skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Good feature, minimal product. Go forward or move on to something else?
I'm interested in local search, specifically in terms of time. Yelp and Citysearch are great at telling you about businesses you've never tried, but if you want to find out when a given business is open it's pretty hit or miss. Those sites usually list business hours for the trendy restaurant across town, but when it comes to the small market down the corner you're on your own. If you're like me, even though you've been to that market ten times you still can't remember if it closes at 10:30 or 11:00. But you're hungry, so you walk 10 minutes to get there anyway. And of course it's closed. It'll take another 10 minutes to walk back home and you're still hungry.

It's annoying, it's a big waste of time, and it's a problem I've always wanted some local search tool to solve. Like Yelp, Google and other major search engines are only helpful some of the time. A lot of small players have tried to take on the problem, but most have been hamstrung by data that's woefully incomplete or just plain bad. It's a pretty hard nut to crack, in large part because half of the restaurants in a typical city don't even have a website. Data collection is a complete pain in the ass.

Still, I've created something that solves the problem really well. It only covers about a third of one large city as a proof of concept, but it's really helpful. Looking for beer at 3:00 in the morning? Wondering when the DMV office opens? Searching for one of the three places in town that actually serves teriyaki on a Sunday? This app can tell you all of that. If a business isn't open, it'll tell you about similar ones in the area that are. It's just a click to read reviews of the place on sites like Yelp and Citysearch, get directions, etc. It's exactly the product I've always wanted someone else to create.

But that's the rub: it's not really a product; it's just a feature. I'd love to refine the thing, gather loads of information, and roll it out in major cities across the country. It's perfect for a mobile application. It's easy enough for anyone to understand and comprehensive enough for anyone to get value from. But once the data's out there, it'd also be incredibly easy to recreate. There's a definitive first mover advantage, but it would only go so far. This is all a big concern for me; even though I know that a lot of people would use the app and enjoy it, generating revenue is important. Solving this problem on a large scale will require several years of hard work on my part, so there needs to be some sort of sustainable path to get there.

Assume you're in my position. What do you do? Is there some way to build a product around the feature and create a company with a chance at making money? Or do you leave it to an established business with more resources to add the feature to an existing product?
Unlock iPhone
Unlock iPhone,Unlock iPhone 3gs,jailbreak iPhone,Unlock iPhone 3g
Functional Programming with a Mainstream Language
Is it because Twitter runs on Ruby? What if I mentioned Scala and Twitter in the same sentence?
There is a point here, but I think Greenspun is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude wrong in the time scale. The elderly haven't been revered as the only repository of wisdom since the invention of writing, and the invention of the press accelerated the process. It made sense for villagers to take the outliers to the elders, because they were the only ones with some chance of having relevant experience, but their influence diminished as books became common and cheap. The elderly became mostly cheap labor for menial tasks like mending clothes or going to the bank, the kind of work that automation eliminates.
Google Wave to be opened for federation today. Yes, for you to host.
Eggventure -The Sperm Assault
The Droid vs. the iPhone: Let's count the apps
The U.S. was one of the first nations to make it illegal for its own citizens to pay bribes overseas with the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The bill passed even though the US knew we'd lose business overseas. It was also very steady U.S. pressure that helped move Europe to do the same a couple decades later-- this was on the top of the U.S. trade agenda with Europe for a long time.
yes i do but Bobby makes a good point. all venture funds have a provision in them that they can be extended and most are. i am still working on deals that were done more than 10 years ago
Yamuna expressway residential scheme
Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority introduced Residential plots to be developed along the Noida-to-Agra Yamuna Expressway with many diversified projects under construction. It is also in close Proximity to Eastern Peripheral Expressway
Here's the funny thing: I actually dislike Ubuntu (I run Debian at home and use OSX at work), and I loathe Windows. But of course, none of that matters (saying "I run Ubuntu and I like it" is a bit like saying "some of my best friends are <gay, black, Jewish, whatever>").

The point isn't whether you or the other respondent has recently edited the registry or hunted down a driver. The point was that all operating systems have their troubles.

The standard gripe about Linux distros is hardware related. Well, um, duh: if the hardware is closed source, there are going to be problems getting things to work just right. Hardware manufacturers cater to Windows (for obvious reasons) and Apple controls what hardware their os runs on. Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian et al. are not in a position to do this. So, yeah, there are probably always going to be those kinds of troubles with Linux.

That said, you can't beat the price, the ability to get at the source code (if that matters to you) or the package manager (for Debian-based distros, at least).
And the Virtualbox repository is ready with 3.10 for Koala.

You do have to re-enable the source manually - it's not deleted, but the 9.04 -> 9.10 upgrade process turns off third party sources as a precaution.

Just finished upgrading an AMD quad core box, smooth sailing.
http://twitdiff.appspot.com/
Same idea, and works fine.
Is there anything like this for facebook? I'd kill for that:)
I don't know -- looking someting up in a book, even with a decent computer index, is still orders of magnitude slower than a googling it.
This matches all my intuitions about how I was going to do this; now I have a cookbook (several recipies!)!
This is why Hacker News is so valuable. Nothing beats experienced advisors.
The headline of the article has changed to "Study Suggests U.S. Could Use Fewer, Not More Science Students"
Perhaps the answer is for every old person to become an expert personal computer and network administrator.

Really? We're so wrapped up in technology that my Grandma is now considered useless unless she can help me setup my home media server?

Despite growing up with technology, I learned many, many things from my elders, including work ethic, money management, respect for others and an appreciation for simpler things in life, like gardening and carpentry.

I think I know what he's getting at, but I really just found this article absurd. There is, and will always be, more to life than bits and bytes.
Bill Slawski: The Importance of Listening.
The besr tip I could give is to join Toastmasters.
Another Wiki in Google’s Kitty
Google added another feather to its cap in the form of Google Sidewiki, a Google Toolbar option that allows users to leave comments about webpages as the browse the net.
Plans approved to allow non-Latin-script web addresses
That's interesting, thanks. Forgive my ignorance, but I'd assume it's up to those who invested into the VC fund whether or not the fund is extended, not the VC partners. What happens when they decide against it and there are still privately owned companies in the fund's portfolio? Is ownership transferred directly to the original investors, who can then choose to liquidate the company or take control in some other way?
Arizona judge rules public record metadata is also public record
Most recently he's been moving everything onto a sail boat:

http://www.nomadness.com/blog/
Educating yourself on youtube
It's only matter of time before all topics and subjects will be covered by a professor, then broadcast for free on youtube. How will this affect existing universities? Will they become obsolete as we know them today?
I love that just from the title, before clicking and without even having yet seen the little (harvard.edu) beside it, I knew immediately that this was a Greenspun article.
I think you can't talk about general criteria for web sites, just like you can't talk about general criteria for automobiles. Is a truck better than a family sedan? It depends on what you plan to do with it. You can say that a site that goes down almost every week is obviously bad, but what about Twitter during its first, shaky growing phase? Or to use a more common example, web copy brevity is usually good, but long sales letters convert well.
Help the best-funded and least accountable military on the globe with some free intelligence work. How exciting.
Handling out of memory conditions in C
Meetings as flattery
Provided that you find a way to have a substantial amount of businesses listed, you have a great idea.
See also: Richardian numbers.
Umm, yeah. Just to save people some time, he sums up by saying that doctors don't solve problems but football players do. So, you know. Bullshit.

I mean, his central thesis is: MY job requires problem solving, whereas everybody else's job requires more memorization than football does (which, you know, is a sport that consists largely of continual drilling.)
I believe google acquired a super early-stage startup that was doing precisely this.
data != wisdom

a computer != a human brain

logic != emotion

Otherwise, you wouldn't need things like y-combinator, Hacker News, or Startup School. Hell, we wouldn't even need each other. We'd just google everything.
Does anyone know if such mods can be done on calculators with no programming power?Like casio Fx- series. I have a fx-911MS so was just curious.
Ski Aspen Lodging
Once you choose the location, you can figure out when the best time is to go. Since most ski resorts are busy throughout the season, you may need to plan your trip well in advance. Unfortunately, this doesn't give you a lot of flexibility. Some places may not see a lot of snowfall at certain times. To help increase your chances of getting good snow conditions, research what the conditions are typically like in a given area for the time period you would like to go.
3. Intuitive ... femtoo.com

I took 'Register to get started' as: 'New user? Press here first' (not filling email and password)
This is probably going to give away what I spent a large portion of my youth doing, but that is the most compelling application I have so far seen for the multi-touch table.
Douglas County's first death from swine flu reported
No, but after upgrading via apt-get my system was unbootable. After pointing it to the proper drive in grub, it would attempt to boot but mysteriously hang. No one in #ubuntu or #ubuntu+1 could figure it out. I ended up having to boot from live cd, decrypt the filesystem, transfer it to a different box, and reinstall from scratch.
Revisiting "The Fold"
WebSync: Comet for IIS
Doable with how much patience exactly?
That is true only if you use bleeding edge clojure (EG. 1.1.0), clojure 1.0 docs are very mature. And since 1.1.0 is a developper version at the moment, it appears quite illogical IMO to complain about the state of documentation.
# Metric Formula
- ---------------- ------------------------------------
1 effectiveness sum(EffortExpended) / OriginalGoal

2 efficiency sum(EffortExpended) / sum(ValueReceived)

3 speed "0" or "1"
(TimeToLoad < TimeWillingToWait)

4 readability "0" or "1"
(AbilityToRead == 1)

5 comprehensibility "0" or "1"
(TimeNeededToUnderstand < TimeAvailable)
Very clever. Have you considered making the slider non-linear (the distance on the slider between Yuck and Meh is smaller than between Good and Awesome)? If most people are going to rate their tea somewhere between Good and Awesome, it allows more of the slider to be used.

Have you received enough ratings with this new interface to know if my assumption of ratings being clustered is accurate?
Is it just me, or is his average_time_of_day missing a "/ times.length" at the end?

Also, why is he calling :to_time there but not in the iterative example?
AS you say, the value is in the data, not in any website or iPhone app you may build on that. So you could expand the data, build an iPhone app just for kicks, and try licensing or selling that data (not the app) to companies. The value is in the data, and perhaps even more so in the systems you build to expand that data and keep it up to date. That's what you can license/sell.
Release an iPhone shell to test the concept. Refine until people buy it. Then make a web service and so on.
Virtual Goods: It’s all about the context
You know they had a pretty good pitch until, that little slip. It's good to be young, energetic and exciting but when you venture into misspelling words on purpose, it becomes a little unprofessional. Then again, I am probably not their target market being > 35 and all. You know there are a few of us dinosaurs that keep up with the latest and greatest, hell some of us are even still changing the industry with the young bucks.
Credible.

If I hit a road block (such as having to register) before I feel that you are going to deliver on your promises then I move on without bothering.

For example: I won't register for your new social network, because I feel there's a very good chance it won't change my life for the better (not even enough to justify a 30 second registration). However after vising your blog and reading your articles I might sign up for your newsletter because you are now credible to me as a source of interesting information.
"You can't put the cheap version of Windows on a device with a large SSD"

Why not?

(BTW I don't know how to quote properly on HN, little help!)
Compiling Erlang - A “personal” experience
I hear you. There is something about face to face human connection that will never be lost, as long as we are still human. Encyclopedic knowledge is only a fraction of human value.
Are Single Founder Startups that Bad?
A lot has been written about the "merits" and "demerits" of single founder startups.

Many of the arguments against it are perfectly legitimate. The common theme is that it is more risky.

My question is:

If against the odds, the single founder can
1) implement a working, post-beta product and
2) gains some market traction (i.e. can demonstrate some actual dollar sales, even if they are just a handful)

At this point,the company and its business model have been derisked to a large degree.

Should we still discriminate against that startup in comparison to 3 founders with no product (or an alpha stage product) and no sales?
Interestingly enough, they probably are allowed to use those in my country ;-)
My experience raising two children is that adults often talk to babies with babytalk. we talked to our babies with adult language and they didn't really use babytalk.
> a victim of the same sort of lazy, pattern-based thinking that it's trying to critique.

Over generalization based on incomplete data or biased vision of the world has nothing to do with the problem solving/memorization dichotomy the author is speaking about. In fact, (and this is a big generalization) problem solvers have a tendency to reduce every problem to its simplest forms in order to find new ways to analyze it. I'd agree that when it is applied to human/social world, it often leads to partially or even totally wrong hypotheses though.

I'd also like people to stop just dissing over generalizations where in fact we just use these all the time. This comment is not meant to be a "end of discussion by scientific proof" about anything. But it's doing an extremely good job opening a new interresting way to see the world we have around us as intellectuals. And that's what generalizations are for.
From C# to F#
Django + facebook connect
Since this is a clearly meaningless list, it doesn't really need to be sorted alphabetically. I think it would have been more fitting to sort the list numerically.
I love that you included the ability to make your own.
Autistic artist draws 18ft picture of New York skyline from memory
Rejection Gone Digital?
> Higher health insurance premiums are probably to blame for a good part of the desire firms have to hire younger people.

That's why we should tax younger people to pay for older folks' healthcare. Medicare's 3% is just the start - single payer will let us (I'm older than most of you) bleed them in ways that they'll never figure out. (Heck - they haven't figured out social security.)

Then again, that's not a high bar - they haven't figured out that there are lots of ways to cover pre-existing and catastrophic that don't involve inter-generation subsidies. Throw in some rhetoric and they'll even think that you're doing them a favor.
This reminds me of one of Dave Thomas' Code Katas (http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/kata_eight_conf.html), where one objective is to write some code as readable as possible. It turned out to be much less well defined than I thought when I started out.
I don't install the microsoft fonts and still HN looks like much more like the Mac OS X example for me on Ubuntu 9.10 with Chromium and Firefox.
A ton as in "8", right?

It's not a ton by any measure...
An upgrade with LVM and cryptfs in use worked for me.
I thought the patent issues were mostly about these older Apple patents:

http://www.freetype.org/patents.html

I'd not heard about these subpixel patents, but I'd be happy to have them removed from Linux as I honestly don't think they add that much in Mac OS X style font presentation, as opposed to Windows Cleartype style.
Brian ofsie,brian ofsie financial
Brian Ofsie has 13 years experience and offers the best financial services. Best rate with the lowest fee and close your loan faster than any other broker.
By the same reasoning technology reduces the value of all people. But as long as we're all reduced we can still stay competitive to one another.
Almanacs: the internet of the early 20th century.
TwitDiff guy here, the service delay graph is permanently broken. I hoover late accounts about once a day, usually only a few fall out of the system. It's actively maintained and generally fuss-free, except during Twitter API farts (including in the past, feeding the app completely invalid data).

Buzz me on Twitter if you have any issues. :)

David
The rest of us seem to solve it without nagware. That kind of thing gives the worst possible impression of your site; please consider whether the signup rate it generates is worth it.
Scaling Galaxy Zoo with SQS
Diabetes Nutrition Tips
Honda UX-3: "the unicycle segway"
D is well-designed and has many wonderful features, but its documentation is so bad as to make it unusable for serious work. This article is the best reference work on D2 that I have yet seen, which should not be the case.

Also, this guy has been working on the book for over two years now. Even when it's done, it's going to be just like Grails is now: you can read the online docs, but you don't really get it until you read a certain book.
If almost all allocations are specific to the processing of a record, and become garbage after that record is done with, GC is almost free. GC cost is proportional to retained allocations, not allocations made; and if old generation memory is never modified to point to new allocations, it doesn't even need to be scanned (this can be detected by write barriers, either injected into JIT code or via page faults, so it can be quite fine-grained). That's why GC is asymptotically faster than manual allocation and ideally suited to record-processing and server request/response kinds of applications. If it were using manual paired allocate/free memory management, it would actually be more impressive.

And it's not 4.32ms/rec; that it's 4.32/rec with 4 cores, so estimating around 17ms (like the graphics frame) is closer.

I don't agree with your suggestion that the fact that because graphics is usually accelerated and physics very rarely is, the comparison is unfair. Take a look at Pixomatic that Mike Abrash worked on. DirectX 7-level API, done entirely in software; and efficient enough that the game can still do all its work in its own time. Games still have to pump an awful lot of data through to the hardware; the hardware isn't going to do all the high-level scene graph calculations, culling and occlusion itself. The hardware expects a list of pretty basic primitives, and takes care of transforming them into the view frustum, with depth converting into Z-buffer value. The game still needs to make sure it doesn't give the hardware too much stuff that isn't actually intersecting with the view frustum.
But you can select what to hide and what not (link in the upper right corner).
a.k.a. the biggest prisoner's dilemma competition yet.
If you're really concerned about people unfollowing you on Twitter, you're probably using it wrong.
Over the Air hackathon
Why every country has a different electrical plug - awesome graphic
Traffic Server is now Open Source
"Always-on" benefits in debugging
tcarnell, I went to see what jonsen was saying about Femtoo.com, and well, I think we should add compatibility to that list. While I dislike IE6, there are many users still forced to use it.

Internet Explorer 6 is not supported.
???????????I?,~+??~+,~+=~+,~,:+?,~+~+,:=+:+,:+=~++~==?
Compleat: Programmable bash completion for human beings
State control of the Internet via three strikes copyright laws
I would think this is more like what happens in each individual on a given topic - you start off with little packets and eventually you integrate them into a map. How well you are at doing this depends on how good you are at linking the packets together, how you are taught or learn them, and whether you have constructed a similar enough map before to construct the new one more easily.
NoSQL East 2009 - Summary of Talks from Day 1
What's the likelyhood that an IE 6 users is also an early-adopting web-app user? I think it's very low, and certainly doesn't seem to bother 37signals.

http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2008/07/basecamp-p...

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1072-apples-mobileme-drops-su...

The big issue I see is time vs. return. In most cases when you're a small team and trying to move fast, I believe the decision comes down to support IE6 or push iterations faster. I pick the latter.
It sounds like HTML5 is a backwards-compatible superset that includes HTML4 and XHTML1. Does that mean the rendering engine browsers use for standards mode is effectively an HTML5 rendering engine that also works for valid HTML4 and valid XHTML1, since they're subsets of HTML5? Or am I way off-base?
5 ways to connect to the Internet while on holiday abroad
What do I value in old people? Patience, compassion, wisdom, experience, self-awareness, skepticism, faith, perspective, financial maturity, honesty, thrift, perserverance, self-sacrifice, wit. Not only does technology not diminish any of that value, I find that technology makes those qualities even more valuable.
Yes, there are several hundred crashes nationwide. Largely, people cannot see or hear the flashing lights/sirens...

It would definitely be something worth investigating...I'd be happy to talk more if you are interested!
Why is e^(pi i) = -1?
IPhone app translates between English and Spanish, and vice-versa
http://jibbigo.com/
Fish out of Water: Promoting Entrepreneurship by the Govt
The Phobos vs Tango thing put me off too.