skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the things that originally caught my attention in a PG essay is a point he made about design patterns: if you're writing the same code over and over again, you're being a human compiler. I remember the shock of reading that: like someone poured a bucket of ice water over my head. It wasn't just that I recognized it as true; it indicated the existence of an alternate programming universe that I knew nothing about.
Not a coder. But being in marketing, and condering myself as a pretty creative guy. I too notice that my production level increases when listening to music. I am more creative and innovative when I have something inspiring, fun, or just purely good playing. Now, if we can just get music to be more productive, creative, and innovative for a change.
Because if someone is for instance, a thief, and he steals something from me, I can handle that. If someone is indecent with my child, it's more than just a "thing". If someone's out on parole from a murder sentence (not man-slaughter based on hitting someone while drunk, et cetera) then yes, I would kind of want to know what kind of danger I'm living near so I can move.
Keeping your g/f? "There's an app for that"
It's not just that the media has changed, there's much, much more of it. The problem with 24-hour news channels is they are 24 hours. Even if there's no real news to report, they have to talk about something. Hence they go in an entertainment direction, or harp on things that people have an emotional response to that is not in balance with the actual risk - such as child molesters.
I'd guess a lot of it has to do with the (perceived) quality of the linked site.
The alleged thirty-year "journalist" write:

> Just for the sheer heck of it,
> I decided to try a different
> tact with you.

What's a different "tact"? Is it a spelling error, a typing error, or ignorance?
"Hi, I'm legally obligated to tell you that I'm a registered drug offender."

"No way! Me too!!"

"Duuuude..."
For one, you should probably tell where you're located, conditions vary quite a bit depending on location.

The reason why I think YC concentrates on younger people is twofold, for one they are not under enormous pressure to make money because they don't have a lot of responsibilities, thus reducing the burnrate (imho this is actually an asset for an older person!), second, you are not 'free' to move to wherever YC is because of your prior commitments.

Again, depending on your location I'd try to find out if there is a local 'club' of angel investors, possibly a local VC (you already have a working demo, you could consider pitching it).

One more option would be to mortgage your house and pool your savings but with the failure rate of startups being what it is I would be very careful before doing something dramatic like that.

Another big question is the quantity of money that you will need in order to get off the ground, and how long you expect to take before hitting break even.
Because Apple has provided the To-Do functionality in Mail.app, which makes adding a to-do item literally a single click.
1) keep working on it at night until it becomes profitable enough that you can work on it in the daytime. bootstrapping is usually the best idea for people who have heavy responsibilities.

2) if you truly believe in your idea, you could take out a loan and use that to fund your project. depending on how much $ you need and what your savings and responsibilities look like, this isn't necessarily the best idea.

3) a more middle ground would be to transition to a freelance or part-time position that allows you to spend more time during the day working on your project while still providing you with an exterior source of income. could combine that with #2, as well.

4) look for a more local alternative to YC. they might not be as good, but they could provide you an alternative that doesn't require you to disrupt your responsibilities. there are quite a few (you would, naturally, need to figure out whats near you): seedcamp, techstars, launchbox, boostphase, founders co-op, capital factory, dreamit, hitforge.

5) search for a local VC or angel investor firm/group/etc. that might be willing to hear a pitch from you.
Why cant we utilize the supercomputer to our advantage, and make it actually do some good, and help to stop pollution? Not the V8, V12 or even a Jet Engine. But utilize another often used engine in collaboration with the supercomputer, to create true green energy. Hint. Im using it right now.
While this might be true for larger everyday objects, I think there are some real advantages in extremely small scale technologies that may not even be able to carry a battery.
I have known someone like this. In his case he was doing it for two reasons (1) he's a genuinely nice person and enjoys doing things for people and (2) he knows that it can sometimes "grease the wheels:" that is, it leaves the other person with a positive memory of him that can be useful later.

The take home message though is that his primary motivation is just his good nature; the benefit is a side effect.
Too many lists and then everything is saturated, no I don't propose that. I propose common sense when a sentence is being dealt.

On the real hardcore criminals, I didn't say I didn't want them in prison, rape and harming a child are horrible, horrible things, if they're going to be released from prison though, they should suffer consequences of their actions, I don't care if they choose to move in near me, but I will be packing my bags if I deem the threat too high. Notice I didn't say I would be knocking on their door asking them to move, I would take action to get out of the bad situation myself, this doesn't affect them.

EDIT: Yes, I will mentally, and willingly blacklist someone if they're on a sex offenders list. If I know what the crime is, I can adjust this blacklisting accordingly, but there is no reason I should be care-free when I have children at home and know there is a possibility, no matter how small or "rehabilitated" the chances.
Can someone throw more light into this idea YC is working on? I am damn curious, given that http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html mentions techcrunch on one side and reddit on the other (News will morph significantly in the more competitive environment of the web. So called "blogs" (because the old media call everything published online a "blog") like PerezHilton and TechCrunch are one sign of the future. News sites like Reddit and Digg are another. But these are just the beginning. ) And essentially, given the fact that HN is far better than any of the two.
That's a scoping problem, not a closure problem. The issue in this example is that python doesn't have true lexical scope. It has three scopes: function level, class level, file level. If you wrote "global blah", it would look at file level, not the next function level.

I agree it's broken, but it's a different flaw than the closure problem.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=percent+of+people+are+in+prison+for+non...
Morocco's Extraordinary Donkeys
There is a lot of possibility to carve your niche, although this is true for most software products (a product can be considered a market leader in one vertical, yet almost unknown in another).

Whether you choose to seek out a niche or not, you still need a novel approach. I know one search company that in 2000/2001 started building a solution that relied heavily on in-memory indexes. At the time memory was expensive but it was a smart play b/c it became cheap very quickly which gave them a huge advantage in the depth and breadth of calculations they could do. They got a contract with Verizon to provide search for superpages.com and became quite popular in the YP space. They were acquired in 2007.

I mention the story because it's important to remember that there are many, many successful companies doing cool stuff that we've never heard about. That's the norm. The ones we do hear about are the outliers.
Applying a Home Remedy for Itchy Scalp
Yes it can be extremely annoying and embarrassing having a scalp condition like dandruff, eczema, scalp infections or a nasty itchy red rash on your scalp. If you are suffering from: is your scalp flaky itchy or do you have dry scalp with…
There is a huge opportunity here for middle-aged founded startups who would benefit from a YC experience. There is a similar predicament in the arts (at least in Canada). There are lots of programs for new or emerging artists as long as your're not over 24. All of the other YC-esque "camps" are similar to YC in this regard. New ones seem to appear quite often, so perhaps there will be one tailored to "us" in the near future.
Banks 'Too Big to Fail' Have Grown Even Bigger
I would focus on anticipating the user's search needs even before he/she formulates them and types out a search query.

I would use as much context that a user is willing to provide me - location, recent email messages, voice call transcripts, unread messages, web browsing history, etc - to try to anticipate what the user is likely to query for.

For example, a sales engineer who receives a technical query in his email inbox is likely to be searching for product information once behind his/her laptop. Also, a student that lands in NY JFK airport one a morning, will likely be searching for restaurants in the vicinity by evening.

I would focus on anticipating such queries (among a range of others) in advance. And would let the user choose which ones he/she wants answers for.

I'm sure this is easier said than done, but is a direction I think is worth exploring.
PowerSet comes to mind.

How hard was it to do what they did? (I know nothing about semantic search with the exception of what it is.)
Well, I'd think that being at war would be a good excuse. War on terror, war on drugs. I'd think there's plenty of excuses there.
I'm shifting to prefer lowercase underscore, but I actually wasn't aware of that detail of PEP 8, either. Not that I can claim to have built anything sizable in Python, just lots of little to moderate-sized scripts.
Or, rather, having a source of money aside from working on salary for said asshole makes you not unhappy.
It's remarkable that an entire business ecosystem can exist around Twitter's inability to get simple features right.
Glad to know I can add you to my list of people who believe that Haskell does not (and by definition cannot) have closures.
How To Develop Websites On Linux
> Where's the line between good self-promotion and spam?

It's the smiley face.
There is no bright line law here... every state is different. We once had a developer working for us who in 1992 had a server that was unsecure and someone was sending kiddy-porn via it. Of course he is now considered a 'sex offender' and his life is well... over. But what can we do? Everyday you hear a story about a kidnapping and American's are scared, protective, etc...

I do agree that something needs to be done. In fact, I wrote my Thesis on 'The Illegalities of The TV Show To Catch a Predator" I think some of you will enjoy it:

http://stalemelon.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-catch-predator-inv...

-P
Making laws bigger instead of stronger seems to be an increasingly common problem (At least in the US. not sure if the same is true of other countries). It seems to be the result of an imperfection in our political system. In certain communities, any legislation that would increase the scope of sex offender laws, no matter how senseless, will be met with support. And given the nature of sound-byte journalism these days, it's politically impossible to oppose one of these laws and still be reelected.

I think drunk driving is another example of the same pattern. We've ratcheted down the blood alcohol content limit to 0.08% in most places (generally equivalent to a couple of drinks) yet there are habitual offenders still on the road. I had a friend get hit head on by a drunk driver with 8 DUI's.

In both cases the focus should be on dealing with the serious offenders swiftly and severely and not on maximizing the number of infractions.
OpenCL "Hello World"
There are times and cases where a Perl script is faster than grep. It's ridiculously heavily optimized for that particular task.
It's hard. Natural language processing and semantic analysis is a fairly deep field of knowledge.

One evidence of its complexity is PowerSet itself. PowerSet launched with just being able to search Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a highly, highly structured body of text that is much, much easier for NLP and semantic technology to analyze. Taking the same technology to the garbled soup that is the web is a whole different ballgame.
How to Choose the Right Color Scheme for Your Website | TechJaws
let me tell you a story. i wanted to post some images and videos of a new game i was playing. i looked at tumblr and posterous, two platforms i'd never used before. i've also never uploaded images or videos before, either.

i chose tumblr because it looked cooler... posterous is plain and the managing of posts and accounts--at least through their website--is confusing as hell. i still don't know how to delete blogs or my account, and it always took me a handful of extra clicks to figure out how to post a new entry.

this was for Salamander Wrestling, btw: http://salamanderwrestling.tumblr.com

then i wanted to start a development blog for my startup. i stuck to posterous this time, the blog being more of a writing thing, and because tumblr doesn't have comments out of the box (i've since hooked up disqus to salamanderwrestling).

i'm not comfortable using email to make posts. what i want is a powerful markup language (read: pretty prints code) with elegant markup (read: not html).

posterous just didn't cut it for me. things looked...plain and yellow...and i couldn't save drafts. i'd be happy to use emacs to write markup blog posts, but because posterous only allows rich text or html i have to use their web editor.

i switched to wordpress while writing my second post. wordpress makes me feel safe and comfortable. my posts are autosaved. i can upload images. it has themes.

each platform has its niche. here are some reasons why someone wouldn't use posterous (i really tried, though. i'm still rooting for you guys.)
Looking back at my life, when was I the happiest? It certainly wasn't when I got the paycheck or got a new job with better pay, or bought a new car, or bought second laptop.

Looking back at my life, I find that this is exactly opposite for me. Every period in my life that I was really happy, I had just gotten or was still in a high-paying job, had low stress and no worries (because of the aforementioned good job), was able to buy a new car or new laptop, etc.

Most years of my life, I made less than 20K, and the happy times were (and are, because I'm damn happy right now) all above 50K.
Autophagy: How our bodies recycled damaged cell components
http://hounder.org/ does 01 and 03 quite well, and 02 through bayesian filters you can train to find and rank relevant sites.

:)
Maybe some sort of per-worker hidden metric formula based on commits, tests added, emails, and meetings attended (segmented up on who invited you and whether you were mandatory or not) could be used. During calibration phases, a more detailed interpersonal study could be used to figure out if the metrics were accurate or not and adjust in kind.

I mean, a good, benevolent boss could use information like that to figure out when a worker was having trouble and attempt to assist, but the more likely scenario is that a malevolent boss would just abuse such a system.
I think the nonlocal keyword would make your second example work as you expect (but I can't test it as I don't have Python 3.0 installed here).

See http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3104/
For what it's worth, we actually are helping new search engines scale their capabilities. ..and not just on crawling (or indexing, as most people confuse it), but also on applying their search technology.

There are a ton of really cool search technologies (NLP, deep web, media analysis, etc.) out there that don't have the processing power to apply their stuff to billions of web pages. That's a big stumbling block for these guys. Google's #1 competitive advantage (IMHO) is its low operating cost (achieved through hundreds of millions of dollars in CapEx).
I can agree, the public freaks out and band together without really thinking about what should be considered a serious offense or not. And I can definitely see it doing more harm than good. Really, though, every issue these days seems to be driven on fear and panic, which leads to people wanting to see more action, not refined action.
"Media is not the key. In fact, we can't change the media/entertainment world, but change perception of things in our society."

Where do you think "perception of things in our society" comes from?
Thanks for the YC alternativs:

http://www.capitalfactory.com - Austin

http://www.dreamitventures.com - Philadelphia

http://www.founderscoop.com/ - Seattle

http://www.launchboxdigital.com/ - Washington, D.C

http://www.techstars.org/ - Boulder, Boston

http://www.seedcamp.com/ - London

http://www.hitforge.com/ - ???

http://www.boostphase.com/ - ???

I'm from Germany.
Is that headline a Jonathan Coulton reference?
The problem is your opponents would still slap up a bunch of ads saying "elai would let monsters take your children". Most people aren't following the debate they are being sensationalized by 30second editorials.
Seems a little too concerned with earnestness for my taste. All non-pathological human interaction is based upon establishing relationships that are beneficial to at least one party.

So what if someone wants to curry some favor with me? If it's a nice enough lunch maybe they've earned it!
I think there is a big gap between autonomous technology that 'works' and autonomous technology that works in all circumstances and won't fail in a way that causes harm.

Re: the example of caring for the elderly. The harm here is going to be psychological and cultural. We are a pretty selfish generation in general when it comes to how we view our responsibility to the elderly. I'm not sure being able to shovel off our responsibility to past generations on a few robotic servants will better us as people.
This post reminds me of PHP 'best practices' :)
Or, stretching it, perhaps he is going to stop being polite.
That guy must have a killer network.
Technology Review has a briefing on electricity and the power grid
The Bureau of Justice Statistics contradicts your information.

The official numbers on their homepage show that in 2005, 53% of state inmates were sentenced for violent crimes, versus only 20% for drug crimes.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm

Note that the statistics only count the most serious of the offenses for which the person was sentenced, which means that some of the violent offenders may have also been charged with drug crimes.
It's interesting to read the responses here from a population that tend to be more technically focused than people focused. (I'm included)

We're all trying to reverse engineer the intent of the acquaintance. The lunch-buyers out there are much less calculating; they just like hanging out with people at lunch!
To point out, as someone always does, hacker news is news that is interesting to hackers.

The best hackers tend to have a wide range of interests, including current affairs.
Creepy. If you have a girlfriend, and she finds out about this app, she'll probably leave you.
For me, a good compromise is to buy supplies for making stuff. Then I have the experience of creation, which I love, and I also have the finished product. When I visit art shows, I often think "I want to learn how to do that." I'd much rather make art than buy it (with some exceptions that are beyond my budget for the present).
Not if you sell it right. In fact, I'd argue it isn't even that hard a case to make if you push the right points.

Put it this way: If 10 people are marked as sex offenders in your area but only one of them is actually guilty of a violent sex crime than the 9 other guys wrongfully on the list only serve to make your children less safe. Because they end up distracting you from the real danger and making it so you only pay 1/10th of the attention you should to the one guy who is actually dangerous.

Follow that up with a bunch of real life stories about 17 year olds put on the list for having sex with 16 years olds and you'll be set. Because you'll have proven the current laws make children less safe while themselves harming innocent people.

That's not hard to understand and I don't think it's hard to sell to the American public.
This approach would be suitable for "mainstream" search results, but wouldn't be able to serve the long tail.

Or to put it more humorously, you wouldn't be able to find the earrings because only you (and no one else) were interested in them :)
I’ve received a few other applicants from newspaper people, all of whom swallowed their pride like every other job candidate.

This comment by the prospective employer almost single-handedly redeemed the applicant in my eyes. These two deserve each other.
Of course functions are first-class, and the lambda statement does return anonymous functions. Functions in Python are just objects that have a __call__ method, and methods are just functions partially-applied to the object they are bound on -- LOVELY METACIRCULARITY

What aren't first class are statements and suites (indented blocks of expressions) -- they're part of the syntax and thus can't be constructed or referred to. Particularly nasty is the way non-value-returning statements can't be used in expressions passed to other statements.

Your example is perfect -- in Python < 3, print is a statement and not a built-in function!

# this is invalid syntax:
name_printer = lambda x: lambda: print x

# with print as a function it works:
from __future__ import print_function
name_printer = lambda x: lambda: print(x)
I think there are worse things than a lunch paid for someone who is insincere (such as having to pay for lunch with someone who is insincere). It's not really worth worrying about to me actually.
Collateral damage? Well, then it appears Google's experiencing some blow back, and deservedly so. It shouldn't matter what trails your blazing, you can't leave your customers burning in the blaze behind you.
Gilad Bracha Interview
Ask HN: Any hackers going to Burning Man?
And if so, what are some of the things you enjoy doing or seeing?
I usually do but circumstances dictated otherwise this year.
Smart Child Left Behind
Staring at the Income/Frequency histogram, I am wondering why there is more clusering around the 10s and not the 5s. Ex: more salaries clustered around 60K, 70K, and 80K than around 65K, 75K, and 85K.

I wonder if there is a tendency (intended or otherwise) for employers/managers/etc to push salaries towards these numbers. Do they seem more 'round'?

I have some experience here, but I don't know if its really a trend. I was bumped up a while back from an 'uneven' salary to one of those clustering points. It was a small, strange, increase amount, but it was a welcome increase nonetheless!
Don't doubt the power of spin. Living wills = death panels in a sizable percentage of the population. You're right, but the truth doesn't matter very much.
Notable quotes from the interview
"A (static) type system is like Napoleonic law - it arrests you because you can't prove you are innocent"
"(static) type systems are mainly good for documentation - the idea that they make your programs more reliable is a myth"
David has it right (http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html). You just can't generate that much power--his burst output is about enough to run a desktop computer.

I researched this a while back because of an ingenious idea to decouple power and pedalling speed by putting a pedalled generator, a supercap, and an electric motor on a bicycle frame. Sadly, it would've been about 2x as heavy as a normal electric bicycle, and 60% as efficient.
Tablet Computers Are Coming Soon, Nvidia Says