pewpewlasergun

how about custom domains? are they more or less trustworthy than a gmail/hotmail/yahoo account?

do you have a source?

How do you deal with blisters? I tried barefoot running, made it about 1/10th of a mile, and had to walk back on my heels because my feet were raw and bleeding. I had large blisters for a few days after.

Was your post antagonistic towards the YC company or removed for an otherwise valid and transparent reason? If hacker news is removing posts by competitors, or giving their startup founders free range to remove posts I should probably start using it differently.

What's the current cost per base pair? Is a significant portion of the funding really going into synthesis?

Do you foresee synthesis costs falling quickly? It seems like its a major factor holding back commercial applications of synthetic biology.

Congrats on the funding and best of luck as you continue to scale!

We are discussing a puzzle games. Part of that will be discussing puzzles. Maybe don't read comment threads talking about things you don't want any more information about.

"The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel." - Neil Gaiman, "Neverwhere"

Didn't pg say there was a self-driving car startup? I don't see it.

Did he mention 'strong ai'? or is the 'exo-cortex' basically really good siri/google now?

Its worth noting that the Keith Hennessey's entire blog is anti-democratic party's economic policy. He has only worked under republican congressmen and presidents. This is hardly an unbiased source.

Do you have any sources on alternative systems of accountability for doctors? Or that go a bit more in depth about how they are unique in self-regulation? I haven't heard of this before, so thanks!

Couldn't you get the same benefit by just using the Arduino bootloader and including a USB connection? That way things could be reprogrammed in the arduino environment and you could still use your custom PCB. If nothing else it would be much cheaper, and you wouldn't be constrained by the arduino's size/layout.

So hackernews doesn't have PM's. If you don't mind letting me pick your brain a bit about startups/research/neuroscience, shoot me an email at cantsayimpleased@gmail.com (or put your email in your profile).

I second airbnb.

Advantages over craigslist and the like for subletting: You can sort by availability dates. A lot of craigslist postings start three months from now, I saw people trying to sublet for next spring already.

The pricing is in the same units. It sucks to read a post and realize the price is for some weird unit of time like 10 days or something.

The tragic thing about this is it doesn't have to be that way. People would look at Intellectual Ventures in a really positive light if it was actually doing lots of research, and sold access to its patents and charge for consulting. This would be a really interesting way to do things, and would actually be outsourcing research and providing a convenient way for companies in different areas to share patents. However, they are instead buying up patents and using shell companies to sue companies that have been operating for years and show no evidence of willful infringement. Another strike against them is their patents, they seem to love method patents which are way too broad and taking advantage of an overly generous patent office.

The tragedy of the patent dilemma is that it could be solved by just reforming the patent office, and making some slight adjustments.

Why is this quote worth considering or insightful? What does it add to the discussion? Have you done half of those things? Did you really get anything out of it? Some insects specialize, some do not. One could just as easily say farming is for insects, or flying, or a multitude of other things. Just because several species of insects do something does not mean we should not.

This quote, along with a few others, seem to be always dropped into internet discussions with no context or explanation, and I never see them add to the discussion.

I'm not as skilled as I need to be to pursue the ideas that excite me, and I am not excited about the ideas that I am skilled enough to pursue.

Come on, you can't say something like that without giving a single example....

Do you mind saying why you don't find thousands of scientific articles published in a wide variety of journals compelling?

This seems like one of those ideas that sounds really good until you start to think about it.

I would argue that biology without equations is just as useless as physics or chemistry without them. Yes, its interesting to know about evolution and how cells work, but to interact with a cell or guide evolution in any meaningful way you need to know the equations that describe flux over a membrane or evolutionary equilibrium. Just like its interesting to know the order of the planets and that rubbing a balloon against your head will make your hair stand up but if you actually want to send something to space or use electricity you need to add the equations.

The advancement of biology is driven by the development of algorithms and equations and to suggest that it is somehow less dependent on them than other branches of science does it a disservice.

Why didn't they give the non-management murder statistic? Or the percentage of fatalities that were in management?

This is actually what those sponser-a-child/build-a-well/kiva type charities do. For example, go to kiva and you'll see a bunch of people you can lend money to. These people already have loans, you aren't actually lending money to them. So, its not a dumb idea and has worked for other charities.

So for the family example, maybe print a catalog with food, furniture, ect. and a mini bio of the family and present it as buying stuff for that family. In fact, you already helped that family and the money goes to help the next one.

An online college has a lot of startup costs, unless you're just making a diploma mill. You need to get enough profs to teach a degree's worth of classes, especially if you're getting accreditation. (also, as an aside, the accreditations that matter require you to have a few years of successful classes). You also need a system for handling communication with teachers and students, grading, actually giving the lectures, and education software is not cheap. So as you hopefully can see, its not really bootstrap-able or easily scalable. You need money, and you need to get it right the first time, because you'll lose that money if you don't get enough students. Also, you need to be able to operate at a loss for several years, because it will take a long time to get accreditation. College is a lot about signaling - thats why it matters where you actually go. A few credits from a brand new online college is not great on a resume, so there will not be as much demand.

So, how about instead you try to take the tutorial concept and and apply it to practical skills? 2 classes of biology from an online college isn't really useful to someone. 2 classes of SEO or knitting or 'How to contract with the federal government' is really useful to people. This would also make it easy to recuit instructors. You could find retired people who just got out of an industry and want to make a little more money, or working professionals who want the feeling of giving back.

Here's kind of a short vision for a site i think has a shot at being successful. Have bios of the instructors, spelling out how they can actually give you good instruction in the course they're offering. Let people apply - advertise a class size capped at a certain number of people, and be upfront about costs. You split the cost with the instructor, so they only get paid if they bring in business. Don't use an essay, its a big barrier to conversion. Have people write 100-200 words on why they want to take the class, what experience they have in the area, and their future goals. Let the instructor choose who to take if more people apply than the class size. Bootstrap your way to more and more courses - and make the courses practical skills. There are a million websites that will teach me biology or history or math - most of them free and a lot better than what you'll be able to do. There aren't a lot of places where i can get someone to teach me how to transition from being an employee to consulting or get started in commercial real estate or start bidding on government contracts.

I feel like this article is an example of how a lot of charity and social businesses are half-baked at best.

First is the idea, mostly held by people at places like Dartmouth, that because these problems exist it must mean that nobody is trying to solve them. In reality, plenty of people are trying to solve them, its just difficult. This leads people to start their own charities that end up competing with each other for donations and thus it is difficult to develop the economies of scale that makes this stuff efficient.

The article mostly talks about the lack of market research. Its not difficult to ask someone 'What do you need' or 'Why don't you have running water' or 'Do you need your house to double as a workshop' and this would have helped guide the designs. A simple walk through and critical thinking would have shown designers that many people lived in apartments, and perhaps a 3000 dollar apartment building would get more use.

The article brings up putting local laborers out of business. I'm not sure I buy this argument against charity. The authors had spent previous paragraphs explaining the need for customization. The builders would not automatically be out of work if people bought prefab houses.

I guess in conclusion I think a lot of people who go into charity have the 'saving the world' attitude that makes them arrogant. This leads to people trying the same thing over and over again, and while competition is great in a market economy, when non-profits are competing for donations it leads to the non-profits viewing the donators as their customers and the most important people to please rather than the people they claim to help.