skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Anyone want a Free promo code for my iPhone app?
Would anyone like a promo code to test my company's iPhone app? I have ten to give away valid in the U.S. app store.

It would be really cool if you could write a review on the app store afterwards. Be honest.... but be nice :)

Go to http://www.joubee.com and fill out the form and I'll send you a code. Thanks so much guys.
I don't get this. Let me say this as succinctly as possible: it's not 2005 any more. TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Mashable, and GigaOm will not help you get users.

We've been in those publications multiple times, and since I run Google Analytics with goals, I know how many new users and transactions they send. It's de minimus. The links might be good for PageRank, but you'd rather be in Lifehacker anyway.

If you think users will come because you get into these pubs, please try harder.
I instinctively disagree with the first point (and completely agree with the second, but regardless, I don't think a card with a number makes for an open invite), but then again, I don't cold call a lot of folks. The idea that someone would hand over control of their time to other random people just strikes me as strange.
"Paralyzed Rats Walk Again"

Maybe there's hope for the record labels after all.
I just scared the hell out of my neighbors. :)
Wave, in a lot of ways, is just a XMPP client/aggregator. I don't mean that in a condescending way, it's very cool, but it's hardly "the first truly revolutionary leap since HTTP itself".

The article says that this revolution hinges on XMPP letting you "talk directly to ANYTHING, and ANYONE", but that's just false (it's decentralised but not peer-to-peer) and hardly "HUGE": SMTP is such a protocol where "Social networks and proprietary transports no longer have an exclusive license to deliver content", it's just too old and crusty for us to slap some buzzwords on it and claim that "it can easily turn into a bona-fide platform for next-generation applications".
Genetic Expression Technique Helps Uncover Function of Individual Neurons
all my stuff's stuck on tape for the time being
I'm glad to hear about the analytics.

Funny you brought up the Bankai tour. I'm planning on driving to Vancouver myself to see it.

A little background on the tour. Bankai is an electronic artist from Australia. He puts out some awesome music. A bunch of people from the t61 group Electro Freaks live in or around the Vancouver area and they decided to put together a series of shows featuring Bankai and other t61 artists. Bankai is crowdsourcing his trip to Canada. So far he has raised $1450.

Check out his progress here: http://www.bankai.fm/vancouver/
No, it was because of Compaq.

Compaq won the white-room reverse engineering suits against IBM, opening the door for dozens of manufacturers to make clones of the IBM PC/XT/AT.

Eventually the term "PC Clone" got shortened to "PC" when referring to anything that was compatible with the PC-AT standard.
maybe they're happy just reading the RSS?
this was apparently made as another option to the official aggregator. while its slightly easier to read, it looks nearly identical, and offers no new functionality to really make it worth switching -- especially for someone who reads the official aggregator in a feed reader.
thanks!

live makes loop construction and synchronized playback as easy as clicking a mouse. its just plain amazing. everything from there on is icing on the icing on the cake.
XMPP is defined in two RFCs. RFC 3920 specifies the low level transport between servers and clients. Wave uses the server to sever transport defined in RFC 3920. RFC 3921 specifies messaging and presence. Wave ignores RFC 3921.
Check out my site twiturm.com. Its sorta like a twitpic for musicians.

this is some of my music on it as well.
http://twiturm.com/profile/blackcortez
In my experience, that question is an awkward one for a surprising number of people. For some this question is awkward because they are looking for work or don't need to work. For others, this question implies that all you care about them is what they "do".

At the moment, I'm asking people "So, how do you stay busy?". This question has been the start of far more interesting conversations than "So, what do you do?".
There's one particular thing about Christianity though.
Well OK, a couple of things, one it's kind of a modern
less complex flavor of Judaism, no offense meant to any
Hebrews reading this.

First, the similarity between the practice of Judaism and Christianity is the product of the last century or so. At the time, the ideas of, e.g., Paul diverged significantly from contemporary Jewish thinking.

Second, if you don't want to offend Jews, don't call them "Hebrews". ;)
I would say yes. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh for helping millions.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/oct/13nobel.htm

Former President Bill Clinton just name dropped Yunus on The Daily Show this week. He mentioned that a microlending bank has up popped up in NYC.
Great building for an incubator
Computers Shown to Read Lips Better Than (Some) Humans
I wouldn't discount it, as completely irrelevant. It probably got him that first coverage, and helped convince the VCs over the edge to fund them.
Good Points.

I would add that the demand for a 4 year degree is not strong by itself, but that it is often required by many employers and used as a differentiator, even though a degree may be immaterial to the position or industry.

So there is a third party source propping up demand. Until that stops, there will be no move towards the convenience end of the axis.
Y SIN EMBARGO magazine #21, ink or link?
Very interesting. This will most probably be a big boost to neuroscience.
The colors seem backwards to me. Red should signify the more intense connections as it is a bolder, stronger color than yellow.
The value of Twitter
I thought that the title was "Computers Shown to Read Lisp Better Than (Some) Humans" and I got really excited that we have computers that could program them selves...
> They also enforce laws preventing it.

All govts selectively enforce laws. The "bad" cases get called corruption.

> Of course they affect other people, what do you mean?

Exactly what I wrote. If I don't do biz with a company, whether or not it follows its rules doesn't matter to me at all. In fact, I can even avoid a company that obeys all of its rules.

One can almost always avoid a company. It's very hard to avoid a govt.

> There are all kinds of harmful corrupt practices not involving governments.

How about three examples?
The best composition is probably one engineer whose passion lies in the pixels on the screen and another engineer whose passion is making bits fly really fast through servers.

Best 2 people to do a start-up?

A programmer and a business guy? No.

A programmer and a designer? No.

2 programmers. Yes.

Classic.
This is what I don't understand. Most students just use the book for the class they are in and then completely forget about it. Wouldn't it be better if schools included e-versions of textbooks as part of the tuition? It would be way cheaper for everyone and publisher could incorporate feedback in real time.
What do you do when your team thinks code reviews are not worth the time they take for a majority of the commits?

At my previous job, code reviews were required foreverything more complicated than a CSS tweak: change the DOM significantly, and a UI dev has to Ok it. Change a piece of JS, and the UI definitely needs to ok it. Change a piece of the mid-tier, and you can bet your ass that it's vetted before it's comitted - often by additional developers that don't even work on the mid tier.

Granted, this was a corporate b2b app for a fairly large company. Everything needed to be vetted, and sometimes it splled delays (hey, can you do my code review so I can test on staging? Ok, in 15 minutes then..).

At my current position on a small team, we do optional weekly code reviews: do something interesting or that you want feedback on, bring it up in the weekly.

How do you make pre-commit vetting of code quality scale, especially on a low headcount, high velocity team?

Without impacting the weekly velocity numbers that people not involved in said code reviews are used to seeing?
Hey, that's cool too and what I first mentioned: http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/09/14/procrastinate-until...
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. Although I expected the prices to be much lower.
To also mention what I use:

- GarageBand for recording through a Tascam US-122 (keep looking at higher end ones, but keep putting the purchase off... :)
- Guitars mostly direct input w/ GB's built-in amps. My stage amp is a Fender Blues Jr. + jamman looper and a few other pedals...
- Vocals through an Apex 460 condenser mic
- Drums mostly electronic or sampled, with a V-drum lite for playing

I've also got a bunch of random stuff I can break out as needed, shakers, tambourine, ukelele, banjo, harmonica, etc. I also got a little nanokey keyboard recently and wanna get the nanokontrol next since I bought Ableton suite recently to play with more electronic sounds.
Yes, exactly. In fact, this could be interpreted as evidence that the bank's standards are close to ideal. The loans have a basically neutral effect on the marginal borrowers (the only borrowers included in the Dartmouth experiment), which is exactly what you hope to see if you're trying to draw a line between people who would be helped by loans and those who are more likely to be harmed.
Booby-Trapped Treasure Buried off the Coast of Nova Scotia?
One important addition that you can make is to add popularity metric to each post so that readers can segregate popular posts vs non popular posts.

One such thought of adding popular metric is:

1)Track the number of shares happening for that post in twitter,delicious,Google Reader (via Friendfeed API).
I once went to a seminar for programmers who wanted to learn how to sell. The teacher walked into the room and saw all 22 of us sitting at our desks reviewing the handouts. He couldn't believe that none of us was already talking to each other. The first thing he said was, "You guys really need this class!"
Everyone knows major blogs will send a bunch of visitors to your site and most will bounce back immediately. Webmasters usually follow up with "Techcrunch traffic does not convert...". Well, in all fairness that is not the bloggers' duty to figure your conversion method. At any rate for most consumer startups a bunch of visitors from leading tech blogs is better than no visitors.

I run Google analytics with goals too for my website and at my day job. And let me tell you that in both cases I am pushing products that no one is jumping to write about. The same is true for (arbitrarily) 9 out 10 companies. Hence organic traffic is not easy to create, and paid traffic is as good as throwing money off the windows.

So when giving advises, give advises to this group. Not the one who can built a product and gain traction easily. I have not done this successfully so I cannot tell anyone how to but here are a few examples:

- Don't go to major blogs first, go to smaller ones (TC used to be small when Meebo launched in their living room) and create a relationship there. Find a few competitors or a business that is complementary to yours and do a Yahoo Link Search/Google BlogSearch to figure who is writing about them (call it regression analysis if you want), and drop them 4, 5 lines and ask them "Can you please present us to your audience". Email users with an "Invite your friends" link. SEO is a marathon, not a Sprint. Be steady and set a goal to email at least 5 new blogs/newpapers everyday. Call a couple local radio stations, or TV stations, everyone is looking for a story. If people don't answer after 21 days email again with a polite 2 liner, because sometimes your emails get overlooked. Email the guys at Startupschwag, and ask if they can include your startup in their next mailer. Etc....Be HOTDAMN PERSISTENT, because the "only thing you can control is INPUT".
Wordpress, Varnish and Edge Side Includes
Note that heat shock hormesis and calorie restriction hormesis (which may involve the same underlying mechanisms) are demonstrably good for you. The science backing those forms of enhanced bodily health are good: a little damage and adversity provokes the body into much greater clean-up and defense efforts, with the net result of increased health and longevity.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

As other posters point out, the data for radiation hormesis is lacking in comparison. However, it's not an unreasonable hypothesis given the reaction of mammal biology to other types of low-level damage.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been given in recognition of several dumb ideas.
Why the hate for designers;)

Seriously though, having someone who comes from the aesthetic/UI side is a lot more useful than the generic "MBA" type who has a big vision and just needs someone to build the site. For instance, Flickr and Typepad both had a hacker/designer founding team. One of the recent YC teams had 2 designers and only one hacker and have been doing really well. The best example is probably Apple, SJ had some technical skill, but his real art was designing the UX, but had SW to handle the technical challenges. I'm all for the coder/coder team, but a great designer is not a bad addition!
Why, not? It's archaic and not strictly a synonym, but why would it be offensive. I understand that those that use it, usually mean offense, but there is no real reason for it.

In lots of languages it is not derogatory.
UCLA scientists make paralyzed rats walk again after spinal-cord injury
Agreed. Either block the ads completely, or show them. For a site so completely based on data, giving them bad data by covering their ads so that it appears to the site that they are being shown, but they aren't, just seems wrong.
Oh, and for writing the music, I utilize Cubase (I think I am using LE right now) for sequencing, I will use one of the few synths I have as a midi controller, and Kontakt or Reason for samples. These things get me by for writing.
I think this is the playbook that the GOP in congress is playing by.
This is actually quite good advice. It's not overly preachy and it's not overly poetic.
No, it doesn't mean you can open your own restaurant, but it means you have at least an idea of how a successful restaurant is run, rather than just starting a business because you're a good cook.

Its not my path (Go out, get job, learn how to do things there, start own business), but it definitely brings some advantages with it.
Terry Tao about his own childhood as child prodigy (1985, at ten)
Silicon Valley jobless rate hits record 12 percent
I would be interested in seeing that training video. While I don't have any kind of hearing problems, I've always wanted to read lips better. I have some slight ability to read lips, but it largely requires me to be able to hear the talker at least a little.

I would also be interested in seeing a little more about how the software works. Was this some sort of machine learning, or was it something else?
Paper here: http://www.alphagalileo.org/AssetViewer.aspx?AssetId=12227

That took a bit of finding. Grumbles at journalists who leave out even the authors' names
Hi, I am Bankai.

It's not that T61 tips are 'funding' it as such (it's actually simply mp3 sales/tips I've already made on there that I'm putting towards it), as much as T61 is the place where everyone involved with helping fund the tour has come from.

To be specific, it's actually the core of the 'Electro Freaks' T61 group (http://www.thesixtyone.com/group/Electro+Freaks/

) who are helping to fund the tour.

Point being, T61 is excellent with it's artist --> fanbase direct connectivity and thus full to the brim with awesome.

Thanks Jmiao :)
But also like a "how it is really done..."
oh, and fuck yes analytics. People have spoken about scraping T61 to try hack together our own, we want it that much. :)
"I think I just really feared working for the Man."

vs.

"worked in IBM’s mergers and acquisitions department..."

How much more of the man can you work for?
There are many things you don't need to be focused on at the start, but monitoring is something you should set up from the very, very beginning. Knowing when you're open for business and when you're not is absolutely crucial. Plus, it's cheap -- $5/month or less.
I read them all the time during grad school, as a form of procrastination.
when people pay you, and go into partnership with you. You are being paid for your ideas and your skills. Is that what you mean?
When I went to grammar school in England, many of the other students seemed to do this.
The writing in the parent is significantly better than the writing in the original post (the web page not on Hacker News). So, thanks, danielrhodes, for summarizing!
That's why I want to be financially independent, diff than a startup, tho.

Doing a startup might get me financial independence, but only at the expense of possibly years and years of grinding effort, given the normal stats.

However, if my standard of living is low enough, and I pick my location well, I should be able to become financially independent in not too many years at a normal job.

Additionally, if you put a few years into the military, you could even get a free grad degree.
Seeqpod-like SongBeat 360 charges for search, not music
Did not realize this:
"the median of n integers can be found with just O(n) comparisons."

Must figure this out!
edit : I just logged in and noticed that I can upload a song a day on top of my limit, so some of my criticism is invalid. Thanks for the change, and for the advice!

I posted some songs to thesixtyone (http://www.thesixtyone.com/#/nihilocrat/) and wasn't happy with the experience. I'm guessing it's my own fault for sucking, but I do have to fault the site for having a "winner take all" attitude towards artists.

You're in a bad situation if the public doesn't like the tracks you post when you post them. You're practically invisible if you don't get lots of votes immediately, appealing specifically to thesixtyone's community tastes. I don't mean to whine, but I don't see hardly any downtempo/triphop with lots of bumps and thus there's not much encouragement for someone producing such tracks to post on thesixtyone.

To the victors, the spoils, but it's even more humiliating when you're unnoticed and forever stuck at Level 1. thesixtyone is definitely a listener's site (duh) because it doesn't encourage you to post partial songs you are working on and practically no one gives you technical criticism, merely things like "I like it when the song gets heavier in the middle". No one seems to be iterating on their tracks but instead submit only complete ones. Please excuse me if my anecdotal observations here don't match up with any metrics you've put together, maybe I have tunnel vision because I listen almost exclusively to the "dance" and "electronica" portions of the site.

About the Level 1 ghetto, is it meant to encourage us to just start over again with completely new tracks or is that just a side effect?

Even with these reservations, I think thesixtyone is a great music site with a great community.
-cli based interface.
Did you read the article? The point seemed to be that it certainly smoothed out some peoples lives, it did not actually have a measurable effect on the wealth of either their families or their communities.

It struck me as something closer to credit cards for all instead of business loans for all. When you're poor, credit can help carry you through periods where you might lose a lot due to unlucky circumstances, but it will not actually increase your productivity or efficiency. Repayment rate has nothing to do with long-term social impact.
I doubt that when he conceived of this month long project, he had a "celebration of wasting resources" in mind. It was probably more like, "I'm going to meet some cool people and fly to 50 cities".
I used to spend a lot of time mucking around in FL Studio. All decidedly amateur, but if anyone's interested there are a few songs at http://drop.io/joshs_music

You might like to try "I'll be back later", it features some, uh, catchy.. vocals from a friend.
Hmmm, Okay! Enough said.
Why can't there be much interest? :)

My old professor (who is an authority with RBMs) linked me up and asked me to see and make sure I know certain things about it.Let me give it some months and report back to him. I basically work with SVMs, it's his suggestion to study RBMs (which I know already) and sent me a number of papers.
I am not sure why he sent me this one (it's just a month old).
This one to be frank looked pretty nice to me, and I downloaded a number of other papers to study it. Even if I give up. I'll be glad to learn some of the math involved. I'd rather go with his opinion. Thanks.

The aim of my submission (as is the aim of most my submissions) was actually to get some comments on it, and links to some resources. Not what a person should learn and what not. I'll know better what to do and why. Given the wide pool of people on HN, I was hoping to get something interesting, say some comments ON the paper. Even one helpful comment would have done.
Mind posting a link of where we can check in on the status? I'm curious what your criticisms of current software are.
I think it's been awarded multiple times for "solving" the Israel/Arab conflict.
Try a Zii Egg instead: two cameras (video & still), wifi, a multi-touch screen, music & video playback, HD output...
"What do you do?" is better than "Where do you work?" or worse, "Where did you go to school?", which are common among many people in professions like law.
Have any religious people here read this article? What did you think?
Lista de Ganadores de los Premios Emmy 2009 - Gvke
The History Channel just aired a 2-hour special that included an in-depth discussion titled "Holy Grail in America" which talked about the island and the Money Pit. I would recommend catching it if you missed it.

Pretty fascinating as it really gets down to how the Knights Templar discovered America perhaps hundreds of years before Columbus.

http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=...
ICFP'09 Talks (videos)
enjoy.
My modest, slowly-expanding collection of classical piano recordings: http://blog.purepistos.net/index.php/piano/ Obviously, being classical music, I didn't compose any of it.

All recordings played on a Yamaha P-120; piped directly from piano line out to onboard line in on an old P4. Recorded with Audacity on Gentoo Linux, in which minor touchups (normalization, etc.) are done. Final export is MP3 format, and these are published on my blog.

Next pieces due for recording and publishing will be Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique, first and third movements (the second is already published). I take requests, so if anyone had anything they'd like to hear, let me know.