skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From what I understand, there are a number of hospitals that can do some measure of call-ahead scheduling for ERs. What would prevent you from asking about each hospital policy and at worst doing a Twilio automated call to the number if they choose that one? At worst your automated message would get hung up on, and you'd tell them that it could not be processed and tell them to go there directly.

At best, you win because the ER staff hits the right keys for your automated message. Or they agree to do a full agreement with you.
I'd be up for that.
Very, very interesting. My first concern when I saw this site was concerning no-shows and late arrivals -- I know many doctor's offices are forced to double book appointments and therefore run extremely late, simply to maintain profitability in the face of lateness and no-shows. Have the hospitals had any issue with late arrivals throwing off the schedule? I'd imagine that if, after paying $24.99 for this service, a patient is still seen late, he or she would be rather (rightly) peeved.
The amount of gold available in the world is relatively stable; there's not much of it and never has been.

The amount of "stuff" -- things of value which we wish to obtain through economic transactions -- is not stable and has not been for quite some time; it has, rather, been expanding at a rapid pace (consider, for example, the number of profitable industries today producing durable goods which did not exist even a half-century ago).

This represents a problem: if the total amount of currency available for use in transactions does not maintain rough parity with the total amount of goods and services available to be exchanged in those transactions, then the imbalance will lead to wild price fluctuations.

Since this situation is isomorphic to inflation (the only difference is which side of the currency/goods equation harbors the imbalance), the magnitude of the fluctuations will be the same as in an equivalent inflationary situation.

Thus, your point would be a strong one if only you were arguing for gold as an investment (since, in an imbalance of the type described above, the market value of gold would increase). As an argument for gold as a currency, it holds no water and in fact tends to undermine that position. In the present age, gold simply cannot be the foundation of a stable currency.
I invite you to read my reply to ghshephard.
Ask HN: New Web Customers and Ballpark Estimates
Since we started over a year ago we've had numerous proposals where people have asked us to work with them and write up a proposal. However over half the time when we finish the proposal the prospective client responds with "Oh wow, that is way out of my price range." I've checked our prices with other developers and have been told they are reasonable.

Recently we've after initial talks with possible clients, if we feel they do not understand the size or cost of the project, will ask them if they understand the cost and time requirements of the project. We've had a mix response on this.

We worry sometimes the ball park is going to be too large, and possibly scare them off. However it is necessary as we don't want to waste our or their time.

How do you handle this situation?
Are you recommending a swingers club?
Also an El Pasoan. This is the first time I've seen anyone say anything about El Paso.

There's some great areas to camp around town. I usually hit up Mesquite (there's BLM land out there that practically no one knows about) and Hueco Tanks. As for extended camping and backpacking, I'd probably suggest heading out to Big Bend or the Gila.
You can tax land. Land isn't going to go away:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoism
Cool! So, what else is new?

Facebook isn't making any money?!
Its important to point out that this is not an overall judgment of the presenting team as people, only the VCs impression that they will be able to work with them. This does not often require more than a cursory interaction and the confidence to trust your opinions. I don't think the VC has any obligation to see past their own biases and plumb the depths of your personality. If they don't think they can work with you, thats for their purpose.
It's like saying 128x and 28x, considered as finite sequences of digits followed by a letter, are in the class of sequences that end in x. Except in the infinite case, there are a lot more than 26 letters.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why is google paying for bandwidth at all?

Why doesn't google own their own bandwidth provider? Didn't they buy up a bunch of dark fiber a while ago?

Lease it to the providers and use that to subsidize their own bandwidth. Or am I totally missing the point?
I've personally had horrendous waits in clinics, urgent care centers, and ERs. I've also had really quick experiences with an ER. I'm not saying I'm typical, I'm just saying that my personal experience is such that your point never would have occurred to me.

But even granting your point, you can still market against that experience without implying that you only schedule people for ERs.

Right now I imagine that this site gets most of its business from people who call the ER directly, and then the participating ER tells them about the site (I could be totally wrong about that, though). Going forward, though, I would think that way that this is going to be used is that a user will know they need treatment, go to the site (find it via a search engine, whatever), look for the treatment facility that satisfies some mix of 'near', 'soon', and 'perceived ability to treat my problem', and put their name down.

If there's a marketing hump to get over, I would think it would be snagging people who are coming from a search engine or via some route other than having the ER send them there directly. It seems like the perception that this is just for ERs is more a problem in this sense - I'd personally be less likely to use it if I thought it wouldn't include nearby clinics in the list of places I could sign up for.
1) Not subsidizing anyone, ever.

Actually not subsidizing can be non-optimal in a wide range of situations, although in general intervention is questionable.

We'd have no tech industry at all in Asia if it weren't for HEAVY industry subsidization in early stages in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, followed by the wildly successful Chinese special export zones (which are, to some extent, just a loosening of laws, but also included economic stimulus). This same pattern has emerged worldwide in a number of other industries (Taiwanese Orchids and African textiles off the top of my head) that otherwise wouldn't have appeared at all.

If you'd like some better cites on this you could do worse than to start with the work of Dani Rodrik: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~drodrik/papers.html
The government doesn't have to pick winners in terms of single companies or technologies, but subsidizing whole sectors is often quite useful.

2) Increasing transparency of its laws

Totally agree here

3) Taxing negative externalities rather than positive ones
(so tax carbon instead of capital gains)

Negative Externalities are often extremely difficult to value in the free market (the original Cap&Trade systems had wild swings in price until the market matured via gov't intervention), so that can be a sticking point. Not everything can be cleanly auctioned for value, whereas positive externalities in the form of profit are usually clearly valued.

4) Removing market distortions like
the immigration issue discussed in the article.

Agreed

1) Subsidizing some part of the industry which therefore
damages the innovation that would out-compete it.

Which is why an approach is needed that doesn't pick winners, but is equally helpful to a wide range of (generally small) companies. This is particularly true if you can't get competing countries to stop subsidizing.

The 'second kind' of policies arise not necessarily from a desire to be 'world leading', but because lawmakers have a different criteria of what is positive than you do. Many things that are strictly profit increasing are not welfare increasing, whether for the better (Save AIG because they reinsure half of the damn country and insurance rates would soar), or for the worse (Save GM because unions are politically powerful and raise my chances of re-election).

I feel like many HN'ers (although not necessarily you) went out and took econ 101 and 102, decided it was mathematical proof for strict Randian libertarianism, and now deride any government. This simplified view isn't well supported even in economics, particularly since so many problems in real life fall into either collective action or non-rational behavior categories. </rant>
Ask YC: best ISP in Bay Area?
I'm aware of Comcast (cable) and AT&T (DSL). Are there any others that are worth looking into? Which one do you think is the best from experience? What kind of prices did you pay?
As a student of applied mathematics I pretty much agree with the gist of this post, although I'm not entirely sure what it means to "understand the math" of a field if you don't understand the concepts (or, to be unaware of the math if you do understand the concepts).

I think the real key, rather than seeing equations and having them explained to you, is to learn how to read an equation so it teaches or illuminates a concept instead of mystifies. There are lots of simple tricks to this that can be immensely helpful, and most of us already know them: recognizing that a formula is monotonic on its domain, for example, tells you about the relationship of the variables involved, and therefore the mechanics of whatever real world quantities are being described.
Taxing the negative externality behavior doesn't have the aim of eliminating it -- just causing it to be weighed properly in the firm's decisions.

But, you do have a point because 'proper' tax rates for negative externalities only pay for abatement/offset of the externalities' harm. You can't count exclusively on such taxes to pay for other unrelated public goods. (If you did, you'd be overtaxing the externality, causing underproduction of the related goods, which can be just as damaging to overall welfare as the original unabated negative externalities...)
Land deals in Africa and Asia: Cornering foreign fields
When I worked for NASA I knew several researchers who were funded through NASA's SBIR program as independent investigators.
Eric Schmidt was talking about how 'micropayments' were the solution. Maybe people would pay a couple cents per video.
Definitely interested! I don't believe a U.S. G2 release has been announced.
Yes, but that is $2 million in internet dollars.
1-Take a long walk (walking helps a _lot_ to think about problems)

2-If you find a library, stroll inside

3-Find a book or two by using your immediate taste/intuition. anything will suffice.

4-Let it flow. You will eventually find something to do.

I would be very surprised if you don't find anything this way.
The book (and TV series) "Connections" by James Burke is a very interesting peek into just how interconnected technology is.

The one that amazed me was how the technology of the auto loom lead to the computer (via punch cards). Again, this won't give you insight into the math of things, but it will show you how one innovation lead to another.

http://www.amazon.com/Connections-James-Burke/dp/0316116726
Holy crap it takes that guy forever to get to the point.

8 minutes of video to show an old acoustic coupler modem is still functional.
Would you?

For me, youtube has largely replaced pirating music as a means for discovering bands (this is why it angers me so much when videos get muted). The cost for me to check out a band I might be interested in is ~$0.00.

If they started charging me for this, I would either want something that I got to keep, or I would start pirating again.
Ah, perhaps it is because I am not familiar with him that I completely missed the satire. I had taken it to be quite literal.
Proving something exists nonconstructively using probability.
I agree - the CLI's biggest weakness is discoverability, and the feature you describe is nice way to address it. And it's the right way to add a frill - there if you need it, invisible if you don't.

Bespin's interface, on the other hand, is just obnoxious. It's great eye candy, but there's so much visual noise and wasted space that I could easily see it affecting productivity. I'll call it eye diabetes.
Based on Credit Suisse's bandwidth cost estimate, it seems like YouTube would have to be pushing more than 10PB per day (petabytes). That's assuming a $0.10/GB bandwidth cost. Now, I'm sure that Google is getting a lower bandwidth cost than I can get on a dedicated server as just me with my credit card.

So, I think it's safe to assume from those numbers that Google's pushing a few dozen petabytes from YouTube every day. That's a lot of data.
But music videos are promotional, meaning the label would pay YouTube/Google for the cost of distribution. You don't get CD quality on YouTube (and I actively buy CDs because they sound better to me than MP3).

I mean TV shows, lectures and science programs - video with educational value.
I'm guessing they can hold out long enough for flash p2p penetration.
I don't think I would have come back if it wasn't for her

You mean to stay you would have stayed abroad? Am little confused as you start talking about expats dying of preventable diseases immediately afterwords
I agree that the main weakness of the unix cli is in discoverability. This would require at least a limited standard interface (for declaring options and help) but it would not be enought for specific usages. So the overkill solution is real introspection abilities (from what I understood MS did this thanks to .net in its cli), but you loose simplicity and text everywhere.
> Also, I still like eating tasty animals.

I think this is the 'logic' that has underpinned the previous dominant views of animals as mindless automatons.

I like eating animals -> eating animals is morally OK -> animals don't have consciousness

Merely trying to point out that animals do have concsiousness often causes cognitive dissonance and is quickly dismissed.
And the search box on the right bears more than a passing resemblance to the login box for GMail.

http://gmail.google.com
"Taxing the negative externality behavior doesn't have the aim of eliminating it -- just causing it to be weighed properly in the firm's decisions."

But it does tend to reduce the externality, thus reducing tax base. Which interferes with revenue collection.
I have to agree with the gold rings. What we had were gold coins hanging on our necks just in case something happened to the dollar or the euro. At least with gold, you can pay your way out :)
Every other week these figures appear and every time on HN they are debunked.

The Credit Suisse analyst's report has little idea about how delivering large amounts of data on the net works. See my previous comments on this story for more information.
and do some PNF stretching :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNF_stretching
maybe the OP is taking everything to heart? :)
If Google had their own bandwidth (hell, their own Tier 1/2 network is feasible) it might provide them too great a temptation to do evil.
Having a little creature be so happy to see you every time you walk through the door he can barely contain himself ALWAYS puts a smile on your face

This literally made me laugh out loud with all the fond memories of the dogs I've had in my life.
Why aren't you charging for your proposal work? I'm dead serious.

There is little downside to doing this once you get over the shock of such a "callous" suggestion that the customer actually pay for your technical and skilled analysis of their particular problem.

First, anyone who won't pay for the problem analysis and recommendations will not pay for the end result of a project that results from a free proposal either. This is mainly because they probably aren't as invested in the solution as you (or even they) think they are. The notion of "scaring someone off" is fantasy; better to do it in 5 seconds than after 20 hours of work. If a client is going to go forward with your project, they will pay for the expert advice. They do this already with their lawyers, accountants and other service providers.

Second, you do need to review your services. It is evident that if you are losing greater than 50% of your proposals, and yet other developers charge your prices, one of the following is occurring:

1. Your proposals suck. (ie you are not selling your services well enough)

2. You are targeting the wrong clients (easy to do if you are giving away your proposals)

3. You are possibly mis-matched for your target industries - size, etc.

Assuming you are competent, it is very likely that you are simply wasting too much of your time with prospects you haven't properly qualified.

The other thing you can do when you get the "out of my range" comment is to ask what is the range. At that point, you can provide a solution (again on fee) that addresses a subset of the problem, at a easier to swallow price. It also allows the option for them to use your services again in the future, which could actually net you more fees.
Ask them what budget they have to work with, and provide two options - one within their budget and one that goes over. Understanding their budget and who pays is important.
Provide a value proposition.
My companies startup http://www.medtipster.com/ should partner with you. Unfortunately it's not up to me.

We already have all the localization code, and with more hospitals I think this would work great as a module on the site.

I sent the suggestion "upward", but I have no way to know if it'll go anywhere.
Use a Wii Balance Board with Linux
FAQ item... w3schools.com uses a self-selected sample, and most other surveys show IE still above 60% audience share.

I agree with you, though, that it's weird to discriminate against such large audiences.

jd/adobe
They're probably already doing settlement-free peering with various ISPs due to their sheer volume of data transfer, which would mean that they aren't paying for all of the bandwidth they're using. Otherwise, the ISPs they're peering with would have to pay someone else for the bandwidth to use YouTube.
> An attacker which can read out the passwords from your database already owns your site.

Never store passwords in plain text. They are open to a disgruntled employee. It happens frequently enough to just not take a chance.
yes. you can still theoretically call it a startup. i just wouldn't waggle that tag around too much until you have something to back it up.
Yes, Ontario.
They also happen to be in the class of sequences that end in 8x and 28x... also definitely their own classes. So 128x is in at least 4 classes, 28x is in at least 3. Therefore it's not an equivalence relation.
Woah huge congrats guys!
Absolutely consumers care about the car's internals. Most people know a lot more about their cars than about web standards.
You can potentially have a sample of programs implemented in many different languages and compare the length of each program across languages. With enough programs you should be able to get a good enough sample as long as they are diverse enough.
Yes, I am here until mid June. Moving outside the U.S. again to be with said girl friend :-)
I agree. That's his main point.

He also touches on two points which I thought were worth calling out:

(1) No source for a Simple Math of Everything exists (ie he'd like to write one)

(2) If it did exist, there are many benefits to it even beyond gaining new knowledge (for example, reading Feynman's lectures greatly enriched his world view)
See "How to Learn About Everything" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=628413

And I don't see "diminishing returns" in knowledge as significant. There is always something else relevant to learn, maybe in another field but still relevant.
Not only that, the paper he references used OpenDHT as its substrate. OpenDHT was Sean Rhea's research project and was never designed for performance or for the particular operations the paper authors tried to use it for (specifically, the data structure they were attempting to implement required an atomic write assurance for key insertion and they were forced to add a locking layer on top of the DHT which was basically a set-and-test for a lot of the put operations...) This is much akin to those people who try to store unstructured data in a RDBMS and then bitch and moan about how all RDBMSs must suck because of the poor performance they are seeing.

I know the blog author has a particular agenda to push, but one would hope that the least we could assume is that he actually read and understood the details of the paper he uses to bolster his claims...
>Sure, as long as the site uses HTTPS.

You really should think again about your logins especially if you are near a college campus and especially if you aren't using firefox (which will pop up with a warning on an https site when you are tunneled through someone else's computer).
I should have called out the one element that I was responding to,

--SNIP--

As "money", both are valueless in and of themselves, and merely stand in for things of actual value (goods and services).

--SNIP--

But, in hindsight, I realize that your statement, wasn't suggesting that gold had no value, but that its value was derived from those things that it stood for - which is, to some degree, orthogonal to the fact that it historically has reliably, and consistently, stood for things of value.
What confuses me is if they like the idea but don't like the team. Why not buy the founders out right then and there and just put in there own people.
I've used Trident Trust : http://tridenttrust.com/jurisdiction_tbvi_companies.html - but I get the impression that all of these companies are similar : http://www.offshorebvi.com

1. Sign up and pay (about $1000 USD)
2. They incorporate same day
3. Next day they FedEx you your documents
4. Bring those documents to your bank to set up an account
5. .. ? ..
6. Profit! ;-)
7. Once a year you renew your agent fee with the incorporation company. Another $400.

That's really all there is to it. I don't know how it works out from a tax point of view outside the U.S., but in the U.S. it's just treated like a corporation in any state. I pay U.S. taxes on my income, worldwide, so there's no tax benefit to a BVI Corp for a U.S. citizen.

But I've heard there are big advantages if you're not a U.S. citizen. Since you're only taxed on local-earned income and your BVI company is not a local company, etc. That's all I know.
jeez you kids these days with your 1200 baud modems have no patience
Google Gives Devs G2's. But What Music Did they Include?
Google gave out G2 Android phones to developers at its Google I/O conference today. Each one came with some songs included. But what do those songs say about Google's opinion of its developers?
I'm not sure: they're a series, and as such the effect is cumulative. Also, if you found Freeling overly literary, van de Wettering's Zen sensibility (he also wrote three nonfiction books on his experiences studying Zen around the world [Japan and America in particular]).

I just noticed, reading the Wikipedia article, that he died last July 4. Another one gone. Damn.
Really?

I have a dozen of reasons to have the passwords recoverable - when the angry big customer is having problems with the application and you need to access his account to reproduce the issue being on a level 4 support, you really want to have the password straight away, and there are many other scenarios, like when you need to test something on a production server with some real data but cannot get access to any accounts as it takes years in a big corp to have something done.

So from a developers perspective - as opposed to business/marketing side - i cannot think of any reason to ever store unrecoverable passwords in a database. Makes it easier to implement, easier to restore, easier to maintain, easier to test.
http://code.google.com/p/google-app-engine-django/
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