skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But to do the tasks correctly, your brain is fundamentally making a series of comparisons, incorporating visual and haptic sensory information. The key here is that the white space of the cards prevents you from putting the two lines exactly next to each other.

What if you just hold the cars facing each other so the lines are just short of touching? Then you can see the lines pretty much side-by-side.

Yes, I am smarter than a fifth grader.
This is exactly the problem. After 5 years in newspapers and being very tech-oriented, I cannot see a way that any major newspaper company (McClatchy, Gannett, et. al.) will be able to transition print revenues to online profitability. The print model is the heart and soul of every newspaper out there, and profiting in online news (or at all, for that matter) is not as straightforward as simply turning off the presses or 'improving' web content.
It really depends on what they ascertained their needs as. Perhaps they don't feel they need the additional protection, or they have another backup scheme in mind. If their solution works for them (which is seems to) then indeed, for their needs at least, the cost comparison is pretty accurate.

It might not add up the same for your needs (assuming you want multi-data center redundancy of all data, etc...).
try http://mailplaneapp.com/
supports unlimited gmail accounts
I have three months to think of an idea, surely that should be enough for us :-)
I get that and thats how I handle it too, however, you now have an IllegalArgumentException to handle for the null pointer when IMHO having null pointers should be something out of the ordinary and therefore not possible in MOST of the code.
The app you are logged into is a place to create and share your checklists with a defined group of users, for team and business settings.

What you are looking at also provides the interface you login to when you want to create checklists or work with one of your running checklist instances.

What you are talking about, the directory piece of the puzzle, is in development and almost out the door. It will allow you to find checklists in this manner and clone them into your account so you can edit them and create any number of instances based on them.
> Is it because he used bit.ly? (I'm not being snarky, just curious)

Might be. I hadn't seen his comment yet when I posted mine (was just scrolling down) and just wanted to point the previous reviews to huygen (I'd kinda missed they were on the last page and he'd already got the links through the article itself).
security is dependent upon many things. the language in which something is written is not at the top of the list of things.
> There is no way for any AI system to discriminate between a combatant and an innocent.

Eh? Why not? Your saying you can't use some sort of NN algorithm trained on past videos of combat situations to learn this? I realize that we'd need to be VERY sure before we deploy anything, but its definitely possible.
the job happens to be my all-time favorite

What are you crazy?!?

I've had many jobs and I've liked few of them. If you have a job you love working for a schoolmate, why would you want to leave? You don't even have any plans. I'd understand this a little better if you had a project you're dying to work on full time, but that's not the case.

Why don't you just keep your job and find a side project. If that side project gets big, go part time. If it gets so big, you're burning to work on it full-time, then quit, but not before.

Good jobs are hard to come by and jobs you love are almost impossible to come by. Also, don't discount all the data you get from your job to feed your startup plans. Lots of people would love to do a startup, but don't know what to work on. People with jobs don't have that problem as much. The job can be the source of lots of great ideas for things people actually need right now.

I'm the last person to discourage anyone from doing their thing, but job vs. startup is not a binary decision. You can do both, at least for a while.

Keep that all-time favorite job for now. You can always leave later once something else has wings.
YC doesn't, but I occasionally participate individually in angel rounds.
<puts on nazi hat> then again, it's always been utterly trivial to do that in Erlang, just replace

Results = lists:map(DoWork, data)

by

Results = pmap(DoWork, data)

with `pmap` being implemented with 15 lines of Erlang.
* Practical Mathematics
* Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
* Foundations of Arithmetic
* Emerson's Essays
OK, based on a very brief splash, I think you need to email me in a week to tell me what I can do, then email me a week after that telling me what more I can do, and what people have already created on it, including you. If you want me to be a beta tester - and I'm happy to play with it for 5 minutes each week and risk getting sucked into more - then I need to know that it's got something I want.

Currently I can't see anything I want. I can't even really understand what it does have. It looks good, it looks like there might be substance, but from the screen I'm on I can't understand what it thinks I'm trying to do.

Does that make sense?

I'll email you separately, and this isn't entirely negative, and I want it to work for me.

And what's a "module"? And what does "Add a new object" mean?
I see how GCD is going to make putting long running tasks on a separate thread easy, but I have a bone to pick. In his GCD example he has this example of code

- (IBAction)analyzeDocument:(NSButton *)sender
{
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(0, 0), ^{
NSDictionary *stats = [myDoc analyze];
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
[myModel setDict:stats];
[myStatsView setNeedsDisplay:YES];
[stats release];
});
});
}

It takes a potentially long running operation, analyze, and put it on a background thread. Once it's done, the UI is updated on the main thread. GCD made that ridiculously easy, but, this is assuming that the objects reference from your block are thread-safe.

It may be that the analyze method isn't thread safe, and mutates some state inside the myDoc object. So it made one part of creating async/multi-threaded apps easier, but you still need to be careful with mutating state like that.
Here's a serious idea.

An SMS-based/ mobile app that will help me and my family encourage each other to work out.

For example, when I come back for a run, I would text in "just ran 5 miles" and my parents and sister would get the text /email/ twitter update and perhaps be encouraged to exercise as well!

Some other functionality could be showing me trends of my workouts (think Nike+ on iPhones) vis a vis my other family members, or SMS updates ("your son said you should go for a run!").

The problem is that people in this country are getting fatter every day, and could use motivation to work out. Support and ecouragement from family and friends might be the most effective source of motivation.

Thoughts?
Google sells 65% of Skype for 1.9 Billion
Isn't a more common order 1) unsettled in job, have an idea 2) quit to work on it full time 3) realize the original idea sucks and zero in on a new one through trial and error 4) profit!

In which case, skipping step 1 doesn't seem too harmful to the process.
he has an anti-establishment shtick that I find trite and unconvincing

If you're immersed in a world of pro-establishment suckers, then his comedy provides some validation and relief. I remember what it's like to be a young kid and feel like my life is controlled by idiots, but I no longer feel that way. If you've been hanging around with worldly people who have read a little bit of history, or a little bit of anything really, then this kind of comedy just misses. I still know there are a lot of idiots in the world, but I no longer feel oppressed by them, so Bill Hicks seems beside the point.
Sounds to me like they haven't implemented this yet. I wouldn't want my data on that sort of solution. Backed up data would surely need a level of geographic redundancy.
http://github.com/richhickey/clojure-clr/tree/master

http://blog.n01se.net/?p=41

http://clojure.org/todo

As a rule, things move pretty fast in Clojure-land. And in the beginning it was dual-platform, so it's not really a new idea either.
A hilarious comment:

"Real estate people don't think like you and me.

About 10 years ago I ran a small manufacturing company in the Midwest. We leased an office/warehouse suite in a complex of 7 other units. At the time there was a vast overcapacity in the market (still is) and 4 of the units were empty. Several months before our lease was to expire I contacted the landlord to sign a new lease. Rather than being overjoyed that we were staying, he stated that our rent needed to be increased by 15% to make up for the empty units! With other locations just blocks away heavily recruiting us, I said NFW. However, I was willing to continue at what we were paying due to the hassle factor of moving. No dice, he held firm. We moved.

For the next 4 years I drove past the old location on the way to work. It remained empty."
I'd bet that a lot of people don't even realize that IE6 is way behind (or even know what you mean when you say IE6). Short of a forced upgrade, this is probably one of the best ways to get people to upgrade. With the added benefit that food goes to charity. Also with the added benefit (for MS anyway) of good publicity.
Is AT&T losing its grip on the iPhone?
On the other hand if you have a job you like and it's paying you well, it can be hard to get motivated enough to really work on a side project, even if it's something you'd like to try. Forcing a little hunger on yourself might be what you need.
Rider, thanks for the feedback.

This happened about a month sooner than I was planning so I haven't had a chance to address the learnability of the app yet. Would love to have you check it out when I am a little farther along.
Just start building something and let it evolve - sort of like stream of consciousness writing when you have writers block.

Just start building something simple and your mind will begin moving.

I've done the same thing you have with my life, congrats on taking the leap :) You might find it worth your while to pick up a weekend part time job too so you can have some fun money (having fun is necessary when you are cooped up all by yourself working in an intellectual space).

GL!
Ask HN: Are there any high-end rentacoder type sites?
I make good money at my job, but I want to buy my own place and I'd like to make an extra few hundreds pounds a month on the side.

I've looked at rentacoder type sites, but the bids on there appear from the outset to be quite horrendous.

Are they as bad as I'm making them out to be? Do others do work on these sites? If so, what sites can you recommend, and can you share some figures?

I'm a web developer by trade: php, mysql, postgresql, js, photoshop, etc.

Thanks. :)
How A Forum Site Grew Monthly Revenue From $400 to $400,000
Online Shopping Deals: Best Deals waiting for you
No matter how much I've liked any job I've had, I always knew I was working for someone else.
I would love an app that could keep an inventory of the food i have on hand in my aparment (based on what I've ordered in the past and my own inventory revisions), allow me to order more when I run out (from freshdirect.com or whatever the local equivalent is), and provide me with recipes that I can make with what I have on hand. Kind of complicated to orchestrate the whole thing, but would be obscenely valuable.
This is a server design, so it won't tell you anything about why hard disks fail. Also, I suspect that people who design hard disks know why they fail; they just don't feel like sharing that information with the public.
Again -- a feature that wasn't ready for public consumption.

The system has a few different objects that can be embedded in pages and checklists - todo lists, data lists, docs, files, comments and other checklists. The feature needs some work before its usable.
Google wishes.
This is the trick, though. They want to improve their system. By sharing with you they may have solicited some really helpful advice.
I like how they conveniently drop the fact that they have a test (that they can sell) for the fake DNA that they created :)

I don't think that this will in any way invalidate DNA evidence any time in the near future. Besides, I can't imagine anyone taking the time to prepare or purchase replicated DNA except for high-profile crimes.

Also, as a former Bio undergrad, I'm pretty sure I couldn't pull something like this off, lol. Maybe that's just me
Actually Spolsky had already found that to be true for their compile times back in March. But decided the benefit was still worth it for his developers.
See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/03/27.html
Good jobs are hard to come by and jobs you love are almost impossible to come by.

I've loved all my jobs.

Also, don't discount all the data you get from your job to feed your startup plans.

I wouldn't dream of starting a competitor to the project we built together.
I thought this might be something like Eliezer's arguments against developing a GAI until it could be made provably Friendly AI, instead I just got an argument exactly like the ones in 1903 that said heavier than air flight by men was impossible - go back and read some of them, some of the arguments were almost identical. Some of the arguments are currently true, but some of them amount to "I can't do it, and no one else has done it, therefore there must be some fundamental reason it can't be done".
Make an app in your favorite language with just a red button on it. Then just figure out what the button should do when pressed, and you'll be fine.
IBM patents Twitter-enabled TV Remote
RNAi: a real gene hack
> While technology isn't more than any typical hacker can slap together in their apartment

I think you missed the part about testing a dozen SATA cards, etc.

The attention to detail here is a lot more than something you'd slap together in your apartment.
IIRC older kernels blocked any unknown ATA commands, including TRIM. Newer kernels no longer block TRIM, so someone is working on a third-party utility.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=409...
When I was young I used to think high-paid consultants were the smartest people in the building.

Now that I am one of those guys, I know better! Consultants are trusted friends who know stuff. Work on being a good friend and knowing valuable stuff and you'll be a good consultant.
The problem is that as soon as a site shows up and allows bids, there will always be people willing to underbid. It's a race to the bottom; and the people coming from places with lower costs of living will always be able to underbid you.
Snow Leopard Adds Closures to C (and its derivatives)
Yeah, rsync.net
The general argument against adults having even consensual sex with minors is that they aren't able to judge the consequences (emotion, physical, societal, etc...) for themselves and can be easily manipulated, thus the need to make this illegal.

> I'd say that the "to each their own" argument works really well in many situations.

Agreed. The dividing line is generally around an action affecting someone else. If it does, then there is the possibility that we should make it illegal.

Of course, this can become more nuanced. At the risk of getting (slightly) off topic, Deborah Stone's book Policy Paradox (http://www.amazon.com/Policy-Paradox-Political-Decision-Revi...) has an interesting discussion.
Did you look at tarsnap (http://www.tarsnap.com/)? I don't use it, but read about it here quite a bit and it sounds really great.
It's actually a fair bit harder to offer generic key/value large object storage than to offer a backup system that talks to a client you wrote yourself.

Of course these days there are well-understood solutions to those problems, compared to when S3 first started, but it's still not stuff you can pull off the shelf. (Although with the Cassandra distributed database, the metadata problem is close to that point now. </plug>)
That may be a good idea, but I live in Russia and practically no one around me is fat, so it'll be hard for me to muster the startup enthusiasm. :-) Anyway, thanks!
I would have some smart-ass comment here but I just read your HN profile. Good day, Sir.
Prefinery helps companies build better beta tests
"They are phenomenally accurate at predicting full-scale intelligence scores."

I call baloney on this. I want to see the peer-reviewed publication that says so. This is the kind of mental test that Galton and James McKeen Cattell did a century ago, and those tests were found to have no valid correlation with intelligence.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

This further paragraph in the submitted article provides better information:

"The team wanted to evaluate several intelligence tests, including their own. So they recruited 77 gifted children through the Parents’ Association for Gifted Children in Switzerland. A previous intelligence test, taken about a year-and-a-half previously, had won them entrance to gifted primary schools. So how many of the kids still classified as gifted just eighteen months later? Only half, no matter what test was used. (And that was using a relaxed cut-off line, to account for standard deviations in testing.)"

This is in accord with many findings by many researchers in many places over decades: preschool IQ tests have remarkably poor reliability for predicting subsequent school-age IQ scores. By the way, the Newsweek blogger's terminology is incorrect. Where Po Bronson wrote, "to account for standard deviations in testing," he should have written, "to account for standard error in estimation," which is a different concept. A "standard error" is something different from a "standard deviation."

The later paragraphs somewhat rescued this casual blog post, but I fear that most news reporting on IQ testing is at the level of excessive credulity found in the earlier paragraphs. It takes time and effort to read and understand the better published literature on IQ testing

http://learninfreedom.org/iqbooks.html

and alas many journalists don't bother to make that effort. Even less do most bloggers bother to check their facts on this contentious issue before posting.
you say that like working for someone else is bad - do you think your startup will have no customers? (for whom you'll be working_for harder than your boss)
The problem with any of these tests is that over-competitive parents and schools simply start training their kids to pass these tests at an early age. You end up with kids who only are able to properly process a line-length test. Asking them perhaps to discern a series of squares of different sizes could potentially roadblock them.

IMO, the bigger issue is that we expect all children to be at the same learning development stage at any given point in their life and to respond equally to a given teaching approach. So, all 5 year olds get lumped into a particular curriculum, and then as 6 year olds move as a group to the next stage. Actually, I think the schools don't REALLY expect that,they just don't care to figure out a better approach.
Yes, they did a firmware update. Here is one article that talks about it: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-barracuda-1.5TB-fre...
Like others, I'm not really going to answer the question you asked, but instead offer unsolicited advice on the decision you've made.

Being at home doing nothing is fun, but realize that you'll be at home working your ass off. If it was the "doing nothing" part that was most interesting to you then a startup may not be as much fun as you're currently anticipating.

Also, I don't know what your financial situation is, but "several months" of savings doesn't sound like a whole lot if you're just starting from scratch now. It could likely take longer than that to get ramen profitable.

Just some background, I was in a somewhat similar situation last year. The new startup/project I quit my job for was something that I had been working on part-time for 3 years before that. Even with that head start, my initial revenue was only about 10% of what I had projected/hoped for. It's still steadily growing and could be ramen profitable in the next year or two, but I just wanted to share my experience to let you know that financially it could be harder and longer than you think. It was for me.
‘Your New Eye’: Tokyo’s Augmented Reality iPhone App
Here's 30 ideas: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
XML+XQuery+Google Voice+Python=WIN
This is a neat idea. However, by enabling the user to post "just ran 5 miles" you are just duplicating the point of Twitter!

More compelling, to me, is a site that scrapes your Twitterfeed for "<action verb: ran/biked/swam> <#> <miles/km>"-type posts, and tracks the data automatically through a website.

You could increase your conversion rate through a bunch of neat hacks:
1. Using a script to scrape tweets like this and DM them once you have X datapoints charted, inviting them over
2. Allowing people to view their history without registering, just by going to http://<website>/<username>; -- you could spider their tweet history on the fly
I'm pretty sure SNI has browser support issues.
Ask HN: Downloadable or SAAS?
I want to develop a software product that I envision working best as a web service that people register for. The software could also be packaged as a downloadable product that customers could install on their local servers. I'm sure my customers will largely dictate which product they want once I get it launched, but I am wondering how I should start?

From what I've seen, there's a large number of businesses that are only willing to rely on software that they can install and monitor on their own servers. Many have policies where they simply won't use a software product that resides (along with their data) on someone else's servers.

While I am going to try and make it as attractive as possible to use my product as a web service (which will include making all of their data fully exportable in an open format), should I start out offering the product as both a web service AND a downloadable product? Should I start out as JUST a web service and gauge customer reaction?

The only reason I would prefer to offer the product as a web service only is that it will reduce the amount of time I would have to spend maintaining the downloadable version, and eliminate support and development issues related to it being installed on third party servers running god-only-knows what. I'd rather funnel that time and effort into the web service. Piracy is not necessarily among my list of concerns.

What are everyone's thoughts?
Big Businesses That Started in a Recession
This replicates the finding of Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of high-IQ elementary-age pupils that many of those young people did not qualify as "gifted" on a subsequent test that Terman gave them at high school age. But he kept them in the study group anyway.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

An especially odd result of the Terman study is that Terman tested and rejected for inclusion in his study two children whose IQ scores were below his cut-off line who later went on to win Nobel prizes: William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor, and physicist Luis Alvarez. None of the children included in the study ever won a Nobel prize.
> Again -- a feature that wasn't ready for public consumption.

Understood.

I think the underlying problem here is that you have a particular model in your mind of objects and actions, and I, as yet, have no way of discovering what that model is, why it's useful, or how I use it. I think you need to make explicit, either through the interface itself, or with an explanation (big, bold cartoons can be effective) what your underlying model really is.

Whether you should stop coding and do it now, or whether you should finish alpha coding and then do it, is up to you, but without some sort of communication of your model of what happens, I don't think you'll get any useful feedback.

I hope that helps - it's intended to. More via email.