skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The single most important thing in a product name these days is that it needs to be immediately spellable. Surprisingly, this is this single most common mistake that startups make when choosing a product name.

"Hey, check out my site biivo.com!"

"Ok, type-type-type... Uh, it's a domain squatter's parking page."

"No, it's spelled with two i's and only one v."

"Ohhhh. let me try again..."

The day I registered Twiddla.com, I also registered Twidla.com and a few other misspellings. People in the UK sometimes try going to Twiddler.com and there's not much we can do about it. Fortunately, we're the #3 Google result for "Twiddle", and we get about 5% of our search traffic from that keyword.

It's hard to imagine how much traffic these startups with missing letters and intentional misspellings are missing out on.
Resolved: Altman takes on the big dogs
I think Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, and NYC are in the top four. Except for the Valley, people argue about which city is in which spot for 2-4 (they all have their niches), but it seems unlikely that Portland -- although it's a wonderful place to live and a solid runner-up -- could make a solid case for the top four.
Why have there been so many "<complicated topic> explained to 8-yr old" posts?

It's great that the gist of things can be explained (most complicated things have simple premises), but the devil's in the details!
How to visualize the bail out
Co-Founder of www.FeedbackJar.com
This is absolutely doable, but when life is stressing theres nothing like an extravagant meal to bring back some cheer. It doesn't have to be eating out, home-cooked is fine, but rib-eye ain't cheap either way.

Green olives, goat cheese, and crackers really do melt away my troubles.
IMHO, Techcrunch's coverage of the Tech scene is not significantly worse comparing with the Tech coverage of mainstream media. TC is able to break stories, contact sources, etc. Sometimes their integrity is questionable, but I wouldn't say mainstream media are always kosher in this respect, either.

But what TC doesn't get is, that they were successful only in covering the relative small niche of the companies and products related to the Internet. But they didn't prove yet that they could make such breakthrough in general news coverage - nor any other blogger did, even HuffPost is dependent on mainstream media coverage which they build upon.

We are yet to see a "lean" media company consisting of bloggers, who are able to consistently do some heavy reporting like government corruption, war in some African country or life in totalitarian countries, for example. I am curious to see how they will support themselves financially and compete with MSM.
wait, what does that say about your definition of "high-powered"?
There is no point in arguing with the statements of today's facts. Such statements are also not very interesting, since they are common knowledge. What is interesting, is the dynamics and the direction of the change.

In all emerging market economies that managed to stabilize their currencies and make them appreciate (Latin America in the 90s) this has led to domestic consumer booms and reduction of current accounts surpluses (or running up deficits). China has not gone this route yet, but this is a massive reserve of growth. I am sure their leaders understand this. Of course, to focus on domestic market instead of exports, it represents a major policy change. But fundamentals increasingly point at this scenario, so we may reasonably assume that this is what will eventually happen.

I also do not buy the 'forced loans' concept. Throughout last years of rapid growth Chinese authorities have been in fact imposing artificial caps on domestic credit growth, since they don't have developed domestic debt market, and therefore lack effective tools to sterilize their dollar interventions. Immediately after financial crisis, the Chinese have removed many of those lending restrictions, as part of their 'stimulus'. Now, because of the developing stock market bubble in domestic Chinese stocks, the authorities are bringing the lending restrictions back.

I think the idea of 'forced loans' came from the same area as fables of state-planned road running through schools and kindergartens (but not through villas of state officials). It is so heavily mixed up with ideological propaganda and clichés, that it does not really deserve a serious discussion.
Coolest Robots of 2009
Ask HN: Does having the right corp lawyer help you find investors?
I was recently approached by some lawyers in the Valley telling me that I should incorp my startup. The told me they'll defer the cost until we get funded, and they'll introduce us to their investor community.
With that said, do lawyers really help you get funded or is it just a bunch of horse Sh$%!?
Older white males hurt more by this recession
But how, how, how to get it back in the terminal emacs? :)
a lot of comments focussing on health. one other issue is that finding all the best deals and using coupons takes time. if you treat it like a salary, maybe you could beat minimum wage(?), but it's not a good salary by any means.
That's true. A lot of intros to investors come through lawyers.
This does look like a ton of fun, though the "hose" attachment didn't seem to go too far. It's also not cheap. But kudos to the developer of the thing! It's an incredibly original invention and application. Plus, since it runs in the water and is attached to something you can't go too high and there's a smaller risk of injury.

Also, I chuckled at the pun of calling this "vaporware" :)
absolutely. This is a misguided judgement if there ever was one.

The simple fact that the pirate bay was summoned to the court in a country other than the one that they live in and were delivered their summons via email, twitter and facebook no less makes it a complete farce.

As if I have an obligation to appear in a swedish court if a judge there summons me... that's what we have extradition for.
Would that this theory worked so well in real life where different drivers have differing motives for being on the road. If everyone's priority was to get off of the road as fast as legally possible, you could assume a uniform speed just below the limit. The only problem left to solve would be creating space between the vehicles and the approach you've mentioned would likely work well.

However, the road is full of people who are more concerned about watching the scenery pass, carrying on a phone conversation or looking for landmarks in unfamiliar territory. This is perfectly fine until traffic starts backing up behind them. As cars are added or lanes reduced away, a jam becomes increasingly imminent. And jams are just the extreme example. Patient motorists driving slowly behind distracted ones still have their goals deferred.

What I'm saying is, haste is relative. Slow down if you want to--it's a free country. Just have some consideration for the people behind you.
Nope, Spokane. High end of "several."

"Nice" is probably overstating the climate, but the flip-side is that it's rarely too hot or too cold; you don't usually suffer through the heat+humidity of the eastern seaboard, which probably has something to do with me holding that opinion right this second!
Any good recipes, Jeremy?
"PB+J can be priced at $.25...Rice cakes and cheese was a favorite. "

PB+J and Rice cakes = Living comfortably?
In spite of the faux-documentaries like Super-Size Me, eating McDonald's food doesn't actually make you fat and unhealthy.
Original article is http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/042009-robot-bus...
I enjoyed this post a lot because I traveled the opposite path. I started out in computer science with little interest whatsoever in math all through high school.

Then when I got to college they introduced the notion of "program correctness" where you tried to prove, mathematically, that your computer programs were correct. This convinced me that computer science was simply a knock-off approximation of mathematics and I drifted away from it.

From your derivative example above I’d say it is this inexact nature of computer science that you especially like. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Blackberry Tutorial on SMS text programming
You are almost correct but it's not entirely without rules, 4chans /b/ people keep saying "bring back snacks" where snacks are referring to the ban on:

* "Post ending in x"

* Gay porn

* People seeking attention but not "putting out"

Refence but keep in mind the common sense thing is to not click encyclopedia dramatica links if are at work or want to avoid knowing useless things:
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Bring_Back_Snacks

For the record I don't actually visit 4chan, I just happen to know this out of sheer morbid fascination.
Great robots though, I almost went into robotics when I was younger. Sometimes I still wish I had.
thanks. =)

my particular university has first and second year calc and then other maths and stats all the way up to 4th year level, unfortunately. I was always an A/B student back in highschool, but that was when I did this stuff day in day out. Plus I don't have the teenage angst to fuel me anymore. The comsci courses are making me so happy though, that I think I should manage to pull through.
It's all the white collar workers surfing from work :)
That's cool. The 150 web address per person got me - one wonders what proportion of that is spam and/or subdirectories, however.

Sucks for Africa though :-(
3D Scanner Recreates Real-Life Objects on the Computer Screen
I keep reading this as "Teen Decomposes IN Plastic Bag........"
Thanks Paul. Oh and I know you like to eat cheese.
Anyways, so should I be picky about which firm to go with?
Does anyone have any good law firm recommendations in the Silicon Valley?
I've never used Schaum's outline series before, but I shall look that up. Thank you.
[HAARP] Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere
Glad to see it go.

This was the most painful thing to get rid of because you couldn't ever isolate it. I spent entire days removing chunks of code from a page, until finally arriving at this:

<html><body></body></html>

Refreshing the page in the browser still gave that Operation Aborted error about half the time. It's like it was cacheing the ghost of the original page and executing its scripts.

Now to wait patiently until IE7 goes away so that I don't ever need to dive into that again.
To ESB or not to ESB
Tomorrows headline - "cheeseburgers cure hairloss"
I was chagrined to find myself in this very same position. Sadly, I have not yet had the time to track down the resources necessary to "re-educate" myself. Computer science has given me a new love for math that I didn't even possess during my education, but I know of very few ways to express that enthusiasm.
Most people undercook brown rice. My wife hated it and had stomach cramps whenever she ate it, until she started cooking it for 50 minutes or so. Using our rice cooker never cooked it thoroughly, so we use the stovetop now. Now she likes it. I agree it's not as nutritious as most people think it is...we eat quinoa more frequently, and we try to alternate with other grains and sides.
http://www.paulgraham.com/angelinvesting.html#f2n
Quiet, if the rest of America realizes that - our plans for world domination are over.
"The browser just isn’t up to the standard of the iPhone’s."

Helpful.
I use it every day and it works fine for me. Since Mac OS X has unix underpinnings all the good stuff works just fine (unlike trying to use M-x grep on windows). If you compile ispell and put it in your path then all the spelling stuff works, etc.

I had to do very few Mac specific things in my .emacs to make it comfortable.

And on top of that it supports basic mac interaction, so if you drag a file into the window it'll open it in a new buffer, you can associate files with it so that double clicking them works, etc.
Soon we'll see posts about sama eating breakfast (http://paulgrahamatebreakfast.infogami.com/ )

In all seriousness though, glad to see Loopt is doing so well.
Film Company Blowtorch Burned By Hedge Fund Flame-Out
I don't know that I agree with this. If you don't like just following rules, then you want to try to understand why the rules work and make sense. E.g. why are you allowed to add "x" both sides of the equation or divide both sides by 2?

The rest of it is like what BrentRitterbeck says. You just need to do enough problems to be able to look at a problem and say to yourself "I think this technique will work."

Proofs in algebra aren't usually very enlightening with respect to the theorem they are trying to prove, but they can teach you a new technique (e.g. proving the quadratic equation can teach you how to "complete the square").
I have a similar, but slightly different problem. While I know that CS and programming in general can be translated into useful math knowledge, I always mistrust my math. I suspect that i don't understand the math correctly because I understand it, if that makes any sense. The weird terminologies and reputation for being way hard always erode my confidence in my understanding.
"incredibly original"

Well, we can't be sure about that: ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Sunshine
No, you're just buying the wrong things. If I walk out of the store with $100 of groceries for my family of 3, it's an entire shopping cart full of food and lasts for weeks!

4-5 lbs of "on sale" meat, 10 lbs of bread flour, 5 lbs of sugar, 2 lbs of cheddar, a gallon of milk, cereal (from local mill, not the national brand stuff), vegetables, butter and lunch meat will cost around $60 here in the Upper Midwest. But if I spend that $60 on mostly processed food, I will barely get two grocery bags full.

With a bit of land you can go further. I keep chickens for fresh eggs, but I realize most people can't do that. However, my potatoes, corn, carrots, broccoli, squash, pumpkins, salad greens and some herbs come fresh out of the garden so for summer/fall at least, I don't buy those things.
Firefox Approaches 1 Billion Downloads, Could Hit It Tomorrow
I was checking out massify.com from your comment, and must say how valuable it looks. I'm a producer on a documentary (noapologiesmovie.com) and will def. be using massify's site for some of our upcoming work. Thanks!
Web developer for a nonprofit. VP Technology at a startup. Trying to write as much as I can.

Doubled in CompSci and English at a strong U.S. uni.
Upmodded for calling out the "nice climate year-round" bit. Portland can be miserable with rain.
You should be picky. I've had an instance where a lawyer ruined the prospects of getting a startup funded by acting in a very inappropriate fashion while "helping out" during fund seeking.
Python-MagickWand or How to Work With Icons
This whole article seems to be based around 2 strange strawmen about the original article.

First the original article never said the "Best" or "Top Ten" entrepreneurial cities. It was just a "here are some good towns to start a business in"

It's also very much not tech focused.
I agree with what you're saying. It's amazing me to how people won't support art or politicians that they agree with or any other important thing because they are broke but will have plenty of money for beer.

I have to laugh at one thing:

"where bar bills can run up to $20/night"

Man, you should hang out with my friends for a night. :)
It's a natural fat used around the world, nothing to be scared of. If you get "real" lard (not hydrogenated), it has no trans fats and can be quite useful in the kitchen. Hispanic grocery stores or butcher shops are a good spot to find it.
Active DNS filtering at DTAG?
I'm not a physicist, but this paragraph struck me as incorrect (or at least misleading):

Li, however, figured that if he attached a hose to his pack, and put the engine and water pump in a separate vessel that dragged behind him, he could seriously reduce his weight, and therefore the amount of thrust needed to stay aloft.

If the engine and pump were part of the jet pack, even if the engine and water pump were weightless, wouldn't it be impossible to get enough thrust to provide lift? The propellant is being thrown back in the direction it came, so doesn't the momentum cancel out?
Buy one container of good yogurt and use it as a culture to make your own from then on with fresh milk. It's easy (google home made yogurt) and tastes infinitely better. Best of all, as long as you have a little yogurt, you can use it to make more.
Microsoft Yahoo Deal: Why it is a good deal for Microsoft and Yahoo?
I would think that facebook (and their mobile apps) are a bigger threat than google. They could add a 'share my location with friends' feature that would be competitive.
Removable roofing.

The roof is white, but you put black panels on it for the winter. In the summer, you take them off. Or vice versa.
It's not "different strokes," it's a change of perspective causing massive confusion all 'round. Computer science isn't a knock-off approximation of mathematics, it's a subfield of mathematics. Programming, which is what the post is talking about, is a third thing. The derivative is the inverse of the indefinite interval (and has the same arity), but the function he refers to computes a definite integral which is not the same thing. Etc.

Confusion about this stuff is a sign that you didn't really understand it the first time. Believe me, I've been (am still) there...
I'm a big Black Maple Hill fan. Will have to try Rittenhouse - thanks!
Gliffy Unveils the First Online Diagramming API
I know this is just me picking nits, but

> Mark Montgomery, 53, was let go from an Owens Corning insulation factory in April and can't afford his $575 monthly mortgage payment.

What, local WalMarts aren't hiring?
That would be better, but for most places, there isn't much solar energy coming in during the winter, so they aren't losing much by being white.

Maybe for winters the best would be to use fluid based collectors with coils inside the envelope of the building to skip the energy past the insulation. With a low sun angle you don't need much area of them to capture all the sun and in the summer they would provide shade to a portion of the white roof. Now, if only they were free.
The VC introductions are an invaluable asset offered by the large law firms in the startup area - if your business model is capital-intensive, you will find no better way to open doors to this type of funding.

The big-firm model is highly VC-focused, though, and can be somewhat inflexible for bootstrapping types of ventures. It all depends on where your company is at.
I visualize it kinda like a black hole.
That's the point though. If you travel through life only worrying about people that can help you directly, and never stopping to offer help of your own, you miss these opportunities.

The beauty of "charity" in any form is that it sometimes has the very difficult to predict side effect of offering the largest return on investment.
slightly, which is made up with a few skipped meals where someone else is providing.
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

...or maybe I'm just a software engineer / small company owner ( SmartFlix.com / HeavyInk.com) outside of Boston...
"It's a management problem..."

"It's a big company problem..."

No! It's YOUR problem if you are starting a company, building a brand, or serving customers. It's not necessary a big company issue - it's a "mentality". I've worked for a Fortune 500 where employees were too proud of the culture to ever "pass the buck" and a startup where employees had a "big company" mentality and thought it was okay to leave features broken for customers for months (to the ultimate peril of the company). If you're a founder coming out of a big company beware of this potential blind spot.

Good company culture, good brand, happy employees - those things aren't accidental or simply the result of a lot of money and freedom, you have to cultivate it - and brand destruction or toxic culture starts with the little things, like saying, "I just work here".

In my opinion, employees who contribute nothing more than "punching the clock" should be the best at towing the company line, because let's face it - if you just punch the clock your are easily replaced, especially in today's job market.
Ask HN: How do you split strings (to get keywords)?
First trial, one splits on whitespace, but this sucks on interpunction and special characters.

Second trial, you use a alpha-numeric whitelist and split on anything else, but what about umlauts? What about hebrew or cyrillic?

Third trial: split on characters < 32, whitespace and interpunction characters; this works somehow but is ugly. What would you do to get keywords from a string?
I'm sure with a more powerful engine (which is planned), longer hoses will become possible. However, it says that the drag caused by the boat added significant stability during forward flight, so a short hose attachment actually increases the quality of the flight.
I have first@firstlast.eu through Google Apps.

My name is incredibly common and had been occupied in every conceivable domain extension (and in all the common email services) for years - so when they came out with .eu names, I preordered mine and managed to secure it. At least EU is a well-known acronym and less confusing than, say, .me.uk.

It's not ideal, I'd much rather have .co.uk or .com, but it's better than sticking numbers after my name @googlemail.com.
Cannot access the server...
I'll write a test case and report it at some point. It's on my TODO. Also it's not been tried against 1.1 yet.
The first time i read the title I thought it was some kind of forensic investigation.
It depends very heavily on the origin of the string, as that would determine the special cases that needed to be dealt with. Can you provide more details?

edit: Based on what you said in your original post, I would say to have a list of possible delimiters (which would probably need to be added to for some time), and tokenize the string according to that, and discard any token that appears in a second list of words that don't matter (conjunctions, articles, prepositions, etc...). Before discarding said strings, you'd also want to check if they're operators used in your app, or anything like that.
Why does he say that the arity is different for derivatives and integrals? Isn't there an arity 1 symbolic integration? If you were numerically computing an integral over a range, shouldn't you be evaluating the derivative at a point? These don't have the same arity, but at least the ideas are parallel.
I've found that mostly it's just that mathematics is usually taught extremely poorly. Mathematicians and mathematics educators typically gloss over definitions and use terrible notation. Further compounding the problem, the mechanical aspects of mathematical computation are rarely formally defined -- talking about elementary operators and objects of a mathematical subfield is rare.

I've recently discovered abstract algebra and I love it. We need to find and celebrate good explanations of mathematics both to do better work and to give future generations the mathematical education we didn't get.
Precisely. I forget that the 9x series of operating systems existed sometimes!
Regarding where CS stands in relation to math: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=690798
Romania, Bucharest: 5-10 Mb sounds about right. Static ip is either free or optional, no bandwidth limits. Metropolitan speeds are usually much higher, up to 100Mbps for smaller providers. This matters because most romanian content (including file sharing) is in metro, and bigger cities tend to have almost metro speeds too.

Cost is between 10 usd and 10 eur per month. Lots of competition, with around 2-3 providers in the same area plus the national phone company.
Interactive Voice Add Uses Your Phone for Personalization
"...some times authoritarian governments can do the right (thing?) a lot faster then democratic ones..."

I really like this train of thought. It's so easy to get caught in Democracy = CORRECT. For me anyway.
Any cons with large firms like Wilson Sonsini, meaning would they charge an arm and a leg once a startup gets funded?