Hacker News Reader

namankon What's Y Combinator's conversion rate?

"Conversion" rate, as defined here, doesn't make sense for YC's (or any startup investors') financial model.

Valuation could be useful. Maybe track the change in the companys' valuation over time.

namankon Engineer Converts Van into Laundromat, Offers Free Loads to Homeless

Because it demonstrates that individual people have the power to affect change and all that remains between you and that is the willingness to take action.

namankon Ask HN: How do news networks get election data?

Btw, Twitter definitely has the potential to rival and I think, dominate, AP and Reuters if they design the business that way. Just need a reliable way to decide trust worthiness of the tweet/source, and a way to put context around a tweet or a bunch of tweets so the headline can be derived from the tweets.

namankon Ask HN: How do news networks get election data?

The other one is Reuters. AP and Reuters are the two largest networks for gathering news. Most other brands that you know and recognize are in the business of distributing news.

namankon Canada's immigration website crashes on election night

$20 says the crash is because of all the online jokes about moving to Canada that contain links to this site.

namankon Ask HN: How do I protect my parents from the internet?

This is a very important conversation for this decade. Do post your solution on HN once you have it.

namankon Time to Dump Time Zones

So 2pm Earth Time for me in North America means afternoon but it means night for Asia?

This might make sense if Earth's communication with extraterrestrial localities significantly outweighed communication across Earth.

But it doesn't.

So, no.

But upvote to the OP for posting an interesting idea. :)

namankon How to Build the Future with Sam Altman

Seems to me, the advice is all about surrounding yourself with good people.

namankon Ask HN: How long is your daily commute?

10 seconds, I live across the street.

namankon Ask HN: What to do with 3K visitors a month?

Go to a startup meetup and hook up with someone you think will be great at marketing or knows something about the chat space that you don't.

Partner with them on making this more profitable.

namankon Anomaly Updates

Precision, people. Precision with language is the mark of a clear mind.

<snark>

namankon How to Get a Job in Deep Learning

Speaking for the other side, the point is not that you achieved the accuracy but it is understand how you thought about the problem. The ability to decide on a useful hypothesis, formulate the problem around it, and have some way to measure your progress is very very valuable from the employer's perspective.

namankon I Hope Twitter Goes Away

Broadcast has it's own use. I posit that broadcast leads to a more organic formation of a community since it ensures that communities are emergent rather than prescribed.

Thousands of communities come into being and dissolve on twitter every single day - what, really, is the hashtag?

People within an "idea proximity" (nearness of two ideas:)) commune about ideas with a gusto lost in other social sites. Twitter is one of the greatest communication gifts of this century.

namankon We are not normal people

So what, it's the maker mindset. Add to that with the appreciation for what to make, you have a very impactful being indeed.

namankon Introducing our smart contact lens project (for diabetics)

Impossible. Anything with "blood glucose" on the labelling or even a hint of it will need FDA approval.

namankon Introducing our smart contact lens project (for diabetics)

Sympathize with you!

How would reduced accuracy really help you? I'm imagining that it could be worse since it could introduce anxiety...

namankon Why productive people get up insanely early

Insert a few chunks of quiet time in your workday. Mission accomplished.

namankon Most people won't

Why?

namankon Most people won't

Not really. She qualified herself by saying: 1. she uses it all the time. 2. she hates it.

As a founder, I am always looking for that combination in my users.

The bonus was offering herself as the solution. I'll venture that his decision was made even before she finished the sentence.

namankon Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain

Superfluous?

Ok, so the face value of "sorry" implies apology but putting the situation in context it seems less a question of culpability and more of a shared sense of frustration against/for a common goal.

How does it make you feel when you are peeved off at the rain and someone comes up to you to share in the misery?

It's about a shared sense of understanding more than anything else. If some people choose to take advantage of this for ulterior purposes - well, that's the very definition of emotional manipulation.

namankon Ask HN: Can Machine Learning be self taught?

Most people looking for machine learning will be looking for the projects you have worked on.

You can approach learning from several perspectives. Learning machine learning from abstract theory is one thing, there is also learning it as part of an application - Coursera has a Recommender System course that just started and I would venture the guess that it's also about machine learning.

namankon Geeking Out on the Logo

Well, I like the bevel. It may not be flat but it does an excellent job in the context it's supposed to be used in - go check out yahoo.com.

That favicon could definitely be reworked though.

namankon Clone yourself a million dollar idea this year

Yeah I get it. But the thing is - that's one year less I spend on my idea.

namankon Fake Signs On Bay Area Highways Say Drones Looking For Speeders

Does this notice, found at the end of the article, imply it is illegal to post the article on HN? Or is it ok since we are redistributing the link and not the article itself?

namankon Set up an email server in two hours

Well, with that consideration, the advice is moot since it isn't outside government regulation.

Hmm...good point. We really need an open-source ISP for privacy to start to work. A fool-less system where the executing code is available to the public with read-only access with write permissions to appointed admins.

namankon Set up an email server in two hours

It's defence against legal compliance with the NSA.

Emphasis is privacy and compliance, not security.

namankon Do_good.js

Sounds like a successful academic project but not so much for the industry. I'm hard pressed to find a company willing to use plain, publicly-available Javascript to write their number crunching algorithms. That said, I would loved to be proven wrong - good luck to you!

Berkley has a similar project going on where you can download a program that donates your idle CPU to their tasks.

namankon Do_good.js

I'd much rather donate CPU processes to advertisers than donate screenspace to their ads.

Ok, but do the advertisers want you CPU processes or your screenspace?

namankon Git for the masses

scigit.com is solving this problem.