aaron987

Cool project. I did something similar myself very recently, except I just used a spreadsheet, and I didn't look at the whole country. I was focused on cities out west. I found a list on Forbes of the 200 best cities to start a business (which I would like to do) and used that as a starting point. I then combined that with walk score, cost of living relative to minimum wage, average temperature (I want to be somewhere warm), and crime data. I even searched each city on OkCupid to see how many people had at least a 90% match to me relative to the city's population, which was an indicator that people in the area tend to think the way I do. In other words, it meant I would be able to make friends and get along with people if I moved there.

Using all of that data, I gave each category a rank based on how important it was, and tallied the results. My top three cities were Vallejo, CA, San Francisco, and Olympia, WA. I've never been to any of those places, but I want to leave Ohio. At least now I know where to start looking.

Hey, great service. Will that promo code be expiring, and if so, when? I'm working on something right now and I would like to use this service, but I'm not quite ready yet.

I don't think you can cite one study concerning an increased risk of varicose veins and conclude that exercise is not all it's cracked up to be.

That study seems pretty legit, but it only concerns one health problem, and a relatively minor one at that. Fewer than 2% of the people in the study even required hospitalization for their problem. Comparing that to the numerous benefits of exercise for things like diabetes and heart disease, I think exercise is still a worthwhile use of time.

This explains the problem I had with LastPass earlier today. None of my computers would let me log in for about a 10 minute period.

I've been using this one for a few years now and love it: http://www.rei.com/product/862927/rei-sahara-tech-long-sleev...

SPF 50, tons of pockets, quick dry material, vents in the back and armpits for air circulation. It even has little snappy things to hold your sleeves when you roll them up.

The added benefit of a shirt over sunscreen is that the shirt keeps bugs off too.

Wow. I didn't realize this would get so many upvotes, so I decided to put a little more effort into finding that video. I finally found it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2m6JkJvv4w

This story has another lesson buried inside it, and it is one that I first learned not long ago in a video (unfortunately I can't find a link to it).

The lesson was: "The best way to get into business is to be in business". In other words, the best way to build a successful business is to get started. Do something, anything to get started. You have to do that to get into contact with people and start getting feedback to see what other problems they have.

I noticed the same lesson in this post. Initially, the author was making money from freelancing. But as clients began asking questions and providing feedback, a more profitable idea came to the surface.

Do something. Just get started.

Great post.

That happened to me too. Are you using the Disconnect plugin for Firefox (or something similar)? I had to whitelist the site in Disconnect, then it worked.

Ebola is nothing new. If terrorists wanted to use it as a weapon, they could have done it a long time ago. Now would actually be a bad time for a bioterror attack, because people are on high alert for anything that could be ebola. It would be a lot more effective if it came out of the blue, giving it time to spread before anyone realized their fever was actually ebola.

I like quartz.com. They have interesting stories, and they are short, so I can read them when I have a few minutes of downtime.

Are you talking about something like Glassdoor.com? They let people report their salary anonymously, then you can see the average salary for each job within the company.

It isn't really a service I need, I just wanted to compliment you. That is a beautiful website.

I honestly don't see the benefit of this. If I understand it correctly, a bunch of people watch ads, causing the price to go down. But only one person gets the discounted price, and everyone else who sat there watching ads gets nothing? In other words, the majority of people using the site get no benefit.

I tried to research this topic further, but the Wikipedia pages about copyright makes no mention of monkeys.

The fact that this solves some of the problems of cryptocurrency, and the fact that Stripe is behind it, give me a very good feeling about this. To have the clout offered by Stripe while still being open source is very powerful, and I think it is what the cryptocurrency world has needed.

This has been written about so much there is really no point in repeating it here. Just Google Pat Flynn. He has a whole blog about it.

I mostly agree with what the author is saying, although I would argue that it has nothing to do specifically with programmers. Our entire culture is risk-averse, preferring a "safe" job to the potential reward of starting a business.

Here is one (anecdotal) example. I have been working on a business idea, and everyone tells me it is a good idea. I even have a working prototype. But the conversation always turns into a discussion about getting a job. I ask for a few hundred dollars to help with the business, they say no. Then later in the discussion they offer (without me even asking) a few hundred dollars to help support me while I find a job. Either way it is a few hundred bucks, but the job is acceptable, the business is not. This happens even for other investments where I show them numbers and we have a high probability of making money. Even then, no.

Even outside the world of business, people are afraid of risk. Even something as simple as trying a new food is too risky for some people. Our culture is so risk-averse that it is frightening.

I'm surprised by how few comments mention one other thing that is important to consider: How does the lifetime value of a college education compare to someone who instead spent that money starting a business?

I went to a small private college and graduated in 2010 with about $40,000 in loans. My degree was in biology. So far, it hasn't really helped at all. If I were going to start over, I would skip college and start a business.

My student debt is higher than average, so let's be more conservative and use the $25,000 average debt stated in the article. For $25,000, you can create a pretty nice little business, especially in a small city. For example, I lived in Fargo for a few years where my living expenses were only $800 per month. Even if that business fails, you are no worse off than a college grad, except you also have years of experience for when you try another business.

I think the real question we should be asking is not "Is college worth it?", but rather, "How do we help young adults start businesses the way we help them get into college?". We spend so much time and money offering scholarships, which in turn is supposed to help them get good jobs. In other words, we are spending a lot of money to increase competition in the job market. If that money was spent helping those young bright minds start businesses, we would be simultaneously removing someone from the job market AND creating new jobs.

I am an avid walker. Even when I was a kid, I would go for long walks. My parents never worried about me, because I always came back, sometimes after walking for 4 or 5 hours. I would sit in the woods and watch birds. Sometimes I would find myself sitting in a park. Other times I would walk around in cemeteries (they are actually great places to walk. They have paved roads but no traffic).

There was this homeless guy who sometimes sat next to one of the places I would walk past. I guess he eventually got curious, so one day he asked where I am always going. I said, "I don't know. I'll find out when I get there".

In college, people would spend the morning cramming for a big test. I would just go for a walk. At that point, I either knew the test material or I didn't, and destressing was more important.

To this day, I walk a lot, even in the middle of winter in Fargo. I turn my phone off and leave everything else at home. I don't even take my wallet. If I don't have money, it eliminates the urge to run into a gas station and grab some milk, or take care of other errands.

Walking is my meditation, therapy, and medication. My friends and family know when I haven't walked that morning because I get cranky and/or depressed.

It is such a shame that our culture does not allow walking for various reasons. Some places don't have sidewalks. Some places have too much traffic. Other places are just not safe. It really is sad. I wonder how many of our problems could be solved if more people just took a chill pill and went for a walk once in awhile.

This looks great. I tried Fitocracy and was disappointed. It seemed to be focused on a flashy interface rather than useful features.

I signed up for your mailing list. I especially like the ability to see moving averages. Up until now, I have been using spreadsheets for this kind of thing. That works fine for charting, but not much else.

That is awesome.

The photos from deathtothestockphoto look decent, but I see no central place to search through them. You can only get them by email. Their Instagram feed only has 46 photos. The rest of these look like the usual generic photos.

However, it is refreshing finally find some sites that actually offer free photos. Most sites that pop up in a Google search have a few free ones, then billions of affiliate links to Shutterstock. Nothing against Shutterstock, but it does get frustrating to search for free images and constantly end up on a page requesting payment.

I have made great progress learning Italian by simply changing my homepage to google.it instead of google.com. I search for words in Italian and read my news in Italian as much as I can. I also watch Italian TV.

I'm not an expert yet, but my point is that learning a language just takes more effort than most people are willing to put into it. They are looking for some silver bullet that will teach them without any effort. Just like learning how to code, or run a business, you just have to jump in and get your feet wet. Make mistakes and learn from them. The "silver bullet" is to immerse yourself in it.

> Stock price != company value. Nobody will enter a position they can't get out of easily unless there is real worth in holding.

This says it all. The price of a stock does not equal the value of the underlying company. Value investors like Warren Buffett make their money by exploiting that difference.

One of the things I love about HN is the lack of people trying to be funny. Between Twitter, Facebook, G+, <insert social media outlet>, there are plenty of places I can go to laugh. But HN is one of the few places where I can get top-notch news with input from a lot of smart people, as well as intelligent, civil discussions even when people disagree. I'm happier without the witty comments.

Interesting. I remember a few years ago, Craig Venter did something where he "signed" a genetic sequence with a specific code snippet to make sure the experiment worked as expected [1]. Do you think they could do something like that here to make sure nobody is using this in proprietary seed? In other words, insert a specific code in the DNA, then if there is ever a legal dispute about where the seeds came from, just sequence it and look for that code.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-...

I get that error too. Reloading doesn't work for me.

It may or may not be "a kernel", but personally, I learned a lot from this one simple tutorial. As someone who normally plays with website code, even something this simple can be very helpful in understanding other areas of programming and how computers work.

This is definitely something I would use. I hate messing with date/time. Timezones, zillions of different date formats, etc. all make dates and times a pain. A slick "Stripe-like" way to handle all of that would be awesome.

Well in terms of layout and functionality, sure, I understand the need for consistency. My comment was referring to the artistic element of color schemes and fonts. That is the part that gets annoying when everybody does it the same. You can have consistency of function while being creative with colors and things like that. I love it when I show up on a site with bold colors and unique design ideas. It gives me the impression that the company is willing to try new things.