skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This highlights part of the HN/YC culture that just doesn't resonate with me at all. I like coming up with creative ideas and working on fun stuff, but it seems totally backwards to me to repeatedly try to conjure a startup out of thin air in the hopes of getting funded. One of the parts that gave me pause was the idea of somebody furiously learning programming to facilitate building an app to teach others to program.

I guess it's a different mentality, and some people get the same thrill out of the entrepreneurial game that I do from writing code. Anyway, looks like some interesting conclusions came from the story, thanks for sharing.
hes just applying again for H1B the second time after his 6 years expired for the previous time he was granted ( 3years reg + 3 years extension). Thats normal logic
Google, why did you destroy my gmail with your new reply interface?
I wonder how anyone can think that is the case. Can the government stop me from buying something with USD? Not a chance.
I suspect that the fact that it's the last release that runs on 32-bit processors might have something to do with it. There's not much wrong with a 2+ GHz Core Duo for most people's needs.
Seriously, good job. Why is it so hard to be honest with customers once a company grows past a certain point? Does the money corrupt, or am I naive, or both?
That is a great assessment of the PR piece. It made me realize that my anger with EA for some of the ways I feel they've changed the gaming industry may have caused me to take it a bit too personally.

As someone who was an avid gamer, I felt like the statement was addressed to gamers. But, you may be more correct in saying it was for shareholders anyway.
If you think the pursuit of immortality causes mental breakdowns, can you substantiate this with evidence from psychology journals? If not, this strikes me as unreliable folk wisdom.

There is a lot of possible change that does not involve death. I used to buy your argument, but upon reflection I've decided that it does not automatically follow from simple considerations. We need to be a lot smarter to know the answer for sure. Just as negative temperatures are possible, death-free eternities may also be possible.

Lifespan increase is certainly a stronger possibility than immortality, and is therefore a stronger motive to pursue cryonics. So why is so much space wasted talking about it every time someone suggests cryonics? The thousand year or so extension we could reasonably expect with a good aging cure and decent public safety is pretty significant regardless of eternal considerations.
Agreed. I would normally not consider purchasing a pre-made desktop, but this form factor does make it quite tempting. I would not feel ripped off, whereas historically I always felt Alienware machines were a little overpriced.
Funny, as all the emails I get from recruiters are basically one-liners with some fluff and they've clearly not read my profile. However, I agree with you, except that it's not a hirer's market for good engineers. I know. I've been trying to hire as many people as I can for the last few months. I've found a few.
You could argue that Bitcoin is a more perfect sort of system

Which could be exactly why it is wrong for humans- as we are more imperfect than perfect :)
Anyone use http://www.git-legit.org ?

Looks like it was inspired by a hackernews comment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684483 and it replaces these commands
May I interest you in the .src project instead then? ;o) http://dot-src.info
His comment created confusion with "cap exempt" vs "cap subject" logic.
In addition to defer, Go actually does have goto.
They key to StarCraft before the Diamond/Master level is probes and pylons - your build order doesn't matter, your strategy doesn't matter, your micro doesn't matter.

All that matters is you mine exponentially by always building a worker when you can, and never getting supply capped, and spending your money.

A grandmaster can beat a platinum simply by building 10X more primary units than their opponent. There have been demos of this online.

It's true you can "perch" yourself in Diamonds or Masters with a single cheesy build, but if you want your rank to withstand patches and new releases, then you have to master the fundamentals - probes and pylons.
Tbh, I was speaking from a position of ignorance. The last time I used sourceforge properly must have been circa 2006/7 and it was an abomination then - clearly that is not the case now.

It definitely felt cleaner from a UI perspective today (albeit not github-clean) and the sluggish document load times that I remember were also not in evidence.

The open-source ecosystem is definitely richer for every hosting solution that exists, sf included, so if my comment seemed sneery I apologise. It just surprised me at the time is all.
"Even more appealing, this reaction occurs at low temperatures, generating hydrogen energy that is greater than the chemical energy stored in xylose and the polyphosphate. This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent - a net energy gain. That means that low-temperature waste heat can be used to produce high-quality chemical energy hydrogen for the first time. Other processes that convert sugar into biofuels such as ethanol and butanol always have energy efficiencies of less than 100 percent, resulting in an energy penalty."

Whoah...
Using Social Media for spreading awareness about Green Tech
You do need to learn a few keyboard shortcuts before you can work effectively with Gnome 3. I think these ones get you 80% of the way there, though (and they work the same as they do on Windows):
1. WinKey and type a name to open programs
2. WinKey + arrows to snap windows
3. Alt+Tab to switch between open windows
Ask YC: Mobile app vs Web app ideas
I'm a programmer and every now and then come up with ideas that could be YC-worthy.

I'm curious what percentage of YC alumni build mobile apps. Of those, which ones have decent to great success?

I'm trying to understand how good mobile app ideas are measured.
Git pull does a git fetch of the branch specified and then does a git merge into the current branch.
they own so much bandwidth it's probably cheaper for them to just send uncompressed html than to waste time + power recompressing it when things change. Being so large, they're an exception to the general rule.
I agree, there are way too many tchotchkes on sites like Shapeways and Thingiverse, and way too few useful products. I wonder what the first "killer app" for 3D printers will be. That said, I think they are already practical for prototyping or DIY tinkering projects.
The International Space Apps Challenge
New Podcast for iOS Beginners
Bitcoin is analogous to gold. To the extent it is more of a "threat" than gold, it is because moving bitcoin across national borders is easier. You also don't have to assay it.

This article is alarmism. There is no theory of how bitcoin will facilitate more tax evasion or transactions for contraband, than cash or, or bearer bonds, or gold do.
EasyGit (http://people.gnome.org/~newren/eg/) fixes this problem. It’s a command-line wrapper for Git that makes some interfaces more usable. `eg push` pushes only the current branch; you must write `eg push --matching-branches` to do what `git push` does.

EasyGit also provides better built-in documentation. For example, if you get merge conflits, `eg status` will mention that you can run `eg help topic middle-of-merge`. That command opens a page explaining your options – how to find conflicts, resolve conflicts, etc. I have found EasyGit very useful, and when it’s installed, I always use `eg` instead of `git`. You can download the EasyGit script at the linked website, or install it using Homebrew with `brew install easy-git`.
That was the case in 2004, yes, but now people look forward to getting their games on Steam. The value added by the Steam client is enough to get people to choose games on the Steam platform, as opposed to direct downloads from Amazon or the developer-- in fact, most of those come with optional Steam keys anyways because loading your purchased game into the Steam system is worthwhile enough to do in and of itself. I think the most telling point here is that Valve has only had a handful of it's own games drop-- Portal, HL, L4D, CS, and TF2 are the 5 that come to mind, and that's over 9 years-- compared to the number of IPs that EA binds to Origin, and yet people still choose to load their 3rd-party games into the Steam client.

Origin, on the other hand, is coming into the market as an underdog entry from a hated company with a history of decommissioning game's DRM and multiplayer servers within a couple years of the game's release. While they've only had 2 years in the market to Steam's near-decade, unless Origin manages to come up with significantly more value added to the client itself, their IP is going to be their sole draw.
What you can learn from Pandora's near-death experience
Thomas, I enjoy your HN writings, but I'm afraid you comments here may mislead readers.

Associates play a key role at VCs, sourcing MANY investments, and serving as gatekeepers.

When I was a VC Associate, I sourced 6 investments, totaling over $50M invested. Those entrepreneurs are glad they met with the lowly Associate (I'm now good friends with many of them and have discussed the topic).

This idea of "don't talk to an Associate" is misguided from the real fact: the Partners are the decision-makers at the firm. If you can meet with a Partner instead of only an Associate - do it! At the very least, it decreases your cycle time. Don't have a connection to a Partner? Can't make schedules work? Meet the Associate. Hundreds of entrepreneurs get funded this way, every year.
I am pretty sure most people voting in the polls a very much aware of this. But voting Xe as worst company of the US? Who would care? Everyone already knows they are that bad and nothing has happened.

On the other hand to vote EA as the worst company has a tiny chance of proving a point. There are lots of people out there who buy AAA titles without thinking and if some of them stopped buying the latest AAA crap EA just might have to start care about quality a bit.

Now I personally avoid this kind of bogus polls, but I see why it can make sense for people who do have a clue to still vote for EA:
I like saas companies so much more than traditional ones largely because they offer support effectively.
Test case: Try to find the number to call to replace your bluetooth headset.
Another wasted 'investment' by the government in so-called green energy. Between the billions of dollars wasted on Solyndra, Fiskar and that cohort, we could have cut taxes and made it easier for successful companies to grow and expand. Instead we subsidize losing products while increasing the regulatory and tax burden on small businesses making it an exceptionally difficult growth environment. Electric cars might be nice in theory but their environmental impact is far worse than the normal cars we have today. The components in the batteries for instance produce far more pollutants in ther manufacture than a gasoline car produces in 5 years. Yet, electric cars "feel" good despite the irony that they do nothing to improve the environment.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen Reprise Classic Microsoft Photo, Three Decades Later
Photoshop is easier to design in because you can change everything around without having to recode it. There are less steps and some of the best designers, for better or worse, can only design in photoshop, so it's better to have them design it and then have someone translate it.
Indeed, this kind of statements do not make much sense to me. They make the critics angrier and everyone else just wont care. If you instead saying nothing you get the same benefits without making the critics angry.
This all seems so misguided. "I'm going to come up with something so I can get into this club and I'm going to sit in protest until they let me in! And if that doesn't work, I'll just keep trying." Reminds me of Rudy... Instead of working on an idea in hopes of getting into YC, focus on an idea/market you care about and don't give a shit whether you get into a special "cool kids" club. That will get you a hell of a lot further.
And Mark Rosewater of Magic the Gathering design. "Restrictions breed creativity" has become a catchphrase associated with him.

If an author is told to write a science fiction story, that gives no hint or help on what to do with the request. Tell him to write a story about tigers escaping during the process of Mars terraforming, and now you've got something.

In Magic terms, being directed to design a creature doesn't push the designer in any useful direction. But "Design a small black creature that uses this set's new mechanic", and it will come to be. Much of MTG is conceptualized in such ways, right down to the color pie, where what colors can't do is even more important than what they can.
Upstate NEW YORK Greens UTICA Style How To MAKE THESE VIDEO RECIPE
Untappable Apple or DEA Disinformation?
Too many combinations of operating system, cpu, browser, browser version -- the server would need to have a huge number of versions built and cached. And then you need to ensure your server continually has support for all the latest browsers.

But even that pales in comparison to the biggest reason, which is security. In order to run fast, the compiled version needs to be "trusted" to do the right thing; by allowing the server to send pre-compiled code, you're opening up a huge number of attack vectors.
Yeah, and MS will have to deal with Steam.
I dunno. Maybe ten years around Steve Ballmer terminally fucked him up.

The fundamental problem is that his post was targeted at the 10,000 industry and customer elite, none of whom feel like giving the Titan much respect because nobody fundamentally likes the #1 guy.

Who he should have been writing to were the 350M people he claims to support. When you're selling sweet-smelling electronic vapor, you use sweet-smelling words to gently remind people that comparing a videogame developer to ACTUAL HITLER is insane and insulting. That a substantial portion of the market is composed of profound assholes is beyond the point.

You don't play at their level, you don't speak at their level, and you don't engage in CEO Ego-battle 3000X. It's just fucking videogames.

Their true customer is a 15 year old girl playing Simpsons on her Samsung. He should be writing to her.
Your client/wallet detects it and offers a pop-up with registration or forfeiture options. Up to a certain amount (per person, per year) you can probably just pay a small excise tax (less than 100% forfeiture) to 'clean' it. Larger amounts without explanation would mean a visit from the taxman or Justice Department, however.
This is widely regarded as the best ever album review. Has there been better?
> 3) To remove the painful Unity interface.

I find it quite pleasant. What is it that bothers you about Unity?
That was his conclusion too.
Oh right, good point, I should have said performant.
At the risk of sounding like a grouchy old fart: I still mourn the loss of the old Electronic Arts -- the company that Trip Hawkins founded in order to let the imagination of artists run wild through the nascent world of personal computing. I grew up immersed in EA classics like Skyfox and Archon and Adventure Construction Set and [pause to genuflect] M.U.L.E. The brilliant men and women who crafted these games were actually celebrated in the packaging. You got the sense that the game you bought was truly a creative labor of love. At the time, EA's slogan was "We see farther." Today's EA is by comparison unrecognizable, a giant that has grown too big to care about anything that the original EA cared about, a company whose slogan might as well be "We see the bottom line."
Oh, please tell us all about Foucault. Then explain what he could possibly know about the attitudes toward mental health in 2013 when he was writing about it in the early 70's (over 40 years ago).
Only because of how the media is treating it. The split makes fine sense from a business and technical perspective. I'm not sure why people are assuming that it's because of some internal spat - there's zero evidence from inside the Webkit project that this is the case. It's just professionals doing their job.
What I had in mind when writing the original post is that there are many places on Earth that are far more accommodating which we will probably end up settling first (e.g. Antarctica, Siberia, the surface of the ocean, and all the interstices between where people are already living)
Nope, I am on a cap-exempt H1B for last 2-years.

Technically H1B visa is never transfered, but it's always a new application when you change employment. In 'normal' cases, people start with a cap-based H1B (with some profit making company) and then change employment to another profit making company. Their new H1B application isn't transfered, but it's not subject to any cap as that applicant has been already counted in the cap.
The rule says that, "an applicant will not be counted towards cap if he/she has been subject to cap in last 6 years". Most cases fall under this category and hence it's commonly perceived as 'H1B transfer (without going through cap again)'.

If one starts with a non-profit H1B, then he/she needs to go through a cap-subject process to join a profit making company. While it's not impossible, it's extremely difficult to find an employer who will apply for your H1B in April and wait until October 1'st (when new FY begins) for you to join the company. There is a way out here - you can start working before October if you do concurrent employment at both places, but again that's difficult to achieve (both employers should agree as well!).

IMO:

* the wait time from April to October should be eliminated
* allow work as soon as visa is approved

This will reduce the application rush and companies can pursue good candidates all round the year.

Also, keep in mind that not all H1B holders will enter US. It can be a carrot stick to curb attrition as an H1B holder employee won't switch a company in the hope of being 'on-site' some day. Although it's expensive to use this tactic nowadays as H1B fees are high!!
No doubt that YC has a fast growing fan club, I know IDEO have to differenciate between the suitable employee vs. the fan club of which YC is likely to be the same. I have applied to YC this round, but I am confident we can build a business and take on the world with or without YC. The tone of your blogpost suggests success is dependent upon getting in to YC which isn't overly attractive.
I'd recommend http://justmigrate.com/, which facilitates migrating to Tumblr.

I've always been of the opinion that Tumblr was the superior platform all along, and certainly beats shelling out $5 per month.
The same thing that happens if you deposit them in his bank account?
thanks Lutusp. I did post a Gawker article, but that post was dead in a second; seems like HN marks all Gawker articles as dead.
Can mods stop censoring the Arrington controversy?
This is silly.

One thing we can [I hope] agree on is that, from a bureaucratic standpoint, the moderators' likely motivation for removing the stories is true, it's a: not technical or intellectually stimulating and b: likely to generate a lot of attention that detracts from such material on the front page. But the same could be said for, say, the death of Steve Jobs. If we can mourn Steve Jobs for a week, we can ponder the Arrington accusations for a couple hours. In other words, using this bureaucratic justification for removing those stories, whose relevance is to the community, is inconsistent with the way HN is typically run, and thus intellectually dishonest, something that good hackers should not like.

In other words, censoring these stories is a form of lying.

I'd also like to say that while a controversy of this nature can generate a lot of bad discussion, it can also generate good discussion: I'm willing to bet it's possible for the average HN'ers to contribute in a constructive manner on a topic like this if they really want to. Or, to be more precise: one should not be afraid to discuss a controversy iff they can contribute to the discussion in a way that is not causal, i.e. intended to affect the outcome. That is a nice rule to keep in mind: pretend what you're saying doesn't matter before you say it.

Dishonesty, Kant tells us, results from using the audience to achieve your aims. So don't do that.

The point of the above two paragraphs is hopefully to inspire moderators not to censor future controversies, either. I don't expect to keep every comment civil: my belief is that large parts of the discussion can be civil and useful enough that we can learn from them. We've done that before, and, censorship notwithstanding, we can do it again.
I think it was "most hated" rather than "worse", you're right there are lots of companies much worse than EA.

OTOH I think that people feel that video games should be a source of joy and pleasure so feel especially betrayed when a game company turns around and sprays them with this sort of corporate BS.

It's like if my bank sends me a letter charging me for not having enough money + another charge for sending me the letter I just expect that because they are a bank, I just accept them as a necessary evil. They don't exist to make me feel good.

OTOH a video game company's raison d'être is to make people feel good so if they are attracting hate then they're really fucked something up.
I believe you. If I ever go talk to VC again, I'll do my best to unlearn the old idea. For what it's worth, nobody ever told us to religiously avoid talking to associates, just that (a) our goal was to convert to partner ASAP, and (b) if you can't do that, move on. I imagine it's (b) that you disagree with.

For whatever it's worth, I'm only commenting because I thought the swipe at 'dmor upthread was unwarranted. Even if the idea of associates as wastes of time is totally unwarranted, it's a very common idea, including among people who have done very well with fundraising.
I think HP beats all with urls like http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15179-15179-64...
The floppy disc rendering is already a timeless symbol for the 'Save' action. The first thing you think about when seeing it is 'Save' not 'I need to get my disc out.'

Also most apps save automatically and usually use an animation of something spinning, so you're already a tad too late.
That is - until it dies a sad, slow, death just like Posterous "never" would.
specifically in this case with Madden and NFL2K you are absolutely right. It's not even that nfl2k was any good or not. It's just that the loss of competition gave the various madden dev teams over the years ZERO motivation to do what the hardcore madden gamers wanted them to do to improve the game. yes they (we) are a minority and they want to sell as many copies as possible, but seriously, even in their own house Madden is subpar compared to FIFA. FIFA had online multiplayer a good 3 years before Madden. It took Madden about 7 years into "Next Gen" consoles (PS3/x360) to revamp online franchise even though they actually promised it every year. instead they focus on "Presentation" like hand warmers. please. And they justify their decisions by "Telemetry" aka usage stats, but those are extremely misleading. A couple years ago they put out a half-baked online franchise with horrible bugs. Their "telemetry" told them very few gamers used that game mode, so they decided to scratch it and try to completely redesign online franchise from scratch, again. Well of course nobody used that game mode! It was broken!... ay ay ay, dont get me started...
We love posthaven too, already migrated several thousand posts across ten blogs, and have all the video transcoding, storage, deep link protection, and delivery features they'd need, at less cost than a stack of providers.

So Garry has more than one fan CDN he can choose from. ;-)