skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I hear my friends talk about not finding any work because of "the economy". I yell at them, I've never been busier."

Not to trivialize the value of, well, adding value, but there's a lot of luck involved too. It was an awakening recently when I tried to refer a bunch of HN people into Google - folks whose resumes and comments looked pretty good to me - and none of them even got past the prescreen. My own hiring process went remarkably smoothly, and my recruiter hustled me between the different phases with little delay. It was a surprise to me that so many people who I thought were otherwise good candidates didn't even make it to the initial phone screen.

I've never had trouble finding a job either, but maybe I'm just lucky. It's sorta hard to reconcile the ease of getting hired/doing the job vs. the difficulty of doing something like starting my own company (which I've also tried, and failed miserably at). Maybe for some people, those talents are just reversed...or worse, they're bad at both of them.
Well, not really. Those people are rather pissed because we in the West waste resources eating for 10 or 100$ a day while they have to starve or survive on one dollar.

When we curb our consumption there is actually more left for the rest of the world. It's that simple.
http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/
Also, there is no net gain of energy or information in the system when the gasses are reversed which if I understand it correctly would be the case if it was reversed entropy.
Though if you can't get any paychecks, which is sorta the point of the parent post, then it's as good as a default. ;-)
Not necessarily, though using feminine colours probably is. I've never seen a man get annoyed by the large number of available of colours when buying a car, or even a shirt.
design reminds me a lot of airbnb.

i think you need some sort of mechanism to inform new users as to whats happening. also, important information like, are you guys going to take a cut? how are payments made? etc.
Using your Sign-up form as a Qualifier
Whatever the motivation, these sorts of living experiments always intrigue me. The book "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping" (Judith Levine) is another example. I informally decided to go a year without buying any clothes back in January, and while I haven't totally kept to it (have bought a few t-shirts from Threadless), I've managed to spend much less than usual and not look like a hobo.

The point of most of these seems to be that we can manage, quite well in fact, on a much lower level of consumption than we might be used to. Worth remembering, imho.
Who cares for left or right as long as it's the best way and more people live a good life? So stop talking divisions focus on the justice like in "just" here.
I guess what I'm looking for is some advice on how to partner with them for money. I'm not sure what's standard and what's rude. Or how a % of the company would get paid out. These aren't questions I want to ask them.
I was going by the title of the HN article, which is "9 Reasons FlightCaster is the future of startups"
You know, there is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to do a startup.

You'll find that a lot of people here have something crazy in their genetics that makes them know that they have to do a startup. Like, they could be really happy doing whatever they're doing today, but they'll never stop thinking about how they are going to do their startup. Those are the people that pg is talking to in his essays.

If you ask me, it's about doing what makes you happy. If you prefer to have a job at an existing company, or if you're risk averse, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I noticed that people had been ripping on his code a bit lately... I think the Ruby community's embrace of Nokogiri really hurt the man's feelings.

_why has been a great contributor to the Ruby community... let's hope he reincarnates himself :)
For later stage companies, options are poison. If you pay your CEO in options, his best strategy is to go to Las Vegas and put all of your company's assets on "black".

Why is that? Betting on black only has an 18/38 chance of winning (less than 50%), and losing means that his options are going to be out-of-the-money (in this case, they'd basically be worth nothing).

Not to mention that doing such a thing would probably get him sued by the shareholders of the company (for not acting in their best interests), whether he won or not.
also, the only way i got it to work was by fullscreening the browser.
No, and to me that's what makes Seth Godin's stuff so appealing. It's so obvious most of the time, yet it's stuff people time and time again fail to recognise and do themselves. He has one clear message which he drives through in all his books and in his presentations. It's not about new techniques or silver bullets, it's about getting back to what matters, and that's simply having a relationship with the person our dealing with.
Well that sort of ruins one's day. I hope everything is alright with him.
No one will read your post after you write a new blog post and the link to your blog's root has nothing to do with the HN title.
That's what I see among my friends, but I wonder if that holds across all socioeconomic strata. It seems like this recession hit the upper reaches of society first - finance, consulting, lawyers, universities and venture capital - and then worked its way down to regular unemployment. The news now is that finance is recovering (thanks to government bailouts), but the consumer picture is getting worse. Retail and manufacturing are taking it in the chin now.

Edit: Actually, no, I can think of several friends in the class of 09 that graduated from a top college and still can't find jobs. They're in non-technical fields though; maybe tech is doing better, but non-tech is still in the dumps.
Good machine vision books / resources?
Hey folks,

I'm looking for some texts and papers on machine vision. Any recommendations?

Specifically, I'm interested in Scale-Space, SIFT-like stuff, and OCR.

I did some signals and systems stuff in university 15 years ago, but I need to be able to understand the current state of the art for vision.

Thanks!
It’s the partner, not the firm
As long as they work for a publication that has a real address of their office it's enough.

When they operate a blog or website on their own they also have to publish a so called imprint including an address (which might be an office address though).

Journalists and everybody else working from home have no choice for their sites and blogs.
Yes, but people probably wouldn't call it a niche market in that case.
It seems like that would make sense, but when I type in 'what is sequoia capital', I end up at the google results page. Fortunately, it has a link to the Sequoia website as the first result! Unfortunately, that link brings me back to the blank search box page.

The 'us' page does have a (somewhat) helpful snippet, but I can't get to it easily by typing 'about' or 'sequoia' either. Not a bad concept, but I think the execution needs a bit of work.
Whoa. Scary.
Its usefulness is comparable to time and effort required to implement it. Surely there are other, more useful yet still ignored features, like being able to set larger font size in Mac OS.
Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion
Unfortunately I can't give you any advice regarding specific percentages. But I would be very up front with them regarding wanting to take a bigger part of the action.

Something along the lines of "Hey, I think this is a really amazing service and I believe it's going to be very successful. I'd really like to talk to you about making this a partnership instead of just being an employee. Here are the ways I think I can really contribute to the success of this thing..."
Picwing (YC S08) and the importance of print photos
The only thing that video has to do with string theory is that it contains the words "string theory". Go read "The Elegant Universe" instead. (Don't watch the PBS series, read the book. It's not the be-all, end-all of string theory, but it's actual knowledge, not anti-knowledge.)

Criticizing this video is not criticizing string theory; this video would be vastly improved if it actually contained any sort of truth about string theory.

Being short is not an excuse for being grotesquely wrong. Not simplified, which has its place, but wrong.
This seems to be the source:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/14/txts_r_v_pricey/comm...
Apparently he tweeted this yesterday (quoted from a retweet): "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."

But _why's contributions are largely irreplaceable. Yeah, software evolves and individual projects might be supplanted by others, but his contributions go way beyond simply writing functioning code.
What good are mortgage regulations?
Just FYI, I have flagged it. Probably many others have flagged it as well. Either the mods haven't seen it yet or they disagree with the flagging.

Of course people should flag. But calling them noobs for not flagging when you have absolutely no idea if they have flagged is just dumb.
When you hear those "dollar a day" stats for world hunger don't kid yourself into thinking that $1 converted into the third world is somehow generous. They use purchasing power parity power to calculate the numbers relative to what it would be in the USA. When they say $1 a day they mean a $1 a day in America. That means they actually have less than a buck to spend, depending on the country significantly less.
Let me introduce you to Reverse Polish Lisp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language)

Not everything is postfix, but it has some elements of that, to parallel the reverse polish notation.
I wonder if they'll be able to transition all that logic toward analyzing a different set of data if predicting flight delays doesn't prove that lucrative? I guess if they take this far enough though, the government or an airline consortium might just buy it.
Well, there's another problem too. If I open a blank text document with the intent of writing some code but I have no idea what I'm developing, I'm not going to get anything written. If you give me a search box, and there's nothing I want to find, why would I type anything at all?
Unfortunately the "left-right" divide is at the very crux of figuring out what "justice" and "living a good life" actually mean, so we can't bypass politics and go straight to "making things better" until we agree on what "better" means.

Briefly, left-wing folks think that it's best when everybody is equal, right-libertarians think it's best when everybody is free, and the Catholic Church and other religious types think it's best when everybody does what God says.
The housing wealth effect: Falling prices don't crimp consumption
Ask HN to explain, in your own words, why Virtualization is important
I'll start off simply stating that given the current state of the PC (or Mac if semantics really matter that much to you) and each main-stream OS (including your major Linux distributions) available for implementation is a problem.

Extending this argument even further along with some Alan Kaye rhetoric, I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say that personal computing is even a bigger problem and quite possibly a super-set or, for the lack of better words, a more general characterization of the previous problem stated.

I think Virtualization is important since it is the only foreseeable solution of bridging the gap between the way we think about the web, software, firmware, hardware, etc. which, IMO, would lead to an evolution in the way we think and create user environments.
It is my understanding that libel is only libel if you are aware that it is a lie. If the blogger was honestly convinced that this women was a skank, then the blogger would be be guilty of defamation...
http://hacketyhack.net/ also

This is a sad day.
Even if the blogger was lead to believe that she slept around, he would still be cleared of charges.
PowerPoint sort of gets a bad rap. It mostly deserves it, because its interface encourages exactly the worst sort of usage, but it can be used well. It's just that this is rare.

The second best PowerPoint tip I've ever heard was "Don't use PowerPoint." The best was to get the rest of the presentation ready, and do the PowerPoint deck last. This forces you to actually make a decent presentation, and use PowerPoint as an aid, as opposed to making a good slide deck and fitting the presentation to it.

The problem is exactly the same as in programming or, really, everything else: people focus too much on the tools, and not enough on the task.
Coffee's Dirty Little Secret
When financial innovation’s good for the economy
Do you have a source on that? I've always been curious about how those sorts of numbers are calculated. Do they, for instance, include subsistence farmers, who may have plenty to eat but no actual money?
Germany braces for second wave of credit crunch
Don’t Be Fooled, Europe Won’t Recover Until 2013
I appreciate that you say that because I do find it troubling that some people here seem to suggest that unless you are willing to take the kinds of risks involved in doing a startup, you are not really living or actualizing your potential.

It's the attitude that if you work in a company you are just a wage slave and a drone.

It's an attitude that expresses a value system which places a premium on achievement and 'Success' and is not so different from the value system of certain people inside the corporate world who are desperately clawing their way up the ladder to prove something to their peers, their neighbors or themselves.

I don't begrudge someone their ambition to do that if they want to but what I do resent is when someone tries to make me feel that my choices are somehow less if I'm not willing to 'step up'. It all comes down to what you value more.
This actually is not a new result. See http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf, section 5.4.
Electromagnetic, as you already know, there is a karma threshold for flagging. I didn't have enough karma to flag this article. This was the only way for me to point out that this article, in my opinion, doesn't belong on this site.
I am a new user, yes. However, I have read the guidelines and the articles that I posted were, in my opinion, in accordance with those guidelines. On the other hand, I believe that some of our newest users haven't read the guidelines and regard this site as something of a Reddit or Dig clone. My comment was simply meant to raise awareness of those users about what isn't regarded as a suitable article for HN.
To quote the guidelines -
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Anyway, I'm not the kind of person that constantly whines on about how some of the articles don't belong here. Actually, this is the first time I said that something doesn't belong here. If there was another way for me to express this belief instead of writing that comment, I would have done it.
"Hey! Budget renewal time is coming around and we in the cyber-enforcement division haven't made a record number of busts this year."

"Load some USB sticks with contraband and handoff to fallguys through DeadSwap. A dozen arrests should look good."
Excellent points. I have tremendous respect for start up founders, even those who fail. But for many people, it is simply not the right decision.

This is particularly true for people that value stability highly. This could come from simply desiring it personally, or having a compelling reason (such as family commitments) to seek stability.
http://redhanded.hobix.com/ too :(
In my country, considerable population makes a dollar a day and fulfills all its needs with it
http://tryruby.hobix.com/ too. THIS IS BAD!
What is actually very misleading about this graph is that it doesn't separate out the effects of immigration.

The graph is constantly making the baby boom look less and less of a factor, but that is mostly because immigration is bringing in people at all age brackets, not because so many baby boomers are dying off.

What is scary is that for the first 5 to 10 years immigrants, especially illegal ones, are a net drain on social services. Depending on the country they come from they do, eventually become net contributors ((taxes from them - government overhead) - outflow to them) > 0, but not to long after that they become retirees draining SS, medicare, etc... The value that immigrants provide is usually through their children - possessing good social and technical skills after years of North American education.

How many of you have been driven in a taxi by a Pakistani (in Toronto, anyway) Licensed doctor or electrician?
I'm not in the ruby world, so perhaps that's why his contributions have largely been outside my sphere and there may be a great deal I'm unaware of. That said, when someone goes and removes their repositories and whatever other traces of their workproduct they have access to (as is their right), it might make people reluctant to use their products in the future (assuming they return).
but not totally gone on twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=RT+%40_why
Apparently he tweeted this yesterday: "programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."

ironically he wrote "you" on twitter, and you wrote "u" on hn.
Some Thoughts on the Economy
Google cache is still live:

http://74.125.155.132/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&...

Edit:
Also, twitter search results:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%40_why

Notably:

racheltostring: RT: @_why: programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more.
about 21 hours ago from TwitterFox
Appland: How smartphones are transforming our lives
Is it just me, or does Ruby tend have these "personalities" more than other communities? Seems like the Ruby community focuses a lot on the "rockstar" mentality. I don't spend any time in it to know for sure, though.
It's from a retweet I believe, where the retweeter replaced "you" with "u", perhaps to fit it into 140 chars.
:( Sad indeed.
That was pretty immature, to delete the repos as well. Sure, nuke your Twitter, who cares. But people might have been depending on the repos; it's a breach of trust IMO.

Not impressed.
Now that Nokia owns Qt, it'll be interesting to see what stance they take towards Microsoft's and Apple's desktop platforms.

Somehow I think proprietary desktops have relevance to Nokia only as platforms for rich internet applications which currently need some access to native APIs, while the main focus is naturally on keeping their mobile offerings number one (based on the number of units in use). Qt as a cross-platform native API is an edge in this against Microsoft's and Apple's mobile platforms.

To help in this, they can continue to bring software from the Free desktops to the mobile world (Maemo, Qt, Python). They consider web developers important, which can be seen in their work to integrate WebKit, Javascript, CSS, SVG into Qt.
http://www.flightcaster.com/faq#data_sources

What are FlightCaster's data sources?

FlightCaster uses data from:

FAA Bureau of Transportation Statistics

FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center

FlightStats

National Weather Service
Holy shit... _why is why I'm a Ruby developer to this day, especially the Poignant Guide.

So very sad.
_why was to the ruby community what willy wonka was to chocolate. Maybe, just as the fictional Willy Wonka secluded himself in his chocolate factory for so many years due to competition, _why is simply secluding himself in his programming factory.

Deliciously sweet chocolates (or libraries/books/hacketyhack/etc.) will hopefully magically still appear.

Maybe _why is simply going to oompa loompa land to get little helpers.
Maybe we just have more interesting people? :)
That's terrible, his code and posts always brightened my day.
I hope he didn't take my extremely down voted, (apparently) not funny, pun ridden comment on this article too seriously. My puns were harmless, I swear. Any comic drawn in programming text immediately makes me think of _why: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=771013

But seriously, reading _why's poignant guide to ruby back in the day was a breath of fresh air coming from Java, and wanting to try something new. His intermingled illustrations and humorous text made a programming book that I actually found enjoyable to read. Also, his contributions in terms of libraries and interesting apps has been awesome.

_why: My hats off to you fine sir! May you find goodness on your latest adventures!
THE PURGES HAVE BEGUN! SAVE YOURSELVES!

Seriously though, I hope he's /okay/....
He was more like ruby's Batman than rockstar
I learned ruby via his blog, via his poignant guide, and via the older edition copy of the pitchaxe which he had hosted on his site. I really hope he's not going into seclusion for good. :-(
_Why is more like a fairy tale character than a rock star. What qualities of his persona do you consider to be rock star qualities?
"we can manage, quite well in fact, on a much lower level of consumption than we might be used to"

True, but this is attitude is a double-edged sword, it can just as well be applied to money-hypermiling (i.e. gross over-optimization of spending, in older terms, being a cheap bastard).
They may consider their methods too proprietary to supply details, so I'll speculate:

Information on earlier-in-day flights alone would probably be enough (mixed with historical data) to be fairly accurate about later-in-day flight delays -- even those that aren't continuations of the same plane -- because of giant overlaps in delay-causing conditions (weather, airport/mechanical mishaps, crew issues, etc.).

Weather forecasts might give another advantage, especially in predicting 'seed' delays that then hint at later delays.

If there are any other semi-public feeds related to FAA reporting or air-traffic control -- even if mostly meant for other pilots or General Aviation -- those would be incredibly valuable.

If those regional and national maps of planes-in-flight also contain sufficient positioning detail to notice when they're spending a little extra time on runways, or waiting for/at gates, etc. -- another positive early influencer for predictions.
I suspect some sort of burn out. Honestly the guy was a machine. I remember looking at his commit logs for all of his public Github projects and wondering how he managed it. And mind you, that only accounts for code publicly released and doesn't address any private projects he might have been working on.
I'll give it a go. I'm up for pretty much anything involving coffee... except sugar.
We're talking about management here. The old quip about 'herding cats' comes pretty close to the truth. So there's a large amount of uncertaintanty involved. Buzzwords give a sense of security, even if there's not much behind them. Six Sigma. ITIL. Scrum. Paradigm shifts. Proactively promoting synergy.
camping 4eva!
The title is inappropriate (without really knowing what happened to _why). Only his online identify is no more!
I was playing with hackityhack last night, trying to find a way to contribute to it. It's very important to me that young people have an easy way to learn programming and I think he was really on the right track.
burn out?
Wow, that's a much better version of the same basic concept -- more details, less preachiness.
"Maybe for some people, those talents are just reversed...or worse, they're bad at both of them."

Oh man, being bad at both is my worst nightmare!

Fortunately, there are such variances in types of work, that surely you can find SOMETHING you can excell at.
Yeah I think so too. My initial reaction was that this is his right, which technically I'm sure it is. It does call into question an unspoken rule of open source though, which is you can abandon your stuff if you want, but don't try to remove all traces, even if that is ultimately a futile act.