skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think his arguments are quite reasonable, but his example is a poor one. A Manhattan apartment is a fairly atypical sort of real estate investment, imho. I live in Austin TX, where real estate has managed to weather the storm much better than average over the last couple of years, and I'm much better off having bought than rented, even though I bought my condo in 06, at the height of the housing bubble.

That's also an atypical example, I know, and so I wouldn't want to generalize from my case alone.
Let me qualify that a bit ... I liked Garfield when I was very young (probably < 10) and before I "got" other comics.

I always loved Bloom County and I still feel it was quite different than C&H.

One final note: I grew up on the beach in California–where silly people brought their big, lifted trucks over from the valley. Inevitably, the read window had a sticker of Calvin peeing on [insert some company/sports team logo]. Maybe that ruined it for me.
How does News.YC ranking work?
As I understand it, "Ask HN" posts are supposed to be local, not on another site. But perhaps that was a white lie in your perspective?
For me, just taking a 1-2 hour nap can make a big difference.
Sleep. If you are at work and your boss doesn't realize sleeping will make you more productive, go sleep in the toilet until you can quit your job and get one where you can sleep how and when you want.
If Africa was as overrun with NATO troops as Bosnia is, Africa would be as peaceful as Bosnia is today.
Yeah, it kind of seems like the "example searches" they have up are the only searches that actually produce anything comprehensible...Cool concept, needs more development before it will be ready for primetime.
Yes, but you can rent houses, and you can also buy apartments... And in many large cities, you probably won't be buying a house.
you've almost got the right idea, except how does a taxpayer justify investing 60mil into something that doesn't make money?

furthermore taking out the need to turn a profit will result in mediocre products being made.

this smells like china to me
It also encourages boring lives. I recently had occasion to talk with several homeowners.

My plans over the next year? Move to Kerala, learn Kalaripayattu and work on my startup. Several renters had similarly interesting plans.

Every single homeowner (or homeborrower) had plans to remodel some room of their house.

I'm firmly convinced that a home is nothing more than a ball and chain.

[edit: changed 'similar plans' to 'similarly interesting plans'. A reply to this post made me realize it was unclear.]
It also encourages nicer neighborhoods, because homeowners are better incented to bond with their neighbors, and the condition of their property isn't an externality to them.
> there are cops in Vegas working 12 hour days just doing evictions

They had better hope that there will never be a revolution which results in class-traitors being correctly dealt with.
man you guys are a miserable bunch at times :P
That's nice, because I'm sure if you talk to 100 renters, most of them also want to move to Asia and start companies.

Sheesh.
clearly i'm one of the few that thinks so... :P
Palm Pre: 150,000 apps downloaded first day 50,000 sold in 2 days
Any reliance on that service for life-critical things is clearly delusion, incompetence, and downright frightening.
If you read a lot of Calculated Risk blog, you could easily infer that it's the people with the HELOCs that were most vulnerable to being screwed in the downturn.
If Apple announces new Iphone today... I'm curious as to what will happen.
Electric Bike Review: We Ride the Pacific E-Bike Terra 7-Speed
No. (fullstop)
Couldn't agree more.

The author appears unfamiliar with how Twitter actually works pragmatically.

Anyone following more than 100-200 folks on Twitter is likely in the category of "Filthy Marketer."

Anyone routinely posting more than 3-4 times a day is likely also in the FM category, or is a babbler begging to be unfollowed or banished to Facebook.

The Twitter employees are using the tool in its most elegant fashion.

Article = F.
I appreciate the note, I'll be sure to use it
Step 1: Around lunch time, in a very nonchalant way, stroll out to your car, set your watch/portable-alarm-clock/cell-phone-alarm-clock to wake you up near the end of your lunch break, tilt back the seat, and zzzzzzz.....

Step 2: After waking, splash cold water on face, then eat your lunch at you desk.
Many programmers confine projects to one language, but this severely limits their potential.

If Python (or anything else) isn't perfect, that doesn't mean there is necessarily a problem with the language, or that you shouldn't use it. For example, once I became familiar with SWIG, I was not at all afraid to use C++ for the things that needed to be fast, while continuing to use Python for a large portion of what I had to maintain. And, I don't automatically write every script in one language, I use whatever is most suitable to the task.
The NYT has a good rent vs. buy calculator:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAP...
Vaksel is wrong, but so are you. If you were renting you wouldn't have any equity to appreciate (in the form of title to your house and the difference between what you paid for it and the current market value) so it would never be in your pocket to begin with.
I think this is interesting, programming related, but still not very much unavoidable in the HN front page.
"Ask HN" posts are supposed to be local

Why? What if you want to include a chart or a picture in your 'Ask HN' post?
Palm Pre teardown
Tell that to Pravda.
So I can read this without registering if the referrer is Google, but not if it's HN? I just don't get it.
See when everyone tells me the USA is on the down trend I point to stories like these. Where else in the world are technologies being produced like this?

I understand Japan and India and Europe have great technological feats and strong science programs but nobody compares to the US when it comes to research and development.
Ask HN: Post-YC Startup Numbers
Just trying to make sense of some numbers...

According to the Inc article, 27 out of YC's 145 funded startups have failed, 7 have been acquired, and 2 have merged with other YC startups, meaning that the majority of the startups--a full three-quarters--are still hard at work.

PG recently posted that about 200 people are employed by YC-funded startups, which works out to be a little less than 2 per company on average (109/200). Plus, some of the companies employ a dozen or more people, which makes the distribution even worse. If you assume that the majority of the companies were founded by at least 2 people and that not many founders have started more than one company, the stats indicate that a lot of founders have moved on to other endeavors, no?
You forget costs for insurance and maintenance of the house. Plus the costs of having your money tied up in a illiquid asset.
And lets not forget that a house takes time and is something on your mind. Time is probably the asset I personnaly value the most. I purchased a house a few years ago (after many many years of renting by choice) and the cost in time is VERY annoying for me.
What incentives would there be for reviewers to stick around and keep participating in the site?
If we all die tomorrow, the Singularity does not occur.
You've probably read too much NYT stuff today. Clear your cookies and try again.
I certainly agree with you that for the economy to work we need a way for (say) authors to make money. But technological change requires adaptation. Just like we ask factory workers to retrain in the face of machine automation, information workers need to adopt to the internet. There are plenty of options: advertising, server/service systems, and customization to name a few. Printing and copyright are just a blip in history. Enforcing copyright in the internet age has a giant social cost that has become larger than its benefit. As this technology develops further and people realize its potential, the Pirate Party will grow.
Never really thought of it, but what incentive is there for Digg users? For Reddit users? The community helps each other. Because I would be looking to build a close, small, but knowledgeable community like HN, many of the reviewers might end up as pitchers one day.
I'm a renter and I hit at least one of those points ;) Moving to Asia - not so much!
This is a very cynical way to view the world. I reject it completely. Being dishonest might benefit you in the short term, but building a reputation for honesty is a huge long term advantage.
How is learning an ancient form of South Indian martial arts at all relevant to the discussion?
WWDC 2009 Crunchgear Live Blog
I don't think that this sort of blanket statement is universal in the way that your tone implies.
If you make a sale, you've committed yourself to making the lie come true (or at least hiding it's lack of truth). Say goodbye to your development schedule and/or your tech support budget.

Of course, hardcore sales people who don't mind lying will cheerfully say 'all's fair in love and war, and no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy!'. Lots of business people love war metaphors because competition justifies all sorts of things, and when someone asks whether customers are the bombed out civilians in this scenario they can say 'it's only a metaphor, don't take it so seriously!'.

If it's a question about your product, don't, although it's OK to say 'were looking at it - and that's all I can tell you'. If it's a question about your company the answer is don't, but nor should be afraid to assert your privacy. If it's output rather than response to a question (eg a whiff of bullshit in your sales literature, I'd say avoid anything more specific than 'our product is the most awesome' that can't be justified.
Milestones to reach before raising venture capital
tl;dr it's ok to lie to competitors, but not to your customers.
Well, _I_ learned in college that people vary widely in when and how they are most productive, and that trying to change your nature is an uphill battle. Obviously doing the work two weeks ago when you knew it was approaching due would have been the best method, but there are times when the crunch is unavoidable (OP) or when you chose life-enriching activities over work (college). For us night owls, when the deadline is imminent, the all-nighter is the surefire way to pull it out.
Inflatable tower could climb to the edge of space
Would YC actually fund a news startup? I find that hard to believe considering the ranks of the alumni.
That could very well be the case: http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1...

"Whether stability is such a good thing in a downturn,
though, is a different matter. A decade ago Andrew Oswald
of Warwick University argued that owning your own home
makes you more reluctant to move, so labour markets tend
to become more rigid as home ownership increases. He
claimed that increases in the level of home ownership
(though not necessarily the level itself) are associated
with rises in unemployment. Ireland, Greece and Spain all
saw large increases in home ownership in the 1980s and
1990s, and had relatively high unemployment. America and
Switzerland had stable ownership rates, and escaped the
long-term rise in joblessness."
Never. Trust lost is trust lost forever.

Reminds me of the parable of a man who sometimes stretched the truth in business. He went to a guru for help with his "problem".

The guru's advice: "Take these 10 feather pillows, slash them open, and release the feathers to the wind. Then come back tomorrow."

The next day the man returned for more advice, "Now go get the feathers."
The distinction there is an issue of risk analysis. Airlines pay big bucks because every minor goof is a potential disaster. There are huge stakes, both personal and financial resting on every decision in the cockpit. As a result, a "culture of safety" exists in pretty much all of aviation. This is a good thing. A community of pilots trained to cross all their t's and dot all their i's as a matter of instinct is better for everyone.

But that doesn't mean that taking off solo in a plane you know only from manuals is always going to result in an accident, either. Even DUI drivers "usually" get where they're going without incident.

Reading the article (yeah, with a little salt applied), this is a guy who faces down armed resistance. So the appropriate question of risk isn't "is an accident possible?", it's "Is an accident more likely than the other risks assumed?". There, I think he's on much firmer ground.
World Map of Social Networks
Well think about it this way.

Status Quo right now, you get only a very small percentage of the actual profits that your work makes -- the rest goes to your distributors. The internet allows you to significantly cut the costs of distribution and thus increase the percentage profits to yourself.

We see in the new business model that there are still plenty of ways to make money even if copyright doesn't exist. Bloggers make money from advertising, Chinese pop singers (where piracy > 90%) make money from concerts and endorsement deals. It's been possible for a long time to make prints and posters of famous artwork for cheap, yet famous original artworks still sell for millions of dollars.
i doubt a new iphone would damage the pre app store negatively. or are you saying if apple doesn't release anything new, it would benefit the pre?
You're right, it is very cynical. Unfortunately it's also true. I have seen people rise to fame and fortune, and very few of them have done so by building a reputation for honesty. It appears to me that 80% of the people that "make it" financially have done so by lying or cheating at some point in the game. The remaining 20% have made it by having an impeccable reputation that they build on. It's not the norm though. There seems to be differences in these numbers depending on what industry you're in. Construction appears at one end of the spectrum to be thoroughly corrupt, Software appears at the other end to be very trust and reputation based. That said, I know people in the software industry that have lied and gamed their way to their fortune.
I don't particularly like it, I just observe the world I live in, and not the world I would like to live in.
Jetpack is an additional extension install for users.

This framework looks like it builds native extensions without an extension needing to be preinstalled - at least until jetpack is shipped with ff.
I guess it's a convention that comes with the fact that people (in many cases) look more kindly on "Ask HN" types of posts and upvote them more generously than external articles.
Energy drinks, in tiny, tiny sips. After that, water and a sugary granola bar, in tiny sips and bites.

By consuming in tiny increments, you are both avoiding caffeine overload and prolonging the amount of time you can keep yourself occupied with the task of drinking and eating. As long as you're taking tiny sips every 20 seconds or so, you won't lose focus and drift off.

On a side note, if you would like a humorous effect, try shotgunning a Red Bull. Just make sure you don't have to pass yourself off as normal for the next half hour or so.
True, but it's also the best answer available.
removing copyright doesn't reduce the number of artists, it increases them, because more people are exposed to the art and more people will become inspired by it.
... 20+ years later. Personally I couldn't live with doing business dishonestly, but you can't really say that it didn't work out well for Microsoft.
Yes, the latter. Sorry for the confusion. I'm currently on the road and have flakey internet connectivity. I should've been clearer.

Simon wrote a piece saying that some of the treatments the British Chiropratic Association offer and recommend have no scientific basis, and no scientific evidence. For saying this he is being sued for libel.

The intial ruling has taken one sentence from his article and interpreted it completely out of context. It means that anyone writing anything that might be read in the UK can be sued for libel if any sentence can be taken out of context and interpreted as libellous.

Please read the articles, and please sign the petition.

Assuming you agree that having evidence is important in medical procedures.
those are employees, they aren't counting the founders in those 200 people
The future of robots is rat-shaped
Not "if" but "when". There's nothing magical about the human brain. It's just a bunch of neurons. Eventually we'll be able to replicate it.
I wonder if competitors who were offered the pwnership tipped off tmobile? Coordinated response at the demand side is probably the best way to discourage such criminals.
If you question the ethics of something, you have an ethical problem with it, after that it is all justification of why you can allow yourself to do something you find at the very least, morally ambiguous.

purely personal; there was no universal 'you' intended.
You missed the point. If you were renting you would not have paid the money that otherwise went to principal - that money would still be in your pocket.
The bbc are a bit behind, but have been talking about doing the same for a while now - and appear to be building this archive of (currently just very old) programmes out gradually:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/
Not sure whether it can be accessed from ip addresses outside the UK though...
Presentation and Panel Discussion at Gilbane San Francisco conference
_Ignore_ any change in the prices of houses! It has no bearing on the decision.

It most certainly does.

Suppose you bought a 500K house now that you could rent for $3K per month. Paying $5000 in taxes (about what you'd pay in MA) means you should buy.

A year from now, don't you think whether that house is worth $600K or $400K has a big driving factor on whether you should have bought or rented?
Personally I think there is incentive just in getting to see what new things people are working on. Bleeding edge is always interesting.
Digg, Reddit, etc. provide new content people can read. People don't have to comment. On the other hand, a review site depends entirely on people commenting in some way. Compounding on that is the fact that the only content would come from product launches.

Of course, on the plus side you would only need a very small number of reviews to be of value. Any benefits for reviewers would probably be very easy to come up with.
And this one, where the OP posed a vague question but made no attempt at providing a solution or even a tough example case, has little excuse, IMO.
> Trading is often very asymmetrical.

Explain please. Because if you paid too much on your house, and are now upside down, the person you bought it from has more money than before. It seems symmetrical to me.
Wow, I'm glad not everyone shares your mindset.

CSS grids aren't that difficult, but I find http://960.gs/ really useful. Having a nice, packaged example of best practices comes in handy.

If this saves me 5 minutes each time I want to create a quick firefox extension, it provides value. Thanks for sharing, trevelyan!
"Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." -Rob Pike, circa 1991
> You forget costs for insurance and maintenance of the house.

I did. I just put them in.
> A year from now, don't you think whether that house is worth $600K or $400K has a big driving factor on whether you should have bought or rented?

Nope. If you want to make money on house values going up, invest in one. You don't have to live there.
Apps Are Booming as Companies Seek a Place on Your Phone
To be fair, despite owning a home, if I really wanted to pack up and move to Asia I could do it. I'd just have sell first and thus do it a few months after you. I'm also pretty sure that a spouse/kids would be much more of an impediment to that move than owning a house.
In the case of digg/reddit the payoff is interesting content. It would be a harder sell in this case because looking at commercial sites is usually less interesting especially if the quality is mixed.

If you implement a mechanism where the best sites float to the top, well then the sites which need criticism the most (coincidently the least interesting to review) never get it.

I think it's a good idea but you really need to think out the incentives more thoroughly instead of just hoping for good-will and communal feelings to keep it going.
Urban Airship: Scaling iPhone Store Kit and push notifications
Innovations in one field are inevitably linked to innovations in others. Do you really think it's possible to hold back technological progress? That effectively means restraining human ambition. Would that not require an extreme police state?
Not to mention MMOs. Transformation to Cat-girl will be extremely popular with the furries. Sad to say, but this will make MMOs much more attractive. Or much less incongruous might be a better way to put it.
How to Build a 100-Million-Image Database
How about the more you review, the higher your own pitches appear?
Content Aware Image Resizing built-in in FF3.5
Not impressive at all. That's an average of 3 apps per user.

I believe IPhone and Android users average more than 10 apps.
Also, those numbers refer to the 118 startups prior to the current cycle. The 27 this summer haven't had time yet to fail, merge, get acquired, or hire people.
I think it should be easier to create things, not harder. We should stimulate creation, experimentation, research, remixing and refinement. Copyright laws makes it harder then it should be to create things. Creativity should not be limited by copyright. Having commercial exclusivity for 50, 100 or 200 years won't make creation any easier for original author or any other person following. Being able to make some money is an incentive for certain types of works, and you should also be able to do that in the future. But for most people it not about that, how large a percent of books are really making a lot of money after 10 years? The unpopular are forgotten and the popular are already in paperback with small profit margins. And if there are some books that make a lot of money after 10 years, isn't there already a sequel? And if there isn't, wouldn't it be better to stimulate the creation of one? For most people who are in favor of copyright, it's not about making money, it's about control. Control of information. Society should not accept the control of public information. Ideas, knowledge and information have their value in their non-exclusivity. The Pirate Party is the only group I found who stand up for the right to personal development. To be able to educate yourself with free information. And that, to me, is a really powerful concept.
Have you seen this boy?
Not really, I don't like to visit more than a handful of sites. I'd rather just see the posts on News.YC. (sorry)
Icon sets. The Kai's Power Tools of web application design.
Yes, we'd fund a news startup. It's on the list: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
Introspecting Rails Models and Controllers Callbacks
Set it up so the participating sites can give away rewards to the people who beta test. Free accounts, discounts, whatever. You could organize all that.

Even if only a fraction of reviewed sites do it, you'll have enough people coming through that sites with nothing to give away will get attention too.
I find this post rather inspiring (who doesn't like cheering for an underdog?) Although I believe he is right to use Balsamiq as an example of great success, I'm not sure Peldi's market is exactly a small niche. Sure he has targeted a small development community, but his mock-up software could certainly be useful to a wide spectrum of people. Perhaps that is where the whole "growth from a small niche" thing comes in...

But I digress. The fact is that this article outlines exactly what more founders need to focus on. Why be a small fish struggling in an ocean when you can just as easily rule your own pond? (disclaimer: I watched Finding Nemo yesterday)