skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Good Banks for Start-ups in the Bay Area?
We're ready to open our start-ups first bank account and are looking for recommendations for a bank (or banker!) to work with.

We've heard working with smaller or local banks is better. Do you think that's true?
We've just relocated to the bay area and don't know much about the banking scene here, but our own experience so far is inconclusive.

Our personal accounts are at Chase, but they've become a mess in last few years. I can't get anything done there anymore.
On the other hand, we've found the initial small bank recommended to us to be short staffed and un-responsive unless you actually go there and start waving dollar bills around.

So, anybody know of a good bank for start-ups in the Bay Area?
I just have to say that I very strongly dislike this type of comment.

First, you disagree with the poster, and proceed to make a few claims "I don't think Snowden engaged in responsible disclosure", [Snowden was] "ultimately mistakenly misguided", and "mistaken about what the overall course of his actions has done for the world as a whole."

After those claims though, you bow out with "That's all I have time to say about this at the moment" (and of course you lead the comment with a similar "It would take ...more time than I have with my work responsibilities today"

You took enough time to write a 1335 character comment, but not a single bit of it was about backing up or explaining the logic behind a single one of your claims. If you don't have time to get into a discussion, don't, and don't expect others to respect such a one-directional attempt at conversation.

Now, I will make a small try at explaining why I think you are wrong.

"I don't think Snowden engaged in responsible disclosure"

I think Snowden did the best he could given the restrictions he was under. He took the data over a certain amount of time, and given the amount of documents it is infeasible that he could purge truly sensitive information withing a decent timeframe, therefore he did the next best thing, which was to contact respectable news outlets and give them the documents on the condition that they use their resources to do what he could not. He gave all documents up (minus a supposed insurance file) and sought political asylum, a respected political tradition since the days of Hammurabi. I really can't fathom any better course of action for the situation, but if you would like to suggest one please go ahead.

""mistaken about what the overall course of his actions has done for the world as a whole."

I'm not sure, but to me this seems like it might allude to a claim that the revelations have made the US/World weaker. That simply isn't true. The weaknesses are already there, we the public are simply just learning about them. Could that create a political weakness? Yes indeed, but that is irrelevant because it was the NSA and other powers that be that actually performed the acts that created that weakness, not Snowden and not the public.

On your link about Kim, I also have a strong suspicion, hopefully an unfounded one, that you may have fallen into the trap that "journalists" like Joushua Foust have fallen into, in which they all but outright claim "ze Russians" have some nefarious hand in Snowdens cookie jar. Before doing this, please remember that it was never Snowden's intention to seek Asylum in Russia and was headed for Latin America when matters out of his control put him in a spot with limited options.
Of course violence has to be targeted and stopped, regardless of the reason.

But cultural change is important. Lynchings were bad because of the violence, but just as bad was the culture that lead to such violence being sanctioned. Gay bashing is horrible, but the culture that sanctions it is also horrible. Same with trans bashing, but there has been less progress at targeting that culture. Include nerds in the targeted groups, there.

Sure, maybe you don't agree that targeting the culture that sanctions violence is important, but a lot of people disagree with you there, including me.
I sincerely hope you elaborate more, because as a non-American I feel that the world will now have a chance to become a much better place and Snowden did remarkable thing, which apart from giving a sort of CV you don't address.

I think that E. Snowden was in a position to judge which path is right. I trust that he knows better than you, me and probably others what would have happened if he tried to go public without ever leaving the USA.
I'm a gamer, that means I play games.

I try not to be a jerk, but some people who play games do act like jerks. I am not going to give up my hobby or my identity because some people who have the share either act like jerks.

There is a subset of the gamer population which encourages players to act like jerks. The correct response is to build environments (games, communication channels, and communities) which inhibit and discourage negative behavior, not to abandon the field.
It's about lowering the threshold so that when I need to patch your project, I can trivially clone the repo with software I already have installed and know, do my change, commit and create a patch or submit a pull request to Github or whatever with so little extra hassle that I feel compelled to do so rather than just making the change to my local tar-ball and never upstreaming the changes unless/until there's something large enough to be a pain to maintain separately.

Frankly, that ability is more important than the choice of DVCS: There's more value from most people standardising than in picking the "optimal" DVCS just because of the lowered barriers to participation.
> Management can turn "Yes, if..." people into mindless drones over time by constantly shooting them down and feeding them negativity.

And individuals can turn everyone else into mindless drones by constantly saying "no, because of XYZ."

Blaming "management" is so fashionable, and so counterproductive.
Can't help recalling this pic http://xkcd.com/645/
Nope, still embarrassing there too.
So in your opinion is a domain squatter worse, the same, or better than a real estate investor? That is someone who identifies something that has value that might be able to be sold at a higher value at a later date and buys it for less than they intend to sell at that later date?
Strong & attractive body in just a few weeks
Have you experienced lack of information about exercising and nutrition and struggled with:
- speeding up the process of gaining muscle mass,
- burning subcutaneous fat,
- or maximizing your performance ability?
Something about the idea of an "open letter" always bothers me. I don't know who Joel is, or why I should trust that this issue is important. The coming of a "morality apocalypse" is pure speculation, with no data or even anecdotal examples to back it up, and seems straight out of 60s Cold War MAD paranoia with little to add since then.
The sad state of website password standards
I think there was a co-evolution of the two. A lot of people started using git because Github was where the cool projects were being hosted. At the time, I recall hoping for bzr to "win". I like git these days but coming from an svn is king world - bzr was a bit gentler for transition.
I have misread the last quote as "is anyone else in the room turned on" and wondered whether that's not a bit far out of the box ;)
IOS Goodies - Week 8
Are you a VC? Come speak to UC Berkeley tech journalism students
I'm looking for a VC/investor who can come speak casually for 90 minutes on Feb 11 2014 at my "Covering Technology" class at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. (I had a speaker just drop out.)

Ideally, it would be someone who's been in the industry for a long time and can also bring someone from a company that they're investing in.

Interested?

Ping me: cyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com

http://arstechnica.com/author/cyrus-farivar/

Here's my syllabus: http://bit.ly/1kEbvEX
It's great to see these unsung accomplishments. This one is surprising, and seeing the $1/day as a benchmark (you can live at a much higher level than that in the US and still be poverty-stricken) the trend is pretty spectacular, perhaps more-so than the reduction in crime in Chicago and New York.

Chicago: Lowest homicide rate since 1965: http://homicides.suntimes.com/2013/12/28/graphic-analysis-of...

New York: Lowest homicide rate since 1962: http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/number-of-murders-in-ny...
These kind of thing changes your worldview. It's like math, you either prove it or it remain a hypothesis even after the 1.0000x10^1.000.000 repetition.
The Coca-Cola Company got a range of 16M MAC addresses reserved
"United" - Jung Phil (Official Music Video) Tribute to Trayvon Martin
"Due to the growing controversy over Trayvon Martin & George Zimmerman, I decided to write a song to support the Martin family and movement. It's sad to see that even in 2012-2013 we still have issues, and I mean serious issues, with racial discrimination in the United States. A CHILD lost his life for going to the corner store for a snack, millions of other children around the world are doing this right now and they shouldn't be worried they won't make it back home safely because of the color of their skin. The fact that his murderer is walking around with the same freedoms as you or I, COMPELLED me to write this song! I am/was inspired by all of the support the Martin family has received, black, white and otherwise. Watch my new video of, "United," let us know what you think about the message of unity I am trying to portray to the nation and world. This was a wakeup call that racial discrimination is still prevalent and a part of our culture. BUT, I was equally inspired when I saw just as many white people supporting and protesting this cause as my black brothers and sisters. Please don't let this precious life be forgotten! If we stand "UNITED" his life will live on and his legacy will be preserved!" ~Jung Phil
i'm looking for a co-founder in the DC / Baltimore area. i'd like to develop a must-have mobile app for sports fans. i have a strong development background in c++ / mysql / php / some objective c. i'm also somewhat networked with new sports media. an ideal co-founder would have a strong iOS and objective c background, and loves sports. if you're interested, respond and we can exchange details.
In 2005, there were already some free, open-source DVCSs. Linus considered using Monotone for the Linux kernel project before deciding to start Git.
Assume they already know it, and ask them to explain it. A good explanation is almost as rare as understanding it.

If they don't know it, then ask to solve.

The early controversy with the Monty Hall problem was that explanations left loopholes, or weren't compelling enough, and even people who who should have known better didn't understand the solution clearly enough.
I'm not sure what you mean. How so?
For those looking to learn more, there's a guy by the name of Ralfy who does fantastic in-depth reviews that will get you excited to enjoy whisky: http://www.youtube.com/user/ralfystuff
I mean total revenue, but I leave it unspecified in the hope that someone will ask for clarification. Same with if they should include authors with no sales during the time period.

I like this question because the base query, however you interpret the unclear parts, is easy, but it still allows candidates to impress me by asking about the "edge" cases. And even if they just makes assumptions, I can still ask them to do the other versions to see if they really know what they're talking about. I'm always amazed at how many people can't convert an inner join to a left join, or can't change a sum() to a count().
The problem with most such predictions isn't the technology but the social side effects; we are capable of fulfilling the prediction, but don't want to. Ex.: nuclear batteries are entirely doable, but the word "nuclear" has been demonized. Ex.: breakfast-making robots are possible, but we just don't want them.
Because of Columbus I and most of Latin Americans are born, most of us are a mix of European and Native Americans. If all of that population was really killed, there would be just white people in the spanish and portuguese territories.
Specifically, 'Blink' is the best time-travel conceptual episode in recent memory.
And how many of these kids will read these blog posts about the issue? None.
Well, Guido van Rossum has a time machine.
The Bechdel test is severely flawed and not indicative of anything.

Most great films fail it miserably, so you'll be missing out on the greatest works of human cinema if you use it as a serious criterion.

It's very idiotic. It implies that there's something wrong with having a scene where two women discuss a man. Yet any film at all, no matter how great or even progressive in its themes, will fail because of a brief four-second quip.

Tell me now. How many films have a scene where two or more men discuss a woman? I'll tell you how many. A metric fuckton. Human sexuality is a pivotal motif in the arts and is a fundamental part of our lives. Whether you like it or not.

You can easily make a very misogynistic and hateful film that positively portrays wife beating, gay bashing and oppression while passing the Bechdel test. Fact of the matter is, the Bechdel test completely ignores any context. It's very narrow and to impose it on people is a violation of artistic license.
Math.random() in modern browsers is a pretty good RNG. He would probably be happier with a pseudo-random algorithm or simple rotation, but over time a uniform distribution should be seen if his code is correct: http://coffeescript.org/#try:alert%20%5B0..300%5D.reduce%20(...
That's a simplistic view. First, the GNU project is very much alive: the GNU tools are used in a huge number of operating systems and are installed on a staggering number of devices. I would bet that the system you are writing this comment from is running thanks to the GNU software.

Second, it is debatable whether sticking to Hurd was a good or a bad idea technically. Imagine if Stallman and co. managed to convince a good number of developers that it was a good idea and the kernel was competitive with Linux, BSD's, etc. If you believe you have a technically superior vision for your product, should you compromise on it just because people who do not share in your vision will not join you?

In the end, I think what killed the pure GNU/Hurd OS was bad PR and absolutism. Hurd as a technical question was just a small part of that. Remember, the debate between the Free and the Open Source guys was pretty fierce. Today we use terms like FOSS to describe all open software, but when Linux and Hurd were young these were different camps with opposing philosophies, and the one that appealed to more developers won out. In simplistic terms, you can think of this as the VHS vs Betamax debate. Can you blame the Betamax backers for continuing to try to push it and "killing" it as a result?
Apple still insists on building their kernel atop Mach, and it doesn't seem to stop their momentum. (Even though it's kind of a strange choice.)
Genetically Identical Bacteria can Behave in Radically Different Ways
I think this is a very interesting question, but there's a pretty strong tendency in the human psyche to assume that the answer is more or less to replicate $MY_CLAIMED_MORALITY out to the rest of humanity, which this essay does nothing to avoid. ($MY_CLAIMED_MORALITY stands in contrast to $MY_ACTION_MORALITY, i.e., how one behaves, which this essay does discuss there being a difference in, to its credit.) Fiddling with morality may have large potential benefits, but it can also cause catastrophe, yes, even worse than what we have now.

"Increasing empathy" sounds great, right? But it can cause excessively local decision making brought on by a particular case of acute pain, while missing the greater good that may be done elsewhere. It may allow a morality-parasite leader to come to power to manipulate everybody via their increased empathy to do something awful. (Indeed, I'm sure many people here have found that even in current society, there's certain areas that you must deliberately reduce your empathy in; you simply can not afford to be manipulated by every picture of a starving child you come across, or you'll become broke... and with no guarantee that your donations are doing anything but lining a pocket somewhere, if you're too busy giving to do background checks on who you're giving to....) And of course it's not a knob; what "increases empathy" in the lab may in the field "increase empathy for my tribe", as we are so wired for that.

Tribalism is bad, right? Perhaps so, but "let's just turn down the tribalism" does not clearly work. We are tribal for a reason. Unless you can flip the switch all at once, you run the risk of the selfless a-tribals getting parasitized by the still-tribal, meaning it may not be stable. It may not be stable even if you could flip the switch all at once; you still have to worry about morality parasites.

To say nothing of what happens once you have the power to twiddle with human morality, and then those of altered morality start twiddling the knobs themselves, which would be inevitable.

Yes, it is likely that some morality changes will have to occur for human survival... no, it probably is not the case that you can predict them trivially now, no, it probably isn't as simple as "Why can't we all just love each other?", and I very strongly suspect that if we could get a preview of that new morality, we'd all probably find it repulsive in some way... it's simply inconceivable that the answer is as easy as taking somebody's modern morality (which does not come from any magically better morality source, it's as broken as everybody else's) and stamping it out on everyone else.
Projematic: An email list for design and technology projects.
Probably your best growth hack is publishing this deck.
I'm always interested in applying :-)
There were a lot at the time. Computers for playing games were expensive and lan parties tended to take a whole weekend including sleeping there, while D&D was more relaxed and was just a couple hours in the evening.

I'd still say the culture was vastly different though. A few people sitting around a board rolling dice was just a completely different social interaction to a hundred people in a noisy hall. There also wasn't the same level of 'scoreboard hero' in tabletop games that arose during Doom/Quake.

I guess I'm actually talking more about 'quake culture' than gaming culture at the time, but it's actually that 'quake culture' which has gone mainstream rather than the 80s gaming culture which is still around today. Without the lan parties and quake, you wouldn't have the 'rape culture' they talk about and that's why I'm saying the two are something different.
I agree - to clarify, there is a difference between a joke and hatred laced with a "joke" - not really a joke in the example you pointed out, more of a derogatory statement, but I get what you are saying.
Why did it make you wince with embarrassment? From spending time with my nephews and friend's daughters, I know it's reasonable. I probably would have phrased it, "I see! Did you have fun climbing up? Do you want to slide down?" I probably wouldn't use the word "scared" unless I thought they actually looked scared.
I just want to point out in the most friendly way possible: Everyone you know is likely just like you. ;p
If we had time travelers, they would have been already comeback in the past and meet us from the future. It is useless to look for them. Wait for them and do something else.
And then you ask them what they mean by SEO, and it gets worse. SEO is one of my favorite buzzphrases, because it causes ignorant marketers to rapidly self-select. (Unless their explanation shows otherwise.)
The gap between technological capability and the ability to deal with the consequences illustrates a problem with our collective intelligence and the ability or inability to contain the more volatile members of our species when they make use of technology for their own selfish gain.

Morality (the desire to render many shades of grey into black or white decisions) is not going to save you. The only solution that mortality has to offer at this point is to limit technology or attempt to put a halt to further progress until humanity has had a chance to catch up. To a certain extent this is being tried already in various conservative movements around the globe - from opposing stem-cell research to limiting the effectiveness of vaccination programmes.

Instead I'd put my money on creating more effective institutions and better levels of organization in order to limit any adverse effects until human intelligence is able to progress at a similar pace.
In 2014, if you want happiness, choose work
Open letters are only ever used correctly by those with enough power/influence to address their audience as a public entity.

Therefore, the main reason why those lacking power, in this case Joel, write 'open letters' is in the hope of gaining enough attention from others peeking at a letter addressed to a private individual.
CryptoEngine : Embed a crypto currency payment system into any website
Right. Just make sure you don't read my spoiler comment first :-(
> As Parkin points out, the term “gamer” is idiotic. We don’t call movie fans “moviers” or literature enthusiasts “bookers.”

We call people who read "readers", we call people who go to movies "movie-goers". Game isn't just a noun, it's a verb, and adding an "-r" or "-er" to the end of a verb is a common English way of turning that verb into a word that means "person who [verb]s". To suggest otherwise is idiotic.
Sadly, ethnic discrimination is still pretty rampant in areas of the former Soviet Union. Although it does seem to be getting better. I suppose it takes more than a generation or two for that to fade away.
This piece is less about gamers and more about the failures of online 'communities.'

The interesting thing about the Internet is how utterly unaccountable people want to be for what they say. Just try mentioning that people should be held responsible for things they say. Anytime you even suggest the state of online discourse is abysmal, there are five people who show up to tell you that it's perfectly fine, and the problem lies with you for noticing it.

It's like there's a culture of acquiescing to perceived social norms (in this case, mediocrity), lest you speak up and be expelled.
Yes, the global populace is immensely immoral.

What is your solution?
Not knowing the root word, I would assume ludophile would be related to luddite.
10 Signs You're Probably a Techie
There are tons of variations and few people know them.

For instance ask "What if the showman didn't know which door the car was behind?"

IIRC even if you exclude instances where the showman shows a car, it evens out the odds.
PC's with 2-3 terabyte hard drives and 8+ GB of RAM are not that expensive, and download speeds are fast with broadband, which allows "excess" resources to be used to obtain and install a Linux iso within Windows using VirtualBox. So it's become a lot easier to experiment with Linux. I like Linux Mint.
I dint mean to say Elance is bad or something, I just prefer Odesk over Elance and thats my personal opinion. As I mentioned I find more projects on Odesk that interests me, that is just evident that I was giving my personal opinion.

And if you want differences between the two, I would say the option of using 4 extra credits on Elance to get your application on top is very stupid and Odesk has a very simple UX.
Name: Silvia

Startup: http://www.allthecooks.com

Role: Founder, wrote the iOS app and some server stuff.

How did you start: HTML Blogging when I was 13.

Why did I start: The internet is a really cool thing.

Proof of cred: http://www.linkedin.com/in/silviacurioni

Has your gender made any of this hard?: no
Because they share the author's extreme social justice sentiments in every other way.
Have you considered using Ethics rather than Morality ?

I hear the word morality and immediately assume the speaker/writer is arguing from a religious point of view.