skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These crazy people can image Betelgeuse into a DISK at 640 light years. I can't decide whether to be awed at the sensitivity of the technique, or the size of the star.
In Silicon Valley, Mergers Must Meet the Toothbrush Test
Show HN: Loltrove – for easier gif saving and posting
I think part of the "make what you can" bit is to forget about a good architectural foundation and just build something almost sort of barely works. This probably goes against your instincts (it certainly does go against mine). And yes, you might run into trouble because of bad design decisions made early on. But there's not going to be a later unless you get something started :)
"Being a partner at a VC means you get a lot of executive positions to hand out to your B-school friends who turned out to be underachievers"

You clearly have a bone to pick with the industry and that's fine. But no VC hands out executive roles to anyone they don't believe to be top talent; they'd destroy their own career, reputation, and compromise the returns of their fund.

Now, they could very well be wrong about somebody and give a job to a C- player but that'd be an honest mistake.
Poor title, but interesting observations about the value of not using investment banks.
For me... but I was assuming that I would be the developer. (and I don't know greasemonkey or javascript, so... it would be work.)
I'm the developer of Atlas(https://github.com/Qihoo360/Atlas).In current Atlas has used in 30+ companies,If you are interested in Atlas,you can contact me with email(flikecn@126.com),any question are welcom.:)
That's a very sophisticated way of saying that utility companies have some magical entitlement to say "Fuck you, pay me".

There's another answer that that a 5 year old could come up with, and happened to work very effectively for 75+ years: when the electrical grid is out of electrical transmission capacity, add more capacity.

Writing future contracts doesn't accomplish much, other than create jobs trading electricity, because the supply problem isn't generation, it's distribution. There is no market for electrical infrastructure.
Is Google pushing some agenda with these pages? (Not implying a bad agenda necessarily.)
The mail headers seem authentic. dropboxmail.com is registered to Dropbox, Inc.[1]

Maybe you should contact Dropbox to confirm whether that e-mail is legitimate before telling everyone that it's not?

[1] http://www.whois.com/whois/dropboxmail.com
"If that objective (above market returns) is persistently left unaccomplished, investors will allocate their capital elsewhere."

And that could well be the end of the article folks. VC as an industry has too much money so it doesn't generate good returns. This shouldn't be shocking to anyone.

If say GE generates $8.8b in dividends ($0.22 per share per quarter and 10b shares) and it's priced at $10 a share that's an 8.8% yearly return! But if the stock price is $50 a share it's only 1.76% return which isn't as impressive.

The only difference in those two scenarios is how much money is chasing GE's dividends.

The returns to VC are too small because the pool of talented, motivated individuals to start companies isn't getting bigger anywhere near as fast as the cost to do so has fallen. That means that VCs are over-paying for the companies that they can buy into (because they have to do SOMETHING with the money) and because they buy into more companies that won't necessarily be successful.

VCs (the human beings) don't scale the same way the companies they're investing in do. The whole idea of VC was that money was scarce and a person could only make a few bets so they could afford to spend a lot of time with each of their portfolio companies. As the amount of money needed has crept down I suspect that the number of investments has crept up and that means less time to go around and probably less good outcomes.

When it "only" takes $500k to take a swing with a company a VC can afford to look at it as a calculated bet that might pay off rather than an investment which needs care & feeding to be successful.

tl;dr the landscape shifted under VCs with the dropping price of starting a company and not all of them know how to successfully operate in this new world.

Just in case this comes across overly negative I don't hate VCs at all. I think that VC as a whole is great. I'm sure some of the individuals aren't all that great but as an industry I think its fantastic. But as an industry it might end up shrinking, too.
Time will tell. Major downside of the CuAAC click reaction is using azides, which are hella dangerous.
Hey guys, I'd love some feedback on loltrove. It's a tool for saving, remembering, and reposting interesting gifs that come your way. Currently it stores the URLs for the gifs, and the "api key" is kind of your password for the app (which is stupid, in retrospect), but other than that I think it does the job reasonably well...

I've got a small amount of users, and they're not really leaving any feedback, so it's hard to know if this idea is even any good or not, or what changes I need to make -- hoping HN can give me a better idea.

I really like the idea of making a tool that people can use and depend on (it supports offline mode also) -- and I'm looking for any way I can to make it better/pinpoint weak spots.
Tips for How to learn vim
That doesn't explain why Uber is more about sharing than taxi companies, nor why Airbnb is more about sharing than the old way of renting your flat.
London to Mumbai by road for charity
I've found this great project some months ago.

I written a couple of robots which end up on this robot runner[1] mainly as a toy project for trying the game with some friends.

[1] https://github.com/eridal/Vindinium
One of the biggest issues in the US is cost of education. If you have a country that doesn't have that issue, keep it that way. Too many parents have to tell their kids they can't go to college for financial reasons. That's wrong.
Just to be clear, I'm not asking how we know quantum amplitudes are in C; I'm asking why, in the same sense as the question "why do we have 3+1 dimensions".
It doesn't always work.

I've seen serial devices that are so picky with timing that they'll work with real serial ports but most USB->Serial adapters cause programming to fail.
Taleb's earlier "Fooled by randomness" is one of the few books that changed my life.

However, Antifragile was not a good book. Taleb is too angry now, his ego too big and the ideas are not new.

For something to be anti-fragile, on needs selection and evolution, or at least non catastrophic failure and then the possibility of feedback.
Uh... What is it? There's no information and it's not even clear what I should click on. Neither a dmg or exe are of much help on my phone, and tapping the top banner just makes safari tell me "can't install profile".
> The medical community currently has an abysmal record with treating chronic health problems.

Could you elaborate on this a bit more? What sort of 'chronic health problems' are you referring to, and what is it that the medical community is failing to provide (short of cures, presumably)?
SSLSwitch – see which of the top sites switched to SSL (SEO)
Forget about AMT, it's a major pain to enable even if you need to. The Computrace "Laptop LoJack" application is trivial to activate has been embedded in most major OEM bios for years.

http://www.absolute.com/en/partners/bios-compatibility.aspx

It's capable of phoning home, deleting or replacing files on the operating system and wiping out the system. It can persist across re installations of support operating systems. When combined with AMT features it can permanently brick the device as well.
Show HN: A Chrome extension for group forced web navigation
To install, enable developer mode at chrome://extensions and load source as an unpacked extension.
> contains the locations of the chain’s hotels in JSON. Using a regular expression, I converted the hotel data into CSV.

wat.
> portably in shell scripts (spoiler: it's hard)

At what point do you give up and, if you must have portability, bootstrap a saner environment?

Are there many options in this area? Assume perl is available? Use autoconf-like shell script compiler? Starting with Lua (which I hope/assume can build anywhere, though I know it's missing lots of functionality out of the box)?
It's going in the wrong direction. Instead of empowering people to make good decisions, you're advocating putting a government gun to the heads of people to make them make healthy choices.

So are you going to throw more people in prison for the illegal sugar trade?

It never ceases amaze me how many people on HN actually advocate these draconian, statist policies. Stop hating on your fellow man.
An interesting idea, but in what use case would you actually want this?
A Stupid-Simple Introduction to Chef Solo
Two thoughts:

One, great video, it had a very Zen like quality. However, I fully acknowledge my ignorance in understanding of "Zen" or Eastern philosophies in anything but the most superficial of ways (so it might not be that Zen after all).

Two, did you see that mortar work?! (Full on 1st world problem self entitled asshole rant incoming...) I was told by my house builder that the brickwork of my home, which has a very baby diarrhea-esque mortar application vibe to it, is the current "style". I think it's more likely they didn't want to pay craftsmen like the guys in the video that do good clean mortar work.
Even moreso, image operations get more fun. Most image filters (and other transforms) assume a regular square grid because the math works out really well (axes are orthogonal and same scale). Any deviations from these assumptions make the math more convoluted. (Pun intended.)
I went to day camp in the 1960s.
http://justinjc.github.io/pentris/ - basically Tetris but with 5-cell pieces. Made this mainly as JavaScript and git practice.
Isn't this changing the devil you know for one you don't? Instead of potentially having NSA spy on your org, you have potential of China and Russia doing the spying?

Or is there solid evidence that these countries aren't engaging in the same stuff as the NSA?
Neat. Looks like it outputs something similar to what I had started with this[0] project. I had the idea while sitting in a meeting one day, and played with it for an evening, and the morning after... Never really followed up and finished it yet, though.

[0] https://github.com/shortstuffsushi/WhatDidIDo
The entrance to the vicious circle is the product. If you are interested in talking with investors you will need to produce a successful product. This implies two things; you've successfully built the product, and you've successfully gained traction. There are some great products/businesses out there that were started and/or built by a solo founder. But the majority of them were started by teams of people. So if you are in a situation where you feel you don't have the skill-set to execute, then you either need to increase your skill-set (wear multiple hats), or build a team of co-founders. Regardless of how you go about it, one fact remains; you must build! My advice would be to start building the product now (to whatever capacity possible). Not only will you learn more about the product as you build it, you'll have something to present if you decide to find co-founders. Another reason to build as soon as possible; Often times you'll find that what you've envisioned as the product will change over time as you learn from your customer. The sooner you start that learning process, the better. Good luck!
I would be surprised if India, China, or Russia did not have similar sorts of surveillance programs.

But, I think you're right, you're unlikely to be caught in dragnet-style surveillance by the Five Eyes nations, but this style of attack sounds like it has to be targeted.
I wonder how many common USB devices out there use DFU - I remember reading something about how it would be a standard for Android smartphones/tablets, but that doesn't seem to be the case, with each manufacturer using its own proprietary protocol. Ironically enough, the update code in the ROM of my phone's SoC emulates a USB serial port (CDC)...
Show HN: Pseudo3d old school racing game made with pure JavaScript
Your Editor should Encourage You
Similar topic: "How Doctors Think" (http://www.amazon.com/How-Doctors-Think-Jerome-Groopman/dp/0...) is a great book. Amazon blurb:

"How Doctors Think is a window into the mind of the physician and an insightful examination of the all-important relationship between doctors and their patients. In this myth-shattering work, Jerome Groopman explores the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. He pinpints why doctors succeed and why they err. Most important, Groopman shows when and how doctors can -- with our help -- avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health."
You think BitLocker closed-source from Micrsofot is more secure and trust worthy then open-source fork CipherShed ? I would take open-source project over closed-source any day. Linux Action Show recently talked about "Tomb", it looks like a nice alternative. https://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/
In The Netherlands a law called WBGO gives you the right to access - and correct - your own medical records. The law was instated Apr 1995.
Why is this website not banned yet? They're very well known plagiarists.

http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/infosec_institute/
I would assume because PostgreSQL (the DB he is using) doesn't support importing from JSON?
It's deliberate:

"Between February and June of 1969 ... no more full-service properties were planned ... difficult to control quality with in-house restaurants ... All inns built after La Quinta #505 were built ... at locations with area available to build a restaurant ... which would be leased to a major restaurant chain for management."

"June, 1969 ... La Quinta #507 ... Restaurant on the premises was leased to Denny's."

http://www.business.txstate.edu/users/jb15/MGT4350/how_la_qu...
The cure for writer's block: start with the last thing you learned
It's kind of boggling to read project blogs from people messing with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and, after all the unpacking and setup and breadboarding and programming, they can finally light up an LED as their hello world.

When we had basic PCs and parallel port you could literally take a resistor + LED, twist them together, stick it into the parallel port itself and with a line or two of MS-DOS shell script make it light up.
Mechane-little bluetooth servos for home automation and robotics https://github.com/jmptable/mechane
Then the open records don't make the job of the doctor any more difficult or easier. Arguably, it's not really the responsibility of the doctor to figure out, beyond some reasonable point, if he is being "manipulated" by the patient.
Citizen science games: the ultimate list
Deep Learning for NLP without Magic (2013)
Gitmo isn't a concentration camp because there is no 'concentration'. That is, the Gitmo prison is clearly not part of an effort to take some population of people and stick them all in one place. Nominally everyone there is a prisoner of war - they are not there because they a member of some Afghan minority, or homosexual or disabled or whatever the hell else. Neither is it a death camp, although it seems most everyone still there, will die there. Probably the most accurate label is that it's an internment camp.
But why not use a JSON parser?
and if you replaced the LED for a speaker, and created a resistor ladder, you could squirt data out the parallel port and get sound.

The NO$GB emulator used this, for example. And even though it was horrible it was authentically horrible.
Google AdWords Removes Advertisers’ Ability to Match Only Exact Keywords
Using Bitlocker over open source software makes zero sense. Thanks to Snowden we know for a fact that Microsoft backdoored many of their products and gave access to NSA.

I would be shocked if Bitlocker doesn't have a backdoor.
And let's not forget the 80% of USB->Serial adapters that are using counterfeit FTDI chips and barely work at all, if you can get an O/S to recognize it.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, being that you are sufficiently educated to comprehend the studies you're reading - both biology and statistics - and have actually invested a non-trivial amount of time ensuring you're actively trying to seek information to disprove your hypothesis rather than the alternative. (ie. You're looking for research suggesting that cholesterol has significant predictive power as opposed to looking for research just confirming what you already believe.) [0]

And under those conditions, I agree with you! Get involved with you health and engage in discussion based dialog with your doctor, and push harder if you don't agree. The healthcare system in this country may be incredibly screwed up, but at the end of the day most doctors are incredibly intelligent and if you have information suggesting they are wrong they very much would like to hear it. (Though like the rest of humans, some of them let pride and ego get in the way of rationality.)

However, the fact of the matter is the kind of person I described makes up a fractional percent of our society. Most people are not even close to being able to do that. Even if they could comprehend the biology, statistics are hard. Most people are incredibly naive and arrogant with their regard to their comprehension of statistics (probably myself included), which is why they are so powerful in misleading people. Ex: "A and B have a strong correlation so you should do C" - when in fact the correlation's r value is 0.3 and the correlation described was more likely random noise... but there is a correlation! [1]

Thus it is important to keep in mind general population when considering the effects of changes impacting more than yourself. If our healthcare system demanded we take more control of our own health, there is a small group of people who would be greatly benefited, but there is a much larger group who would suffer.

[0]: If that came across in an attacking manner I do apologize as that isn't my intent. My thoughts are much less about your specific case rather society as a whole.

[1]: Just to clarify my thoughts, I'm not suggesting most people are not intellectually capable of acquiring the knowledge to do any of this - It's not like it takes a special kind of super genius - most people simply just have not acquired the knowledge and thus are incapable for that reason.
I quite like the term "data civilian."
Pretty breathless PR piece from Scripps that actually doesn't go into any notable detail on the chemical reaction, hits all the buzzwords (green, click, yada yada) and manages to spell sulfur "sulfer" and hydrolyze "hydrolize". (Here's an actually awesome recent piece of Scripps science)[http://openflask.blogspot.com/2013/08/ingenol-behind-scenes....].
>USB keyboards do not support more than 6 simultaneous key presses without needing some special workarounds

This isn't totally true. If you want your USB keyboard to work as a boot keyboard (i.e. one that the BIOS understands) then the first 8 bytes of keyboard reports must follow the example (which does have this restriction). After boot though, there will be a Change Protocol request sent from the driver that signals you can use a non-Boot report (which doesn't have this limit).

Alternatively, you can always pack more keys into another report. The BIOS ignores everything beyond the first 8-bytes.
It was a bit odd to me, but I was willing to accept that it might be faster than figuring out the API for spitting out csv, but when he did exactly that for the XML extraction...
> What is the downside of a person being more knowledgable and involved?

More tests does not mean more knowledgeable. It just means the patient has more noise to either listen to or ignore.

That has consequences: stress from some test result; taking action based on a test result when there's nothing wrong; and so on.
May I ask why you were using /g with exec? I was confused about what /g did too.
Well, I can think of one downside to just giving the demanding people what they want: over-use of antibiotics creating 'super' strains of bacteria.

(I realize that you're specifically talking about tests, but I see tests as just an example of the, "I know better than the doctor," people.)
The fact that developers are known and are mostly US based means you shouldn't trust their product. Any of them can be silenced by a secret gag order and forced to introduce a backdoor/weakness, and there isn't much they would be able to do other than move to Russia and reveal it.
The dude had a whimsical idea, tried it out, and wrote it up for our enjoyment. Let it go. Maybe he will parse the JSON next time.
Engineers have to work with what they have.

Do you disagree that he made the right decision?

Is there solid evidence that these countries are engaging in the same stuff as the NSA?
> he's worth 1 billion to the company.

No, he's worth minus 1 billion, whereas the other guy was worth minus 2 billion. He's worth 1 billion more than the other guy, but that doesn't mean he's worth anything in absolute terms.

Granted, one year is probably too short a time frame to judge; if the CEO has the company making 1 billion a year after, say, three years, then he's presided over a recovery (minus 2 billion to plus 1 billion) and deserves credit (assuming the recovery is stable; even three years is probably not long enough to judge, but I don't want to make this post too long). But if his sole claim to fame is that he lost less money than the other guy, that shouldn't be worth anything.
> Ask five different doctors and you'll get five different responses as to what are the accepted parameters in a healthy diet.

You really wont. It'll be pretty much advice about eating a varied diet, not too much fat, salt, or sugar, with a lot of vegetables and a wide range of fruit and veg.
It is for many.

More employers are parsimonious with vacation time, so no summer trips. Moms work now. Thus many kids go to daycare, but we call it camp.

I envy my friends who are teachers married to teachers. I would love to spend my summers with my wife and son!
Hitler's reasons for invading the USSR were batshit insane. He wanted to wipe the Slavs out, and thought he could do it before winter set in.

If Germany hadn't broken their agreement with the USSR the Soviets probably would have stayed out of the war - remember that they had just been humiliated by the Finns.
> That's going to be a non-issue once doctors start typing instead of writing.

It will be a lot better, but:

35 instead of 3.5?

7.5 uG or 7.5 mG?
Its not only about what I can produce but what you can provide. Why would I give you money to trade for goods I own, seems like a losing proposition.
Nothing shocking - a little surprising, definitely disturbing.

The lack of regulation is the most surprising thing, and the lack of interest from the US federal government to do much about it is disturbing.
if you're driving a nail into soft wood, you could use a hammer... Or you could just use a rock, or another piece of wood, or....

Using the wrong tool for a really easy job can sometimes be faster than the minimal effort of getting the right tool ready.
It's not about the patient editing the record directly. It's more about the patient talking to a different doctor than the one that wrote the notes, and then saying, "oh, that's wrong. This is the right information."

If the doctor takes that at face-value (like in the article's example), I assume that it ends up on the notes.
Bigcolors acquires Australian idea incubator, Get Viable
Mark DiMarco gave a talk at JSConf 2014
called User Interface Algorithms
which touches upon this

http://youtu.be/90NsjKvz9Ns?t=4m10s

relevant section starts at 4:13

rest of the talk is good as well
> If I were a VC with money from clients with me, telling them that I'm holding out for a good investment is a great way to lose them next year.

VC inflows tend to be locked in after the fund has been raised.