skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Eh, the better option would be to run a EU and a US west team. A 10 hour time difference lets you do something like:

10am - 10pm [on call] for US West.

7am - 7pm [on call] for EU [UTC +1]

4 days on / 3 days off. [48 hr on call, 40 hours of work]

Its doable. Just expensive to cover 2 jurisdictions and maintain 4 shifts worth of people.

No system is ever going to be 100% reliable and cost effective.
The time is ripe for theogenesis. Who says you politics and religion can't be startups?
Are you sad because of the auto, or the terrible variable names?

auto gps_position = *saved_position;

I can think of cases where I'd want to see the type of auto, but not often.
No, it's not. The shadow inventory (and home vacancy rate) in the US is still massive due to overbuilding during the housing bubble. House prices and sales are dropping for 80% of the market, and banks are releasing inventory in dribs and drabs in order to keep prices from collapsing completely.

I have no idea which of these graphs is supposed to represent something other than a period of extreme overbuilding and speculation, followed by a reduction in building and a gradual rise in the rate of shelter cost increase which hasn't even reached trend yet. What difference would you expect to see 7 years after the collapse of a massive housing bubble if there weren't some pending shortage of rental housing?

edit: The distressed housing, as it is released and foreclosures are actually completed instead of artificially being held in limbo, will of course largely be converted to rentals. Virtually all current residential construction is in multifamily units intended for rental. It's the only profitable segment of the housing market other than luxury.

edit2: an image from that same blog that shows the enormous amount of vacant housing that isn't on the market: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GWjstiIc_No/UfQTK38X-TI/AAAAAAAAaQ... from http://soberlook.com/2013/07/for-many-americans-rising-home-...

This is yet another press release from the 'I want to build upwards in newly hot urban neighborhoods and get some of that upper-middle class 20-something moving from the suburbs into the city' money.

edit3: Annual Rental Vacancy Rates for the United States and Regions: 1968–2013

http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig03.pdf

Show me the problem here before we start building 80 unit buildings on the corner lots of quiet residential neighborhoods.
You rarely hear the raw stories of startups that persevered but ultimately failed — the emotional roller coaster of the founders, and why their startups didn’t work out.

Great post. However, when guys paint the other gender with a similar broad stroke as here, we go after them. I hope posts like this make it okay to state our general observations about the other gender.
To be pedantic, Free/Open Source Software has nothing to do with the cost.
You're right, totally doable. I should have said 24/7 for the price of 8/5 is going away.
Looking forward to v1.0 of Rust to have some expectation that the constructs that I learn will endure over time.
We shouldn't really be asking if some excess software (and an IDE is pretty heavy) is causing bloat or not. If it's not needed by most of the people, it is bloat. If not so much for the user, then also for the development team.

I like when software is doing one single thing, and is great at doing that one single thing. With Firefox needing to address a lot of problems to stay on par with Chrome, the last thing it needs is more cruft to worry about in the browser itself.
I disagree. If the death is in any way related to work, they will get sued or fined and lose a lot more money that way.

The company is just playing the odds. If they have thousands of employees, some of them will die naturally every year. The entire scheme is just to gain the tax advantages of life insurance from those natural deaths.
Why is helping people find products and services that will enrich their lives an inherently bad thing?
Actually this article points to the reverse happening - they build bridges to be able to connect to each others protocol to work around having to use a common protocol.
I was unaware that the mere suggestion that we should focus attention on the public good is now "totalitarian". Clearly I need lessons in the new English. That or there is such an aversion to any form of social responsibility that even mention of it is met with massive hyperbole.

I'm sure it must just be the former.
I find it refreshing that we got this level of truth and detail from a startup post-mortem. The price for that transparency is selective opacity in a few still-sensitive areas. I get the deal.
And if it goes down at 9:01pm?

No thanks. I'd rather have 24/7 support.
"It got to the point where I had to call the consulate hotline every single day and split test different types of crying…”

"for some reason a 5'11 woman in 7 inch heels commands more talking time and attention from investors…”

"As a woman going out in NYC my nights were normally cheap because cute guys would buy me drinks, but I am not the kind of woman who expects that.”

Why did YC ever bet on such a dud? Like honestly good on you for trying and all but you sound grossly immature. I don't mean that in a negative way I mean that in having read your post that's how you come across. Your cofounders decided to leave you and you are calling them out - I wouldn’t blame them at all - they made a choice and their equity would not have vested. Cofounder’s have walked away from much larger startups than yours and its for the reason that they did not believe in you or your vision. Seems kind of immature to call them out. No one wants to be led by someone who responds to their problems by sobbing.

Its a shame YC bet so big on a non-technical founder because you give non-technical founders a bad name. They got you in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. The Stripe brothers had a billion dollar company before even getting half the notoriety you got. For a two-sided marketplace thats like getting to start a mile race with a kilometer lead. Any startup that gets such a ridiculous head start (global publications covering you before you get to 100,000 members) comes down to a failure to execute.
Which the end of the article mentioned.
I think a lot of people here take offense at the tone of this article (a tad bit condescending and patronizing) and rightly so. However I think people are missing the bigger point of the article which is to serve as a reminder that there are bigger(other?) problems to solve, and it would be prudent to make a case for the other causes the author mentions. Think of it as a pitch to the next generation of entrepreneurs. (Yo knocked its pitch out the park with its million dollar funding and news headlines).

I do not agree with his target audience, since the bigger problems are big because of their difficulty. If they were problems that could be solved with little effort/limited finances they would have been. (energy, food, water, health, education). Apps such as Yo exist because they can obtain funding to the tune of a million dollars. His pitch should be to investors to invest wisely keeping in mind their social responsibility and make a case for the importance of these other big ticket problems as opposed to apps like Yo. It does not make sense to berate engineers/start up founders etc. for their chosen path especially since they do not own the capital required to solve "smaller" (acc. to the author) problem let alone a "big" world changing one. They are almost entirely reliant on working up to their next round of funding.
If Heroku simply re-sold AWS, people wouldn't use them. The argument that AWS's falling prices should be passed on to customer's is logical only if you're ignoring that Heroku is using the savings to build and increase the performance of their platform.

It's really the complete opposite case, I think. For the value (time is money!) they offer, it's amazing they haven't increased their prices as they scale.
I agree, but the guy I drove next to reading a magazine this morning wasn't doing a terribly good job staying in the white lines this morning either.
Did I miss something in this article that presented evidence that companies were neglecting work safety so as to earn returns from life insurance policies on the top 35% of earners in companies?
> When our customers email us during our vacation pissed off that we are not around and we have nothing to show to them to prove that this is Heroku's fault and not ours

Here's a tip. You are a black box. Your customers don't care if it's your fault, Heroku's fault, the power grids fault or a meteorite's fault. They just care that their service is up. If anyone from you all the way down to the silicon breaks, its your problem. Not Intel, not RealTek, not Western Digital, not ComCast.

Stop playing the blame game.
TI-99 fans subthread here!

Pleasantly surprised to see my favorite here and with several upvotes. It always gets overlooked in comparison to the Commodores, Apples, Ataris, and the various UK favorites. but the TI-99 was where I typed in plenty of BASIC programs from library magazines and books... almost all of which failed horribly, being written for machines other than TI's odd BASIC dialect.

But once I figured out CALL COLOR, the screen would be a beautiful mess of colored characters anytime you saw me at the machine.
Actually, no. They have different insurance to cover that. That would be General Liability, Worker Comp, etc.

Even if it works the way you suggest, it is just a wealth transfer from the Federal Government to Life Insurance. That is almost as bad since it means its ultimately a transfer of tax burden from Capital to Labor.
Show HN: Obstacle avoidance A.I. I built this weekend
bjt, that target market needs to be educated. Call them what they are, and don't make up "silly names" for them. What if they were selling pickup trucks? Would they call it a car that has a place in the back for your stuff?
> Employees aren't your assets, unless you're participating in indentured servitude.

Employees are most assuredly assets in that they provide value to the company.
Paraphrasing Peter Thiel [1], this is a stochastic approach ("unplanned statistical view of the future") to technological progress. Throw darts at ad clicks and hope that it cures cancer. The opposite approach is the 'Manhattan Project'-way, where you throw the best minds in a field to work on a particular project. To some extent, this is going on in areas like mathematics (Langlands Project), Human Genome Project, NIH BRAIN Initiative, etc. In the long term, it is unclear if the 'stochastic approach' is deterministically effective in solving the 'Big' problems.

[1] http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2012/02/01/a-c...
Why does the title slide show a ship flying a US flag? He obviously has correct pictures, because they are in the later slides...
>"for C++ 98, but I can't motivate myself to get the new edition and learn in the ins-and-outs of C++ 11"

I can understand that but keep in mind that C++11 is a completely different language to what it is C++98.
You don't have to. You can take the prior or following day off after the overnight work.
You know what you should do? You should always....

( just kidding :P )

Why does it bother you? Is it so bad that it affects your ability to Get Shit Done?

You're already aware that people enjoy giving advice. I'm sure many people could learn better ways of giving advice that aren't so intrusive, but many times people are hoping to be helpful, and it's a fairly innocent and friendly thing.

That being said, I'm not sure what you're seeing. There are certainly limits on all behavior, and it's possible for someone to bully a person with advice.

What's going on for you?

FWIW, this is a nice read on the subject: http://getpocket.com/a/read/542330336
I'd recommend the author substitute it with "let down", even though it doesn't as accurately describe how she likely feels.
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist." - Hélder Pessoa Câmara
> I am simply pointing out that another instant messaging app, however novel or 'hipster', isn't going to solve what really needs solved.

And here i've been wasting my life on novel hipster apps, thinking it would solve the big problems, when in fact I was just wasting my life working on fun things. Thank Bob i've been set straight.
Ugh. Sorry to hear that.
| I've found asking "do you want some unsolicited advice"

++
I apologize, my previous comment must have been quite poorly written for you to have misunderstood it to the extent that is apparent. I didn't intend to make any assertions about writing books or wearing suits, and I certainly do not object to $100/hour rates (having charged more than that in markets much smaller than Chicago). The crux of my point was that freelancing isn't the optimal way for most people to pick themselves up from nothing.

It's not helpful to suggest that a person just needs to go check out the local $INSERT_PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE_HERE developer meetup and ask people to hire them for freelance work--that sort of environment is not the norm in most of North America.

Of course freelancing is a perfectly viable option for lots of people, and I will generally agree with your party lines (ie. businesses typically value developer skills on a completely different axis than programmers do, and programmers typically underestimate their ability to provide that value) but offering it up as a panacea to someone who's on the verge of homelessness seems... a bit strong.
It's even mentioned by that name in the article!
GoDaddy gives you one email box with your domain name so that when you reply the email, it is sent from the real email account.
You confuse Pareto efficient with beneficial. Indeed, markets could just as easily result in a planet wide Easter Island while still being pareto efficient at every step.
PlayCanvas is a great choice[0]. We're designed to do exactly what you want to do. Concentrate on the game not building the engine.

We support drag and drop importing from Blender and the Designer is great for building levels.

[0] I'm a founder
Looking forward to the new Pheonix when someone gets fed up enough with the current heavyweight Firefox to write it.
sorry this should be fixed now.
Ask HN: What startups and startup ideas ACTUALLY make a difference in the world?
Inspired by the recent noise about the application "Yo" and also the show Silicon Valley with its memorable quotes such as "Hooli ... is making the world a better place through minimal message-oriented transport layers", I wanted to know:

Beyond all these superficial applications, these 1st-world-problem-solving startups, what startups actually make a positive difference in the world? Not as a side-effect or afterthought.

I'd also like to hear some startup ideas for real world problem-solving. What issues do we face that need solving that a lone developer (or a small team of developers) can solve? How?
Yes... I've found the relevant RFC now. How disappointing! I like 32-bit hex IP addresses.
I guess that was the correct interpretation and why the IEEE editors allowed it. They did mention that they did not introduce the architecture (which is what it sounded like originally) about midway through the article.
Although I agree it's possible (and so "dilemma" is hyperbole), in my own experience it's quite challenging to pile on the features while retaining a simpler experience for more casual users.

Realistically: The early-adopter power-users will want their new features relatively quickly. It takes significant discipline and foresight to add them in a way that won't complicate and compromise the simpler experience. Yes you can hide options, etc., but eventually the complexity can start poking through.

Of course that's just my experience as a developer and user of many programs; you may be smarter and/or luckier than me.
And that's what he's saying; Heroku's problems are his problems, but Heroku doesn't provide him a lever to solve their problems. So he's moving to somewhere else, where he has more visibility over the problems and can better communicate with his customers what the timetable is for repair.
Do you know how much the mentioned advertising would cost?
You can "attach" the pen magnetically to two positions on the surface device itself, including the power area where you're used to, and magnetically to the power bar also, iirc. Plus a loop for the keyboard if you buy one. Personally, I used the Universal 13" Snugg case I also got at the Microsoft Store and was very happy putting the pen in with the power adapter.
A Supreme Court win for Aereo would take the fight out of broadcasters
That some people built Yo is not the problem. They most likely lack the talent to solve the hard problems facing us - given what they've built so far, anyways. These problems get solved by a different class of people altogether.

The real problem is that someone with money and influence deemed their project worthy of support. The motivation is not to make the world a better place, but to get rich.
Trying to partner with Oxfam is a brilliant idea. They are also present in other European countries, so this could open you multiple doors in Europe where you don't have competition.

I happen to know someone who worked at the direction of Oxfam in Spain couple of years ago, so let me know if you are interested - it would be a super long shot though.
It wasn't in response to the OP, it was in response to the parent comment.

A financial incentive [payout] from employee deaths is the opposite incentive you'd want for any business that is paying for any kind of safety equipment. You'd want an incentive for the opposite behavior which no one really offers.

https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owasrch_news_releases.searc...

You can regularly see companies being cited so "numerous" is reasonable.
Aereo's good-enough TV could inspire cable subscribers to cut the cord, making broadcasters dependent on Aereo for advertising revenue.
That's because our culture is sick. Generalizations about gender has been the main stuff of art, literature, and personal correspondence for 500 years - only now are they offensive.
Great news to me, recently switched from GoDaddy to Namecheap and I still don't like the experience.
I take complete responsibility for this failure. Were other people involved in 99dresses? Of course. Was any of this their fault? Absolutely not.

I understand what you're going for here (and it's nice), but it's fair to let your team share responsibility for the defeat. Otherwise it never really feels like they were part of the successes.
Assets are things of value that are owned by the company. It is illegal in most countries to own human beings.
Now that it doesn't attach there, I think you'll develop new habits to avoid losing it in the future. Happened to me too because the pen was tiny, black and ... less useful.
So your complaint is that a support line for businesses is only available during business hours.
tl;dr

Q.A.

The homepage video play button doesn't work in Firefox (latest stable release)...

[imagining RP-1 driving me off a cliff the moment I venture onto an unsupported road]
If you haven't seen it in person, you'll love the new 3:2 aspect ratio. I want all my laptop/tablet devices in that ratio in future. So productive :)
This is a bug, not a feature.

There is a lot of good stuff in the new versions of C++, but the language really could've used a bifurcation years ago.

That said, it's still the best tool in the toolbox for certain problems.
I get calls at 3am for outages. Remind me what business hours are again?

Plenty of domain & DNS providers offer 24/7 x 365 support.
"Political Extremism Is Supported by an Illusion of Understanding" [pdf]
J.K. Rowling and the Chamber of Literary Fame (2013)
Dedicated servers for one week – OVH
Tragedy of Anti-commons: how a movie option killed R.A. Lafferty's books
So what do you consider an HPC language? Fortran?
"Combustion Hour" (a story about the eschatology of shadow puppets)
If You're an Intern, Don't Use Google to Find Images
David Sedaris: Living the Fitbit Life
Yeah, you failed... but you put yourself out there... that's what really living is all about.
There are a ton of times in C++ or any language where you want the type. If having the type makes the code more readable, you should have it.
Your argument seems to be that this makes it harder to engineer the browser, and yet you don't explain that at all.

You simply assert that it would be easier for Mozilla if they split it into a separate piece of software.

I see no specific reason to accept this as true, and you have not provided any.
I was critiquing "free markets are best" and not singularly EMH. I will grant that I've used terms imprecisely.
You are being obtuse now, minecraft is a game with a level editor and a mod scene. SL is something different that you don't seem to grok and thats ok. :)
Comments here are fairly negative. Pointing to downsides, insufficient upsides and such. Gimme fully self driving or go home. Here's my perspective:

I think that self driving cars are coming and that. Even cars that drive on built-for-human roads are just a bridging technology. Eventually roads will be built for robocars. I think it's a big important technology. All transport revolutions are.

To get on that road we need to start getting this tech into consumer land, a beachhead. I don't know if this specific product is it, but it could be. It's got a nice gradual path from cruise control plus to auto-drive for 80% of the ride.

There might be other beachheads. Long haul trucking is often mentioned. This seems like a very similar problem. They both need to deal with highway driving only. Maybe robocar friendly road networks will be extended into built up areas.

I'm happy to see a company take what's working now and put it in a consumer product. We'll see if people like it. If they do, it seems like a good a place to start developing this stuff outside of research labs.

edit: clarity
Are you still manually pulling and aggregating data?
Many individuals who are over this role express their frustration for wasting much of their time trying to extract, aggregate and correlate data.
> How do you make lists with Hacker News markup?

You just made one.
I've never seen footage of Meyers before...He kind of reminds me of the Tall Man from the Phantasm movies.

I guess C++ will do that to you. :)
> people use it and derive value from it

I think you could just stop at "people use it". What kind of value they derive from it (if any) is another inquiry, and can't be discerned from merely observing the fact that they use it. At least, not without some really strong assumptions to the effect that people always correctly make positive-utility choices. It's possible people use it, but derive negative utility from it, and mistakenly use it nonetheless.

There are some very popular things (tobacco, say) that in most reasonable analyses produce negative utility over the long run! The problem is that people are not very good at utility-maximization, especially when the analysis involves more than one factor, some uncertainty, different time scales, etc. People are generally not good at almost any vaguely arithmetically complex operation (e.g. correctly using conditional-probability information in their decision-making, even when known).

That's one reason neoclassical economics prefers to talk about simply "price", rather than the classical discussion of both "price" and "value". Modern economics is the empirical study of pricing and economic behavior, and is agnostic about value.
Or, you could just buy the already existing product. Is there anything they want to add beyond these?

http://www.mercedes-benz-intelligent-drive.com/com/en/1_driv...

For Mercedes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSXUApikcOk

For Audi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8sJwuZyVAY

Similarly from other high-end car producers.
Most customers have a better experience because it is walled. Those who care, should indeed not buy Apple products.
Saying that free markets are best is not the same as saying free markets are perfect.