skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I could well be confusing the two, because I'm not sure if I even know what cycles are :-). I'm guessing from the name that cycles are when h(h(h(... h(a)))) = a? That's not quite what I'm getting at.

I'll try explaining my concern a little better. Suppose you have a hash function h. Let p be the probability that h(x) == h(y) for any unique x and y.

Now suppose you have some arbitrary inputs a and b.

h(a) = h(b) with probability p
h(h(a)) = h(h(b)) with probability 2p
h(h(h(a))) = h(h(h(b))) with probability 3p
etc.

The probability at each step increases because a collision is possible at each step, but a collision in a previous step guarantees a collision in the current one.

With a good hash function, p should be astronomically low, so I guess that's why it isn't a problem in this case? Or am I completely off-base in my assumptions?
I agree. Marketing is, largely, how you interact with your customers. But there is still a need for the work described in the question. As a business you still need to do outreach to new customers. And that is the type of work I would rather someone else do.
Apple working on adding multi-touch to iPod click-wheels
hyperlocal newspapers will always do well, but that is because the bar is effectively lower for them. where i grew up, the local newspaper was run by one person, and it wasn't their only job because the profits couldn't sustain them. content was always coming in and was a self-sustaining cycle -- stories about the little league, usually submitted by the little league itself or a coach or something, will bring in eyes of the league participants to the paper.

they'll probably always be profitable, but they won't be churning out jobs.
If you're wanting a marketing version of rent-a-coder, I think that's a great idea. I've never heard of one myself, but I have several friends who are talented artists, etc.., but just don't have the where-with-all to get a decent job marketing. They would totally go for a freelance network if there was one, and so would hundreds of others, I'm sure. This is a great start-up idea, IMO. "rent-a-marketer"
I fixed the spelling mistake. You really didn't know what I meant even if it was misspelled?
If you need this, you might want to check out AppNexus. I believe that they allow this level of customization (not sure if that's the right word).
I see what you mean now. And your intuition on cycles was spot-on.

And to answer your question (I'm not a crypto expert, so take with a pinch of salt):

With SHA-1, that probability is generally accepted to be 2^(-160). 1000 is roughly 2^10, so the final probability is about 2^(-150). I guess that's still improbable enough...

But I think you do make a very valid and interesting point.
I have a valid liscense that came with the OEM HP computer. Still have the receipts. Vista worked for 2 years until last night when it became invalid and accused me of theft.
The question was whether taxes are taken at the point of a gun and whether one can opt out of the "social contract" without govt threatening and using force.

Yes, different places have different "social contracts", which results in police using force in different situations. Those differences don't mean that "social contracts" are voluntary in some places and not in others - they're all imposed by force.

Yes, the circumstances in which police will point guns at you vary.

That doesn't address
Fixed, I had a lot more basic problems then I thought posting this up to HN has been really helpfull in less then an hour.
I echo all points so far. Nice idea.

Your name doesn't speak to your audience. What % of foodies know what 'querty' means? My guess: very few (in contrast, stackoverflow is a great name, because it is a phrase that has significant meaning to the target audience). If you're targeting gourmet chefs, something like burntgarlic.com would be analogous to stackoverflow.com, etc.
What kinds of things can a graphic designer, I assume you meant graphic, give me that I couldn't do for my self?
I'm not used to double-clicking on the internet, so it took a bit getting used to. Very nifty, though.
Let's not confuse science and NASA too much in the discussion here I'd say. Flying the existing shuttle back and forth to space for 3 decades is as much dog and pony as it is science.

I'd like to agree with part of this article though. The science olympiad would have been a LOT more fun if the contest was to create the biggest explosion instead of the strongest toothpick bridge.
Audio White Paper - F5 And The 8 Ways To Virtualization
Thats actually a really great point. I guess we thought people would know what qwerty meant. A hybring of food, and computers. Something we will really think about.
Quit being offended. If we take "gun owners" to mean "people completely at random" (i.e. no prejudice) then what he said is true. Random people don't like CLIs. Random people are completely different than people who want to write database archiving scripts. Script writers like CLIs better.
Mine as well. I think there are two people there.

So just wondering--if this goes in reverse, is there a space for extremely local newspapers that cover just a tiny portion of a city or suburb? Implying that economies of scale are not scaling anymore.
google calendar and notepub.com for web clips, bookmarking, todos, and general note taking.
I don't know if its just me but I think the color scheme and design is very ugly. If its a website about food, you should use some nice and warm colors and design elements which makes me hungry!
dude you sound like those people 30 years ago protecting discrimination against certain races/classes: "It is my property, i don't want to rent it to Black/Asian/whatever race you don't like."

Sorry, discrimination is discrimination, and discriminating somebody just b/c they worked on a company x, in a very systematic way (and colluding with other companies on this), seems very anti-competitive. At the end, is the employees that suffer b/c there is less competition for their skills.
Data Mining the StackOverflow Database
Makes you wonder, but then again this sounds like just the kind of thing that some 10 year old user interface patent will suddenly turn up on... snapped up by an IP troll during the fire-sale of some long-dead CAD company.
BookBurro (http://www.bookburro.org/).
What are design elements that make you hunger?
StreamGraphs are neat
I don't think your target audiences would understand (or need to) What RPX is.

I think it would be more obvious if you just show the AOL/Google/Yahoo login interface on that right column.
Your point 2 is far from ridiculous. We do it that way so the business logic exists and is enforced in one place rather than being scattered around this desktop app and that website and so on. Only the most trivial applications can afford to put all their business logic in the middle tier.

Also I'm not allowed to use OCaml in production systems because too few people at the company speak it. Annoying for me, but again far from ridiculous.
Local dailies that run a combination of world, national, state, and local news are hosed. That segment of the industry is in a tailspin. Ad revenue slips, then a round of layoffs to try to cap costs. Fewer people means fewer articles, shoddy reporting, or both. Quality of the paper declines. Ad revenue slips, then a round of layoffs to try to cap costs...
Wow, holy shit. Is there someone we can talk to at Opera about that? Would you be willing to get me a screenshot of the message and tell me what version of Opera you're running? I'd like to find out who reported that, and why. The page in question doesn't contain any scripts or interactive features of any kind. (I just looked at it on the server with less to make sure nobody had, say, injected some script tags since the last time I looked. Nope.)
Mostly sold through brick-and-mortar retailers, though.
Google Techtalk: Web-based Inference Detection
Also keep in mind if you start with $200, see zero sales and then start gradually reducing it to $20, then you basically shoot your own credibility as a merchant as the $200 -> $20 drop makes you look greedy, detached from the reality and ultimately incompetent.

I think you will find in the typically B2C sales cycle -- which is a term that makes me laugh, since it typically fits inside a browser session -- customers do not have access to the contents of your lunchbox from last Tuesday or your pricing strategy from yesterday. The only thing they see is your price, today. This is one reason that nearly everyone who starts at $200 and goes to $20 fails -- not because they "lose credibility" (no one saw the $200 price -- really, no one, the no sales problem in software is almost always caused by the marketing strategy "Put up a website and pray someone discovers it") but because charging $20 for applications communicates that the value provided by them is negligible.

(Relatedly: your competitors' pricing does not matter because your customers will probably never see it.)
"a 'do not touch' list of companies ... whose employees were not to be wooed to the Internet search giant"

Recruiters at Google were not to seek out people from these companies. People that worked there were free to apply to Google without repercussion.
The Apollo program inspired a generation of engineers that got America on the fast track to victory in the Cold War. Furthermore, NASA has facilitated a great deal of technological and scientific innovation in the past few decades, both directly and indirectly.

It is understandably difficult for a politician to justify this value to an apathetic audience when NASA projects are so expensive and they rarely provide any directly observable positive economic impacts. But I don't think it's unfair for noonespecial to assert that the sciences should be prioritized above something whose sole purpose is entertainment. It's interesting to observe how something like NASA can shape a society, public discourse, and the economy in a positive direction. I wish it could be quantifiable to express this value to the voting base, but I doubt it can be done.
I will be honest, I like ads.

Wait, I should rephrase that...."I like useful ads." Yeah, thats better.

My alter-ego is a recording engineer. You know the best place to learn about recording gear is? Recording industry mags!

"Well, OBVIOUSLY, blhack, the articles teach you about the gear! DUH! NEXT! DOWNVOTE!"

But wait, young troll, wait. The reason that those recording industry magazines are such great places to learn is the ads! The ads are targeted at recording engineers, and people working in studios. You may start out thinking to yourself "gee whiz, fellas, them recording equipments sure are neat!", but that is all you know about it! YOu know that there is a mythical land called a "studio" where magicians called "engineers" cook things in their cauldrons called "digital audio workstations" to produce wonderous audio adventures for your listening pleasure, but that is about it. You don't yet know the norms for how those DAWs work, what mics are useful for what, how much things cost, where they go, how they connect to each other, what ELSE you can do (outbourd effects [spells, I call them]) etc. etc.

This is what the ads are there for. They're there to give you cues about what you should be looking at if you're building a studio.

THIS is the holy grail of what google is trying to do! The advertisers know to just advertise their new condensor mics in the recording industry mags because they know who is reading them.

What they DON'T know is who is reading BLOGS about the same things. That is where google steps in. Google crawls your site and tries to GUESS what sorts of ads you would be interested in. This can be highly effective, but it isn't as good at targeting as real people are.

What digg is trying to do is figure out a way to bring humans back into the targeting equation. My prediction is that it will be a total failure, but it WILL mark a revolution in the way that ads are being delivered. (Affiliate marketers are already starting to do this to some extent by localizing their ads).
There is a sea of difference between "preventing collusion to do/not do X" and "mandating doing X"? The key word is collusion.

Similarly, collusion to raise prices is illegal, raising prices is legal. Enforcing this law amounts to "do not collude", and does mean "do not raise prices", "raise prices" or anything at all about raising or lowering prices.
Leaving aside the tar pit that is "personal freedom" libertarian rhetoric, let me remind you that groups colluding and conspiring against others, specially individuals, is grounds for a conspiracy charge and RICO trial. For one, you're denying the tax-man income by keeping one more tax payer out of the labor force.
Fair enough ... but ... if you guys are just doing stuff to prepare for your "real" startups, how is that an alternative to a real MBA (other than not spending the money or extra time).

Why not just dive into the startup you really want to do?

Oh, and I never said anything about M Arrington.
Did you use an open source software to build your site? Or it is 100% your code?
I agree, its in the works, I just added the rpx thing today wanted to see how it worked.
Well, no, not really. Overpricing by much is really bad. Underpricing is not good either, but can be remedied by releasing new versions under new pricing. Overpricing by little is the best though, because it allows fine tuning the price with sale or coupon discounts. So again it comes down to knowing the target userbase and making a reasonable initial guess.
I just saw it is built in Drupal...did you use a special module?
The effect is this: it looks like real work but doesn't require you to hit compile and run the app and find that it doesn't work. It's the same with refactoring. People love doing it because you seem busy but don't have to take the risk of revealing (if only to yourself) that your code doesn't do what you think it ought.

It's one reason for the success of Java in the marketplace, there's so much scaffolding to be done that it keeps loads of people busy-looking.
I converted the 960.gs fluid css framework to a Drupal theme which I then contributed back to Drupal, http://drupal.org/project/ninesixtyfluid , I have modified the Drupal stuff here and there, but other then that its all Drupal and Drupal modules. If you wanted I can provide you with the list of modules I used to create this site.
It sounds to me like this would be a good candidate for an iPhone and BlackBerry app. How many people shoot guns when they're sitting in front of the computer (other than us developers)? ;)
And epoch time is a dead giveaway for the issue date.
Yes I used a bunch I will make a list.
Mostly because I like caffeine. I've thought about kicking it entirely, but I hope that isn't necessary. Also, the decaf selection is pretty limited where I shop, and none of my favorite kinds of coffee are ever available as decaf. Usually the only light-roast decafs available are Central American coffees, which aren't my cup of tea, so to speak.
Trying to turn "people have a right to control what's theirs" into something you can't say? :)
How do you get a patent, if you have developed mathematical ideas to solve a practical problem?

I guess the answer is to patent that specific application of the mathematics - like Pagerank. This narrows the patent, so it doesn't impede progress in general; and it doesn't harm you, since that's the only area that you're working in anyway. From a business point of view, it would suck if someone was absurdly successful by applying your mathematical ideas exactly in an unrelated field... but would be kinda cool for you as a knowledge-creator. As an inventor, you're doing both.
Design: How close is too close? Bing Travel vs. Kayak
I know Knuth for his The Art of Computer Programming and TeX, and he's clearly amazingly smart - I'm curious about what algorithms he has invented, for what applications. e.g. Is there a "Knuth's Algorithm" (like Dijkstra's)?
Test CSS for Harsh Widget Environments?
Does anyone know of (or have) some test CSS that simulates a ridiculously harsh widget environment, e.g. sets all the possible CSS properties to crazy values?
Right order of magnitude; close enough. ;)
I just used EZ 7z (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19139) to do it for me. No need to tarnish my system with MacPorts.
Yeah, we point that out on the front page of the site. We didn't think it was necessary to point it out on every single page. The page in question was last edited five years before Canonical Ltd. was formed.
I can't believe what I'm reading: You are superman. You are my hero. I want to be your friend. I WANT TO HIRE YOU!

Let me tell you something. If this poor guy gets hired by one of you, he'll probably end up working with a retarded person and reading cookies for the rest of his life.

To the hacker: Keep having fun mate, but don't allow your time to be cluttered up by things that don't make a difference, like a cookie.

PyMan
So besides the built in ones here is a basic list of the modules I used. I had use some of the in non-intuitive ways, and others I had to really change the way they looked.

CCK
Flag
Pathologic
Automatic Nodetitles
Global Redirect
MimeDetect
Node Comment
Path redirect
Pathauto
Quick Tabs
RPX
Token
Panels
Rules
User Karma
Wysiwyg
Views
Voting API
Vote Up/Down
How about limiting health calamities caused by hypertension or congestive heart failure?
http://ims.ivv.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/news/pressrel/2008/08-...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Spinoff has a nice list.
This is fantastic. Now they need an option to disable the big yellow line and arrows.
I would say that you sell the program at several different price ranges: call one Standard and one Enterprise, and another Home, and so on. They don't have to be any more different than the various versions of Windows are—that is, about 1% alteration, basically features flipped on or off in the shipped client using flags built into the reg. key.

Put them at drastically different price points. See which one(s) sell. Eliminate the price points/versions that don't, and roll their "benefits" upward (or downward, if you want to be nice.)
The success of a startup consists of two parts - finding product/market fit, and developing the product. Steven Blank claims that for a wide class of web/computer technology startups the former is the ultimate risk item and deserves the most focus of the management (that's you). Hardly any technology startup fails for not being able to develop their product, most fail for lack of market for what they do develop.

If you agree with Steven, you are looking for a co-founder.

If you disagree with Steven, inquire with your local accountant about jobless marketing people. There are plenty right now, and accountants have wide social networks.
SiliconIndia Startup City - VC Talk
Thanks. I now use the following and my HN headaches are gone:

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://news.ycombinator.com/) {
td { color: #000000 !important; }
td.title a:visited { text-decoration: line-through !important; }
td.subtext { padding-bottom:2em !important; }
}
It seems natural to overdo a new tool until you've found its best uses.

But I think the only drug is perfectionism, and it applies to anything reasonably complicated. The cure is brutal honesty. How much will you really be able to reuse in a sophisticated design? (Not much.) How likely is it to change? (Very likely.) Will an unanticipated new feature completely destroy your formerly-perfect object design? (Often, yes.)

One of the original thoughts behind inheritance was to manage complexity. But since code is read much more than it is written, I think of my eyes and not my fingers. Sure, I may have saved some time writing the code, and even had fun coming up with its unique design. But the next 40 or 50 times I have to go back and understand the code, and read 4 or 5 other files just to figure out what a function does, I see the error of my ways.

That doesn't mean I avoid inheritance, but I strictly limit it to things where it has immediate and obvious value. I may have one parent class, and the class isn't very big. It's also not something I'm likely to share in a public header; I'll inherit from it myself, and not ask others to do the same, which avoids a whole category of hurt. :)
If you're graphically inclined then go ahead and take care of it yourself, but based on the sparse layout and simplistic design I thought you would need one.

Even StackOverflow and the others are nicer to look at, but remember you're appealing to food geeks and so they are more visually inclined. Part of cooking well is the presentation.
If it runs Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows, just use synergy. It lets you share keyboard and mouse between several systems. It's awesome. The kind of OSS software I'd love to pay for.
It is a good idea, but there are issues with the execution. I'll outline them below.

The most critical problem is that your site has serious SEO issues. Stack Overflow was built with the goal of having crawlable questions and answers. That's how you build traffic and usage. Your questions are loaded with some AJAX, which means that the search engine will never see them. Even worse, your content will look stale to Google and be indexed very infrequently.

My suggestion: Even if you create a sitemap.xml file (which is one solution), your files will be indexed slowly. You will need to mess with the crawl frequency manually with Google Webmaster Tools. This is less than ideal. The ideal solution is to actually create a crawlable site. You should invest some time and money into learning about SEO and perhaps hiring someone to audit your site.

Next, a little harsh criticism: If you are targeting foodies, you should design your site as such. It's not a very attractive site, let alone designed correctly.
It's a toy, no more, no less.

According to Google Squared, our Russian President has been dead for a couple of weeks by now (he's alive and well, just in case you're wondering), we have been also ruled by someone named "5 November 1996" and "Constitution" was our President too. The one guy left in the list is not a president at all (Viktor Chernomyrdin is Russia's embassador to Ukraine).
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=presidents+of+russian...

Exponential improvement, eh?..
Well, I hope everyone reading this downvotes randallsquared and goes through his posting history for a similar treatment.

Oh wait, you don't like that? Yeah, it's called conspiracy.

You have the right to do whatever you want with your property, but you can not conspire with your friends against a helpless segment of society that's trying to make a living .. or any other segment for that matter.
Love it!! I've been using Live (I mean Bing) maps lately because of the bird's eye view. This new and improved Street View might get me back to Google Maps/Streetview.
For what it's worth, I have found a few since I wrote the article, and I still think the article is okay (although kind of outdated in some ways). I've fixed a few, too. Hopefully I've fixed more than I've created.
Every partnership agreement I've worked under for a large company has had a "no employee theft" clause. I don't think they're uncommon.
Perhaps you should focus your target on simply foodies, rather than foodies + computer geeks. Simplifying will pay off when making decisions in the future. Rather than thinking "what would a food-lover/computer geek want?", you should be asking "what would a food-lover want?"
Bing Travel's design is almost exactly what Farecast -- acquired by MS in early 2008, and part of Live Search -- has had for at least the past year (maybe more, I first visited Farecast about a year ago).

Farecast and Kayak have had a very similar design for quite a while. I'm not sure whose design came first. But to suggest that Bing Travel copied Kayak right now is simply wrong.
You could always move to Somalia. One does have a vote in most societies (though being Irish in America, I don't), and basic services are there for the asking. If you don't like the cost/benefit ratio in the society you're in, you can try to change it, or leave; unless you're unfortunate enough to live somewhere like North Korea.