skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As far as we know, no, it's quantum all the way down. If you zoom in really close you can see the quata of everything, like looking at a newspaper with a magnifying glass - you can see the dots. If you zoom back out to our level, everything looks classical - you can just see the newspaper.
This isn't going to cost TC 4 million bucks in cash. It is (allegedly) worth 4 million to the startup. For example they are offering to plug the startup on TC - which is free to TC and probably very valuable to a startup.
David MacKay: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air
Yeah, you don't even want to get me started on Vonage, good lord.

They get away with it because the charges are low enough and the service decent enough that they can make more by playing BS games with people and taking their lumps with the BBB because by the time people care enough to take notice they have already been screwed.
And, of course, the big gaping hole in that argument is that if you can effectively raise money to participate in DEMO, then you don't need DEMO's help with raising money.

I'd be curious to see a breakdown of success vs. failure from DEMO and TC50 launches. I'm betting, even without knowing anything about the selection criteria of either or having ever spent any time at all looking at the companies launching at either, that TC50 produces more success stories.

Hmmm...actually I just checked out the DEMO site...there's an awful lot of old companies "launched" at DEMO (RealNetworks, really!?!?).

So, now I not only can't believe anyone would pay to present at DEMO, I also can't believe anyone would be willing to sit through that kind of crapfest. It's just a bunch of ads. Why would anyone, particularly someone representing millions or billions of dollars, want to sit through a bunch of ads?

I just don't get it, obviously. Pretty swish website they have, though.

Edit: DEMO 09 appears to have had roughly half the participants as DEMO Fall 08. Perhaps the rules changed, or perhaps folks made the connection that it's not the best use of time/effort/money. I dunno.
It's not smart to try to push around a Wall Street Journal journalist.
It should do him a lot of good if there is knowledge in the industry that this company is posting fraudulent charges and not resolving consumer complaints satisfactorily.
TechCrunch probably couldn't sell enough ad space this year.
The Self Storage for Shifting Households
If you think that self storage are just meant to store the items for which there is no storing space at home or office, then you are wrong. These warehouses have come a long way.
From their FAQ:

"If you live in Alaska, Hawaii, or another country, we hope to be able to serve you in the future."

If that is true, they will make a killing in these states, since they would have no online competitor - just as Netflix checkmated in HI by opening a Honolulu depot; no other mainland-based service could compete. Also, there are not many brick and mortars competitors in some areas of HI.

Of course, making a killing in AK and HI is not going to get them megabucks (the population is too small), but still, it's nice to have a pond where you are the big fish.

As for the service in general - sure, I'd use it, even if it was slightly more expensive than going to the store. Who wants to waste an afternoon shopping for toilet paper in Wal-Mart? Off the cuff, I'd say I'd be willing to tolerate a 5% price increase of my current cost for the convenience. Whether that is enough to defray their shipping, I don't know.
You're really moving the goalposts here: if it's already proven that P==NP is undecidable (your supposition) then of course you couldn't prove that the algorithm, say, solved arbitrary instances of SAT in time polynomial in their size; such a proof would prove P==NP => contradiction of undecidability of P==NP.

I was specifically critiquing this assertion:

- since it (P=?NP shown unprovable) proves that you won't ever come up with an algorithm

...which isn't exactly right (you're drawing too strong a conclusion from your supposition): in a "P==NP is undecidable" universe there's nothing (apparently) stopping there being polynomial-time algorithms for NP-complete problems, just a barrier preventing proof that a given algorithm's asymptotic performance puts it in P.
Absolutely. This, along with DRY, allow you to write in just as much complexity/flexibility as is appropriate at that moment. I think the corollary to this is that you need to become adept at recognizing when additional abstractions and/or consolidations are necessary... in other words, learn when You Really Do Need It.
Y SIN EMBARGO magazine » YSElecta #20
Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released
It's really easy to develop portable Python applications that run equally well on *NIX, Windows and OS/X. I mount a single share on Linux, Windows XP and OS.X systems and run the same Python program and have them run identically on all three systems, side-by-side. I'm not saying that you can't match that with Ruby, but for me it's a way of releasing programs concurrently for all major platforms.
I have no idea how it'll help and suspect the author is confused about what a fraud alert actually does.

A fraud alert is simply a notice put on your credit files that creditors (before loaning you money, giving you a credit card, etc) will see. Creditors are supposed to call the number you listed before extending credit to make sure you actually requested it. A fraud alert's primary use to prevent identity theft and not to dispute items on your credit report.
First, even without payment, some folk will always record music, write software, make their feature films, do their own investigative journalism, occasionally even test their own drugs. You couldn't stop them if you tried.

While I agree with the broader sentiment, I do worry that you can keep people doing investigative journalism if you try. One thing a news organisation does for a journalist is act as a litigation shield. A single individual lacking the same protection is by nature less tenacious.

For example the badscience.net blogger/doctor (Ben Goldacre) wrote something about that hideous man who is getting South Africans with AIDS to stop taking their retrovirals and telling them that vitamins will cure their HIV infections. Goldacre got sued; but because he is a columnist for the UK newspaper the Guardian (a small-fry weekly columnist, not at all a newsdesk star) the paper backed him with their legal team and chased the bad guys off. Now if he was just a blogger with no media connection he probably would have stood down rather than deal with the legal fees. [Reference: http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-c... ]

I think lack of legal protection seriously chills citizen journalism. And legal protection is expensive.
Considering we live in a quantum world that just means you can approximate the same thing in a non-quantum world. It might not seem like a big deal, but thinking about earth's orbit in a pure Newtonian world is still wrong. As is friction and wind resistance.

What I am trying to say is when someone says it works in a non-quantum viewpoint, they just mean you can approximate the first few decimal places without looking at QM. But, saying it works is not accurate.
Great comment ! Reminds me of Lisp, a very simple concept that is powerful and easy to implement and then CommonLisp comes along trying to include everybody's favourite feature. As a result many people get put off without digging for the gold.
We looked at both shows, but no-starter on TC50 is that you can't have any public exposure before the event. This seems pretty silly, in my opinion. Most decent startups should have exposure before a singular event. Banking on entry into one event is a poor decision (more foolish is banking on winning the competition, as that's where 99% of the publicity goes).

DEMO has less stringent requirements when it comes to the amount of publicity a startup has before the event, which, in my opinion, allows companies that aren't sitting on their butts when it comes to marketing have a nice big event at which to launch.

Edit: I should also note that I've had one group of friends go to DEMO, and one get into the TC50 Demo Pit. The former got a ton of exposure and new users. The latter got no benefit in terms of attracting users. Granted, this is a minimal sample size.
Expand Qliance: see http://www.qliance.com
I dont understand how some company hasnt gone into the market, treated their customers fairly, and wiped the floor with the competition.

Any small company will be priced out of business by the big telco companies. It's a pseudo-monopoly, where a small group of huge organizations have an implicit agreement which maximizes profit for all of them, and keeps everyone else out of the running... (Actually, it kind of reminds me of the two-party political system in the US)
VaR Explained
Outsource Your Beta Testing To Prefinery
Really depends on what needs redesigning. You are basically talking about three interlinked projects. As far as possible it is best to chunk down into lots of small tasks, keeping them as separate as possible. That's one of the huge benefits of webapp world, you can maintain clean separation between functions. I'll assume that you can't just build a complete new site, migrate the data and axe the old one.

If the database needs redesign, then you'll need a way to have transactions from the current database propagate through to the new one. You don't want to break anything from the users' perspective while the redesign takes place.

If business rules need to be improved, then you'll have to make a decision whether to hit the current database or the new one.

Finally, the skin/usability part, keep it modular so that you can incrementally 'improve' your site. You would call the business rule codebase from either the old or new part as appropriate.

Just look at Amazon, eBay, Google, etc. They do continuous improvement without breaking much at any given time. The key is to keep each change small, test and be able to revert if something goes wrong. The reversion needs to be designed into every database change to minimise pain and lost transactions. Of course, good project management is key, yes! even with just the two of you working on it. "Failing to plan is planning to fail." :-)
AXiS MIDI controller - a different way to play music
Posting this because I got one and proceeded to spent the next 16 hours playing it with only one break in the middle for food. It is fun because it is easy to learn. Out of the box you can do things that require years of technique on piano.
Looked at your reply! Very good for the usability part. Whether it's possible to start with the skin first depends on how much the changes impact upon the underlying processing.
I notice that the grammar specified requires an else after every if. The wikipedia article also says that the dangling else problem doesn't exist because the grammar is never ambiguous, but doesn't say much more. So does this mean you can't use PEG to parse a language with an optional else? How would you specify it?

Edit: oh duh, now I see the part I just glanced over. The answer is that prioritization is implicit in a rule's productions.
Your view is precisely what I was countering. My point was that they can considered to be the same thing, by the abstract object becoming your "current experience". That it's not just playing with words, but that humans use the same circuitry to experience both (similar to how we experience tools as extensions to our bodies; and that dreams can be perceived as real).

However, I'm just restating my comment. I'm happy to agree to disagree with you. :-)
* Less than 10 characters, if possible.

* No funky spellings, unless heavily branded.
I like the simple and clean layout of your site, but would really like to see a bit more either with screenshots or demo video.

Your description leaves lots of questions. You say it's an 'application and service', does that mean it requires a download?
Is it open to the public? or do you set-up groups, etc.

These are some of the questions I'd like to have answered before signing-up. At the moment, I'm not sure how I'd use the service.

I believe you've don a big 'no-no' with respect to including users e-mail addresses in the url. I gave you an e-mail address that I don't use, so don't care, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to do that, you should encode it with a secret key, or use user-id's.

Now that i've signed in, I have absolutely no idea what to do. How do I create a new entry? How do I invite people?
Can I only have one 'main' page and I have to edit that?

I can't say I have a real need for a product like this, but my gut instinct tells me that if I did have a need, I would want to create and share multiple documents with different people.

What are you doing that I can't do with shared documents on services like Google Docs?
I've always discussed Jackson in those latter terms, and so have many with whom I've talked of him. Not everyone is blindsided by the tabloid media.
Hilarious!

"You seem to lack a flare for self-promotion. Lucky for us our PR department stepped in and changed your L/c2 equation into the much more marketable E = mc2"

Smart. ;)
Now's a good time to try taking on Walmart; their prices are climbing faster than the other groceries in this area, they're still lower on most things, but not as many and not by as much. And the convenience factor should help a lot.
> Tor exit nodes are not against our TOS, but we will forward any abuse reports on to you and we do expect them to be handled.

I'm somewhat unclear on what does it mean for "them to be handled'? If you are running a tor node there is nothing you can do about any abuse reports.
Clarification I think my comment seems a bit sarcastic, but it wasn't meant to be. I think marketing should be as up front and clear as possible about what customers are getting, instead of hiding it. Publicity (like Jeff's response) is one of the few pressures on them to do so.
or - another fun possibility - you could have a provably polynomial-time algorithm that seems to solve SAT, but you can't prove or refute its correctness.
Chase Cheats 
A site dedicated to exposing the many ways in which Chase Bank cheats it's own customers.
I could not disagree more.

"Attendees looking to invest in new companies probably like DEMO because the presenters are convinced enough they have a great product that they'll come up with the funds to go there."

Or they are desperate enough to pay $20,000 for some attention from the tech blogs and one month of hype with the VCs. All those online networks with "over X many angels and VC's" prey on the same kind of startups. Pay to pitch some angel network.

"At TechCrunch50, investors can see a different sort of startup. One who has a lot of potential, but may not have had the drive/opportunity to gather any real money in the first place."

Empirically incorrect. A lot of them have raised quite a bit of money before TC50.

"From a purely investment risk perspective, companies that are already finding capital with a good idea and a good demo have more going for them than startups that merely have an idea and a good demo."

True. But if your first two premises are wrong, this one is moot.

Definitely appreciate the playing devil's advocate -- this is not a personal attack.
When it comes to knowledge, you can never have too much of a good thing.

You can have too many of good people going into business or related fields and not science. We all want someone else to do the hard tedious work,, but on a personal level, I'd rather be a god on this earth than a god of history.

Tis fine and noble to suggest that some guy in his bungalow is going to do serious research and find the gene of addiction or something, or that Michael Jackson would have been the king of pop even if no one paid him anything, but in truth, both are fantasies. Comparing pop music with science, having an article which only projects a romantic sentiment of transformation without much substance, really helps no one.

I think, I believe, that knowledge should be free and if that means that we should be taxed so that scientists get appropriate compensation while making their findings public, then so be it.
In his real review he was given a second-rate raise with the promise of a better one the next year at the patent office [1].

His manager cited his lack of mastery of Mechanical Engineering as the reason for a second-rate review and raise.

[1] Einstein: A Life. Bryan, Denis. John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (April 6, 1996)

{EDIT: Spacing and grammatic corrections]
Atari releases the source code for 7800 games like Joust
Quit fidgeting and just do it.
Do you really think the price is $99? That is like saying the cost of a house is the deposit. The plan is the price.
No. And, yes, long since expired. UniSys held the patent, CompuServe was the victim (and the actual innovator, since they invented the GIF format, which happened to use Limpel Ziv...it was a submarine patent for many years until GIFs were pervasive; very nasty business).
I didn't actually get the point of this whole piece. It sounds like some fiction of course, but fiction which distorts reality and that is called illusion I believe.

Well in all truth it sounds like propaganda, propaganda by definition I use it, namely using language to change perception and that is what this article does. It seems to suggest that Einstain was a human, not perfect, not entirely knowledgeable or fully functioning person. Fine in his logic of course, but lacking all common sense.

Einstaine lived amongst us however, not even half a decade ago. We have stories of him, we have myths about him. We do not know if he was gullabile, I mean, he objected against the german-anglo war, which shows that he had some practical understanding of being a human and performing his tasks with common sense.

So my question, what is the purpose of this article? To suggest that he was not perfect, to suggest that his mind only understood logics but nothing else, to make us feel good that we have not achieved his heights for aftrall why would you want to if you would not be able to perform on a basic common sense level?
right, is that a true story cus I am confused.
I could not agree more with the above post. Really well put.

I think a video tour or screen cast, if done right, would answer a lot of these questions.
what, does Arc auto-remove vowels?
I'm pretty sure iChat uses the AIM protocol. I have no idea why.
Interesting, if so. That's not a very good fail-over solution.
Two, short English words, followed by .com
I spent about 35 hours developing the first version of the mail handler we use on <www.classlet.com>. I took the knowledge I gained from that, turned around, and re-wrote it from scratch in about 15 hours.

Weighing in at under 500 lines of code, it makes heavy use of Python's mimetype and smtp libraries as well as some abstractions from Django's mail library. It operates on mail piped into stdin by procmail every 10 seconds as retrieved by fetchmail. The subsystem has basic logging and in the event of errors procmail dumps the entire message into an mbox file and notifies me. Retrying is as simple as `cat mbox | classlet/procmail.py`

That said: I applaud any attempt to make this easier, more robust, and more standard. Our mail processor is actually quite simple, but has a long way to go in terms of maturity.

I'd love to hear about other experiences with this stuff. I know the Posterius guys lurk around here, how about some insight? :-)
There are about 3 billion people on Earth to whom your statement doesn't necessarily apply: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/397-eliminating-...
The real problem I see is that the majority of users would freak out if their password wasn't masked, as if it's somehow an implication of lax security overall. Users have been trained for the last twenty years to expect that when they type in a password, it'll be masked. Even me: I'm a web developer and if I hit a website where the password was unmasked, I would just assume they had no idea what they were doing.
Renraku: Future OS
This is the incredible thing about NASA (and science in general come to think of it) even "failure" can mean great success.
Direct link to the project page:

http://lamsonproject.org/
I actually like it a lot. At first I thought it looked stupid because it was too simple -- but then I realized that was the whole point. It's really simple and really easy to use.

The other comments are a bit harsh, but they are also accurate. The problem with all the other sites that do exactly the same thing is that they have no liquidity. You have/will have the same problem. Pound the pavement.
My apologies. I misunderstood your argument. I believe that is a correct example of the "finer slicing" I was referring to.
Ha, mine was 103476,1704, password "angry?blink." I remember having a terrible time writing scripts to convince Linux's pppd to dial in and connect.
Hmmm....startups should take on inefficient businesses, not the MOST EFFICIENT BUSINESS EVER (Walmart).
sounds more like a competitor to Amazon's grocery dept and Drugstore.com

I like the UI but I have yet to really compare prices
From what I remember of what I read of the history of linux - it was the fact that BSD code was tied up in some kind of court case when linux was first introduced that allowed it to get a leg-up on the BSDs; because no one would risk basing anything on an OS that may not be available in the future.
Is The Web Recession Proof?
I use paypal, personally.
Anyone else have Q-Link as their first online service provider? For Commodore computers, and in the early 90s it became AOL...
I especially enjoyed the price comparison chart, with all of the other competitor names blurred out and no hint as to what the product is.

The site looks great and the idea sounds like a winner, I'm just not so sure about the execution just yet.
They don't provide any definition for active, that's why I say it's meaningless marketing smoke and mirrors.

It makes a big difference whether you define an active user as "has logged in during the last 90 days" versus "last 30 days" or "has a record in our database".

I have no problems believing that they're approaching 1mio registrations/day. But as said, that's a meaningless figure. What I'd really like to know is their churn/retention.
I've only seen the term, "meatspace", in the last few weeks. Is this some new nerd trend? Attempting to ostracise yourself from the general public by referring to them with degrading inhuman terms such as this is a rather stupid idea, IMHO.
Launch a Virtual PC In Your Browser Using JPC
This article http://techgeist.net/2009/07/london-stock-exchange-moving-wi... does compare to cars, but not quite the way you are mentioning.
Ask pg: can we have last comment time in the crumb after the title?
It'd be good to have -

You've Got Blackmail: The AOL Account That Wouldn't Die (wsj.com)
43 points by quoderat 6 hours ago | 14 comments (20 minutes ago)

instead of

You've Got Blackmail: The AOL Account That Wouldn't Die (wsj.com)
43 points by quoderat 6 hours ago | 14 comments

I'd appreciate a way to quickly inspect to see if a thread is still being discussed.

(and, while here, some way to mark comments as read, perhaps with collapsing or some other form?)
I agree, users is the name of the game. That is my next step ;) looking for feesback on the ui
I agree I want it to be craigslist simple so non techies can use it. But, ultimately it is only good if there is a user base. Working on it. Thank you for the comment.
I was referring to the number of active users (e.g. users that logged in during the last 30 days).

I wonder if that figure grows by hundreds of thousands per day, but the article doesn't give it away.

13mio uniques for zynga gives a ballpark and could be interpreted as facebook having at least that number of active users (probably much more, not everybody plays games). But it's still an order of magnitude to the 200mio figure quoted in the article, thus I'm still none the wiser about whether that was meant to be active users or merely registered users.
Microsoft Keeps Beating a Dead Browser
Subtractive Design