skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They might be a counter-example to the many experiences that I am aware of. On the other hand, it could also be a case where he misremembers his own past to fit the story he wants to tell. (That is not an accusation, by the way, most of us do that to some degree or another. I certainly have.)

Without more information, it is impossible to tell.

However my opinion remains to trust the many experiences that I have had, and the experiences of people that I have known well. Your parents' story is not what most should expect to have happen.
That provides a lot of clarity. Thanks PG :)
http://www.coroflot.com is what you're thinking of.
And also http://www.grabcad.com might be helpful.
New Smartphone App For Young To Report Cyberbullying
Great observation--came here to say the same, but I have to disagree that jumping from Hindi to Punjabi (for example), even with a little bit of practice, is simple.

I'm a native Urdu (Hindi hehe) speaker and though I can understand the gist of a fast-paced Punjabi conversation, jumping in to participate is whole different matter. Even with a little bit of practice, I doubt I'd be productive.
New H.265 codec on test – 4k TV may be here faster than you know it
Does that also apply to angel/pre-seed/seed funded teams ?
For the sake of fiscal solvency, an argument could be made for not having 8 children and maybe not living in the most expensive place in America. The guy's story is motivational but it seems like a lot of this could have been avoided by not buying into the 'American Dream' hook line and sinker.
Based on the way that's worded, is it safe to assume you hold a low opinion of the programs those two startups (FlightCar and another?) went through prior to being accepted into YC?

If so what do you think was lacking in those two "accelerators"?
Seems like I stand corrected.

Thanks.
What are we supposed to be looking at here?

The config (there is only one) in the linked repository is fairly.. sparse (although the headers in the conf directory are more useful).

There are 6 outstanding pull requests, so it doesn't even look like it is being maintained.

Nice idea, but this implementation needs some work.
It didn't get registered in his name. Read the full story next time.
I believe that the vast majority of email users want nothing but free webmail.
Innovation in Moderation — What Apple and Samsung are doing wrong
Funny how 'love' can be spelled 'financial security'.
Right, that makes sense.
I sold the rest of mine when we hit $850 for a bit earlier today. Still hurts that I sold the vast majority of my BTC (about 1000BTC or so) at the whopping price of $2, when I had quadrupled my initial investment....

Mostly I try to use them as means of exchange, rather than speculation tool, but it's hard on weeks like this one...
Even People With “Perfect Memory” Can Be Tricked Into Recalling Fake Events
Ratpack, though very cool, should not be considered mature. The API has has not even stabilized for a 1.0 release. (Because Luke & team are working very hard to make it a great API)
No, not it's not usually a problem if a company has merely raised some money, unless they've sold so much of the company that we know it will deter post Demo Day investors.
I hope this is still hacker news rather than some emotional fools forum who ignore realities.
I see it differently. The languages aren't that far apart where native speakers couldn't easily converse with one another. I'm American but lived in Peshawar Pakistan as a kid and learned Urdu (in school) and Pashto (at home). I don't have any problems understanding most of the Hindi I've heard in Bollywood movies or from my Indian friends.
Canadian here and asking Siri the same question takes me to the WikiPedia page for Ideology :/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology

Canadians <3 Ron Paul, he has been the only relatable candidate in recent elections we can see from the outside that just discusses things directly without weaselling out of things. I wish more politicians (of all perspectives) followed his example.
The Only Metric that Matters
Dictatorship is a form of government[1]. Socialism is an economic system[2]. One does not exclude another. The history shows, though, they come together alarmingly often.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Assembling a 100 Mbp genome on a Raspberry Pi [pdf]
It's helpful to realize that questions of price supports (or import tariffs) on agricultural products go pretty much to the very birth of modern economic thought. Smith discusses them in his Wealth of Nations, and one of David Ricardo's first economic essays concerned the Corn Laws (restrictions on grain imports to Great Britain).

http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/ricardo/p...

All that's old is new again.
wolframalpha.com/examples/Surprises.html

I guess these are just examples. Not a complete list.
Charlie Awards Honor Best In Twin Cities Dining « CBS Minnesota
One barometer is how often they make monkey chants at soccer matches.
Is this for real? Seems like total BS. Esp. in making sweeping statements across an entire cultures.
It really is. This gives me the warm fuzzies. If every free/open source project were like this (ok, ok, like this appears to be) then we would be rolling in riches. I can't count the number of times I've seen a bug in some software and thought "I bet I could solve that!" And I probably could, because I'm not a bad programmer. But the barrier to entry is like the north face of the Eiger sometimes. This turns it into an on-ramp with friendly road signs and a cafe halfway up that serves really good coffee. Bravo, Mozilla!
If I read this recent (post-Snowden) blog post of spaf's correctly, he hasn't:
https://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/blog/post/just_sayin/

Though he notes that his armored car quip is approaching 20 years old, dating back to the dark days of Windows 95. Perhaps the better way to think about it is: encryption is necessary but not sufficient. If the NSA has extruded its tentacles into sufficient endpoints (operating systems? firmware? antivirus software?) that's a problem that encryption won't by itself solve.

Hey, I'm channeling RMS: free software is the real solution! Unless the NSA's tentacles extend to the compiler you use to compile the free software. :)
I don't know much about either of them. There are so many of these things now. It seems like every few days I hear about another one I hadn't heard of. And I don't really know what goes on inside of any of them. Except Imagine K-12, which was started by friends of mine with my encouragement, and one of whose founders, Geoff Ralston, is also a partner at YC. IK12 is definitely good, and we recommend education startups apply to them.
I'm assuming they all have a similar market valuation, or that they did 10 minutes ago or something. Not sure.

It's pretty tough to follow BTC's market valuation right now. Within the last 3 days it has been valued between 441 and 900 USD on MtGox.
I apologize for my vulgarity, but fuck that year.
Google Person Finder Helping Typhoon Yolanda Victims in Philippines • vlogg.com
The idea is that it will become stable.
> invested over $100 million throughout the course of the effort

That line is completely at odds with the title. In R&D 'alive and well' is not synonymous with spending lots of money. The key factor for deciding whether an R&D organisation is 'alive and well' is output. I.e. have they produced novel research or developed amazing products. Another important factor is the cost of that output. Anything is possible with an endless supply of slave labour (or money).

In this case I think that spending 100m on a controller that has only incremental improvements is not a sign of good R&D. It is a sign of a company with a lot of money that is not willing to take excessive risks.
Wow can you imagine a better Warhammer table!
If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Or, alternatively, if something looks too good to be true, one should ask oneself two questions: "What's the worst case scenario if I go for it?" and "What's the worst case scenario if I don't go for it?"
What you said is correct now, but when Amazon was Dropbox's age, it was "merely" an online bookstore. Over time, it has transformed into the company it is today, which has a justifiable, in my view, market cap of 20X Dropbox's "valuation". But you didn't justify this number in terms of profitability, but rather by the value it adds to the economy.

We don't know what Dropbox is going to be, yet, but it's already far more than a service that "stores files". It's the default way students and startups share files and work together. That's a pretty good market to build on.

How much would a company be worth if it was the default way most people worked together? What chance does Dropbox have of being that company? Those are the factors that justify $8B.
A side note: as a teenager I spent one summer working in a clothing store in London, with a bunch of Spaniards and Italians. They spoke to each other using their respective tongue, and said they could understand each other. Just basics of course.

Maybe someone from Spain or Italy could chime in here?
this was the only thing i could think throughout the whole article.

of course it makes no practical or moral sense to discuss after the fact, and his tale is both cautionary and oddly inspiring; but ultimately the entire situation could have been side-stepped with a bit of family planning.

it definitely has a parallel, if even less acknowledged, in the wider world.
First: Almost immediately shilling what appears to be some kind of "get smart fast" scheme of a book and then concluding with a clunky "sign up for my newsletter" undermines your content severely. Especially when that content is pretty weak sauce to begin with.

And I don't like the attitude of assuming people are stupid (and can't tell the difference between an "80% margin of skill" and a "95% margin of skill," whatever that means). Assume the people you work with can tell the difference. I think you'll get further. At least, you'll lay the foundation of a reputation that will provide you way more opportunities as your career progresses.

And "marketing yourself..." Please. Get out there. Meet people. Network. Be curious. Be honest. Be nice. But don't start trying to build some "personal brand" or whatever weird sort of facade you think will impress people. Most people see right through that stuff. The good ones will, at any rate.
Is your Internet Security Vulnerable? Here’s tips to rectify it
You could always build your apps in IronPython with GTK#.

Or even straight Python with QT. Or Java or Groovy or...

If Microsoft doesn't provide a tool that does what you need, then choose another tool. There are an awful lot of choices out there and you gain greater control over your destiny.
Top500 List - November 2013
I don't find this a very plausible argument. Malaria and TB aren't big problems in the states either, so why not treat them the same way? TB drugs ain't cheap.
Creeped out - it told me I should be friends with someone I follow & talk to regularly on Twitter, but we've never contributed to the same project. How did it know that?
You are wrong about point number 1. The purpose of mining is to process and secure bitcoin transactions. The work that goes into mining is what provides the utility of bitcoin. The 25 btc mining reward is just an incentive.
Ask PG and HN: What is your recommended reading list for economic history?
I have a vague memory of you saying in an interview that you have done quite a bit of reading in economic history. Furthermore, you often seem to provide some very good historical examples of economic phenomenon when you write and speak. I would like to do some focused reading on this topic, and I would appreciate input from you and HN.

What is your recommended reading list for economic history?

I am open to books, articles, sections of books, or just general reading that happens to have some economic ideas woven in.
CoffeeScript Introduction
I'd say Malaysia, myself, with their growing radical Muslim extremists, and the instability caused by the institutionalised racist attitudes to Chinese and other "non-native" Malays.

You could argue that Indonesia has a muslim radical problem as well, but at least the govt recognises it as a problem. Indonesia seems to be trying to become more democratic and neutral in religious matters, whereas I'm not sure Malaysia has the same degree of commitment or willpower.
Some ideas from scanning Amazon and looking through HN:

- A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

- This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

- Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction

- Cities of Commerce: The Institutional Foundations of International Trade in the Low Countries, 1250-1650

- The Roman Market Economy

- Economic history: What can we learn from the Depression?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6715879

- A history of American economic growth
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=727172

- Economic history ignored leads to the inevitable
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955219

- (Review) A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=298446

Working link at:
http://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/policy-magazine/2008-wi...

- The Economic History of the Last 2,000 Years in 1 Little Graph
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4135400
Hi. Not OP, but I who wrote the initial content of The Slow Web here.

The Slow Web and traction are not opposed, in my opinion. You CAN have traction without choosing to annoy the crap outta your users. It comes from understanding what your users are (or the target market you want to chase).

If you want to make a Slow Web service, understand then that your users aren't/shouldn'tbe the kind that are interested in logging in everyday to check on updates. Your marketing to your users would need to be a longer term relationship thing. It would of course be easy to annoy the shit out of your customers, but it's in my opinion that all that does is longer term harm.

I stopped using Facebook, LinkedIn for that reason. Once the novelty wears off, you stop using anyway.
Colde? look here, 3D autumn leaves fly in 200 line of Clojurescript
The world's first selfie was not narcissistic - but disgusting
I don't work for free: my libre software work is under the GPL in one form or another. If it's a library, it's LGPL-derived; if it's product, it's AGPL3. Either I get money, or you get to publish your changes to my code so we all benefit. Pick one. =)
Bang on! I don't think you are being cynical, you are being true! People across borders should stop being emotional over an advertisement by a multinational corporation. If they really have to become emotional, there is plenty of literature on this topic in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. And if they even want to take actions, there are many NGOs trying to ease up the visa procedure, raising awareness among the people etc.
Talking about the technology, I think some years down the line all this will become some kind of "ambient technology", if you know what I mean.
Heh, I have an Airbnb guest staying with me tonight that's in Imagine K-12 right now. I should drop by and see what it's about, considering it's 10 minute walk from my place!

I'm curious what makes them different from the others?
Why the world needs women entrepreneurs (in the Economist)
That is not entirely true. Hindi and Urdu as pure languages are very different languages, and not just because of the script. Hindi originated from Sanskrit, while Urdu borrows from Farsi and perhaps some Arabic.

However, colloquial Hindi and Urdu are somewhat-to-very similar and are indeed intertwined which is what allows most speakers of either language to understand each other.

Give me a word and in most cases I'll be able to tell if it originates from Hindi or Urdu.
But, if you use one-time pad correctly, then your string "HEADS TAILS HEADS HEADS" will be just as likely as any other string of the same length. "TAILS HEADS TAILS TAILS" would be just as likely, as would "MEETING AT MIDNIGHT. -E". This is because a one-time pad key has just as much entropy as the plaintext.
Because I live in WA, I used to read The Australian to get Australia-wide news and decent political analysis. I don't bother any more, it is absolute rubbish now and has been for a few years.
It isn't a straightforward process, and is a little pricey for small transactions. I think 1 BTC is okay though.

You first have to deposit US dollars or euros into it from Paypal. Then you convert them to Linden dollars, SSL (the site is actually for MMO virtual currencies), and then you convert the linden dollars into BTC. All these are instant transactions.
To withdraw the BTC to your own wallet, they manually verify every withdraw request, which they claim can take up to 48 hours.
I got touched by this. I used to spend a lot of time coding (already graduated) and never felt the need to do shortcuts on finding gigs. Once I went overseas I got overwhelmed by the old employment culture and suddenly became comfortable and 'recruiter'-friendly. Now I realized that it's not working, and being a well-rounded programmer means spending a lot of time programming outside work while still keeping a balanced lifestyle.

Felt good to have finally closed my linkedin account. Can't say the same for fb though :P
Industry People Are Whispering That Systrom Blew It Selling Instagram For $1Bn
Oh nice, thanks for that link, there's a particularly good section on statistics:

http://www.cancerguide.org/scurve_basic.html

Good read, as I prepare myself for a biopsy for a neck bump with relatively decent probability to be non-hodgkins lymphoma at age 26yrs old (thanks to a combination of smoking and taking certain strong medication to treat another illness that happens to cause cancer).

Note: traditional statistics examples rarely go beyond a 5-year estimate (as they claim, most clinical studies are capped at that).

I came across a good Tweet recently: "The best cure for cancer is to not get cancer". There are preventive means, so even if you don't have it, try to prevent it. Ignoring early prognosis (for ex: colonoscopies), smoking, poor environments, basic exercise, and unhealthy food is simply not worth it.
What changed in the 1930s? In Russia if you wanted to keep your head, you kept your head down in 1917, you kept your head down in 1905, and you kept your head down in 1800's and earlier - deportation to Siberia for being unpleasant to ruling class was a thing for centuries before Russia became Soviet.
As a French I can tell you we can understand most of casual Italian / Spanish conversation just fine (and I believe Spaniards and Italians can understand a good portion of French too). The roots are very similar for most words that you catch it up very quickly.
(Mostly) Believe The Bitcoin Hype
>Alaska, with a miserable climate, high suicide rate, and very outwardly pleasant people

Were did you get the last one from?

>Nobody is trying to explain that platonic friends in California don't hold hands because Californians don't make close friends like Saudi Arabians do. Anyone trying to say that would be laughed at.

That's because holding hands, is not a core human facial expression, unlike smiling.
Ironically, Youtube is banned in Pakistan
> Just a bit unlikely that Ali would be able to read 'saunf' in Devanagari, isn't it?

Why?
I imagine that after SOPA and ACTA, those other countries didn't listen to every US request anymore, and were embolden to have their own requests.
If the author of the original post was overly cynical, you're running the risk of being overly naive. Doing great work that you enjoy is critical, but the reality is that you have to build value outside of your technical skills, or you risk limiting your potential opportunities. You don't have to be a narcissistic self-promoter. Just put yourself out there--as you've already done by posting something thoughtful.

Be skilled, but also be industrious, authentic, and adventurous. That's my advice anyway.
Not buying the Prague vs Budapest thing -- if anything, Hungary was long notorious for having the highest suicide rate in Europe. (Since eclipsed by Lithuania and Slovenia, it seems.) The Czechs are at #30, only a few notches ahead of the US at 33.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...
10 Million UK User Emails are Targeted with Cryptolocker Ransomware
>And let's not forget the biggest lobby group of all: the American citizenry.

Why do you think the TPP drafts and negotiations were kept secret? Exactly so that only lobby group that should EVER count was kept disenfranchised.
As with the Arabic and Chinese language families, different varieties of Romance languages are similar enough in syntax and vocabulary that speakers can kind of make themselves understood to each other if they speak slowly and choose their words carefully. Same with lots of closely related languages, e.g. German and Dutch. But they're not nearly mutually intelligible to the degree that American English and most varieties of British English are or that Hindi and Urdu are.

Regarding the Spanish/Italian example, the father of a friend of mine was fluent in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Using an Italian grammar guide and his knowledge of Romance vocabulary from the other three languages, he learned Italian in a single flight from the US to Italy to the point where he was able to conduct business in Italy immediately upon landing.
My argument is that there is no barrier to entry. Want to compete against Amazon? The amount of cash you would need is enormous. That's Google/Microsoft/Apple scale (and, of course, Amazon).

Dropbox? Very little barrier to entry. Just like them, you could use S3.
Yes, the basics are ok to understand (even though Spaniards speak too fast)
Not quite what you asked for, but in case you were looking for some economic theory...

The Real Price of Everything is an anthology compiled by Mcihael Lewis, and available quite cheaply considering it's literally the size of a brick at 1472 pags. It includes The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (this is about half the book). Malthus' essay on Population, Ricardo on Political Economy, Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class and Keynes' General theory. It's a weighty but great read; Adam Smith in particular is surprisingly easy to read despite having written over 200 years ago, though you could safely skip a few parts like his digressionary chapter on the price of silver, which is an important contribution to the history of monetary theory but otherwise doesn't really go anywhere.

If you want something shorter and punchier, try New Ideas from dead economists by Todd Buckholz, which is a somewhat shallow but still quite engaging tour through the history of economic theory and a good introduction to the basic concepts.
It is supposed to know only when you have the itinerary sent to your Gmail. And some people might just disable Google Now and/or 'location services' altogether.
And they would say "none of your business."
Honestly, I was expecting to read some sort of defense of this corruption here in the comments.

There's a certain part of HN that is totally all about rent-seeking. It's what startups do when they create platforms that are only a slight twist on things in order to get everyone to use them, and then if they get enough market share, they can take in rents disproportionate to any value they add.

Sure, there's a lot of productive and ethical startup stuff too. But there's just the undercurrent that if someone is making good money in the marketplace, it's because they are a success and should be emulated. Many people fail to question whether the business is really founded in ethical practices.

I guess, so far anyway, when something is that corrupt and unethical as the U.S. food policy, then even those who knee-jerk to defend anyone rich are not gonna be defending this nonsense. Everyone has a limit to their ability to be in denial about the corruption in our economy…
Apparently not. Try it :)