skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> But on the bad side, perhaps:
> • destroys long-cherished items/positions, weakening interest/attachment

EVE explicitly attempts to cater to the side of the market that wants to feel their actions have real consequences, as opposed to MMOs like WoW where the world is essentially steady-state. Half their marketing material refers to this.(1)(2) For them to succeed at this, it must both be possible to actually destroy something someone else cherishes, and have your favorite spaceship you've worked on for so long be permanently lost.

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSxSyv4LC1c
(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08hmqyejCYU
I was thinking the same. "99% of tech companies make the rest of us look bad" is how I was reading it.
It's not me, just sharing. :) Thanks though.
I have a love-hate relationship with the advice "Don’t reinvent solutions to common problems." In one sense, it's obviously a good idea because it's (generally) bad to repeat yourself. When you repeat yourself, the places where you can make a mistake increase, you violate single point of truth, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But in the same sense, for me, reinventing things has included some of the most enriching things I've ever done as a programmer. For example, the first big project I ever tackled (more than 10 years ago) was an open source message board heavily inspired by vBulletin. I really didn't solve any problem that hadn't been solved before, and the last thing the world needed was another message board. But holy hell, I really learned a lot! And it was maddeningly fun. I would never want to deprive someone of that experience just because I think that DRY is a Good Thing.

On the flip side, just a short while ago, I tried writing a package that handles a cluster of remote peers[1]. Want to know what I learned? That I knew a lot less about networking than I thought I did, and I'd have to read a lot more literature before I could get to where I wanted to go.

And yes, this can't always be the case, because you'd never get anything done otherwise.

(It occurs to me that maybe I'm talking about personal enrichment while the OP is talking about solving ML problems. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.)

[1] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/cluster
I'm interested in this as well. If you're in SF come out to http://hackendo.techendo.co/

I'll be there building and figuring out how wearables fit into the future of tech.
I don't mind what it does to improve the class model, but I dislike how it breaks certain C idioms. It's very awkward to write an expressive loop, for example.
This is a dark time, but you can work for someone else. Most of us do.
Thanks for the tip. I've switched the code to use Python's httplib rather than urllib2, which is more low level and doesn't follow redirects.
Very small note, the Hively link is broken, I assume this is the right one: http://teamhively.com/
How are anecdotes any less credible than scientific data? They are both reports of observation, both subject to error and subjective influence.

As with any other data, the credibility of anecdotes depends on the credibility of the reporter and evidence.

Anecdotes are not adequate for conclusions that require data, but a single credible anecdote is adequate to counter a universal statement.
Teaching Multicultural-Literature With Artifacts
Using objects from a particular community helps students understand its culture. One way to make objects available for studying multi-cultural literature is through digital 3D artifacts in the classroom. Teachers have available to them nearly unlimited cultural artifacts like personal items, clothing, utensils, toys, and more. These tools for teaching help to illuminate the culture and history of the community that is being studied. Teacher lesson plans prompt students to examine tastes, smells, sounds, textures, and sights the artifacts evoke. Students learn how to use artifacts in the classroom to gain a greater depth of understanding of a culture’s literature.
To reduce his risk.

Now he has a bunch of other smart people who have some skin in the game. They have motivation to help him succeed - which should encourage them to help him grow and eventually to find an exit of some sort.

He might be a multi-billionaire but that doesn't mean he's going to throw his money around on 6-packs of rolexes like all the other billionaires.
I still don't understand why they allow people to edit other people's comments in the first place.
This might clarify what he meant: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2628
Thanks for this: I found this free link with the book though: http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl.... Hopefully it's the same or as good version.

I'm actually building this for myself initially. I currently work in the industry and realized that there are a lot of tools and ways to consume information about the industry faster and easier that don't exist, so I actually know quite a bit about my users. I'm doing some additional user research as we work on development to make sure my working habits aren't totally out of the ordinary and to estimate the number of items the freemium version will have available, assuming we have a freemium option.
Not OP, but you're completely correct.

Here's the wheat yield per hectare: http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/graphs_tables/upd...

And corn bushels per acre: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lvcQDaR56xg/Trfc71LwF3I/AAAAAAAAQK...

Genetic engineering, as well as more traditional agriculture knowledge, has hugely improved productivity.
I would love to see better breakdowns of small craft accident stats, at the very least for one country.
it still doesn't speak to the current treatment of employees at corporations that employ millions of workers right now, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So, why let them off the hook?

How does encouraging people to start competing businesses that treat employees better count as letting existing corporations off the hook?

Also, what alternative remedies would you propose? As far as I can tell from other comments in this thread (not yours), the main remedy appears to be to complain really loudly. If it's not realistic to expect lots of people to start new businesses, it's even less realistic, IMO, to expect complaining really loudly to make a significant difference.

I read at least a tinge of disdain for workers implied in your comment

Not disdain, just a reality check. I completely agree that workers at a lot of existing corporations should be dissatisfied with the way they are being treated. But I don't see much potential for change in just complaining about it. What these corporations need is competition.

here we have to distinguish between small businesses and major corporations.

Yes, this is a good point. However, I would offer a slightly different take on it. Small businesses, in my experience (a friend of mine runs one), just want to do business; they don't have the time or the resources or the inclination to expend effort in non-productive activities like playing political games. (That's one reason I think society as a whole would be better off if the average size of a business were considerably smaller than it is now.) The major corporations are the ones buying the regulations. But that means that much of the "protection" that we as consumers are supposedly getting from those regulations is illusory.

For example, lots of people claim that the financial crisis in 2008 was the result of lack of regulation of the financial markets. But if you look at what actually went on, there was plenty of regulation; it was just regulation that the major investment banks had written to favor themselves, rather than regulation that was written to actually protect the average person from having their retirement savings invested in junk securities that were made to look like AAA securities. As far as I can tell, that situation has not improved at all.

So when I say there should be less regulation, part of the reason is that the regulations we have are useless anyway. Small businesses are too busy doing business to engage in the kinds of shenanigans the regulations are supposed to protect us from; and major corporations can manipulate the regulations so someone else pays the price for the shenanigans anyway. If it were possible to have regulations that really did protect us as they're supposed to, I would be in favor of it; but I don't think we can, at least, not the way our political system currently does it.
Idea: signed JavaScript plugins to wallet apps
Kmeans Clustering With Mickey Mouse (dynamic visualization)
Maybe it's "should be easy" rather than "would be easy", but there's probably something wrong if it's not, yeah? Pretty much every other blogging engine does this and without a ton of effort. Code highlighting libraries exist in pretty much every web language (is there a serious one that doesn't have a Pygments equivalent?). It's just markup.
We can afford to launch free, so I think we will. The launch feature will be one of many to come later that will be much more valuable, so yeah, I think we'll launch free.
It reminds me of Joli OS http://www.jolicloud.com/jolios
Why not? It looks good and is comfortable (if it's not, get a nicer suit).

Yeah, it's archaic, but so is shaking hands and bringing in paper resumes, and you'll probably still be doing that.

What'll probably happen is anybody there from HR or non-technical managementment will think "oh good, he looks professional and isn't one of these super-nerds" and anybody technical will think "oh good, he knows how to handle the HR/corporate types"
I knew him from SEO land - we met in London in 2002. My favorite thing about Martin is that he would call (always on the phone, never by email) out of the blue with completely random requests. The last one I got from him, two weeks before he died, was to run a Hitwise report on some random website. Because it was Martin, you never asked why, but he was already ready to return the favor in any way he could.

I remember when Shak told me that he died. It was a sad day indeed.
MarioWay: a hands-free wheelchair to narrow the disability gap
HN also has a posting limit that's limiting for longer posts as well. Not to mention some crippling deficiencies in markup and other capabilities.
Free Internet for the rich?
Google cheaper than Amazon for 65% of AWS workloads
Your idea doesn't define you, you define your idea.
"Will [out investors] forgive us? Will any investor ever trust us again?"

These are professional investors putting money into an early stage startup, right? I'm certain they were aware going in that they might not get their money back. (And, in fact, that this was the most likely outcome.)
Good tip. Thanks.

FYI (alternatives):

My (career military) ex husband only had pain at the keyboard when his weightlifting regimen was interrupted.

I have an old tennis injury that can be troublesome. When it was at its worst, I took gelatin as a supplement daily for two years to feed the tendons (so they could self repair) and generally have fewer problems since then.
If you can run a startup, you're employable as a consultant to at least enough people to make ends meet. Reach out to your personal networks and try and stem the tide a bit.

We've all been there at some point in our life, there's nothing shameful about working for others to make ends meet. And even though most of us hate the idea of working for other people, at some points in life you have to put your ego and pride aside and just bite the bullet and do some damn work to pay the bills.

Life is long, failure is temporary. You didn't crash an airplane with 300 people in it, you just didn't succeed at business, an extremely common occurrence. Just keep truckin'.

(I realize OP is not the anonymous poster in question)
Because you'd have to deal with one less party (trust, security, reliability, support).

If you aren't already a Twitter user, it's simpler to have the option of making a Medium account.
As a researcher in the field, it's a big question. There are lots of answers. Most of the time, the answer will be, 'maybe, and maybe more if we can get it to the right place at the right time - but it's often hard to know where/when that is'.

More specifically, and more concretely, there are certain kinds of cancers (and diseases/disorders) that this will be very effective against. And some advanced iteration of this technology will be curative - entirely. This is of an entirely different kind of medicine than bathing trillions of cells in a potent chemical in the hopes that one of those molecules might slow another molecule - somewhere. This kind of genetic engineering would enable a biological feature to be entirely restored, changed, or removed.

Those cancers this will be effective against are those where a particular, knowable, and targetable gene has a known and particular mutation. And this is actually a large class of cancers. Cancers often initiate as mutations that destroy the elaborate series of 'checkpoints' your body has instituted to prevent runaway growth. If one of those proteins that guards against runaway growth gets damaged, then there are far more ways to get cancer. If you can repair that checkpoint (via (genetic) therapies), you can halt, slow, or even destroy what caused that (particular) cancer. The analogy of the cells in your body as a society is not a bad one. And cancer, as a 'criminal' is not particularly dangerous to the whole. It only becomes dangerous when the police, the courts, and the military are also crippled. And we have learned a lot about how those regulatory objects function in the past two decades. However being able to restore them or affect them in a living being has been orders of magnitude more difficult than simply watching to see what they do. It would be fair to say we know understand most of the key elements, and many of the details of their roles of what's happening in the society of your body. However making direct changes to that society in a living being is still tricky, and our tools blunt. What you see here is the sharpening of these new tools - tools that offer the opportunity to restore (or improve) those regulatory objects to a broken system.

To say it another way - there is no way I could imagine a cancer to be 'cured' by small molecules (alone). Small molecules work great against 'the different' - but by definition, cancer is not different from its host. I think this is why the drugs of the 20th century were so ineffective against cancer while simultaneously so effective against parasites, bacteria and even viruses for the most part. The only way I could (from first principles) expect to prevent or alter a process like cancer is using tools like the ones talked about here.
Some investors insist on a personal bond, but yeah, that's obviously something you should avoid if at all possible.
Using my mouse left-handed helped with mouse-induced RSI. If you swap the buttons, it will also keep anyone else from using your PC ;-)
I actually asked the question Sunday night here if I should build for myself only, and assume other users want exactly what I want or do more user research to make sure what I want is what others want as well. I'm trying to build it where no one should have any huge gripes with it.
I added some restaurants to the Miami, FL area. I can add a bunch more to the fort lauderdale area as well, but would be nice to get some sort of reward for participating :)
There are all kinds of failed start-ups. As long as you know you didn't scam anyone and you can explain to your investors what happened and show accounting-books detailing how it all unfolded, and you learned something during this whole experience, you'll be alright in the long term. You can always try again. Maybe YCombinator(or GoogleVentures or whoever) should have a support-group for failed start-ups so people can share their experiences and know that they're not alone. Assuming you're in tech, investors know the gamble. I'm sure they know at least half the start-ups they invest in ultimately fail.

That said, one slightly harsh bit of advice:

>>But, I can’t imagine working for somebody else. I wish my wife understood that.

You need to get over that. Working for someone else(after a short break perhaps) is basically recharging your funds and your mind while you think about your next company. For all you know, you might run into your next co-founder in your new job. It's hard to think about the distant future when you're not even sure how to put food on the table tomorrow.
Hi!

As your post seems to indicate, you're scared shitless right now and it seems like the entire world is coming to an end. Trust me, even if it really seems that way, it's not.

For now, grit your teeth and go through the bad stuff. Tell your wife. Be honest with her. No matter what, she's your wife for a reason- she'll support you through all of this. If you neglected your relationship with her a bit because of the startup thing, then she comes first now. Then tell your investors. Tell your employees. Tell whoever else you need to tell. Be honest, genuine and straightforward. The next few weeks are going to suck big time, but you'll get through them.

Once the big stuff is behind you, take a few weeks to breathe, if possible financially. You're coming to the end of a long, arduous journey, and that's always something hard to process. Try to find joy in the little things that you didn't have the time for during your founder mode. Have brunch with your wife. Go take a walk alone in the forest. Read a book. Take time to recover.

You will find another job. You don't realize this right now, but having run a startup for 2 years gives you more skills and experience than others have developed in a lifetime. If you have to take a job right away because of financial hardships, take something low stress (consulting/freelance could be a good choice, for the flexibility, although it can be hard to get started with no leads). Now is probably a bad time to do another startup. Also, you probably want to use this as a lesson to remember that you should always have ~6 months of expenditures in the bank that you NEVER touch precisely for situations like this one.

Don't worry about the investors. It's part of their job - you're not the first startup that they funded that failed, and you're not the last either. Be professional with them- if you want to do a startup again in the future they will remember your honesty and ethics more than the fact that your startup failed.

You ran a startup for 2 years. Solely by doing that, you've gone further on the path of entrepreneurship than 99.999% of people who call themselves "entrepreneurs" have. Take time to grieve, but also take time to see all that you have accomplished.

If you still feel depressed after a month or two, go talk to a professional therapist/psychiatrist. Sometimes we need a little external help.

It's going to be OK. :)
I know others have said it, but I would like to echo the "please don't say that Haskell eschews state" message :)
The guy can't take cards and this thread is nattering on about how Bitcoin is the answer and you're asking that question when I point out that Bitcoin NFC apps don't replace that he can't take cards?
Golang, systemd, Linux, docker, build it all with CoreOS (YC S13)
CoreOS is building a new Linux based operating system for large server deployments. This is a combination of low level systems programming, and distributed systems work. Everything we do is open source and readily available on Github. We develop software primarily in Go, but there is some C, python, and shell mixed in. If you love using Linux, working on hard problems, and writing lots of open source software, this is a great position for you.

We are looking for engineers local to San Francisco to join the core development team. You'll have a big impact!

If you are interested, please email our CEO directly: alex.polvi@coreos.com
Hovecraft Rescue deer on frozen lake
MedCity Hovercraft rescued three stranded deer on the frozen ice near Albert Lea, MN
Make a Rails app, then look at how every feature you use is implemented. Just reading through the ActiveRecord source will get you some mileage.
How about the "Hortibot" instead: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/408225/robotic-farmer/
Haskell, the Language Most Likely to Change the Way you Think
LETS MAKE THEM GO VIRAL
Ah, I ranted before about how Copland was killed in favor of Unix-based NeXT technologies. For example Classic Mac OS used Pascal strings which was more secure than C strings. What is funny is that Copland tried to move the Mac Toolbox into kernel mode even though Copland never intended to preemptively multitask GUI apps. I read they once was able to run the "Blue Box" on Copland's NuKernel which would have been a good starting point.
Part of me wants to charge right away, so I won't be funding everything myself from the start, but I don't want to limit the long-term size of the company because of short-term thinking...
This needs to be a standalone tool.
Is it on github somewhere? Or do I have to copy/paste from the article?
Hell, I'm still waiting for [1, 2, 3].indexOf(2) to be dependable ;)
Was considering having a free tier that is supported by user-generated content and possibly advertising. There will definitely be a paid tier though.
I don't get any such emails. Maybe I turned it off years ago and forgot about it. Anyways, I wouldn't let an optional setting influence the way you work.
Edward Snowden Exclusive Interview with German Media NDR (1/27/2014)
We'll be launching with one of the many features that I eventually want to build, so I'm reluctant to charge from the start.
The reward for commenting on HN is generally engagement and discussion.

I've been casting about myself for a suitable platform. I've actually mostly settled on reddit as it's got a community, some of whom are interested in the topics I am, good search tools, and a serviceable posting infrastructure. Markdown, Imgur for image links, semi-embeddable images with the Reddit Enhancement Suite, and a Wiki for more structured content.

I've also got a more traditional blogging platform (Dreamwidth).

Since I prefer to operate pseudonymously, self-hosting is not a good fit, though I could do that if I chose. And finding a good mix of platform and tools is tough.

As for layout, I've got enough CSS chops that I can shove the more annoying bits of a site out of the way, at least to my preferences.

http://dredmorbius.reddit.com/

http://dredmorbius.dreamwidth.org/
Ooh, nice question.

Floats are a quantity and a magnitude. Adding two floats requires (at least) the larger of the two magnitudes because larger values are more important than smaller ones. So the smaller float essentially gets converted to a small quantity and a large magnitude. In an extreme case, this small quantity becomes zero. So when adding a very large number and a very small number, the result will be the same as adding zero to the very large number.

If you add numbers largest to smallest, then thanks to this, at a certain point you are simply doing $SUM = $SUM + 0 over and over.

But if you start with the smallest numbers, they have a chance to add up to a value with a magnitude high enough to survive being added to the largest numbers.
(Note: I work at Keen IO)

Heap is cool! Clicks in JavaScript are just one type of event data. You might also have events coming from your backend servers, mobile apps, smart devices, etc.

A tool like heapanalytics is a great example of something that could be built on top of the Keen IO platform.

The main differentiator is that you analyze heap data using their web interface. Keen IO has a web interface, but we are fundamentally a query API.

You can use Keen IO to build your own custom data views and frontends, to white label analytics for your customers, or to use your query results programmatically.
There's also RSS/Atom, which I'm belatedly discovering, and appreciating greatly.
2.0? That falls fare short of what wearables were doing decades ago.