bthomas

I've never understood the dynamic between 23andMe and the FDA. It's just information - what's to stop someone from setting up the same service in Bermuda? Would they really stop Americans from mailing a spit kit somewhere?

Understand it's hard to explain. I'd list the canonical use cases, so people know whether to dig in to the docs.

There's no evidence here that successful seed companies are more likely to look like bad ideas than unsuccessful seed companies. If 4/5 black swans look like bad ideas when they start, but 4000/5000 of this year's startups also look like bad ideas, then there's no effect to explain. The only lesson is that seed investing is just throwing darts.

Does Tinder identify fake accounts to Facebook? Tinder has a huge problem with spam already. I'm ashamed to say that I'd be inconvenienced if my Facebook account was disabled; don't want to have to re-sign up for all my other apps.

Suggest switching font weight 200 to 300 - still light, but readable

I'm curious if anybody has an example of how one of the designs in this book informed one of their own designs. I love the motivation for this book in theory, but started reading it and couldn't identify any explicit benefits to my own code.

A lot of the "real money" startups generate is from selling services to other startups and tech companies - particularly in the YC ecosystem. It's possible that revenue will slow in a crash and start a nasty cycle.

Is there room for legislation to ensure at least some liquidity in employee stock? I hate turning to government, but the current system makes it literally impossible for an employee to value options.

Surprised at all the focus on introversion in the comments. I'm 26 too and have always been social and extroverted - I can totally relate to this post.

These are near-universal struggles. Most people wish they could make more friends with shared interests, even those with a great friend group. (Most friendships are circumstantial and the individuals don't have much more in common than two random people from similar backgrounds.) Most people without families also get lonely on the weekends. Lately I've been trying to get healthy and avoid drinking and it's remarkable how much that's stalled my social and dating lives.

I had a different reaction: that this is an untapped opportunity for potential founders. Meetup is great in theory but for some reason isn't good at friendships. I don't get why in 2014 there is such a discrepancy between % of relationships and % of friendships sourced online. There must be a better way for the internet to introduce people with shared goals and convert them to real-life friends, without sex involved. Also consider how much friction this adds to relocation - how many people avoid moving because "all my friends are here". That's implying that it would be hard to make similar friends in a new city.

I hope the HN crowd starts to see this as a problem that needs solving. Personally, I've always thought that social apps were boring and superfluous - that I wanted to work on "hard" problems instead - but starting to question this assumption.

It's certainly memorable though, and that must help his personal brand. I don't like it either, but I wouldn't dismiss it as a bad idea from his perspective.

How common is this - are there any well known examples? (If so, they're not in wikipedia!)

He makes an interesting implicit argument - that it's okay to use patents to block established players from innovating with you, but not to block new startups from challenging you.

.001% is enough...

Do any of these services have a good workflow for pay what you want downloads?

Is there a good alternative to Rapportive?

Does Uber Black Car really subsidize UberX?

I find it hard to believe that UberX isn't profitable alone - Uber just takes 20% of fare.

How much does Mark Cuban have now? (350K as only Angel)

Worth noting that the initial discovery - identifying the common sequence motif - is a purely computational problem.

Could it just be pagification? Each question in the quiz loads a new page

Well said. I work in the field and am looking for more hackers to join. I'm happy to talk with anybody that might be interested - email in profile

On the other hand, I'd rather have one Twitter than three BlackBerrys

I think "end game" is more appropriate than "long game"

One theory for the "why" - I find it takes a higher cognitive load to understand someone with a strong accent. As a result, I don't digest the message as well and I'm subconsciously biased against complex conversations. I wonder if there is any cognitive psych literature on this?

Advice to those with a strong accent: find a way to communicate your message so it takes minimal effort for a receiver to understand. That could be improved English, but there might be easier ways for you to hack this - concise language, use concrete metaphors, keep printed slides in your briefcase, etc.

Naive legal question - is this API considered copyright infringement? Could they charge for it?

Similarly, are you allowed to create an endpoint for "products for sale at Whole Foods" assuming you collect the data legally?

No new information (and personally I'd prefer not to see this on Hacker News) but...this is a really remarkable article. It reads like a spy thriller in a way none of the short form reporting has.

It also introduces a new protagonist that is much more appealing than Snowden or Greenwald. Poitras seems like a truly remarkable woman. I cannot wait to see her final product.

This is the type of article that would make my parents - lifelong Democrats who refuse to consider that Obama could be wrong and a pesky computer geek be right - finally come around on Snowden.

One side effect is that this would accelerate the adoption of Python 3 in the scientific community

I've always thought this was an interesting dynamic too. The Boston Globe recently had a front page article about who is buying the Boston Globe: http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/06/27/least-five-gr...

I'd normally agree with your rules for an apology (eg. after a breach) but in this case I think their aggressive tone creates a Streisand effect. I for one had never heard of this guy. He certainly seems to be gaining some fans among commenters here.

I worry that their post will only increase book sales...

There's a large subset of that intersection that puts a bizarre halo effect around the NSA (everything they do is good) and the opposite for the IRS. So I do think this will wake them up.

7 days is a fine maximum, but not necessarily a target. A malicious 3rd party script should be removed in an hour.

Are there any independent groups that rate a firm's response to an exploit? Other than HN comments and (rare) legal recourse, I don't know what pressure a YC startup faces to do a good job in a holistic sense. It'd be nice if a respected 3rd party were around to shame sites if necessary.