bennyfreshness

Wow. I'm generally in the AI maximalist camp. But adding Werewolf feels dangerous to me. Anyone who's played knows lying, deceipt, and manipulation is often key to winning. We really want models climbing this benchmark?

Basalt is stronger than glass fibers (made from silica / quartz / sand), but not as strong as carbon fiber. Also, its more expensive than glass, but less expensive than carbon. Generally considered eco friendly.

Interestingly where carbon fiber's failure mode is instant, failing catastrophically (like say chalk), basalt will be more gradual (like say wood), in some use cases that's an advantage.

Overall though its still not mass produced, uncertain if it will ever reach scale.

If interested in fibers and composites, the YouTube channel Easy Composites is really interesting / educational. For example you can use flax fiber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD98L9XlCTU

Also "The Conquest of New Spain" .. written as a first hand account by a soldier for Cortes.

Obviously cruel and exploitative what the conquistadors did, but it's an example how fact can be sometimes more incredible than fiction.

How a small band of soldiers got in way over their heads and had to bluff and bully their way through, or would have certainly been killed.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108490.The_Conquest_of_N...

Google Apps Script

https://developers.google.com/apps-script

It's free, so pretty cheap.

You can set up a schedule to run the scripts. Has easy access to Google APIs (Gmail).

Very powerful and simple solution I've used for years.

Just an anecdote of my personal experience, since there's generally a sense of uselessness for MBAs in tech and I held the same view until recently getting an MBA.

I was moving from engineering to product management and thought it would help my resume to get an MBA, but I was pleasantly surprised how useful in many other regards the process and learnings were.

For sure learning on your own, doing things, building product, is better than structured curriculum. But there's something to be said for being exposed to a broad set of business information. When heads down writing code and building businesses, it's hard to step out and learn this disparate knowledge unless you're forced to by wanting to graduate. Maybe you're more disciplined than I, but in my free time I wouldn't dabble in accounting for instance, just wasn't interested. The forcing function is surprisingly helpful.

I'm not claiming it's for everyone, but I got a ton out of my MBA and would recommend. My situation was moving from engineering to product, had full time PM job, trying to start a side business, which now has had significant growth that I attribute a lot to my learnings from the MBA.

I started out as an engineer. But, I built tons of side projects and studied Product Management to hone my skills. Do lots of user testing and analytics. Show you can understand a user's problems and have empathy for the user. Practice solving those problems with simple, understandable UX. Then, take this ammunition and lobby hard to PM leaders. I put together a compelling presentation to a PM director at my corporate job and they gave me a chance with a PM "rotation." It's not the easiest of transitions, but you'll learn a ton. If you do well, they might put you in a full time entry level position. I took a pay cut. Make sure it's what you are passionate about. I miss engineering but love strategic problem solving and the magic that comes with PM. But overall, you have to be aggressive. Learn the skills and lobby hard. Go get it!

Anyone interested in this, please read "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. Its an in depth documentation of all the factors leading up to the war. Its absolutely enthralling, I can't put it down.

Is Heroku moving away from their free tier, downgrading to half uptime a day service?

really really wish this wasn't on fridays

This is state sponsored entrepreneurial propaganda IMO, reflecting the Chinese regime's push towards a more entrepreneurial focused free market. And I love it, I'm hoping Chinese individuals continue inventing products to help all of humanity.

SEEKING WORK - SF

Full stack Ruby engineer. Backbone.js, AngularJS. Have also done extensive FB app development. Can do markup as well, slicing PSD's into clean HTML/CSS. I would love to chat about your project and needs! bkoonse@gmail.com

Honestly, I didn't really see much wrongdoing on part of the leadership, namely Wen Jiabao, as described in the article. Its mostly relatives taking advantage of political connections. Its a broken system, where the state is too closely intertwined with business. Hopefully the rumors are true and the new ruling coalition will make some progress in liberalizing the economy modeling it after Singapore's.

I already have Pow installed but its asking me to install again. Will it conflict w/ my existing install and configuration if I reinstall Pow through Anvil?

the world is becoming so small, its great I guess but takes away from the mystery

Although I'm all for energy independence and the benefits of cheap energy I'm hesitant to think fracking's long term affects are worth it. This documentary does a decent job of depicting some bi-products of fracking.

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

I'm an engineer who just moved here to the Mission where I'm paying this exorbitant amount of money in rent mentioned in the article. The people in my building (of which 4 of 7 units are Googlers, I'm not one) battle a group of locals who congregate in the park drinking and doing drugs over noise, parking, trash, and various other complaints almost daily. We just want a safe living environment close to our workplace. I don't feel sorry for these low budget semi homeless drunks but hope the gentrification raises property value substantially for the home-owning locals who've been here for years. Its sad other long time locals who rent are also being forced out, but still can't help but think the process is cleaning up the city. Gentrification just never had a bad connotation to me and still doesn't now that I"m seeing it on the front lines.

This reminds me of an insanely compelling and moving plane crash survival documentary featuring commentary from survivors streaming on Netflix, a must see..

http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Stranded_I_ve_Come_from_a_Pl...

Very interesting pivot. They were doing an affiliate sales system where rewards from your purchases go to nonprofits of your choosing. They were my startup's #1 competitor. I wonder why the pivot?

This is absurd (and I can't believe its at the top of hacker news).

The article insinuates this is human powered flight.

Any realistic attempt at a solely human powered flying machine would utilize leg power, not arms which pale in comparison in terms of power output.

Also seems a bit fishy a buzzing sound, much like that of an engine, starts the same time as the wing flapping.

Interesting engineering feat but definitely not the holy grail of man powered flight. This is Turnigy powered flight, big deal.

"The design is based on mechanics used in robotic prosthetics."

It comes down to product.

If your product is in high demand and you have incredible mind share (as the mentioned brands do), revenue will follow. With more revenue you can afford to ramp up your customer service.

This article seems to claim that revenue is directly correlated to payroll costs. So spending more on payroll will somehow magically increase revenue? Then everyone would be doing it. There is a delicate balance.

Lastly, Circuit City failed because they couldn't innovate as fast as other competitors, namely Best Buy, not because they tried, as a last ditch effort, to save money by hiring temp workers.

It's unfortunate that Austin, such a creative and progressive city, is surrounded by the rest of Texas.

That number is from 2008, when PG wrote the post. Today I bet its much higher, although still far below reddit. But like PG said, much better quality.

Less employees equals less overhead. Less overhead means lower cost. Cost could be said to be "work" monetized. So less employees equals less work in the long run, shadow or not.

Very good points! THX!

Right now its all women, although I'm experimenting w/ Mechanical Turk to rate photos and other things. Hopefully I can lower costs by using our robot overlords.

I don't mean to prey on emotions, I just want to offer a service to improve your online dating experience.

I agree, men could be equally useful in judging profiles, I have to find out the comfort level guys have with other guys critiquing them. Personally I wouldn't care.

Not sure I understood your last point exactly, please elaborate..

well you instantly settled my "will women be open to this?" issue.. THX!

http://www.profileperfecter.com/ "Your Online Wingwoman"

I find keeping my eyes on the prize motivates me. I like watching interviews of people who've been successful its inspiring. ThisWeekInStartups has plenty of this. Keep long term benefits in mind, like having the freedom to do what you want, whatever that is. Combine that constant enticement with a regimented schedule and things begin coming together, at least for me they did. Plus once the ball gets rolling its hard to stop!

Cool, but I don't understand $1,300 locks. If somebody can breech a permitter and actually physically get to the door I think maybe you should allocate resources elsewhere.

Another example of a select few bad apples ruining it for everyone. This is such a shame. I've had great experiences with Airbnb. The last person who rented my loft left it cleaner that it was before!

a matchmaker app so my friends can help me actually get a date