skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know if it's just because I've become more numb to the aggressive greets (or gotten better at brushing them off) but I used to despise shopping precisely because of the badgering.

Now it seems that in most small stores I walk into, they simply greet and shuffle off after offering assistance if necessary. It certainly makes shopping there much more pleasant.

I wonder if shops noticed the exodus towards large stores (where you're never bothered but can barely get help if necessary) and adjusted accordingly. For years I refused to enter any small clothing boutique because I knew at least 1 but probably more people would try to pressure me into buying something. If they did notice, good for them.
This guy isn't famous because people who complain about GM food, the environment (or whatever) are louder and harder to ignore than scientists quietly solving those problems. Science and technology have provided most of the solutions to our most pressing problems, typically quietly, over a long period of time, and with little fanfare. This noble work will go on even if "eco-warriors" or anti-GM activists only want to whine and make little impact except to make people feel bad.
> it's faster than every other scripting language

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/lua.php

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...
Technology journalists are the ones to watch
The US has has a lot of world-leading companies and enormous global mindshare as the default place to go and make a new life.

So why worry? The fact that US culture has soured on immigration is starting to sink in, and other countries like Canada spotted the advantages of welcoming immigrants, which increases the chance that the next Google will be founded outside the US.
I guess I'm surprised that so much hand-holding is required. Ideally, web pages don't even have to think about mouse events (which would also pave the way for concepts like assisted-devices that let drags be achieved without a mouse).

I suppose my ideal setup would be to have most events handled entirely by the web browser. The page then only has to define the corner cases of interest, namely:

- A single JavaScript event for drags, to retrieve the promised data.

- A single JavaScript event for drops, where one of the arguments is the specific type of data (pulled from the property of the source).

- A single element property to indicate that the entire element is draggable. This property's value is a "type" (perhaps based on Apple's UTIs, e.g. "public.jpeg" or "public.xml") to indicate what kind of data is represented, e.g. <div id="abc" dragtypes="public.xml" ondrag="...">...</div>.

- An element property to indicate that the entire element accepts drops of one or more types, e.g. <div id="foo" droptypes="public.jpeg public.png" ondrop="...">...</div>.

- New CSS classes, similar to :hover, to define presentation for the drag-and-drop cases, such as ":drag-source", ":drop-pending" and ":drop-disallowed". This allows elements to automatically change appearance, without any JavaScript at all, as drags occur.

Not having implemented a web browser, I don't understand all the nuances, but I'm not sure why it can't be as simple as the above. I know that the above is what I would want to have.
Insects.
I think that's a misleading cite, for two reasons:

First, this is what you actually have to say about consulting companies:

But isn't the consulting company itself startup? No, not generally. A company has to be more than small and newly founded to be a startup. There are millions of small businesses in America, but only a few thousand are startups.

So, first, whatever it is you actually think about using consulting services as a vector for getting product to market, you explicitly define those companies out of startupdom --- both by answering "no" to the question of whether they're startups, and by supplementing your definition with "small and newly founded".

Second, while you're kind enough to suggest that consulting might be a good way to start a company for those of that have families, the majority of the "consulting" section of the essay you cite consists of warnings about the perils of consulting.

In fact, you're even more explicit in another essay:

This one is real. I wouldn't advise anyone with a family to start a startup. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just that I don't want to take responsibility for advising it. I'm willing to take responsibility for telling 22 year olds to start startups. So what if they fail? They'll learn a lot, and that job at Microsoft will still be waiting for them if they need it. But I'm not prepared to cross moms.

What you can do, if you have a family and want to start a startup, is start a consulting business you can then gradually turn into a product business. Empirically the chances of pulling that off seem very small. You're never going to produce Google this way. But at least you'll never be without an income."

Or, how about "Ramen profitable", where you say:

Is there a downside to ramen profitability? Probably the biggest danger is that it might turn you into a consulting firm. Startups have to be product companies, in the sense of making a single thing that everyone uses. The defining quality of startups is that they grow fast, and consulting just can't scale the way a product can. [3] But it's pretty easy to make $3000 a month consulting; in fact, that would be a low rate for contract programming. So there could be a temptation to slide into consulting, and telling yourselves you're a ramen profitable startup, when in fact you're not a startup at all.

(Same essay: "it's OK to do a little consulting work at first".)

But whatever! Whether you hold consulting companies in equal esteem with shoot-the-moon product startups is beside my point, which is simply that I don't think think it's reasonable to classify companies principally by whether they are small and recently-founded. Have you ever seen 37signals offices? They're a startup.
A contrarian view on goals
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/

Please choose the up-to-date measurements instead of these.
So does your TV, if you have it switched on next to your laptop.

The real issue is where the content comes from. The browser doesn't provide a document - it's a dumb conduit for the page you're after. Whether you paid for your browser (Windows) or it's ad supported is irrelevant since it is itself incapable of copyright infringement. This isn't true of Scribd.
A live reading of Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
NYC Demo Day
you sound awesome.
StatLib---Datasets Archive
Tell HN: Giving Away 10 Promo Codes For Gaia GPS to Hacker News People
Hey everyone,

Since we have 50 promo codes for Gaia GPS, and I'm grateful for everyone's feedback and ad hoc testing from this site, I'd like to give away 10 promo codes to get the app for free to you all. I'd like to give more, but we have given a lot away already and need a few for journalists. The code will save you a cool $2.99 :)

The first 10 people to email me will get a promo code, which will let you download the app from the store for free. If you like the app, we would of course appreciate a good review.

Thanks in part to my post on the release of Gaia GPS today, we are up to 75th in the Navigation category and rising, so thanks for all your support. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=835433

Check out www.gaiagps.com for more info on the app.
So, then, what makes building out last-mile capacity in NY or SF so much harder/less ROIful than building it in Tokyo?
"The problem is that in my country you cannot get a prescription without a doctor’s appointment."

Acute viral bronchitis: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_9?url=search-alias%3Dhpc...

"They actually do that to make money (see above)."

In the USA, doctors do not make money from drugs directly, though they may indirectly benefit from pharmaceutical "good-will." However, that's more common for new drugs that patients would take chronically, like psych drugs, not antibiotics to treat common, acute issues.

"And the doctor will tell you that it is really necessary. Since most people do not know the field they will believe the doctor with blind trust."

Well, do you really know the field enough to know that it's _not_ necessary? And if so, then why would this be relevant to you?

"Those “similar drugs” are run of the mill anti-biotics that have been on the market for 20+ years."

The standard of care evolves ---as do the "biotics."
> The professor replied "Oh... does your pussy hurt?"

The funny thing about this is that I'll bet if that resident socked that professor in the face, the 'tough guy' routine would drop pretty quickly. In any case, I don't think that trying to turn Med School into boot-camp is necessarily the right thing to do. If all those students take after that professor I shudder to think of what their bedside manor would be like:

Patient: The pain is coming back again. Can I have some morphine?
Doctor: Suck it up maggot! Are you crying for your mommy again?
C# and Ada are typically fast as well (as expected).

Interestingly, Erlang and Lua seem to consistently come out a bit ahead of almost everything else that's not compiled to native code, running on a JITing VM, and/or Lisp.
> More companies than you probably realize lay fiber and copper.

Could be misleading, since these jobs are often performed by contractors, at least in the UK. If you see work being done, there's often a sign by the site saying "X ltd., on behalf of Y plc".
Speaking as just one person in this field, every new regulation makes me reconsider my desire to be in the industry.

It doesn't so much even matter who the regulations favor. It's that at some point, after spending countless hours with lawyers, filing government paperwork, and fretting about current and future regulatory issues, you really begin to see your customers as being politicians and regulators rather than the people who pay you for service.

Which is all to say that, I believe, if you regulate enough, you will get the monopolies that you fear.
I do, because I like offering web sites I enjoy a chance to make money off me, and because I actually feel slightly empty when I go to a site designed around a Deck ad and don't see it. Tasteful ads make a web site look better.
You are paying for $299 worth of emergency room, not $1 of oxycodon.

However, I do agree that distribution of drugs in the USA has become a franchised back office sales game of all rent and no responsibility. I don't like that.
Which is sad. Babies in the first 3 months of life respond very well to the right kind of jostling. The 5 steps that every new parent should learn are: Swaddle, roll on Side, make a Shushing sound, Swing the baby back and forth, then finally Soothe with a pacifier. (I almost never went to the last one.)
Remember Japan's "lost decade"? The government threw money at every infrastructure project they could find.

Before you get too nostalgic about Japanese internet though, a friend who worked in Tokyo for a couple of months tells me it isn't really that much to write home about. Access to all of the services you care about as an American are slower, and my friend's provider explicitly blocked VoIP. I have no doubt that this isn't fully representative (except the latency/limited intercontinental bandwidth part). Perhaps patio11 could lend some experiences?
They split the prodigies into science/math people and humanities people. I skim read the paper, and it showed a correlation between the field they were talented in and achievement in that field.
In other words, eating fruit was positively correlated to conscientiousness, while eating cookies was negatively correlated.
I can't speak for device development, but the way in which I've always cheated this was to capture common resolutions, and watch for resize events.

Basically, I would build 320x240.css, 640x480.css, 800x600.css, etc., have an event listener polling for windowWidth, and change to the best stylesheet available. If you were, for example, at 799px width, you got the 640x480 display.

This was, of course, labor intensive, so you don't do this for everything. The last project I employed this on was done many years ago, and HAD TO look good at almost any resolution. This worked out well, except for images (which there were very very few of in this app), but that could be swapped out on resize as well, if you were really had to make it perfect.
>The relevance is that you charged in arguing that govts weren't all that relevant to corruption

No, I didn't say that.

> I merely pointed out that how they enforce laws is where most corruption occurs.

I don't really understand what this sentence means, or what you mean by "selective" when you say that corruption results solely from selective enforcement of the law by governments. Your original statement was this:

>Corruption requires a govt from which to extract special privs via illicit means.

This is clearly false. It requires only some or other party from which to extract special priveledges by illicit means. There is no requirement that the party in question be a government.

>Yes, I have [head the term "externality"], and it has nothing to do with biz-only corruption.

Are you claiming that the corrupt actions of a business have no externalities? I don't understand how you can possibly think that is true.

>You seem to think that every bad thing that a company can do is corruption. It isn't.

Nepotism, price fixing and protection rackets are examples of what is ordinarily called "corrpution." You are free to define the word so that it only applies in cases where a government is responsible, but then your claim that all corruption is preconditioned on government is just a tautology. I've already said that I'm happy for you to use the word "corrpution" however you please -- we can choose to use some other word if it makes you happy.

>You're not owed a job at a given company, so nepotism isn't interfering with something that you're entitled to.

This depends on what you think you're entitled to. I personally think that I'm entitled to a fair assessment of my job application. And in an earlier post, you admitted that bribing someone to get hired was a "form of corruption." In any case, the entitlement issue has nothing much to do with the question of whether or not it is corruption. Same goes for your other examples.
Possibly related to what's mentioned here: http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/our-work/blogs/rwanda-...

Keep in mind that the Shuttleworth Foundation is about improving education and technology in Africa, particularly Mark Shuttleworth's native country of South Africa. I don't think it has anything in particular to do with Ubuntu Linux, though that's what many people associate Shuttleworth with.
"If you want to build cool technologies, go to YC; if you want to build big businesses, go to TechStars."

I would love to see a discussion around this quote.
This is a no brainer! The cost and way we pay for Internet will have to change; resemble cell phone and electric bills. Economies have been hurt by the Internet and when it starts hurting the ISPs we will finally start to feel it. The ISPs offer Cable TV & phone services and those services can be enjoyed for free using the net now. ATM only a select few connect their computers to TVs to enjoy a free Cable TV like service(thanks Justin.TV) and only a few use iPod Touch's as a cell substitute, but in time .. more and more will do this and the ISPs will be hurting as no one is buying their Cable TV or phone services anymore. GIve it five to ten years but the cost of Internet is going to increase. Either bill by the byte or hefty costs for unlimited monthly broadband. Sucks but it makes economical sense!
I play a politician (Eugene Grant) trying to get elected. He has a rock band and sings about the joys of campaigning and politics.

Our "music video" -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehsQhMbvqdA

I use Pro Tools with an MBox

http://www.eugenegrant.us
Review HN: Ten Seconds of Happy - My Weekend Project
Ask HN: any viewable application videos from YC companies that got accepted?
I am applying for the winter round of yc and was wondering if there any available videos from people who got accepted into yc. I would like to view them.
http://eventlet.net/

I'm using it for my startup. Effortless, clean code.

Edit: This runs on the standard Python install; you don't need Stackless.
How weird that this comment could have been downmodded.
Disneychannel.com/sonnywithachance - Directory
A reason. What's the need that isn't being met?

I think the existing industry has a lot of the basics covered - wired and wireless communication in many locations. Improvements in coverage and performance seem mostly incremental and not disruptive enough to make for a successful startup. Maybe the bulk of telecom opportunities are building on top of that infrastructure - but isn't that exactly what the internet boom has been?
That is: if it were true that expected talent/dollars is greater in women than in men, and this is widely known public knowledge, then why do no tech companies select for women over men in their own self interest?

Possible answers could include:
1) They do, but you realize it.

2) They do, but you don't know about it.

3) They don't, because the premise is false, because women are not undervalued.

3) They don't, because the premise is true, because women are not selected over men despite having a higher talent/dollar value.

4) They don't, because organizations of people are not rational economic decision machines, or values like "talent / dollar" are too vague to be pre-test predictive of individual productivity, or "self interest" is not necessarily defined by maximizing economic exchanges, or that men already in tech simply know other men better and so tend to work with other men.
I had built this over the weekend to relearn python and to get familiar with Google App Engine. No cross browser testing was really done, besides that I know it doesn't work in IE.

The javascript drawing widget was taken from Rafael Robayna (found it online). Everything else is mine on the backend.

It is a fun little "app." Me and my friend are trying to peddle happiness a little bit at a time.
Easily cache results from Javascript functions
Among other things, he saw segfaults in the GC and found the debugger randomly detaching from the target process. I'd say that's a terrible execution environment, and orthogonal to speed.

Sometimes you don't see how bad a tool is until you push it's limits, and I'd say that's just what he did. To use your analogy, I can buy a $2 screwdriver that works fine in many cases, but the shaft might snap or bend if I apply too much torque to it (and no nails in sight).
Where shall we email you at?
Stupid and illogical ideas usually do a great job of explaining complex and subtle phenomena - its too bad that they're stupid and illogical.

At least have the courage of your convictions and be brave enough in the truth of your pronouncements to say what you really mean: "White people are smarter than Black people on average, by their very nature".

Perhaps you don't say it because, as is often the case, utterance of foolishness is its own reminder.
Ask HN: Javascript best practices?
How much does it make sense to decompose your javascript routines into separate files? Do you have .js for related classes and methods and one page wide .js to call everything else?

EDIT: The above was just an example, I'm looking for most things related to JS.
> The $200-300 is exactly right price for this sort of gadget.

Not if the manufacturer wants to be profitable.
Ubuntu Lucid Lynx server will take Debian horizontal scalability into cloud
No knock on you in particular, but the comment is typical of a sort of insider Stockholm syndrome where members of one industry, or one sector of an industry are presently at the mercy of another sector, and the "prisoner" tells outsider "Well, from the outside, idea B might appear attractive, but if you have my inside information, you'll see Plan A is Plan A for good reason."

Your comment does not address why the equipment is expensive (Cisco exerting oligarichic price controls?), or why the market won't bear added expense (eg, where do so many other countries find the money?)
I agree that worrying about leaking info to competitors is silly, but...

> If they aren't good enough for your team and your competitor ends up hiring them, what does that say about your competitor?

There are a number of reasons you may say no to a candidate who is highly qualified. They may not be a cultural fit for your specific organization, or you may have more than one qualified candidate but only one position to fill. So just because you wind up rejecting them, doesn't mean they suck.
I have not made that assumption. Neither has the essay as I understand it.

It is simply a statement about how they are priced.

Regarding your advice, that is somewhere between wishful thinking and suction cups for the dead.
and if that link gives you an annoying login screen, try the coral cache http://www10.nytimes.com.nyud.net:8080/2007/09/27/us/27veriz...
> I would certainly be very interested in making my kids become autonomous learners and achievers.

You can't really do this by leaving them to their own devices in the school-system and using report cards as a 'checkpoint system' to evaluate how well they are doing. Remember that this study was K-12, not just high school or middle school students. When you're raising your kids you are molding them into what they will become, so you need to have a more hands-on approach early in their life to point them in the right direction for later on (when small deviations/whatever don't matter as much/have less effect).
US proposes net neutrality rules
Damn this is tempting. I have a free plane ticket I need to use. Anybody up for a meetup?
> or parallelization

You missed the important part
I've also read some very interesting ethnographic studies about the effects of poverty, including ones about the parenting styles of different class levels.

The most staggering (to me) finding was that poor African Americans (not just blacks — specifically Americans) ask their small children fewer questions that the parents already know the answer to (e.g. "What's that?? Right! That's a kitty!"), say "No" way more often, and expect unquestioning obedience rather than questions, exploration and creativity.

Lower class whites also trend that way in their parenting styles, but not to the same degree.

And of course, parenting styles tend to transfer from generation to generation. Thus the whole "I'm becoming my mother" and "I want to be a better father than my father was" cliché, heritability of depression and also the legacy of child abuse.

When you think that yeah, really, in terms of the number of generations, it was not long ago at all that these people's ancestors were bought and sold like property.

Combine the slavery aspect with the parenting aspect -- and the fact that parents act like their parents -- and you can see how, as a race in America, those kids could be behind, even if their families are much wealthier now.

Their parents' parents probably were not. To say nothing of their parents' parents' parents.

It was this realization I had, more than anything else (in addition to a visit to London), that made me realize that American society truly was racially biased -- at a much deeper level than most people talk about.

These sociological findings are not new or obscure -- and yet, there are so very few programs to help break the cycle by helping those families improve their parenting.
Assuming you could make it safe, probably. It would need a built in alarm, so you didn't forget about them for too long. It should be held closed by electromagnets, so that if the battery runs out it releases.

There would probably be a market for automating lots of other aspects of parenting as well, but most of them (including the baby muzzle) would probably be pretty bad ideas.
I'd like to go, but I won't be around