skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I always sigh in frustration when I read things like "The problem is that these systems will also eliminate jobs in massive numbers.".

Honestly! If these jobs are eliminated, that's a wonderful thing! It increases the average work that the average worker is doing. This increases their average salary. This is not a problem!

The only real problem is getting these temporarily unemployed people an education and a new job. That's not a very big problem, as markets tend to make work when work is available. For instance, where did all the factory workers come from at the start of the industrial revolution? Everyone was working before then, presumably, as there was no such thing as welfare from the government. The workers came from industries that were torn down by the industrial revolution. We don't have cotton pickers anymore. We don't plow by hand. We don't have many of the menial labour jobs we had a hundred years ago, yet unemployment is less than 10% in Canada. The market equalized itself.

Where can these cashiers go? Perhaps preparing food. I wonder if we could start seeing more healthy restaurants that are more closely approaching the true cost of food at a grocery store. Since it costs less to have the store open, since the cash is automated, one could easily see that there would be more money available for food preparation.

The market will find a place for these workers, and everyone on average will see a net benefit from getting rid of non-producing jobs.
Murphies law?

But it is pretty ballsy to assume that Skype works - who is to say that the there is wireless internet there?
I agree we are nowhere close. No-one has any real idea of how the brain works, let alone how to build one.

However, I wonder if the exponential growth of technology will mean that we'll suddenly see a lot of progress in a short space of time.
House passes health care reform bill
Here's a project in the same vein that turns cellphones into a distributed telescope: http://www.distobs.org
About that Cranky IT guy.
In general I don't like politics on HN; the beauty of capitalism is that we can cooperate and work together by only agreeing on a few basic tenants -- politics be damned, but this does have a significant impact on business.

Here is a link to the bill: http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf
I have no doubt that most email list participants do not read the scholarly literature. I also have no reason to believe that most "professionals" are that well versed in it. Email lists have been a source of personal stories about bright kids. Kids that are 2e may only be recognized by the school system as having handicaps and learning disabilities and never get recognized as also being very intelligent. The anecdotal evidence indicates that the brightest kids are often a poor fit for the public school system and are often not recognized as "the best and brightest" while in school. One of the most famous examples of this is that Edison's mother pulled him out of school and homeschooled him after the teacher pronounced him addle-brained.
I do know that it will have to involve hiring someone, and thank you for validating that, but it would be fantastic if someone could help guide those of us looking to do this.

In light of this article and the fact that we are on the topic of patents, it would be priceless for someone to give us a rundown of what the process really looks like, resources on writing it as best you can to possibly lessen the impact of the cost of hiring someone, and knowing how much is reasonable when hiring someone.

That may be asking for a lot, and that information may be invaluable to the holder in such a competitive market, but that is precisely why those scams (which finally got busted) years ago flourished (you may remember the commercials on t.v. for patenting your idea).

That's the last I will comment on it, but I do thank you for basically saying that no matter how you do it, hiring someone is not an option if you want it to be defensible.
I'm going to step out on a limb and predict that if this passes both houses and is signed, the Supreme Court will strike it down.

You just can't have a law that requires people to buy something. There's nothing in the Constitution that can be remotely construed to allow the government forcing people to purchase things.

Now at the state level it's a different matter entirely. Congress could have easily come up with some kind of reward-punishment system that required states to find some solution. And then you'd have 50 states each trying different ideas. They could harvest the best from each other. But it does not appear (to me) that the goal here is iterative, incremental solutions to a pressing problem. It appears that the goal is Big Design Up Front, Top-Down control, and over-engineering every possibility.<sarcasm>An obvious recipe for success</sarcasm>

In the last decade, and with this bill especially, I think we've finally reached the end-game of the American federalist experiment. It's become obvious that we can't meet our current obligations, and it's also become obvious that politicians get elected making promises for even more obligations, not fixing the ones we currently have. So the goal isn't to "fix the system" The goal is to gin up new and various ways to keep making more promises while blaming all problems on the other party. The party's over, but it might be another 20 years before the cops show up, so let's have fun while we can!
OpenOffice is getting ridiculous. All we want is a super-fast client with capabilities on-par with office 2003. YComb should fund some company to do this; load times are getting way out of hand, especially on the mac.
Galactic Suite Orbital Hotel Taking Reservations for 2012
And startups especially.

Key question: So you and two other guys just got $15K in seed funding for your startup for the next three months.

Do you have to use that to buy health insurance or face a fine?

Does this scenario sound familiar to anyone?
Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJXpOsiphhM

Bigelow Aerospace is a competitor: http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/
I can't remember accusing anyone specifically of being an astro-turfer. I only noticed a tendency of any comment critical of Microsoft having a more than average likelihood of being downvoted, something I already noticed years ago, when Digg was intersting. This topic seems to bring out a certain amount of passion in the audience, myself included.

There are two statements you can try to falsify: "It is possible for you to hire people to secure an open platform from the ground up" and "It is up to Microsoft to secure Windows from top to wherever they think the cost exceeds the benefit for them". As for the third, "Microsoft seems to spend more money promoting their wares than properly checking and securing them", it's an impression and, as such, subjective. The "seems" is there because they do spend a whole lot of money in promoting their software and the "properly" is there because it doesn't matter how much they spend, the results are still pitiful, as the mountain of spam in my inbox and the constant onslaught of botnets on my clients (no - my trade is software, but my code has passed more security audits than I can remember) demonstrate so eloquently. Their programs seem to be improving with every release, true, but there is still a long way until I would entrust my data to them.

But that's just my opinion.
It appears that I was wrong, but not entirely wrong.

The "mobile broadband" plans charge $50 (or even $100)/gig overage. These are the plans required for tethering-like services.

"5 GB overage rate is $0.05/MB and 250 MB overage rate is $0.10/MB"

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobilebroadband/?page=pla...

The "Voice and Email" plans seem to be the ones required for Droid:

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=pla...

"Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice"

Ok, so there's no data overage charge, but Verizon has the right to suspend your account.

This is yet another example of how confusing terms prevent sales. Compare the complexity of Verizon's offerings to Twilio's pricing page:

http://www.twilio.com/pricing-signup

I'm not a Twilio customer, but I probably would be if I had a need. Perhaps Verizon believes that confusion allows for better price discrimination?
Overall, I like the message, and I'm a big fan of people recounting their experiences to give everyone else a glimpse into the process. However, I do take issue with the following points of advice:

# Read as many essays as you can that PG has written. Watch any videos you can find as well. Get a sense of his style.

# Research previous YC companies. Take a look at the types of companies YC has funded and see where you could fit in.

I think it comes down to answering this question: Do I want to do my startup, or do I want to be a YC company? If it's the former, then don't spend time trying to study and cram on your YC/PG knowledge, unless that info will be useful to your company. It's not a trivia game, after all.

If the answer is the latter, then by all means read up and prepare for the application/interview process, as you'll need every shred of advantage you can get. Everything is riding on the application and interview. It's a risky bet, but at most you'll lose a couple weeks effort if you don't get accepted, and you can re-apply in a couple months time.

I suppose it doesn't hurt to do your research, but I think YC applicants who see YC as an avenue to do their startup, rather than the reverse, are better off just working on their idea and trying to get closer to a release.

Anyways, good luck with everything and thanks again for sharing your experiences.

(Note: I'm not singling listia out here, as I have no idea what their answer to the question would be. I'm just suggesting that all YC applicants ask themselves that question, be honest about the answer, and use that knowledge to help decide how much effort will be spent on the YC application.)
Ask HN: Speedreading - myth vs reality? your thoughts.
Curious about speedreading - the myth vs reality (intrigued by http://www.readallday.org/ and http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/nyregion/12towns.html). I tried out the 'don't say the words in the mind while you read' tactic to try speedreading, but felt very artificial (as in concentrating more on saying blah blah in the mind while skimming the text)

Could you share your stories/tips about how soon do you finish a fiction/non-fiction book (non-tech). If you do speedread a fiction - can you recall it after a few days?

You Sir! - the voracious reader, I am asking you!<p>Mileage may vary for everyone, but any tips you picked up over the years?

I have of some who read a book every other day - I am not one of them. Sometimes a book takes a week and another one takes couple of months...There's so much to read and so little time.

Any stories/tips?

EDIT:

(thanks to @tokenadult) Speedreading has been discussed earlier (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=419795). That was enough to understand speedreading.

I am interested in tips/learning experiences from your reading/your reading style.
Looks very very cool. Unfortunately quite a few of the examples didn't work when I tried them in Safari. Not sure why :/
I don't think we're on the same page about what 'code review' is. I'm only talking about having your co-workers/peers look at your code and keep up to speed on what's happening to the code base you're all working on.

Do you have a citation for 'most' of the popular web applications not being code reviewed? Have the developers at, say, twitter said they ignore commits and code written by co-workers?
Not if you count the London bombings of 2007 or Madrid in 2004. The perpetrators were at least in part European citizens.

In any case, it is one thing to have stability in an affluent, post-religion area like Western Europe, quite another to have it worldwide. Many nations in the Mid East, for example, are comparable to medieval Europe - except that if the current regimes fall (as they might well, if oil loses its value) their subjects are more likely to create a Muslim Brotherhood-type regime than a liberal republic.
about:mozilla on Firefox, because it makes me laugh. With every new release of Firefox, I enjoy hoping it has changed.
Controversial Emdrive to be investigated by UK govt [video]
"t's not just that most of the those American air force generals began their careers as fighter pilots. No, the reason is more practical. American air superiority has largely been the result of superior pilots. The U.S. didn't always have the best aircraft, but they always had the most talented and resourceful pilots. And that's what gave the U.S. its edge. Will that translate to software piloted fighters? Research to date seems to indicate it will."

I really need some real non-american references to believe in such a thing.
SysTools Backup Recovery Software – a Smart Solution for MS Backup Recovery
I suspect that by the time we develop intelligent artificial minds, we'll have already made inroads into enhancing our own. Come to think of it, we're already doing it.
Comprehensive guide to bash scripting
Good read. However, I was curious about Listia (it was familiar but I couldn't remember exactly). Anyway, the point is, I didn't find a link back to listia.com to click on, on either the posterous blog, or their twitter account. Seems like Listia might want to do that.
I second your point, it's about running to strategies in parallel: release every six months for early adopters, but limit mainstream efforts to every to years. Which would make a lot of sense IMHO.

From what I can tell, mainstream users don't care about having the latest software, they just want it to work. I've helped people migrate to Ubuntu who were still using Win98...

I wish they kept the applications more up to date in the LTS version though, I keep adding new sources and installing .debs to get newer versions, for instance of OpenOffice, LifeRea or Pidgin.
Who is to say that Skype will ever work, even when connected to a 100% reliable wired source?

I love Skype, but I always get really nervous when it becomes a required part of any interaction. It's just too shaky for that.
Russia's Conquering Zeros: Strength of lonely productivity
Your Own Personal 'Cloud'
I'm still waiting for the foot pedals.
But that's just the point! This was your pleasant experience. I'm happy for you, really am. But not everyone else was as lucky, and therein lies the problem for the newcomers! Hope you get what I'm trying to say, that it's the under-appreciated stuff that knocks out one guy out of 10 that's the source of all the commotion here.. except, with good reason.
Texting while driving: the new drunk driving
There was an excellent article in Esquire on UAVs, which focused on the daily lives of UAV operators: http://www.esquire.com/features/unmanned-aircraft-1109-2

Pretty amazing stuff. Most missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are flown via satellite from the US, truly remote controlled war. (Submitted it to HN at the time, but it only got 2 points ;))
Zero-day flaw found in web encryption
You're wrong about this -- neuroscientists know quite a bit about the mechanisms that make the brain work. You don't have he same knowledge because it hasn't been popularized and disseminated yet.
first, are the overwhelming studies focused solely on obses people, or other people as well? i could imagine obese people and "normal" people have significantly different diet and eating habits.

the growing wisdom is that the more you exercise the hungrier you get. that's fine. the problem is that then people feel like they have a free pass to splurge. i suspect that kind of habit is greater in obese people.

edit: personally, i feel less hungry after exercising, and more in control of what i eat. when i don't exercise, it is often related to some negative change in my life (sick, deadline, down-ness), and i'll tend to either eat much less or search for unhealthy food.

i've been the exact same weight for the past decade, so calorie in/out-wise i've settled into an moving routine. of course, where those calories sit has moved around. the kinds of sports i play effect where my muscles and excess fat are. my trimness and energy levels change, even if my weight does not.
Why Happy Shoppers Buy Extended Warranties
The metro in Copenhagen is unmanned and fully automated. Doors open and close by software. I'm sure there must be other places that run with a similar system?
Health insurance is optional. My parents never had health insurance and were always able to pay for medical expenses, even with six kids. I also don't have health insurance and so far I've also had no problems paying for medical care. I don't know where the idea that health insurance is a necessity comes from, but it's not based on fact.
The jquery.mb.containerPlus with memoryversion 2.4
Not really. 200 software developers can write the code for every piece of flying drone that the U.S. has. While pilots where employed almost 1:1 for each piece of aircraft. Not to mention all the crew, flight controllers and maintenance people; I don't think a drone undergoes the same rigorous safety checks and standards as a manned plane. And as the military depends on more drone, the cheaper they will become.
Anecdotal story. It does not surprise me that it's not a question on an IQ test. I chose it because it is shorter than the other story I remember, which I think was from IQ testing. A child was asked who discovered America and was unable to answer the question because "America" did not exist to be discovered by Columbus. The child launched into a long, detailed history of how Columbus discovered the New World in X year but it wasn't called America until Y year after Amerigo Vespucci...etc. The story ended with the child asking "Um, what was the question again?"

For a very bright child, the questions asked on various standardized tests often sound like bogus questions, kind of like the court scene in My Cousin Vinny where the prosecution tries to voir dire the witness played by Marisa Tomei and she says the question cannot be answered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvotE-beoaI&feature=relat...
Advertisements attached to the legs of flies
The same basic thing has been said about many immigrant groups and IQ tests were at one time used as a means to try to back up the assertion that immigrants were inherently "retarded" and thus well-suited to menial labor and should basically quit their bitchin and be grateful to have a job as a servant.
What are they on macs? I get 7s cold and 3s warm start on my quite dated linux laptop. Which I'm ok with.
Why over 90% of online businesses fail?
Worse than that, it is a frustrating, Sisyphean endeavor, always taking one step forward and two steps back once you get past a certain point. It is not a task I'd wish on anyone. It's a lot like writing a multithreaded program when you don't have a clue; you get a few quick things working and then descend into an endless hell of fixing one bug and causing two others, forever.
Romania's society isn't especially healthy (life expectancy is lower than the U.S.). Neither is its economy, with a per capita GDP of less than $12,000 a year.

Two possible reasons spring to mind:

1) this is the fault of public healthcare
2) this is because Romania was basically a Soviet
principality for fifty years

Perhaps you should try looking at, say, Canada if you don't want an comparison that was rigged from the beginning.
The worst part of the mandate is that every health care interest in country will start lobbying Congress to ensure that their procedure is covered by the mandate. Thus we will be forced to pay for care we don't want, didn't need, and doesn't work. This is exactly what has happened in Massachusetts since the mandate passed, and costs have continued to rise even faster than before. The dirty secret of medicine is that most we spend a huge amount of money on stuff that just doesn't work ( http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medi... ). The mandate will make this even worse. Recently I got a letter from my health insurance provider that by law they must cover mental health drugs now. This is despite the fact that these drugs do not work ( http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/anti-depressant.html ).
One interesting development is that, with the growing number of UAVs, there aren't enough pilots to fly them all, so new operators are no longer required to have flying experience.

I heard an interview with "Wired for War"'s author who claimed that controls for some of these systems are modeled after X-box/PlayStation controls, both to capitalize on the ergonomics research done by console makers and to make it easier for young recruits who are already used to operating them.
I like it, although I'm having a hard time thinking of a serious case where I can use it other than for example making another CrazyEgg, which I don't think I have the time for.

TINY request - add a reset button to the example. I guess it's saved per session or something, but I spammed a bunch of clicks in one spot which dominates the page a bit.

Great work.
The flawed assumption is you can know what will be important ahead of time.
Banker bonuses will be exceptionally large this year
> From what I can see a nation of absolute pacifists can be subdued by a single violent person - there has to be some point at which you'd make a physical stand?

Policing will probably always be needed, but that is different. The police are not at war with criminals.
Braess's paradox: adding roads can increase congestion
The problem is that they're "basically just cloning microsoft office". No good usability work comes from basically cloning.

Taking ideas / inspiration from Microsoft Office is great, it's a successful product. But basically cloning just means it works sort of like office, but different enough to be annoying, with no attention paid to designing the overall user experience. It's the same reason Gimp is such a nightmare for Photoshop users.
Umm, the exercise they cited was aerobics, which is well known not to provide a lasting all day long metabolism boost. Nothing new here.

Resistance training however typically provides a metabolism boost for the rest of the day (i.e. until you next sleep.) That's why it's helpful to work out in the mornings.

However, I would certainly support the conclusion that exercise (even resistance training) while continuing to eat junk food will not result in significant health improvement.
My read on it is that it only measured a short-term reduction in performance. I saw no indication that it suggests long-term consequences from a single instance of rejection. Some people are inherently more likely to be bitter, grudging, etc and hold onto such negative feelings. Other people are more inclined to get over it and move on. Bill Gates has said that your unhappiest customers are your best source of learning. Some people are inclined to view negative feedback as useful information and not wallow in a negative emotional reaction to it. This behavior can be learned to some degree.

I would think that part of why the examples cited in the article resulted in negative reactions is because it was not constructive feedback: The artificially induced feeling of rejection apparently was delivered with zero feedback as to why they were being rejected. Some real life situations are like that. But other real life situations hold a great deal of information about why people are rejecting something. Anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur would be well advised to learn to view negative responses as "constructive feedback" and not take it too personally. Most sources I have seen indicate that entrepreneurs typically experience a lot of rejection (and failure) prior to achieving success.