skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A 3.5bn valuation does seem insane for a service like snapchat without any source of revenue. I did read the other day about their extraordinary growth of sent messages however, (up to 350 million a day!)and perhaps it is simply a premium for said growth.

Regardless, I feel that the ephemeral nature of snapchat is likely to reduce long-term user retention. You have no tangible investment into the platform because everything is deleted.
It's very nice for what's going on right now. I mean, a big internet orgy. However, the lack of private rooms pretty much kills it for me.

Otherwise, it would have been perfect to use at work.
Irrespective of present revenue, the acquisition value of Snapchat to Facebook, Google, Yahoo and co basically puts a floor on the valuation. E.g. if I am an investor and I think Google would pay $5B for Snapchat, it makes sense to buy it at $4B. So I guess the trick is not to figure out how much revenue Snapchat will generate on its own, but rather how additional revenue Google could generate if it owned Snapchat (which will drive the acquisition price).
Boilerplate Detection Using Shallow Text Features
Have you guys considered turning this into an API? I know of a successful wallpaper API that's making decent profit
I think there is literally 0 chance for another Facebook. Google tried with Google+ - billions of dollars, millions of man hours by brilliant engineers, crazy bundling strategies by Google. Is Google+ another Facebook yet? Nope, not yet, maybe not ever.

Your strategy has merit, but simply making another Facebook is not going to work now (It would have back in Myspace days). Now there is not an untapped market of people - almost everyone has things vested in social media companies.
1. Companies need either to do better then Facebook (Once again Google tried. Do not get me wrong, there is a fair chance that eventually Google+ will prevail, but very few projects have full might of Google paving their success.) 2. Or have different punchline than Facebook does to attract users (This is what Snapchat did). *typoed
gotta admire the approach. facing off against a formidable competitor (facebook), they just keep trying to add incredible features that will make it a compelling destination for people to use.

this is the kind of luxury only a big company can pull off, but most big companies are not able to get out of their own way long enough to figure out what those incredible features are (and build them). we'll see if google can pull it off.

thus far - it hasn't persuaded me to use regularly - but hangouts was cool enough that i set up a g+ account and tried it with my dad and brother a few times a year ago.
We're auctioning off a chance for your kid to come to a YC dinner
It supports a reStructuredText format as well, which is explained in the last paragraph of the "Example Documents and Input Formats" section <http://www.mos6581.org/introducing-rinohtype#example-documen....
I'm not sure most people would grasp the difference between a company that says it doesn't keep your data and a company that says it can't keep your data.
docs:

http://www.oldskool.org/pc/BCW/BeyondCastleWolfenstein.txt
How is this any different from what Facebook et al are doing?
I'm wondering why there was no measurement across these metrics:
1. Total portfolio valuation
2. Portfolio value divided by number of companies
I don't think the execution failures are specific to them. They were having to sustain an existing business, plus do accelerated development of a new platform and devices, plus the core apps and libraries on top of that, starting from a laggard position with the competitors having a several year head start, and all the time spent doing this the competitors continue to move ahead.

I'd expect the majority of companies to fail at trying to pull that off. Much of it is the kind of work where adding more people will be of no benefit.

The surprise isn't that they failed - it is that anyone expected them to succeed!
You can't really make anything "ephemeral" with data. The closest you can get is probably a neutral third party that promises to delete the data at a future point, and locks down all endpoints where users can see the data. Of course this is still quite imperfect.

With a distributed version, you'd just have to trust all the people you're sending data to to delete it.
There will be private rooms (hidden in the public list) and password protected rooms in the foreseeable future.
Electronics/handset manufacturers have a 95% chance of becoming the next Apple and given that their execution/marketing/technology/etc is 5% behind/off doesn't value them at $450bn, i.e. the market doesn't expand with new players, and FBs network effect is too large to ignore.
Since it's your bandwidth and your content, sure.
Finally! The time has come for me to write my newest melody using http://song-of-github.herokuapp.com/ !
I think many "users" of G+ don't even know what G+ is...
I think in the long run (repeat the process hundreds of times), there would still be an advantage to the selfish miners.

Edit: Here's a simulation written by Dan Kaminsky. http://pastebin.com/PfBhLc7r
Their present valuation is a glitch in the Matrix. Enough of them and you will realize the existence of said Matrix.
If you enter through the home page, you can see a list of his other talks: http://worrydream.com/#!/InventingOnPrinciple
I think it is a little bit odd to create a page that shows every fuck-word it can find in the world, call it "fbomb", having an About page whereby one only talks about the "F word" and "F-Bombs" while trying very hard not to type the word fuck.

Seems a kinda hypocrite to me. "Look someone said fuck in <country> haha, but I don't use that word, nono, not the F-word." I really dislike the term f-word. Say fuck if you want, say nothing if you don't want.

But, yes, funny idea.
Interestingly, my own definition of blogging is not tied to a specific medium.

To me, the defining characteristics of the blog are as follows :

A collection of texts which are :

1 - Published incrementally as they are written, and chronologically organized.

2 - Meant to be read by a wide audience

3 - Usually not ran past an editor.

4 - Not necessarily sharing any common theme

5 - Usually all have the same author.

I cooked up this definition after noticing that the EWDs had been more or less Dijkstra's blog, long before the Web.

PG's essays obviously fall under this definition as well.
Alexis said (at the IA 10th Anniversary bash) that they are going to have this running very soon, using a bot to go over all of Wikipedia and insert archived links close to the dates of existing references (if available), and also capturing newly added links.
This is nothing but bald-faced rent seeking. Middle-men setting up toll booths on a "limited" resource. Limited of course, only by their own investment. The mathematics of this are terrifying. Broadband should be a public utility.
This discussion has a pretty amazing number of references to fantasy or science fiction worlds. I count eight so far.

* WoW - Zangermarsh

* Elder Scrolls - Vvardenfell

* StarCraft - Mutalisks

* Smurfs

* Mario Brothers

* Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth

* Miyazaki - Nausicaa and the Valley of the Winds

* Paul Stamet - Mycelium Running
Sophia database vs. lmdb benchmark
NSA chief may lose 'cyber command' powers
The comment about stickers makes me think you don't understand how much money they make and how much people use them. It's massive. Look at Line made 17 million from stickers in Q1 this year, Kakao made 311 million in revenue and I'm not sure the breakdown but stickers is significant enough that it's mentioned in with gaming as the main source of revenue.

Stickers, whether it's reasonable or not, are a great way to monetize on messaging.

Snapchat also allows you to find someone to talk to that no other service does as seamlessly. From my understanding anyway, people will send out snaps to a group of people, many time everyone they're connected to and after a few snaps back and forth with one or two of the responders, they'll switch to another channel and chat. One could argue adding messaging here would increase the stickiness, but I think snapchat is right in that adding it in would just be distracting.
Full points for continuing the Battlestar Galactica references from the official RethinkDB docs and for having Adama's speech too.

(also great to see more RDB use!)
> there is no movement to tighten the bolts on Markdown

Oh but there was one, and it was desperately needed!

Gruber's original implementation was absolutely riddled with logical inconsistencies, outright bugs, and even an escaping vulnerability that was exploited by an XSS worm to self-replicate on Reddit.

This project originally started as a PHP transliteration of Gruber's pile of regexes, and it's early version history is a nice summary of all the warts as they were discovered (and never fixed upstream): http://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/classic/#version-his...
How robust is C#'s pseudo-random number generator? 
Anyone have a reference for a robust analysis of C#'s uniform pseudo-random number generator? I am writing something that uses the Random class and want to make sure it satisfies marsaglia / bruce schmeiser's criteria for RNGs. I don't even know if it uses mersenne twister, for example; I was hoping since C# is popular enough I might save some time using the legwork of others. If nothing is out there, I might put together an analysis myself.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Myles
Lean On Me: Emoji Death Threats and Instagram's Codeine Kingpin
I guess now might be a good time to mention John Marco Allegro's theories on the amanita muscaria and its role influencing major religions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Allegro
Thanks for the support!

Right now, the packaging is scheduled to take place at our distribution center in North Carolina. I will definitely keep your suggestion in mind and if the logistics allow, I'll see if I can work something out.
Isn't the argument about instagram's valuation pretty much solely based on it's potential for usurping facebook?

There is no true social network born on mobile, and although facebook might win, I'm not sure that it's "never" going to happen
For those who use this service, which part of it appeals the most? Is it removing the hassle of finding a printer? Is it the API part? Is it the shipping/logistics aspect?

I ask because Lob is a generalized version of what we (http://www.littleheroes.com) do every day.

I never considered our platform to be a service unto itself so I'm curious which aspects in particular resonate with people.
That's a fascinating story. My company makes biosensors for people to track blood sugar, and our tech has applications to cardiac markers. We've always wanted to sell a kit for home testing, but the market size of willing testers doesn't justify the investment. If a story like yours led some researcher to conduct a study it could lead to a cascade that ultimately puts tools into your hands. Thanks for sharing.
Dear Tech Employers: Let me help you resolve the STEM shortage
The primary mistake you are making is to have your only available working location in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and it's prices are only going up. The solution, pick another city(or) cities and open an office there. You could even have remote employees.

You would find that your positions get filled quickly and with minimal costs. You don't need total control to get great results, loosen up a bit.

Bonus: For the employer that likes a great value, trying setting up shop in an area hit hard by the recession. You will find a fleet of dedicated and valuable employees willing to take lower wages,in order to remain in that location.
RMarkdown in R Studio does markdown with embedded R code and LaTeX/MathML equations, both inline and display.

It's a surprisingly pleasant environment, though it won't probably be enough for your needs (i.e. no "theorem" env).
Anyone that want's to contribute - from just ideas to full development to marketing.
Why would you buy it? It's probably going to die, if a big player doesn't buy it. They need to get acquired if they want to be alive and get time in order to find a way to generate revenues.
Full OST for FFVII; Couldn't Resist Sharing on here even though not relevant.
I agree. For better or for worse Facebook is the World of Warcraft of general purpose social networks, anything trying to go head to head with it will lose.

It'll probably die off eventually but what replaces it will probably look nothing like it and will exist in a much different climate.
Can i stick the sensor to the wall or somewhere, i think the sensor better has some kind of suction
The role of intelligence for performance in  chess( August 2013)
This is a slippery slope.

When I see people making seemingly irrational decisions I tend to think that there is some information that I don't have but is available to those CEOs who are making these decisions.

Internet businesses have grown like anything in last two decades and we haven't really fully exploited its potential. What Verizon and AT&T are doing is basically killing a Golden goose. AT&T's core strength is to lay out those cable, build towers and give internet endpoints to consumers. AT&T's knowledge about what people can potentially do with those endpoints is as good as an Indian farmer's knowledge about flying planes.

End of net neutrality will add friction to new ideas getting successful. It will also mean internet will have less and less meaning to end consumer eventually leading to a scenario where both internet businesses and ISPs will lose.

For example I have been using a prepaid AT&T card with Google Nexus because I find the contract based shit and expensive data plans nothing but thuggery. I am not willing to live without 3G, 4G and whatever comes next because At&T pricing does not make sense to me (though I can afford it).
Probably not, but it could still be useful for privacy minded individuals. Especially if it was open sourced on GitHub.
I can't find any information on the "newly developed dark mail protocol." Is this public anywhere? I need more information before I know if I want to donate to support it.
>This page is an attempt to "explode" a demo-driven talk into a skimmable, browsable, gistable form, where individual ideas can be quickly referenced later.

This reminds me of another tool, Korsakow[0], which attempts to do a similar thing in a different way with documentary material, by presenting it in "shortest narrative units" or SNUs that relate to each other. It is one of a number of "interactive documentary" tools (like Mozilla's Popcorn [1] to some extent) but I wonder if it could be repurposed to "explode" a talk in a slightly more digestible way that could be reproduced by those of us who don't have Bret Victor's skillz.

[0] www.korsakow.org

[1] www.popcornjs.org
There seems to be a kind of informal agreement (somewhat backed up by the arms-reduction treaties) that the major nuclear powers won't secretly introduce new nuclear delivery mechanisms, so therefore you can safely (if you put trust in this) assume that things not fitting into the known US/USSR/Chinese/etc. nuclear delivery methods aren't delivering nuclear weapons.

Put differently, ICBMs officially can be nuclear weapons, and so basically can't be used for delivering conventional ordinance by the major powers, even where they would technically be a good choice.
Because the people aboard the Kobayashi Maru might live?
Didn't know you could alt and shift for higher precision on the numeric values, love it!

Thanks for filing the bug :)
It's not so much a social network. It's about content. I look there once a day for the occasional kitten gif and some interesting articles. I follow The Economist for example.

It's okay, but nothing compared to HN or Reddit.
Common Blue Pigment Could Help Make A Quantum Computer
arkOS will provide three of those four things. (Obviously not the data centers part). The privacy implications counter the need for data centers for interested users, but of course everyone will need to evaluate their own individual pros and cons.
OS X 10.8 supported... 1 year after 10.8 is released, a few weeks after 10.9 is released. :(
I'm not blaming the authors. The OS X kernel is a moving target. But this does make Valgrind rather useless on OS X. Every time I want to use Valgrind I'm forced to use Linux.
They should be able to. All major shipping companies' API provides an estimate for delivery. So it's a matter of adding up the estimate days with the printing lead time and returning that (along with a disclaimer!)
SURVEY 10 reasons... VCs/founders... developers...binge drink... code...
SURVEY 10 profitable reasons why startup VCs/founders should pay developers to binge drink while working on million dollar code --> http://
That's some breathtaking logic you have there. Perhaps you should consider a third scenario: that the vast majority of no-knock SWAT raids are a gross misapplication of force.

The use of paramilitary-style tactics in situations where such force is not warranted unnecessarily increases the risk to both officers and citizens.[1]

I don't think tragic outcomes are acceptable when they're often the result of inadequately-trained small municipal police departments acting out their Call of Duty fantasies with the help of DHS grants.[2]

1. http://abcnews.go.com/US/tucson-swat-team-defends-shooting-i...

2. http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_m...
I'm particularly surprised about seeing Snapchat with twice the valuation of Whatsapp. Here in Amsterdam, Whatsapp seems to have close to 100% market penetration (i.e. almost all smartphone users use whatsapp), yet I've never heard anyone about snapchat here.
Why Application Operations is Needed in the Dynamic Data Center and the Cloud
I address this in the article: Snapchat doesn't want to be acquired because it thinks its creating its own new market where it has 100% market share.

I agree with you that Snapchat is intrinsically worthless, hence the title of the article.

Even if it was eventually acquired, how could the service be augmented to funnel users into a parent company (Google, Facebook) when the very nature of the application is to create media, then delete it. This builds no links or references to outside sources, no galleries of images, no way to generate ad revenue.
I'm really just gauging interest level in this sort of experiment. But I would say everyone is welcome. I guess in a situation where a lot of different talent came together I would act as the coordinator more then anything.

My area of expertise is full stack development from db to business logic to front end dev.

My last project was topthat.com and while it didn't get the users I was hoping for it was still a lot of fun, I learnt a lot and met a lot of great people.

I recently read the lean start-up and think there could be a market for this type of open development.
You may ask why do we do all of this? It’s because we have pride in what we do. We truly care for the well-being of the human race.

This is like chum in the water for bureaucrats. Its basically a declaration saying "I'd work just as hard for even less".

The problem with "caring" professions is that once you're in the thick of it, its extremely hard to walk away from people in need regardless of the cost to yourself or your family. There are all too many people willing to take advantage of this.
i feel that there is a 100% guarantee that there will be another facebook.
> [3] I looked into how I'd get these tests ordered myself and found these options: [...] Directlabs: A dated looking website but offering the option of a la carte tests. Total cost for these three tests: $205

I'll vouch for directlabs. I was very happy with their "Comprehensive Wellness Profile". Their website looks slightly sketchy, but their service is fast and cheap.
Video summary:

- Lavabit + Silent Circle are starting a non-profit called the Dark Mail Alliance.

- Planning to release an open source protocol for end-to-end encrypted email, along with some open source implementations. Expecting feedback from the community to drive the direction.

- Sketch of the protocol: Mail body/details is saved encrypted on some server somewhere. Encrypted XMPP message containing URI describing where to retrieve the message is sent to the recipients. Recipient clients figure out how to fetch it and decrypt it.

- The protocol is based heavily on Silent Circle's protocol. Functional proof of concept already exists.

- There will be several modes of security, default being the most secure, but allowing the user to explicitly scale down on a case-by-case basis (e.g. to abide by regulations and corporate policies).

- Sounds like it's backwards-compatible with SMTP, perhaps through gateways. It'll be explicitly marked as insecure.

- Ladar's goal is to transition Lavabit from a services company into a software company, using the free/open source business model and offer support services around it.

- The protocol will be using "new elliptic curve cryptography we [Silent Circle] developed." They're expecting the encryption methods will change over time.
Seriously? It's the first result for "dark mail".

http://www.darkmail.info/
I'm not a citizen but a greencard holder, so I have very little power to change anything (not allowed to vote in elections).
> there's basically 1 of 2 scenarios:

What utter bullshit.

Here are just a few more:

3. You're a presumed "bad" person, but a no-knock raid is completely unwarranted. They shoot your fleeing dog in the back.

4. There has been a clerical error, and you were mistaken for a presumed "bad" person, but a no-knock raid was completely unwarranted in the case they anticipated anyway. They shoot your fleeing dog in the back.

You are being willfully ignorant if you think these scenarios don't play out, and if you think the cops never deserve blame. I linked you to one such scenario. Click the link and read.

> " The other dog was shot twice, including once in the back of the leg which bolsters Calvo's argument that the dog was fleeing and that the force used was "unbelievably excessive".[13] This version of events was also confirmed by the later testimony of a law enforcement officer present at the raid.[21]"

> "In depositions, law enforcement personnel admitted that at least one of the dogs was running away when shot.[26]"
This looks like a life changing experience for a teen. Is this auction going to Bing Nursery School?
Quickoffice Vs Microsoft Office
Maybe someone from apple needs to make sure that newly supported kernels work on valgrind?
Michael Dell on Carl Icahn
The point is now someone who isn't the average reader of Nature can understand the concept...

Sometimes I feel like nerds kind of enjoy the exclusivity provided by "cryptic" notation. What Bret is doing is not genius level stuff, he's just doing what a lot of people don't have the balls to do. Attempt to make "hard" things easy enough for "regular" people to understand by appealing to the right side of their brain.
I'm all-clear on all of those. Great site, btw.
Ephemeral messages is not the same as privacy. A service based on privacy wouldn't publicly show who you communicate with most often.
It's been said before but the name seriously needs to change if the initiative wants to get any sort of support from the general public. It's only slightly better than say "pedomail".
I don't know any friends or family who use it, but that's not what I use it for. I visit Facebook once a month to see photos of friends or family. I use G+ to engage with _interesting people_ who may or may not be my friends.

G+ is like Twitter or Groups rolled up together, but you know, with an threading/posting interface that is actually useful for having long form conversations. Many of the G+ features also handily trump Twitter and FB, such as handling media/embedding, multi-party chat, video chat, photos, etc.

G+ photos alone is useful even if you don't have a single person circled.
Yes, it's for the scholarship fund.