditional old books and blog posts which already have most questions answered.
This is awesome.

I think this model of achieving more direct distribution through technology could profitably be applied to a number of for-profit and non-profit endeavors.

This seems like it could also be a better way of addressing hunger, contributing food to individuals but using a managed distribution system.

What a cool idea :).
Watsi is awesome. Kiva and donorschoose made "direct" p2p lending/giving popular long ago, but Watsi is the first that feels like, well, a YC startup (just from the site-- product, team, mentality).

Also be sure to check out givewell.org for very HN-friendly (rational/research-driven) tips on how you might think about giving in general.
It’s absurd when Mr. Lamport writes that developers don’t think beforehand about what to code and how to code it. Of course they do, I do at least. However, writing a detailed spec upfront will not ensure that software will do what it needs to do or that it does that stably. Not at all!

A simple piece of code can already amount to more complexity then a skyscraper. I think that most developers can agree that even when meticulously thinking upfront about what to make and how it should function, when a system is actually coded, new, unforeseen situations arise, always. This is without any exception. This simply arises from the fact that software systems become too complex for us to oversee fast. Especially how processing by these systems evolve over time is difficult to grasp.

Only in special cases you want to do some sort of formal specification to proof that something works, e.g. in the case of an algorithm. In all the other 99% of the cases writing good software is mostly about iterating and communicating a lot, with co-developers and stakeholders: In each small iteration we should think, discuss, code and assess.

Last, I do think that at least after the code has stabilized its functions/classes/methods/APIs needs to be documented such that it becomes easier for developers to fix, change or extend a system in the future.
Really great project. Some thoughts:
1. In the interest of 100% transparency, what do you think about being 100% transparent with your tech? Would it make sense to open-source your technology stack?

2. I really wish you had the ability to donate on behalf of someone else, either to fund Watsi or to fund medical treatment. On Amazon I set up a wishlist that people can easily access for ideas of what to buy me on Christmas or my birthday. If I could set up something like that on Watsi instead, I probably would. And if your tech was open source, I might even implement the feature myself!
I don't think this ("monetization", for profit) is planned -- and if it were I and many others would have a big problem with it. See pg's comment above.
Friends don't let friends use internet explorer. microsoft didn't like that and made internet explorer ads depicting us tech-savvy people as weirdos and nutjobs for recommending better browsers to our not-so-technical peers.

This so-called "great ad" is not going to wipe those insults clean.
In praise of the Apple Store
Yes it is boring, it is doable and it doesn't involve the country.

In the sixties getting a man to the moon was an acceptable challenge. More than 50 years later we shouldn't waste ten years of our countries best and most brilliant minds on something like merely better millage.

How a commercially viable replacement for oil, that can be made in the US in a way that doesn't produce CO2? That would do a lot to improve the world is a worthy goal.
YES - I currently have 155MB down and 50MB up - Although the wifi they included is limited at 130MB and not 300MB :( First World Problem.

I would recommend them as they also have a 300MB down package - but you have to ask for it as most of the people who work for them are idiots but their service is great.

Side note - I had them install my internet - had my HDTV setup with an antenna (Free TV, Imagine that) and they asked who my cable provider was... They had no IDEA you could get HDTV picture with an antenna - these are the same guys INSTALLING HDTV setup boxes at your home, crazy! END OF RANT!
Of your four comments on HN since you created your account yesterday, two of them are "this" and "TL;DR?"

http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
I retained counsel and ultimately left the firm to work in the investor education department of an NGO. I had a conversation with a regulator, but it was clear that they were neither serious about pursuing it or adequately staffed to do so.
This is a really interesting idea. Every file sharing site in the world setting up their servers in Antigua could potentially be a huge boost to their economy.

However, I bet the US will come to some resolution with them at the minute to prevent this from happening. This article is probably more of a bargaining chip than an actual plan.
The first thing I thought of was a course that I took decades ago that discussed using printers for covert channels to get data out of secure networks.

I wonder if any of those are honeypots. It may be interesting to see if any visitors do something clever or unexpected.
> I think you have a serious misunderstanding about government and complex systems in general.

Careful. Around here that kind of talk will get you labeled a statist. In reality society is simple and self-governing, if only government gets out of the way! Also: ponies.
I can't help thinking the payoffs ought not to be in Prisoners' Dilemma form though; i.e. there should be a realistic chance a defendant facing a mandatory minimum sentence most juries would consider excessive might expect to be acquitted by jury nullification.
Invite HN: Windows 8 marketing tool
Hi Hackernews, I'm working on a free Windows 8 marketing tool that allows Windows 8 developer to quickly generate nice banners for their apps. If you enter your e-mail address now, we will keep you up-to-date when the site launches.
This isn't about a general ban of child labor but about removing one option for children to work. One could try to argue for a general ban, but that is a different issue.
Will they also be going through dinners, office-hours and the like?

I could see this being a good way to help new non-profits get over the initial hump of raising awareness, getting administrative issues sorted out and so on. Certainly a service worth more than just the money provided.
One problem I have is that in traditional organizational structures, it can be difficult to call "bullshit" on what I've found to be some of the worst multi-taskers: Your management.

Their multi-tasking was a source of endless problems. But "multi-tasking" was the "norm" and the "best practice".

One reason I have very little sympathy for those now proclaiming the ills of multi-tasking. The worst seem to be the same fad-management oriented folks with no deep insight, and I fear -- where I do not already observe -- that the initiatives are not genuine.

One example: Multi-tasking is "bad" for those who count. But they continue to pile it onto the average worker.

P.S. To clarify my concern about such people and their attitude: "It's my performance that is important. (Whereas my dog could do your job.)" Formerly: "my performance" == multi-tasking. Now: "my performance" == not multi-tasking.

But that says nothing about the jobs under their control. In fact, the less they themselves multi-task, the more they may force it down onto their reports. To pick up the slack, as it were.
World: socialist. (And in denial) Check!

Just because we haven't obtained the socialist paradise, doesn't mean we aren't living under a socialist order. It's the means that define socialism, not achievement of the goals.

The means are "social" control of the means of production; whether it is by direct seizure of the state, proletariat masses, or small anarcho-syndicalist communes; or indirect by legislation, regulation, licensing, taxation, the SEC, central banks or control of the value of currency and savings; doesn't matter.

And the trend is towards more of that because the goals of most of these initiatives are the goals of distributing goods to (almost) everyone, so that when the private component fails, the social component will expand to rectify the situation.
This is great. I did what you asked and used the site and it is indeed extraordinarily compelling. I might suggest a move away from Paypal (only because the Paypal checkout experience is more intrusive and annoying than the state of the art).

Our annual all-hands summit is next week, and we'll look for ways to work this into our charity match programs. Many people on HN have companies with employees; we were told about running charity matches by other friends who have companies and let me pass the message along: they work really well. Match programs have generated more goodwill for us than bonus programs. Start a match program!

I have a question:

The big charity in this space is Partners In Health, which has an extremely positive reputation (their cofounder is also now the President of the World Bank), spends 94% of their funding on program expenses, and has a CEO who makes less than 6 figures. (PIH is apparently a medical partner for Watsi).

Is the advantage of Watsi over PIH that 100% of funds go to program expenses, rather than 94%? Or is it that fine-grained funding is more compelling and will thus elicit more donations?
Maria Teresa - Founder of Makeducation
Heh, that's an IP from Chile. Looks like some sort of outdoors classroom or something.
Cause Of Boeing's 787 Problems Remains A Mystery
One chart that explains why Apple is now a broken stock
Good point; the extra cost is what they paid to develop the original poorly designed systems. (I wonder how much that was?)
I think the term SDK should be in there - it goes hand-in-hand with API in terms of "traditional" development that's not web-based. I understand he didn't go there because he doesn't do that himself, but jes' sayin'.
Shakespeare's Sonnets, Encoded In DNA
If you're looking for another free service that's kinda in between Tag Manager and Segment.io, we built "Add This Script" (https://www.addthisscript.com/) that lets you choose from more than just analytics scripts so you can include jQuery or Facebook widgets and manage that all in one place. We add new services every week or so.

We're also working on some dependency management stuff so you can include jQuery UI and it'll automatically pull in jQuery, for example.
Star Trek's 'tractor' beam created in miniature by researchers
One could think of this non-profit funding as YC's own charity donation. I like this type of donation much more than just hard cash. YC is committing what it does best, building great organizations around amazing teams. I wish more people, companies and orgs took this approach to donations.
Mars rovers: Endless Opportunity
Wait, that's seriously true? All of it?
I think commercial viable replacement for oil is a great analogue to the moon mission.

1) It's a big goal, but one where the first steps are already being made, just as with the moon mission.

2) It has the potential to develop a ton of derivative technology that is widely applicable.

3) It has the potential to cement American's place for decades more, just like the rocket technology developed as a by-product of the space race did. It was hard to compete militarily with the country that could bomb you from space with ICBM's, and it'll be hard to compete economically that has a source of cheap, clean energy.
What? Child labor is already generally banned in China. I just argued that giving money to a company that is secretly, illegally partaking in child labor is giving money (and therefore encouragement) to a company that is likely engaging in inhumane labor practices.
I think some folks might take issue with the idea that you were starting a company while this project was in progress. (I didn't contribute, and I understand multi-tasking, but my impression was raised funds were to capture your undivided attention; unsure if others had same interpretation)
Do you really believe that? That the owners of the printers on this public wire would appreciate, in fact deliberately encourage, anonymous users accessing them like that?
The space race was funded with tax dollars and I doubt the fees charged for commercial launches ever paid a fraction of it.
Aside from the human connection mentioned in the post, by far the most compelling aspect to me is the "fixed" attribute. There's something so satisfying about isolating a problem, then fixing it.

Many charities feel like an investment. This feels like a transaction.

Edit: Here by transaction, I mean it's something that has a very high chance that it's working out. When I order a shirt online, there's a high probability it will get to me. When I fund a new t-shirt company on Kickstarter, it's less certain.
Julia is meant to be a competitor to R. The Julia developer community have added dataframes to compete with R Datasets and packages.

See: http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/packages/packagelist/?hi...
and:
http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/packages/packagelist/?hi...
They're scam is that when they invoice - they hope that the company is big enough to the point where A/P just pays it when they say "Yeah so-and-so in IT confirmed this order" -- they are hoping that the initial contact and the AP departments dont talk.
All of the treatments funded on Watsi are provided by our partner organizations (names listed on the patient profiles) and our first partner, Nyaya Health, is a Partners in Health clinic in Nepal.

So in short, the benefit of Watsi is both of those you described. 1) 100% of funds directly fund treatments and 2) those treatments are performed by great organizations like Nyaya.
Someone editing your post and moderation are two separate things.

What aspect of the moderation is gone wild? Noting a difference between those with diamonds (moderators) next to their names and those with a high board score (high rep users).
And that's how you design blogs and similar sites. Put the content in the spotlight and shove everything else away.
Go and fund someone, and observe how a couple of minutes later you get the notification email that the funding is complete. This is a very powerful new thing.
Looks like a wannabe version of the 37signals blog redesign. White background, overly large text, no aside, author at the bottom, etc.
I just downvoted you by accident, sorry. Maybe someone who really disagrees with parent can vote him up instead? :-)
This is a neat idea.

I have an unimportant question. PG's post says "They even eat the credit card processing fees", but Watsi's FAQ says, "As part of the cost of the treatment, we have included PayPal credit card processing fees (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). These PayPal fees are unavoidable, and no portion of the fees go to Watsi."

Who is right?
If you call that urban planning, then you can call Fairfax the worst example of "urban planning" I've ever heard of. It's a soul sucking mess of bland corporation towers, and distant developments of cookie-cutter cardboard houses squeezed onto tiny plots of land, with no way to escape to the outside air or to entertainment but by a 30 min drive on a traffic laiden freeway... No wonder their upper-class high-schools are chock full of heavy drugs, the poor kids can't escape.
As a Crashplan user, I see it as only slightly related. Crashplan is a backup solution, with multiple versions available for restoration. These are stored in a compressed and optionally encrypted blob of folders and files with restoration controlled by Crashplan's GUI.

BitTorrent's Sync application appears to be a way to keep the current version of files syncronized on multiple computers without a cloud (server) intermediary and without a history of previous versions.
>A car with triple the gas mileage is yawn-worthy? How out of touch are you? Do you not believe emissions are a serious problem?

Of course they are, but increasing efficiency is only loosely related to that, due to Jevons Effects:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Having more efficient (and probably phallic shaped) vehicles could reduce aggregate emissions ... or, more likely, the lower cost of driving could increase how often it's done.

Unless the newer efficiency is combined with laws that make emissions directly more costly, you're ultimately just bailing from one side of the pool to the other.

But then, if you're going to put those laws in place, then you don't need to reward any one specific technology's creation; you've already incentivized (sorry) any emission-reducing change in behavior, which is a far longer list than any bureaucrat or contest-creator can come up with. Unless, of course, you think that we're going to have separate contests for "make the average distance of worker from workplace less than one mile" or "make average driving distance less than 11k miles/person-year", etc etc etc.

Projects like the "car with ultra-high gas mileage" are instances of a very unproductive mentality when it comes to responsible environmental stewardship: it's a mentality that, stripped of misdirection, says "it's okay to be wasteful, as long as you're wasteful with efficient technology".
I was just thinking recently how amazingly not-outdated A List Apart's design looked, despite it being really quite old.
Not yet. See: http://git-annex.branchable.com/todo/windows_support/
Crowdsourcing prior art research
Not according to the website:

http://git-annex.branchable.com/todo/windows_support/
It may not be perfect (which country's is?), but China has a justice system. A court case with Apple's weight (and money) behind it probably would be reasonably succesful in China.
Bill Gates hates cash
Muse is an experiment which will scatter a combined electron and muon beam from protons.

I'm a bit surprised that muon-proton scattering experiments haven't already been done. It it just that there have been other priorities up to now, or is there something particularly difficult about doing such experiments, compared to doing them with electrons?
Also on German krautchan. Watching some japanse gas station attendant receiving weird stuff via fax was hilarious.
Maybe on a Rhaspberry Pi you keep running somewhere?
> A car with triple the gas mileage is yawn-worthy?

In 10 years? Extremely yawn-worthy. Tesla plans on building a 0 emissions, all-electric car and selling it around $20,000 in two years. Not 10 years with epic, huge pollution going everywhere.

> How out of touch are you? Do you not believe emissions are a serious problem?

How out of touch are you? Obviously emissions are a serious problem. That's why we shouldn't aspire as a country to be emitting gigantic amounts of greenhouse gasses from our cars in 10 years.
A popular story - here are some of the other submissions. Interestingly, barely a comment amongst them. I've marked the only two that have any comments at all.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5114742 (nature.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5113818 (computerworld.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112720 (montrealgazette.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112107 (npr.org)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112100 (nature.com) <-

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5111280 (wired.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5110817 (techonomy.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109998 (kurzweilai.net)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109406 (nature.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109350 (telegraph.co.uk) <-

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109229 (bbc.co.uk)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5108676 (slashgear.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106506 (theage.com.au)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106238 (abc.net.au)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5105628 (thechart.blogs.cnn.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5105627 (bbc.co.uk)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5105294 (guardian.co.uk)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5104961 (technologyreview.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5104946 (arstechnica.com)
One of my favorite commercials ever is this one for Zune:
http://youtu.be/IvDFbmb9DwE

It's not particularly great from any kind of branding sense or at selling the product.. but it's just fucking awesome anyways.