jasonkolb

I think most people would appreciate some feedback on something they work hard for, even if it's just an "atta boy, looks good, keep on going--sorry it didn't work out", or even better some productive feedback ("you need to narrow your focus" or "market already saturated").

I have never applied for YC, but I have applied to other things in life that seem like a black hole from the outside. Just an acknowledgement of something that surely took a lot of time would be a nice gesture. I mean, I'm sure you're nice folks, right? Would you ignore applicants if you met them on the street?

Author here... I realize Namecoin is playing in the identity space, I'd love to get some feedback from people who are familiar with it.

The Ethereum project (which recently surfaced here as well) is the most interesting to me. What's the feeling on the viability of this as an actual platform?

Caloric restriction is absolutely fascinating in all forms. I think intermittent fasting might be the best-known variant of this, but there are others. All of them cause dramatic changes in the way bodies function, from changing the hormones secreted to changing the form of fuel it uses to run itself (e.g. ketones in low-carb diets instead of glucose).

Caloric restriction has a whole bunch of knock-on effects, any one of which could have a huge impact on health and aging. For example, restricting calories means that you're restricting protein. Most people think of protein as a good thing, but that's what stimulates the hormone IGF-1 to be secreted, which is necessary for growth of all kinds--muscle growth (which is why bodybuilders eat as much protein as possible), but also including cancer.

I've seen research that suggests that cells don't go into "repair mode" in the presence of IGF-1. This is just one example of a possible mechanism that caloric restriction could have a hugely beneficial effect on aging and illness in general.

I have a half-written blog post about this I should push out. I'd love to get some more conversation going around this.

"It shows that depression is something chemical, that it can be reversed with chemicals, it dispenses for once and for all that you can just pull your socks up."

This is entirely an assumption, and shows nothing conclusively. Just as an experience can trigger a depression (see @JPKab) an experience can cause it to end. There's no reason to look at a human being as a walking slab of meat for the sake of analysis.

This says nothing about "chemicals", and I'll bet you can find many of the same benefits are attained by people who are able to achieve similar experiences using meditation or other techniques.

That just ruined my lunch. Seriously, Zite is awesome, only "recommender" that actually works for me. Prismatic, Flipboard, everything else I've tried--they all suck. Only Zite consistently gives me things I haven't seen that I'm actually interested in.

Welp, time to dust off my recommender algorithms and build something I suppose. If anyone's interested in joining, ping me.

This story is the only response needed when someone says "I don't care because I don't have anything to hide".

Have you actually used the site? I tried to register, it's a complete joke. It crashed twice and eventually I got to a point where I literally could not figure out what I was supposed to do next. I mean, I'm a programmer and I couldn't figure it out. Everyone else I talked to who tried to use it had the same experience.

The site literally does not function, this has nothing to do with integrations.

Hey Tristan, looks awesome. Great work!

This has some really interesting adjacencies to a project that we currently have in limited beta and getting to roll out widely very soon. I'd love to chat about some ideas I have to work together that could work out really nicely for both of us. If you're interested drop me a line: jason@applieddatalabs.com

Interesting way to buy and sell coins. I wonder what the markup will be compared to some of the other services out there once you factor in commissions and so on.

Interesting. This appears to be an attempt to do some market research by Google--to find out which messages are resonating with their audience.

I wonder if it'll work.

I didn't feel like this post was very clear, but I do (think?) it pointed out some important ideas. Data as the fodder that a community uses to discuss and dissect its area of focus is going to be a high growth area. It provides an almost endless stream of content and information that can be used by the community.

My guess: they will float a toothless bill that gives lip service to protecting civil liberties. Then they will gauge the reaction to that bill to find out how much the public at large actually understands about what's going on.

If the public is mollified by a toothless bill then we go back to business as usual, only they'll be even bolder because now the actions have been "sanctioned". If, on the other hand, the Internet is able to generate SOPA and CISPA-like levels of opposition saying that the bill is worthless, we might actually get something of value in Round 2.

I thought the recent rule changes allowed this now... isn't this what Angel List is essentially doing?

So here's a question... with the new rules around fund-raising, why wouldn't he just throw up a box to this side of this article that says something like:

"By the way... now that you've seen our numbers, if you're interested in a buying a small piece of equity in our company, leave your email address and we'll let you know terms."

Is there any downside to an approach like this? Setting your own terms and then selling equity if you find people interested?

This is so relatively unimportant compared to the issue of antibiotics becoming useless that it made me laugh. It needs a healthy dose of perspective.

Cool. I thought maybe it caught something from healthcare.gov servers. It's that time of year you know.

I'm not sure you're right, but I totally agree with the idea behind your idea, which seems to be that it's better to explain the difference rather than work around it.

From a coder's perspective, I'm looking at this like you can either identify the root cause and fix the system itself, or you can start putting in spaghetti code to fix it.

Now, if the system itself isn't behaving like you expected, it makes sense to me that there's something more fundamental going on that needs to be looked into. Why work around the problem when the problem itself could be telling you something very interesting and useful?

What we really need is a political movement based only on a very few things that we can all agree on. Leave economics, morals, guns, abortion, and everything else completely out of the story and focus on one or two core issues. Like upholding and strengthening the Bill of Rights.

I would like to salute the people who are willingly putting themselves on all kinds of lists by being here. I would be there as well if it were practical for me.

This could be one of the most important rulings in history. It will define whether or not the country is actually run by the Constitution or not, as it can clearly be read.

If it goes the wrong way (as I, and anyone else with a halfway decent grasp of English, reads it), it could set the stage for a future MAJOR shift in government. That, on top of the MASSIVELY unpopular NSA surveillance of Americans, would be a clear indicator of a runaway fascist state that the majority of Americans would absolutely not support. This sets the stage for a confrontation between those in power, seeking to maintain it, versus those who no longer willingly give them that power.

I also don't buy that "whatever the Supreme Court decides is correct and just and lawful", otherwise you would not get these split decisions. It is clearly a political body, and this ruling is going to tell us quite a bit about who is pulling the strings.

That's what I was thinking as well. If this sort of thing becomes commonplace, you would just take a jammer or scrambler with you and turn it on after you see them give up the chase.

It wouldn't be for your run-of-the-mill stupid criminal, but for the ones who think ahead.

That's pretty cool. GPS jammers are relatively easy to make however. Funny how hacking skills are quickly becoming the most powerful skills in meatspace as well.

That's a good point, I hadn't considered the collaboration aspect. Out of curiosity, what kind of projects require this? I suppose a book with multiple authors is one good example, are there others?

Why not just keep your files in git? Use a git GUI if the command line is intimidating to writers. That way you don't have to create a brand new writing tool. I keep scrivener files in git, it works great.

Well let's start doing something about this. I created a whitehouse.gov petition, let's start spreading it around: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-antibiotic-us...

Hopefully we'll be able to create some alternatives, but let's stop the bleeding if we can.

If you guys can somehow enable transferring between bitcoin and regular fiat that would be a game changer. Right now that's a laborious process and the closest thing to it is buying BTC in person. But this system with BTC as an option on one side of the transaction would be a wonderful way to get into and out of BTC-land.

This intrigues me. I'm fascinated by storytelling and the psychological impact of it, and data science/analytics is what I'm doing for a startup. I had never really considered the intersection of the two, I'm curious where your interest lies there. Analyzing successful stories to find out why they're successful? Finding ways in which stories can be improved?

I think step zero for any kind of "story analysis" would be extracting structured data from the raw text--pulling out things like emotions, foreshadowing, revelations, and so on. This is pretty interesting because I don't know that I've ever heard of this type of thing--for the most part text analysis focuses on things like sentiment, topic extraction and so on. There may be some fertile ground here for new types of analyses based on how stories work.

Curious to hear your thoughts... feel free to drop me a line as well to chat more, jason [at] applieddatalabs [dot] com

I've been thinking about a surface, anyone have any anecdotes about how their kids responded to that? I selfishly want the Wacom stylus functionality for myself.

Eclipse and sometimes IntelliJ Idea. No problems with either on Windows. And if you use an alternative shell or powershell you can use all the unix commands we know and love.

I'm using 8 on my primary desktop right now, haven't upgraded to 8.1 yet. Typing this comment on my Macbook Pro.

After using 8 for a while, I honestly don't see why people hate it so much. I don't use the Metro stuff, and the traditional Windows desktop experience is much faster. As a development environment I quite like it, and prefer it mightily over OSX as Apple tries to shoehorn that OS into an iOS-like frankenstein's monster.

I'll be upgrading to 8.1 as soon as I feel like it, but I just came here to chime in that I really don't get why people abhor 8 so much in the first place. It kind of feels like piling-on to me with no real substance behind. As a developer anyway--I can't speak to a non-technical user's experience with it.