skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've started businesses in a diverse range of industries: automobile parking, gourmet packaged foods, real estate, online retailing, physical retail.

One key difference I've noticed between industries is the speed with which they adopt technology. I believe many tech entrepreneurs mistakenly assume that non-tech industries are as welcoming of new technology as tech-heavy industries. Understanding the pace of technological uptake in your target industry is highly important - and don't think you can change it!

One of the best ways I've found to understand a new industry is to attend a trade show and talk with lots of people. Tell them you are new, and ask them to explain the basics. Buy people drinks at the bar and quiz them. Get the same few questions answered by a number of different people. Ask who the industry experts are, then find them and get them talking - experts tend to love to share their expertise!

I've found particular success by applying technological advances that give me a competitive advantage in an industry that is otherwise slow to adopt technology. Don't try to sell the technology, or otherwise compete on the basis of the tech itself - instead, use the technology in a way that your competitors would be slow or unwilling to do, and thus gain an advantage.

For instance, in my gourmet packaged food company I used a (then) new digital label printing technology to allow me to experiment with new labels rapidly and at very low cost. The labels weren't "perfect" looking, and my competitors would not tolerate anything other than "perfect" labels, but customers didn't care. I was able to quickly and inexpensively refine my labels, which resulted in higher sales, without spending lots of money on new printing plates (which my competitors assumed you needed to change labels). In this case, I used a technological advantage (new digital label printing) to compete on an industry-standard characteristic (label content) - I'm emphatically did NOT try to sell digital label printers to the gourmet packaged food industry.
My issues are primarily with the "tech tree" (including cultural advances). I would recommend to at least read "Guns, Germs and Steel" alongside playing Civ ;-)
The Arc idea of using single-char operators (I see :.!+, any others?) as intra-symbol syntax is clever . I wonder if any other languages have done anything similar?
This sounds great. I am always looking for ways to implement my math homework into code. This would be a great resource.
Don't take this the wrong way, but the article's data doesn't say what they want it to. While it is true that Linux can be stripped down farther than Windows (and thus do raw calculations faster), that isn't necessarily the only reason that supercomputers use Linux.

For example, Windows licenses for supercomputers are very expensive, as historically they're server editions priced by CPU count. This is a drop in the bucket where supercomputers are concerned, but this would mean that Windows would need to be better in some other way: even if it's not much, people don't generally like to pay for nothing. The difference could almost mean another CPU in some cases.

Also, while Windows has much better consumer hardware support, this aspect of compatibility is not relevant to supercomputers. Linux has much better support for different hardware architectures (the so-called "Playstation 3 processor" can run Linux, but not Windows). This will typically mean additional cost savings for a Linux setup, as they won't need to pay the x86 premium (in terms of $$/processing power).

I'd place tunability at a distant second to hardware costs, and software costs at a distant third. I'm just curious why more of them don't go with BSD.
>currently only 60% of MMO players are male (BBC) and this percentage continues to shrink as more and more females are starting to play MMOs.

I love stating the obvious.

This article actually jives pretty well with me. The statistics in this article seem to match my group of friends that play WoW.
May I suggest a couple of books?

How to Solve It
by George Pólya's 1945
http://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-Aspect-Mathematical-Method/d...

and

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering Learning to Learn
by Richard W.Hamming
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9056995014/ref=olp_product_...

Great books, and they will introduce you to learn the mathematical thinking, so you can deduce the patterns yourself. Great for math and hack I think.
If your tank is downloadable, you sholud also provide the hash signature :-)
Hunting the Elusive First "Ms." (proposed in 1901)
You are correct. He's said the talks at YC were off the record for that reason.
Thanks. I can see it's a faster, more interactive and dynamic version of a wiki (plus other stuff) - and speed-increases tend to be popular. It's a logical tech progression, but I'm not sure it solves a problem.

You mention Lotus Notes: I seem to recall reading Lotus Notes was a cool idea ("groupware") that didn't take off despite passionate proponents, and that it lead to Lotus being vulnerable to being bought by IBM and... ceasing to exist. Maybe today's tech foundation (HTML, web, etc) and now-online target market will cause a different outcome.

I hesitate a little when software is announced before it is released (e.g. google was just released); and when something is presented as a universal solution (but neither of these prove anything).

I think it must solve a problem that I personally don't have, so that explains my (personal) lack of excitement (note: many things have had massive success that I haven't been excited about, so this isn't a criticism of the tech). I tried to watch the Video of it, but it just didn't grab me enough to keep watching (again, just my personal reaction). Perhaps my perspective is really "we had non-interactive email... and we liked it!" and "get off my lawn".

PS: Re "troll". I thought I was asking a straightforward question, though skeptical. Observation: if a non-enthusiast's innocent request about a tech feels like a troll to that tech's proponents, it forms a barrier for adoption beyond the proponents. Not judging, just noting.

Re karma: I periodically start a new account on HN, because I believe karma distorts perceptions. Luckily I didn't ask this question at the start of a new account, or (it seems) I would have been dismissed as a troll.
There was some decent discussion over at Metafilter when this was brought up [1]. In particular, one poster dug up a journal article about Brooke [2], including this juicy tidbit in the abstract:

"Dental and bone ages are pre-teen, while telomere length and telomerase inactivity suggest a cellular age at least comparable to her chronological age."

One poster's interpretation [3] was that "The telomere length means her cells have divided "at least" as much as an average 16 year old's. The fact that she is no larger despite all this cell division means that most of the daughter cells did not survive."

[1]: http://www.metafilter.com/82714/The-girl-who-doesnt-age

[2]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

[3]: http://www.metafilter.com/82714/The-girl-who-doesnt-age#2619...
Maybe the concavity reduces accidental keypresses when the phone's in one's pocket/bag.
Text inputs with rounded corners using jQuery (without image)
Well, you could take a look at WordPress (whose revenue growth is pretty enviable). Hosted blogs, premium add ons.
It mostly replaced TV watching for me. Then I kicked WoW and started running a business. Less dragons to kill, sadly, but much better loot.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a raid on the old inbox. I've had customer support on farm status for a while now but still feel the need to do it every day.
I've heard of people bringing their own tape recorder when talking to a reporter. It can be that bad...
Amusing - because I love my phone so much that I want to feel it all over my skin? ;-)
He doesn't need to demonstrate the impracticality in that. Everyone already knows that measuring effort is impossible in practice.

edit: His final claim -- that the tax on height is an explicit consequence of a utilitarian approach -- is simply flawed (or irrelevant, actually) because we do have a tax on height. A progressive income tax is meant to approximate what would happen if we accounted for all of these variables, but without actually accounting for each one explicitly, as that would be impractical.

Now, I'm not saying that the utilitarian method is the end-all. If it is flawed (which I think it is), this is simply not the flaw.
Here is the thing I wish someone had told me my freshman year of high school.

If you're interested in computer science, study topics in discrete mathematics, real algebra (the algebra where you compute with symbols instead of numbers, look into "rings", "groups", and "fields"), and some statistics. And if you have to scale back on something to make room, scale back on trigonometry.

Discrete is a subset of math that was barely touched on in my school, and it was a massive culture-shock to get to college and never have seen many of the staple discrete problems. Statistics is useful in real-time problem solving and analysis and is at the core of some of the neatest modern algorithms, including those in cryptography. Trig, on the other hand, is something that you will likely have pre-written libraries to support and is just not as important to most computer work. It's useful, but unless you're going into computer graphics and games it's maybe not as necessary.

These days, I can tell you the area of a triangle from its vertices but I still get thrown easily in a crypto discussion. If I had high school to do over, that's what I'd do differently.
Thanks for the link, but my mind immediately goes to sleep upon seeing all the bla bla. I guess we'll have to wait for some talented bloggers to review it.
In general you are correct, but some women need/want to monitor their cycles.

Consider a woman with a noisy cycle (28 days +/- 5) or with a mean different from 28 days (29 days +/- 2). Such a woman may become nervous about pregnancy on a regular basis: "I'm 2 days late, and my flawed human memory doesn't tell me that this occurs 30% of the time for me. Oh shit, am I pregnant?!?" The service can remind her that this is normal.

It's also useful for women with regularity problems (a detailed timeseries would be useful to show to the doctor), or women trying to get pregnant (not always as easy as condom ads suggest).

Also, consider that you may know women who need this service, but they may not discuss the need with you.
I can see why you would feel that way about the phrase "spaz out", but just to be clear: I don't think that's a common view. Saying "spaz out" is not commonly considered politically incorrect, at least as far as I know; I've literally never heard that argument before.

(I'm fairly neutral on the issue at hand, btw; I didn't know of Chris Hughes or the software he used before this incident.)
I'd recommend using this book as a rough guide:

http://tinyurl.com/nfe3gv

Don't let the title fool you. It's really a guide to advanced applied mathematics.

I'd also suggest the material be supplimented with a good bit of statistics. In my experience, statistical reasoning (particularly as it applies to noise, perturbation, and system reliability) tends to be weakness with hackers.
The initial (summer 2006) run of Intel Core macbooks was pretty bad. Everyone I knew at the office where I worked at the time bought one. Within a month each and every one of those Macs was in the shop, or behind the Genius Bar or whatever.

I bought a Compaq. Hasn't given me trouble for three years.

I've got my eye on the unibody case MacBooks with stylish TI-99/4A black-on-brushed-metal color scheme. I hear they're hella well built.
Spot Runner Cofounder Shaw Awarded Millions In Arbitration
here is the difference between HN and reddit, on reddit the top comment for this story with 1071 points is:

i'm so going to hit that when she turns 18

at least here there is good discussion
Allowing your site's users to create and share their own graphs through the content would be a useful tool.

People absorb concepts differently so you won't know beforehand the best way to present the material. This feature would allow say, another experienced math teacher, to create their version of the best journey through Mathematics.

You can then keep track of the most popular graphs (through voting or usage).

This feature would also help with your "but where then?" question. If a graph creator thinks "basic number theory" should go between fractions and algebra but, there's no article about "basic number theory" then just putting it into their graph will create a stub article.

Keeping track of stub articles would then let you know what topics are needed the most.

Can't wait to see what you come up with.
Noscript plays merry hell with the gadgets, to be expected I suppose.

I was hoping the realtime chat/wiki environment would be implemented but if it is I can't find it.
So, as far as we know, she does age, and just doesn't develop normally? That's a disappointment, and it utterly ruins the newsworthiness of the case. Everybody would love to slow down aging, but I don't think anybody is keen to speed up or slow down human development.
Flagged for being linkbait. The actual content is just audio of a narrator reading poorly.
Does anyone know if this will be available in unlocked/developer version similar to the G1?
FSJ did, in fact, start posting again last week.
Is that for some strategic reason? Surely no one goes to work at google for access to the tech-talks...
Well, if I want to show multiple landmarks, you still lose me to Google Maps + any URL shortner combo, don't you?

You probably can't beat Google maps on simplicity without comprimising functionality. I would just accept that and copy what Google has. Just my 2 cents.
The number is certainly not zero.

I worked alongside a consultant once who was in love with all things Windows. He really knew it well, was on top of all things Windows development, and did a good job developing Windows apps, as far as I could tell (I was the one developing in Java on my Mac).

Every time a new iPod would come out, he would immediately sell the model he had, and buy the new one, without exception (this was pre-iPhone).

If you always want the latest and greatest in terms of consumer electronics, you almost have no choice but to buy each new Apple product. Jobs is a big part of making Apple the must-have brand for the early adopter consumer with an ample wallet.
I just hope there's a way to disable it, or uninstall it without too much trouble.
> It's always anecdotes and random chance when it comes to "X's hardware sucks!"

You're right that all companies probably produce bad and good stuff over time. From a business point of view, I think the ability to get a given level of service is much more important. I.e., failure, sooner or later, is a given. How are they going to help you deal with it?
I doubt a CEO would be "candid" in any environment. You can't really say anything without realizing that it might end up getting reported the next day.

Two people can keep a secret, as long as the other person is dead
absolutely - if those people spent the time doing something productive (like forming a startup), they could make a huge difference to their lives.

I used to play WoW extensively, but quit after it became to time intensive - now I sit in front of a computer working on personal projects and freelance work.
I wonder why he didnt code it in C with a PHP wrapper, would have been much faster
Flash comes to Android
Website Performance Tutorials
Twitter Users Buy More Music Online Than Average Surfers, Study Says
I have to agree with the Article.

Jobs is truly a visionary when it comes to technology. The article is not really clear on why he is unique. Here's my perspective.

Steve Jobs has the unique ability to see where the next big technology opportunity is.

Look at his track record - Apple II, Macintosh GUI, Pixar, iPod and now the iPhone.

Walt Disney is the only other visionary I can think of that could repeat his success - animated cartoons (took advantage of TV's) and theme parks.

I don't consider myself a fan boy just a student of business and technology.
German Court Slams Rapidshare With $34 Million Fine
As long as your code can be unit tested, it's okay to test it later.

But what if the "exploratory" code becomes hard or almost impossible to test (due to dependency et al.)? Refactor it? but you have no test that acts as a safety net during the refactoring period.
Well, I've never been to these talks, don't know pg, and don't know the people involved, so I'm just reporting what I read. Argue it with pg if you think they ought to do things differently.
Images can be attached to an email without HTML and URLs that appear in text/plain emails are "linkified" by most readers.

The original MIME specification included an "enriched text" subtype which was essentially an HTML subset that was easy to implement safely and served most purposes for person-to-person communication.

MIME allows absolutely anything to be embedded in an email, but the standard explicitly discourages the use of HTML as the message body. The argument for standard compliant HTML support in all email clients is fairly weak considering it shouldn't be there at all.
No, no, no. I use outlook at work, gmail for general email and also thunderbird for one other email address. And I really didn't come across a problem that email being coded in html tables.
In the basic CS/Math classes at my school, trees are usually covered early in the course, usually along with proofs by induction.

I think this might be a useful approach to carry over to your site. Once someone understands trees well, I think it allows them to understand graphs better when they learn that a tree is a just a type of graph.
mjd also wrote on this:

"There must be a specification," a couple of people said. "Just write the tests to check the requirements in the specification." There was an amazing disconnect here between what I was asking and what they were answering. http://use.perl.org/comments.pl?sid=42511&cid=67765

I think TDD is a great idea - if "you know what you are doing". It solidifies your interfaces. Which is great, provided you won't want to change your interfaces.

It's the dogmatism of TDD that scares me. When "heresy" is applied to a methodology, it makes me think that a theory of reality has been favoured over reality. But hey, maybe that leaves the field clear for the reality-seekers.
Should I even bother with an SRS & Tech Writer? 
What are your thoughts on using an SRS? (real pros & cons) & the need for Tech Writers?
When I tried out Revizr(only a very quick pass-through so far), my first impression was that this doesn't sound that innovative, but then I read more and realized that it's a really cool idea.

Unfortunately, then I saw how Revizr displays changes. Several of the examples look ugly to me(especially the differ example), and the way moving blocks of text is notated seems like it may be slightly confusing with regard to where the block is being moved to.

That said, despite my dislike of the notation, ‍I really like the idea.

A minor complaint is that the bold text displaying one's username isn't a link, which wasn't obvious until I tried clicking it from several different locations. I think it would be better to fold the "Home" link into the username text.
An Introduction to Autoresponders
oh I'm not saying the talks should be public, its one of the reasons why people do YC. I was just replying to the candid part of the response.
Um. Have you ever tried Ubuntu? The "standardized gui" and "desktop environment" are a non-issue these days. The list of non-monopoly reasons for Microsoft dominance is growing thin.

Though, I'll go ahead and contradict myself by noting that manufacturers such as Dell are today shipping Linux with some PCs.
This is the same guy who fabricated a quote from Peter Norvig to fill in a logical gap in his article:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492376
A trillion karma points (well, at least fifty) to whoever can summarize how this works here - since there was no basic summary on the post or the post that inspired the post ;-)
same reason he didn't want to use OpenCV -- he wanted a purely PHP solution.
Alice: No Wonder
Aw, but triangles and circles are such a huge part of everyday life, one should understand them well for that reason alone.

From as practical as hammering wood together to as abstract as noticing the sine curves of the seasons.

And without Pythagorous, you can't grok Euler's Identity, which would be a real shame.

Finally, trig is the gateway to Euclidian Geometry, which is the first taste of realish math most people get in High School...
And I assume you've seen Dr. Math? (for the basics, algebra and the like)

http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
Perhaps the most misleading title of an article I've ever seen.

"It doesn't get any faster than Linux" would get my vote - on first glance, I thought some caveat had been found in the kernel, meaning it wouldn't go "any faster" than it presently does.
Fragmentation in the iPhone App Store
I just hope its not only available for the hero. Not only that I hope they push those UI modifications and multitouch to G1 or Mainline.
Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how do you get introductions from investors decline?
I'm currently raising money from investors for my revenue-generating startup. I've reached out to all the angel and VC investors I know, and whenever someone declines, I ask for introductions to other investors they know - this process has resulted in exactly zero introductions.

This morning I heard from angel investor David Cohen, to whom I had sent my executive summary "over the transom" (I don't know David and had never been in touch with him prior to sending him my exec summary) - he had said it wasn't a fit, so I asked for introductions as usual. Here is what he said:

I can't do referrals - they'll just ask why I'm not investing and it won't help you.

brad feld has a good post on why -> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/11/dont-ask-for-a-referral-if-i-say-no.html

i am always happy to look at potential deals. thanks.

(That third line was in response to me asking if he'd like me to introduce my entrepreneurial colleagues to him when my colleagues are seeking funding - by the way, though David wasn't interested, I very much appreciate his welcoming of executive summaries, and his quick replies - if you are raising money you should contact him)

Brad Feld's article summarizes why David Cohen, Brad Feld, and presumably most other investors will not make introductions to other investors for deals they decline. I didn't realize that this "no intros if I'm not interested" policy was so widespread.

Thus my question: have any of you entrepreneurs been successful in getting introductions from investors who decline your deals? If so, how did you accomplish this?
Women with irregular cycle will not rely on statistical analysis to try and get pregnant. They will go and buy a basal thermometer or an ovulation test kit instead.

The "oh, shit, I am pregnant" use case is laughable. Again, the pregnancy testing kit is far more accurate than the statistical analysis and it can be used few days before the first day of the period. No service can do that.

The only case where stat analysis of the cycle is applicable is for people who do not or cannot use contraceptives and do not want to end up being pregnant. This is a negligibly small group as is, and I suspect that its subset of Web 2.0 aficionados is going to be close to zero.
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/differences/ (Wine is LGPL)
I think the math/cs book by Aho and Ullman does a good job of introducing basic math concepts backed up with plenty of code and examples. Plus: it is available online for free.

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html