skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Mosso Cloud Servers vs. EC2: Persistent vs. Ephemeral Storage
But nuclear kilowatts are "real kilowatts". Wind and solar kilowatts are "when the sun happens to be shining or the wind happens to be blowing at the right speed" kilowats. Most discussions on the subject fail to differentiate.
Quit job to work on it anyway. Old company has problems (with itself and with me) and I never fitted in to begin with. Have lots of stock from that stint, and good friends to bank on.

Cobbling together prototype, teaching myself the NLP and plan on combining it with some techniques I learned in vision research. Figure that I can better pitch it to my risk-averse fwenz once I can wow them with something...

I don't understand why everyone sees a rejection or acceptance to YCombinator or TechStars as such a big deal. It's like college admissions. They are only two shops, with fairly limited resources, and limited means of assessing candidates. If you didn't make it, and you think that your idea really has some serious long-term stock, then keep at it.
A robotic pleasure unit like in the movie BladeRunner...
The Mobile Web: Echoes of Web 1.0?
Check out James Howard Kunstler's book "The Long Emergency". He does a good job of pointing out the serious inadequacies of alternative tech, futility of efficiency (given where we are on the Hubbert curve), and points out that's it's going to be even harder to develop new energy technologies as our current ones fail.
Single serving cat food tins. i.e. Half the size of regular tins.

You might think I'm joking, but I'm not - I looked for this earlier today online.

Cheers
Isn't there some international treaty which forbids companies from dealing with other countries/companies which use slave labor?

It can't possibly be that companies are left to police themselves... can it?
We evaluated and tried SimpleCDN - NO GO for production content. It fits more for testing and basic home-made sites.

They are cheap as they should be. A bit slower than other CDNs and not flexible. Support pretty much non-existent.

They do have a live person chat. That's what they use to tell you things you already know. If you have a technical question - they refer you to support, and you are back to square one.
I agree.

I was just commenting on the quotation in the post.

I think it would be erroneous to conclude that a student is not "good" because he/she receives a "C" in an economics course. Perhaps the student was very ill that quarter or was busy building some really great thing.

But even if they slacked off, they may want to be disciplined. Better yet, they may be willing to listen. In which case, one can probably be taught discipline.
Regenerative disc therapy for my lower back injury.
Pretty sure I'm gonna bail on hacker news until all the YC admission related posts die down.
And New Zealand too.. there are zero quality Mexican restaurants there.

Its not Mexican, but the best Peruvian food I've had outside of Lima is in Amsterdam http://www.casaperu.nl/html/casaperu.html can't recommend it enough!

(My wife was born in Lima and we eat alot of Peruvian food)
Any object you can imagine can be decomposed in atomic parts that can be stored individually with their respective relations to each other.

Uh, yes? What makes you think that this isn't how an OODB works? Generally, each object is stored as a graph of its dependencies. (A class has attributes, and an instance of a class is a collection of instances representing these attributes. This is what's stored in the database... and in memory, for that matter.)

Codd did his job very well when he set the model 40 years ago based on set theory and predicate logic. It has to do with atomicity, redundancy, validity and integrity of data.

Care to go into more detail here? Nothing you say has much to do with object databases -- they can be fully ACID, they store objects that are the same in memory as the same object in the database, and they don't magically make a consistent memory image inconsistent. As long as your in-memory data makes sense, the data in your object database will make sense.

If your in-memory data doesn't make sense, then who cares what's stored? You corrupted your data a long time ago, and no set theory is going to fix that.
We were rejected (back in the day when we weren't working on JamLegend). Now we're looking for people to join us on our mission in San Francisco.

Oddly enough, we're close friends with a lot of the YC companies. The honest truth that every YC company (and LaunchBox, Techstars, etc.) will tell you is that you still have 95% of the work to do, YC helps you get started, but afterwards you sink and swim with the rest of the startups out there.
These certainly do apply.

The competitor's website is clear (and loads quickly.)

Keep working though, looks pretty good.
I would pay for a good enough telepresence application for keeping in touch with my family and friends (they're in the UK, I'm in San Francisco).

Skype is better than nothing, but still not good enough.
> The phrase 'boiling the planet' is clearly a metaphor.

Oh really?

> A more nuanced reading reveals that the author means that we are raising the temperature of the planet to such a high temperature that we are going to cause irreversible change, such as when one boils food and finds that no amount of refrigeration will bring it back to it's former state.

Then the author is babbling. None of the science-based estimates suggest anything like that.

If the author really thinks "sterilizing", "boiling" wasn't a metaphor but scare-mongering.

> More simply, we are doing something analogous to sterilizing the planet, though to a lesser degree, in that many species may ultimately be made extinct.

No, we're not.

In other news - the sky is not falling.
A computer display with at least 200DPI, and about 19...21 inches diagonal. I'd consider only 1:1 and 4:3 sized ones.

Honestly, several times I've been searching for high resolution displays, and aside of old, expensive and slow T221 (or crazy-expensive medical and flight control ones), there are none.

Why such DPI? For starters, it makes anti-aliasing (think, `blurry' fonts, jagged or blurred widgets and 3D objects and so on) irrelevant. Also, with the current 85...100 DPI screens, I still see individual pixels, and that's quite disturbing to me.
And New Zealand too.. there are zero quality Mexican restaurants there.

The Mexican food I had in Australia was a "shocker."
Why? So you can write more code, and hack around the O/R impedance mismatch?

If objects are what your application code interacts with, why would you want to translate them to an unrelated form just to store them on disk?
This was last year.

Sorry, but I couldn't resist given the irony.
Something that allows me to search across all my old browser history (Content of the pages not the titles). So I can find all those blog posts and articles I forgot to bookmark for later reading at the time. (I guess I could start using stumbleupon or something but I want to be able to search in those pages as well.)
Apartment with a pool in Tampere, Finland. Also I would be more likely to rent a place using a site that actually allowed me to search for apartments from a map.

Instant helpful per-minute advice from MySQL/Linux/etc. gurus 24/7 when I need it. Similarly graphic design where I could in a few moments get sketches of things and commission them to be turned into finished works. I don't enjoy hunting for talent on forums/elance and having to wait days for responses when I need something done now while I am still in the zone to work on that particular project.

Frappuccino in Finland, although I hope nobody actually does that as it would make me poor.

A mouse that makes no clicking sound. It seems to exist: http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/14/thanko-silent-mouse-kills... I'll buy one when I go to Japan next time.
what do you mean the dark side? it's all dark. fake money, wild overspending, draconian laws against drugs and sex. next up: a provocative look at the dark side of killing babies and eating them! you thought it was just a harmless hobby, but oh no. oh no. turns out those babies are high in cholesterol! gasp!
http://www.backtype.com perhaps?
Or a motorcycle, Vespa, something.
I'd say. I miss the rainbow hued cornucopia of Indian mango markets. Yes, even blue mangoes.
Business:
- a way way better analytics system that integrates with our own logs and sql calls
- a better referral system for hiring, contacts, etc.

Personally:
- a system to clean up my contacts and make sure that all my living address books (linkedin facebook) work out.
- a front end for mechanical turk, so that I know I'm getting Turk rates without doing the outsourced assistant
Yeah, that's tough. It's even worse when you have a small baby and the grandparents are far away:-/

Here's an idea for someone: Virtual Grandpa - some sort of telepresence thing that's been made a bit robust so that a kid can drag it around and drop it without problems. Maybe like a robust cell phone with a decent size screen and camera? I actually wouldn't mind working on that too, but feel free to run with it. The big problem is probably finding hardware that will work: cheap, robust, and more or less customizable so that the parents can fiddle with it to 'tune in', and then lock it to some degree.
I had some trouble navigating your site. You guys should observe users navigating (look over their shoulders). Give them a few tasks, e.g. find a watch you like, find a shoe you like.

Your UI is simple, but not always intuitive.

Also, I kept thinking that if I scrolled down I would see more shoes on the shoes page (there isn't enough space between the bottom row of shoes and the border of the browser).
I had a Lamborghini, my own skyscraper, and I was dating twin Playboy centerfolds. then I got rejected by YC. my Lamborghini exploded, an earthquake felled my skyscraper, my twins dumped me, and to top it all my dick fell off. now I wander the streets mumbling the lyrics to old Huey Lewis and the News songs. THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU
There isn't much difference if you only work with single elements and sets of single elements. (Imagine, a user with a username and password; and the set of all users.)

Things become more complex when you want to store arbitrary data structures. A simple example is a doubly-linked list. This is easy to represent in memory, and it's easy to represent in a relational database, but it's not particularly easy to translate between the two representations. With an object database, the in-memory structure is the persistent structure, so there is no translation. Anything you have in memory can be put in the database. (Most implementations let you index and query this data, as well, and provide you with opportunities to create indexes that would be difficult or impossible to represent with a relational database management system.)

Also, a key feature of OOP is polymorphism, which the relational model does not handle elegantly. Object databases handle it fine.
"We were told that "they probably understand things about user behavior that you guys don't""

Your site has good approach to design, but personally I feel lacks usability. One of the first things Im(and I guess any user) interested is price and brand. You don't show both. If I click thru some image and see its beyond what I want to pay for, Im disappointed. Instead have proper filters(price/brand/size/small description) still goes a long way(atleast for me).

EDIT: On second look, looks like you had a filter by brand/price in ur homepage, missed that.
The closest I've ever seen would be:
"Understanding and Writing Compilers: A Do It Yourself Guide"

Possibly/probably hopelessly dated now, but since
you can download a free copy from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bornat
what do you have to lose?
If you can't sell, get closer and closer to having a product or getting to having a business. Talk is cheap, but having made something matters more.

A basketball team will be more likely to draft you because you've de-risked yourself, you are probably already on your way to winning the NCAA.

I wrote a little about this before on my blog about getting into YC, etc.: http://andrewlee.com/2009/03/01/startup-march-madness-2009-g...
I have to mouse over the picture of the shoe in order to see the price. That is extremely inefficient, and requires the user to have stellar short term memory.
> Define the sequence k(1)=0, k(2)=2, k(3)=3, k(n)=k(n-2)+k(n-3), and for n>1 ask: Does n divide k(n)? The answer is always "Yes" if n is prime, and almost always "No" if n is composite.

I can see why this is true for primes where x^3 + x^2 - 1 = 0 has a solution mod p (because then you can find a closed form for the recurrence mod p.) But I have no idea how to do it in general (it looks like a generalization of Fermat's little theorem.)
We do use the typical complement of in person user testing (headed out to do some today) and obsessing over Google Analytics data.

Right now our biggest issue is IE performance, but we also have some other UI elements that confuse people that we are trying to resolve (often think clicking on a product will add it to their favorites list).

I'd love to hear more about your navigation issues. If you are so inclined, please email me (rich@stylous.com) some more information about the issues you faced.
would you settle for a real doll rental service?
a way to record streaming audio on a mac and auto splitting with auto tagging. Would pay up to $100
Yeah, then the government bastardized this concept by requiring that all agencies have sign-off on all materials that talk about another agency, which is one of the primary reasons why government communication has lagged so far behind industry.
Tonido Thots - Your personal Wordpress
I'm a sucker for the BMW R bikes. I learned to ride on an '88 R100RS. The thing was beastly heavy.

These days I'm looking hard at the GSX-R 600s. I figure, I'm still young....

P.S. If anyone's looking to buy a parts bike (sigh..) my dad is selling the old R100RS. It's in almost-running condition.
A dead simple, cheap 8.5x11 e-ink device with no wifi or touchscreen or anything like that. Just the ability to page through my already owned pdfs. Some of them are scanned images, not text so no text conversion. Even if the only way to get the docs on it was via some kind of virtual printer driver I'd be happy. I'd basically like a way to read stuff on e-ink as if it had been printed.
...using SSDs?
I'm pretty sure ribs aren't Mexican though
- A laptop battery that lasted for as long as I can stay awake (say, 24 hours).

- A cellphone that people could call anywhere in the world without paying for an international call, and that allowed me to call anyone or use my data plan at the same price regardless of where I'm located. International roaming charges are so absurdly high that they force me to have different sim cards and an unlocked phone (extremely inconvenient).

- A nonstop flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina (EZE) to a major city in California (SFO, LAX, SAN). I do this several times a year and the layover/recheck luggage after customs is a killer.
It's not a programming book but... "The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal"

It's an awesome book about the history of computing, human-computer interaction, and all sorts of things you're familiar with but may never have known where they came from or how they evolved.

http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Com...
Teleportation --will pay double for the service.
It strikes me that with the huge imbalance between natives and foreigners, that there is a power imbalance just waiting to be exploited.
Very durable writable DVDs that could keep the data even after multiple scratches, the passage of decades...etc
Spotify opens its doors to developers
The libspotify C API package allows third party developers to write applications that utilize the Spotify music streaming service.
I see your point. OO programmers who don't understand the relational model want to 'force' the database to deal with objects and there the impedance mismatch.

In that case Relational Objects Database might be a better model.

Let the database store the whole object as an entity, an as the system evolves it can be 'normalized' to more atomic sub-objects giving the programmer time to grasp the relational model.

For simple systems like a contact list, a contact object would suffice, even if it has many phones or many addresses. Get one contact, put one contact. The more complex it evolves the need to change the schema to make it easier to maintain and to avoid redundancy while keeping data integrity.

In the end, a complex system would deconstruct complex objects into simple atomic objects (data) related to each other with simple rules.
I don't know what other stimulants have less negative side effects. Ephedrine?
Do you think this is a feature of the particular OODB you're using, or of OODBs in general? Do you think your problems can be solved by changing the OODB (adding a static type system, for example).
10 seconds (or 16?) doesn't seem that great - XP boots that fast for me. I didn't watch the video though, and most of my boot speed is due to my Intel SSD.
Incidentally, I tried Moblin in a VM earlier today:

http://moblin.org/documentation/test-drive-moblin

It boots from nothing to a working desktop in 8 seconds. Wow!
A few thoughts:

Your page feels extremely sluggish.

On your site, you have to hover over things to see the prices. That's not good design. On your competitor's site, you're able to quickly scan the page (and use the mouse scrolly to get more items instantly). I see the scrolly does work on your horizontal scrollbar, but it's slow, and counterintuitive. I didn't even think to use the scrolly to move back and forth. Intuitively, the scrolly is a vertical thing.

Key phrase: Form follows function. I would almost certainly not want to buy something from your site because it takes the whole point of ecommerce (find and buy quickly) and replaces it with the brick and morter approach (find something, check the price, set it down, check something else), and does so sluggishly (clicking left and right, or using the little js scrollbar takes like 5-10 seconds to load - way to slow).

Your site looks nice and clean, but that's about it. I wouldn't call it usable at all.

Make it usable, make finding something fast.

Addendum: I think the biggest problem with the usability of your site is the excessive reliance on js animation. My machine isn't exactly old (core2duo, 4gig ram), and it feels like playing a modern FPS game on a netbook.

What's wrong with just using a div with overflow:auto, rather than over-designing it.

Another thought: perhaps allow the bottom part to stretch fill the whole page, so that you can see more items at a time. Perhaps some scale-option to decrease or increase the scale of the pictures allowing more detail and less items perpage, or less detail and more images?
We created the site with the assumption that the design of the products is more important to users than their specific prices (within a specific price range). So far, our users have validated this assumption.
There are a few interesting links to the artwork that is obviously showing up in other designer's work on StockArt.com and Jon Engle's work at reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8ac0q/designer_g...

It's not clear who came up with what first. However, the other designers submissions seem to be consistent with their general style while there is not so much consistency in Jon's style. There are no upload dates though on the StockArt.com stuff. This might be fishy...
To be honest, until Adobe changes Flash, I think Java is the best bet in terms of responsiveness (there's still random garbage collection delays of around 100ms so not perfect; but an improvement). Installation base is comparable to Flash.

But not in terms of design: for although a Java version theoretically could be as pretty as your Flash version (and it is very pretty), the designer-tool support really isn't there. It would be hard to port; and hard to modify. Sun has some tool support for designers, but I'm sure it has nightmare usability.

I think both design and responsiveness are crucial in your space, so this is a difficult one.
I think that's what the ! is for. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that gets passed off as Mexican food in Europe.
Still working on it! Just went to the entrepreneur expo in Philly and did a lot of great networking. Talked to some great people and made great connections. Will probably pursue funding sometime this year because bootstrapping has been slowing us down a lot.
Xcode Objective-C Macros Cheatsheet
If this boots from a CD or a rotating HD in 10 seconds, then they could have an "instant-on" netbook. Instant-on netbooks and laptops will win over the end user. This is a step towards turning the computer into an appliance.
It was about 1 year ago. Now I do affiliate marketing, which seems to be a faster and more reliable way to "F U" money.
you know all those random pixels you get in a fax or even a scan? Yeah. Do that to your brain. Or, more particularly, the wall of a high pressure artery, in your brain.
Sorry about the performance issues. The site is implemented in pure javascript. We are still working out the kinks in slow browsers.
I will pay for someone to market my skills on commission.
http://stylous.com is a really great design -- good job.
The title should include the note that the article is from 2002.

I'm sure that given the current economy it's not so much of a problem now.
Excuse me while I put my sci-fi hat on...

I think teleportation will have to be an analog technology instead of a digital one.

By analog I mean manipulation of space/time fabric that you actually step through, as opposed to being scanned and reconstructed on the other side.
I've thought about the same thing myself. (I'll make do with the 24 inch monitors, though. :) I'm surprised the Mac Pro doesn't have a way to dock the air yet, though.

There are a lot of usability pieces to think about. Do you really want program configuration to sync? I use programs differently on laptops and desktops.
Do you know how many entities form an invoice?

Do you know what happens if one those entities change, like a phone number, a vendor's email or a product packaging?

Instead of updating one entity, you will need to update every single object that contains the wrong data.

How do you maintain integrity if redundancy is part of your model?
> So far, our users have validated this assumption.

Then who cares what PG says on the issue?
Europe consists of more than one country you know :-) Please don't judge other countries in Europe based on your experience.
Not sure how relevant the problem is today, but most analysis of this situation is all wrong. It's K-12 math and science education that's the real cause.

Developer A: "Our compiled code is slow!"

Developer B: "It must be a problem in our implementation, we should fix that."

Developer A: "But our C compiler is absolutely horrible. In fact, all it does is compile the C code to Python and then pass that to a Python compiler."

Developer B: "Well why does it do that?"

Developer A: "We don't have funding for an actual C compiler. State law requires us to use the Python compiler for everything. [1]"

Developer B: "It's too late to fix the compiler. We're already in the project development phase. We can't fix the fundamentals, just optimize the code!"

Developer A: "Ok fine, how about we change compilers for the next project?"

Developer B: "Nah, that'd take too much work."

[1] Note: accurate reflection of the logic used in curriculum planning for most K-12 city schools.
Bachelor Chow (See: Futurama). It doesn't have to be particularly tasty, but a simple meal that has 1/3 of your daily nutrition (with 1/3 RDA of all your vitamins and minerals) would be great. Preferably without ridiculous quantities of preservatives and artificial flavours.