skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Is this an idea worth pursuing further?
Hello everyone,

two weeks ago me and a friend were in a bar and suddendly we came up with the idea for http://www.learntoplayanything.com . By now we have put some work in it and we get a few visitors each day. (Although Google apparently hasn't indexed everything yet.)

It was all done in the spirit of "f*ck it, let's just do it and see what happens", but now we wonder if it was such an excellent idea after all.

What do you think? Is it worth to invest more time into this website? What features can you imagine that would make the site more valuable?

We are currently thinking about inserting links to guitar tabs and piano sheet music and changing the layout to something more pretty.
The Clinton "surplus" was created by raiding the Social Security trust fund. While every administration in the history of Social Security has raided the trust fund, nearly every administration in that period also ran a deficit, so the problem didn't really come up before. The president who continues running a surplus while leaving the trust fund alone (say, in a "lock box") would get full credit for running a true surplus. That may have been Gore, had he been elected. Or maybe he would have gone apeshit over 9/11 too and spent us into a deficit again.

In any case, the best we can reasonably hope for is kind of a seasonal surplus, where the government runs a surplus during boom times and a deficit during recessions. That might average out to a roughly balanced budget over the course of 10-20 years. What really happens is that in boom times, the government rushes for ways to spend all their new tax revenues, and in recessions, the government looks for ways to run up spending in order to fix the recession.
Just speaking from considerable experience that a minority of startups can benefit hugely from a good patent strategy (e.g., saw one of my early-stage fiber optics clients get to $400M annual run rate and multi-B valuation, with the dozens of patents filed by its founder proving to be a major factor in valuation at interim funding, at IPO, and at ultimate merger with JDSU).

I find your overall logic compelling, however, as I have seen startups use patents all too often for empty positioning, at considerable cost.
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/tools/JavaSp...
Single page: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/22/they_killed...
Happy Nerds - Programming Links for Kids
You misunderstood my second point a bit: By "an umbrella corporation", I don't just mean that Al Qaeda is made up of different cells. I mean that each of the cells is united by a group of people higher up. In this case, it primarily means Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi, but there are others (Azzam used to be on this list, for example). These guys still have their own goal - a global Islamic state.

bin Laden, al-Zarqawi, etc just view the rest of the groups under the umbrella as different pieces to helping them achieve their goal. That group x wants independence, while group y wants to maintain control (or whatever the case may be) is irrelevant to them. They want all the groups to succeed because if it does, then, thats one more area in the world where Islam rules, one step closer to their end-goal.

And that is why Al Qaeda having ties everywhere is such a problem. That Al Qaeda is an umbrella to bring all of these groups together to trade people and/or skillsets among groups is the problem. Not that Al Qaeda will go and blow up some building in some country. Because then, thats two more groups with information that can (potentially) be used in bad ways.
Pretty cool idea. It would be a more open competitor to Apple's GarageBand music teaching features. I think your idea of adding more value to the site would be a good one. Apple has quality and integration with a nice music creation software. Perhaps you could include more information from lyric sites and guitar tabs and sheet music as you noted.
Will the repayment of the TARP loans fix anything?
That link says nothing about electronics, the headline claim. The sources for banning electronics all seem to refer to Twitter, which may result from isolated incidents, or speculation.
Hi gommm, it's really nice of you. I'm living in Wuhan now, but since I go on errand a lot, maybe we can meet up in Shanghai someday.
Railroads: Tepid Outlook for US Economy
If you included guitar tabs and perhaps allowed users to upload custom tabs (so that people can improve on publicly available ones), it'd be absolutely great. I'd use it on a weekly basis at least, if not daily.
58109
Haven't read Levine's book, but from the chapter summaries I've seen, I'd say it's less general-purpose.

I like all the books you mentioned in your original post. OL is probably the best, but it doesn't make sense to read it first. I learned from both ACL and PCL and like ACL better because it's more systematic. But this seems to be a minority opinion.
They "might also" overuse "scare quotes."
I wonder how it goes about a person talking to himself (without actually speaking) vs. thinking and speaking to somebody.

If I had to use one of these I'd surely need a 'mute' feature :)
it just doesn't want people giving their facebook logins out
I, for one, like the idea and can see myself using it in the future.
clickable link: http://www.learntoplayanything.com
That's great advice. I took a position as a dev lead at my job a while back because I wanted more experience dealing with clients, budgets, estimating, and delegating tasks. It's been far more stressful than my previous position, and my pay has yet to increase accordingly (though it should within the next month), but I consider it a win for all the experience it has provided me. I look forward to applying these skills to my own projects.
nVidia's latest OpenCL driver actually uses LLVM for compiling device code.

If you want to read more: http://llvm.org/devmtg/2009-10/Grover_PLANG.pdf
Which is why software engineering and systems engineering look so similar, despite having quite different developmental histories.
Sounds like you might appreciate The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks:

http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com
it's a good idea, and has some decent traffic #s(i.e. "sweet home alabama guitar lesson" 14,800 searches/month) but it seems to be a little bit competitive. Go exact searching for "sweet home alabama guitar lesson" and you get 185,000 sites.

I think "sweet home alabama guitar tutorial" is a much better fit. Only 53,700 hits, and none are really an exact match for the search on page 1(which is probably true for all other searches). And that still gets you 6,600 searches a month.

So update your titles to be [SONG TITLE] guitar tutorial.

And you should be able to hit some decent traffic numbers with that.
also, this will be a SEO play for you, so I suggest finding a domain that has guitar tutorial(s) in the url. Having that will help you biiiig time when it comes to ranking high for results
How is that a defense? “Others would also suck“ is not a good argument to make.

Any web service should give the user full control of their data. Leaving should be easy, not hard. (And it is hard. I seem to only ever use the help pages of web services when I want to leave.)
I'm just saying that I can understand why they would complain. Sending a cease and desist might be a little extreme, but it seems only natural for them to complain.
I like the idea. Not sure about making money from it, but definitely see it as useful.

typo on home page... "Also contact us if you want to contribute by helping uns organizing the links."

Can you add more specific information to your search results lists? For me right now, this page...
http://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day
returns 20 results that all are "Boulevard of Broken Dreams " - would be more useful if there was some additional info to differentiate.

On this page:
http://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day...
Which is the third page, the paginated link to page 1 actually goes back to the third page. The link to page 1 on all paginated results pages seems to link to the current page instead of page 1.
Yet they'll ask for your email password to take a look at your contacts.

Doubtful, and hypocritical if true.
Yes! See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7266/full/461879a...
Also parseable as "is late".

Why not iTablet?
I like the rule of law
It sounds like seppukoo does in fact spam all your friends. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to them if that weren't the case.
Agreed. I regularly visit guitar tab sites like ultimate-guitar.com. Most of these sites are loaded with ads and have terrible design.

I'd love to visit one that has a clean design with correct tabs and videos without all of the cruft. This site seems like a great idea if you can manage to load it with plenty of content without running into legal issues (I've seen many tab sites get shut down).
The way I see it is that you are taking advantage of bad search results in a specific area. You are simply creating a web page that tries to match a specific video with a specific search query and monetize by putting your ads around the content (the youtube video).

If you simply built a single page with a collection of links with that text to the video of interest, you'd largely serve the same purpose for users - search engines would rank the actual video higher for that query, but unfortunately you wouldn't be inserting yourself into the middle in order to extract revenue.

Your model is negatively effected by search engines improving their ranking algorithms with respect to video content. That seems like a bad place to be.
1. Started hacking the TI-82 in 7th grade while bored in math class. Moved on to TI-89 in 9th grade, and then "graduated" to assembly language so I could make better games. I then moved on to "real" computers with C++, which seemed like an incredibly easy language after doing assembly!

2. I personally found those years hacking around with the TI calcs not knowing what the hell I was doing to be incredibly valuable. I think a lot of people try to learn the "right way" of doing things by reading about "design patterns", etc., but they never deeply understand the value of those ideas of structuring programs. By just hacking a lot and making tons of mistakes, I really learned the power of abstraction and how abstraction can be used or mis-used.
OK, dug a little deeper,
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/12/insurgents-hack-us-...
I believe the reference to unified address space is in reference to #6 in the PDF linked below and caches #4. I agree that the unified memory address space will be wonderful as managing all the various hierarchies by hand is a pain.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/fermi_white_papers/D.Patte...
I wasn't aware that clojure had support for pre and post-conditions. Is it a new addition to the language?
I'm not an English native speaker and asking from pure curiosity: What's funny about the name? Does it have some connotations?
For the website, I would recommend putting some of the non-content bits (links, buttons, login, etc.) on the side, not on the top. Studies have shown that reading is faster and more comfortable with narrower columns, and the 30-45 cm found in modern laptops is way too wide. There's nothing wrong with having a lot of vertical screen space though.
ServerSpy Firefox plugin shows, on the status line, the server for every site you visit.
It is also the sum of eight consecutive prime numbers 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 = 210.
Care to explain? I took your username as a reference to Fargo. Is there another meaning, perhaps one that the Cohen Bros were referencing?

Edit: I'm an idiot. Very clever.
Palindromes (Clojure vs. Common Lisp)
I like it.

Clicking on the logo should bring you back to the homepage.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=210
It's not like he's calling to pitch anything. He legitimately wants to wish them a happy birthday and catch up with them. I guess some discretion is used when deciding to call someone. (He obviously had to know them well enough at some point to get their birthdate.)
Entrepreneurship is not limited to doing a tech startup. Also, going on your own is not worthwhile only for people with other comfortable options.

It is a pity that a PhD with such high credentials has such a narrow world view.

Edit: This article seems to be saying startups make sense when one has these desirable skills. In other words only start on your own if you are in a field where you need a difficult or highly prized degree. Well we all know where the highly desired financial engineering skills have led the economy.

The author is just risk averse. Which is OK. So a degree and other options - which are a hedge against startup failure - seem to him to be pre-requisites for going on your own.
I'm not gruseom, but I'm guessing it's funny because of the stereotype that Japanese people can't pronounce 'l' and will replace it with 'r'.
Yes, his love is competition instead of cooperation and creation.

About trying to be clever: If you are a human being, you an intelligent animal; you are already clever. If you are trying to understand something or someone, or solve a problem, or capture an elusive inspiration that's just out of reach, then it is natural to try, to make an effort. Genius only exists in action.

> Are you the well read geek that with all of the answers.

No. But I notice that when I encounter a problem, I get lots of ideas about how to solve it, often building on each other. Some of them work really well. I don't like to tell people what the answer is, but to give my perspective and hear their's: then I have two perspectives. And the beginner often sees things in a novel way that the expert misses, so that an open discussion is often greater than the sum of its parts.
What is "issuance"? Printing money?
>>It is also a story about how Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today.

It is difficult to convey the depth of my disgust after reading the above sentence from the first paragraph of the article. I share both Russian and Jewish heritages and to my dismay I frequently encounter writings that belittle the history of Holocaust. In comparison, Stalinism and gulags are less known to the Western audience. It is just as despicable to use Holocaust as Stalinist atrocities to score points against political opponents. A death of a single lawyer behind bars or the deaths of numerous enemies of the modern Russian state should never be compared to systematic killing of millions of innocent people.

To borrow from a comment by rms further in this thread, it is "an argument about a difference of orders of magnitude". However morality of killing human lives should not be counted in orders of magnitude -- there is a qualitative difference between killing a man, a family, an ethnicity or a race. Saying that "Stalinism and the gulags are alive today" establishes a false moral equivalence.

Foreign Policy magazine editors should resign for allowing to publish drivel hurtful to lives of so many people.

EDIT: With respect to comments by 'cema', I also have family in former Soviet Union. None of them would compare the famine, repressions, kidnappings, prisons or gulags under Stalin to what is happening in Russia today.
It was added recently.

There is a lot of activity in the language development leading to what I expect to be an exciting Clojure 1.1

[Edit] A link to the language definition:
http://clojure.org/special_forms#toc10

Another link to a small but useful (for me, anyway) discussion:
http://blog.fogus.me/2009/12/21/clojures-pre-and-post/
Is it so hard to test this? Just give people various types of bacteria, track if they receive antibiotics, and watch outcomes.

It's slightly harder in that you have to give combinations, and not just one, but I think it's doable.

I think it should be routine to give people probiotics after every single antibiotic treatment. That would go a long way toward getting rid of C. difficile.
The startup process has several validations built into it. First when you pitch it to your friends you see how they react..maybe build a prototype and see traction. Its not like you wake up one day, and go...I am going to quit my job and do a startup. The balance is how much you trust other people's opinion vs your own instinct.
Actually I think Netflix should buy Redbox. It's obvious how to put the business models together, and hell, even the colors are the same.
I am of the same ancestry as you are, but my opinion differs. My father, who was born in 1924 and thus survived both Hitler and Stalin, has recently told me that the situation reminds him of the Stalin's period. He is an old man now, but he has not lost his faculties (still working as an engineer, at the age of almost 86), and I am sure he has thought about what he was saying.

On the other hand, he was not afraid to say it over the phone, so the situation is not 100% like it was in the USSR (then I guess he would have been really afraid to say it anywhere anyone could have overheard him). But in some important ways it is similar.
Digging deeper into the story, it appears that the author (Bill Browder) is someone who profited from the criminal pillaging of Russian economy in 1990s: "[Bill Browder's] business was very successful, profiting from the wave of privatizations occurring in the Russia at that time" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Browder. May I remind you of a Hacker's News thread that talked about Russia's corrupt oligarchs of 1990s: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998318.

In addition to a publication in Foreign Policy, the author managed to produce a very polished video which is also available from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6ljV-WfRw

The current politicians of Russia became popular precisely for what they've done to Bill Browder -- they have taken back the money that was stolen from people in the 1990s.
I'm particularly encouraged by all the stories of people getting into programming much later in life. I'm a freshly minted graduate, and it's cool to see the career changes.
With all due respect to your father who survived through very difficult times, I doubt that he agrees with the statement "Stalinism and the gulags are alive and well in Russia today"
Where Lisp Fails: at Turning People into Fungible Cogs
If You’re Nervous About Quitting Your Boring Job, You’re Sane
I've taken (and received pretty good marks) in two accounting courses, and five economics courses. I read the Business section of the Wall Street Journal and NYT daily, and try and closely pay attention to the issuances of the Fed. I tried to read that article for the better part of 30 minutes, and it was close to incomprehensible to me. I'm wondering if the author was deliberately trying to be obtuse, or if they are really so caught up in their jargon, that this was the attempt at making things clear. The closest I can think in the Hacker Community would be Steve Gilmor - who can also be quite obtuse:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/23.html
I have to disagree. There are many sites for guitar tabs, and they have a massive database of tabs already. Competing against them generally is not a good idea. Links to tabs for the song in question would solve the problem without wasting your time trying to compete.

A better use of your time would be to cultivate your collection of videos. I think a collection of searchable video tutorials on how to play songs is a neat idea that addresses a different need.
I agree. A card in the mail would be more appropriate. A telephone call is something a bit too personal from someone with whom you've had no other contact in the prior year.
For what it's worth, you apparently kept your cool. I imagine if your reaction was anywhere near how you really felt about it you'd be detained and tasered for awhile.
This is an argument about a difference of orders of magnitude. I think it is possible for Stalinism and the gulags to be alive while impacting much less than the millions of people killed during Stalin's reign of terror, though I understand why you disagree.
http://common-lisp.net/project/boston-lisp/

I think these guys would be better suited to answer your question. Neil Van Dyke runs the listserv. I read that a company, ITA, sponsors the monthly Boston Lisp meet-up, and browsing their website, they have projects for Lisp. ITA does travel applications, such as the algorithm for Orbitz's (or was it Travelocity?) low-fare search. As Lisp was developed at MIT, I bet there are more companies familiar with it.
Were your mother and friends unable to acquire the required skills, or were they simply not interested in doing so? Perhaps there are thousands of job requests, but few that would suit your friend's taste?

I am pretty sure even your mom could become a Java developer...
Welcome To The Future [video]
Don't do a startup, because some Yoga teacher failed with her Yoga studio.
Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories! This is really great to read, and it's even better that there's no cookie-cutter way into programming. I guess I had too much of an attitude that this is like grad school in a basic science or a career as a classical violinist, where you pretty much have to have followed a certain track to get in and where it's better to have started as a young prodigy. The media reports heavily on the crackshot kids who develop their start-up at age 16, and I guess it skewed my perception. And even if you are one of those lucky kids who stumbled on something so fun at such a young age, it was really interesting to read all the different uses and sectors to which programming skills can be applied.
A little fast paced, but very good stuff, thanks. Do you know of any more in-depth videos on Thorium reactors?
Thanks JayNeely, I'll add the "How do you know" info page. I'll also modify the facebook, twitter icons to something on the lines of "share this link".
Thank you benatkin. That's a more appropriate message to display.
This actually makes a ton more sense. The business models fit almost like a glove.

Amazon and Netflix seem too disparate to be the same entity, they are more sales partner material.
Morality of killing human lives should not be counted in orders of magnitude -- there is a qualitative difference between killing a man, a family, an ethnicity or a race. Saying that "Stalinism and the gulags are alive today" establishes a false moral equivalence.
Wow, it sounds like you actually condone the spirit of what happened. As an American it's strange to imagine celebrating rule of force over rule of law. The US falls woefully short at times, but I can't imagine anyone cheering fraudulent theft of tax money to pander to voters.

I also find it hard to believe someone would behave as the lawyer in this story did merely over ill-intentioned greed.
Thank you for sharing your story! I wasn't actively discouraged like you, but my family also enforced rigid notions of what "proper girls" did. I'm so glad you're now doing what you love.
>start with a specific goal/project in mind and find out what steps are required to get it done.

Best advice you can get especially when you start learning to program.
ideamonk, I'm not storing the search results for now. In future, I plan to provide API for third-party websites to get the results.

My script does a simple PHP/Curl header retrieval to find the web server name.
its half of 420 ;)_.~
Also a triangular number.
Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I really appreciate it. More changes coming to beewulf.com in the next few days based on your feedback.
There is no extra value being returned for now. I'll try showing more info in future versions. Thanks.
As a guitarist this is a very painful spot for me and good instruction is worth a lot. If you can figure out a model that connects people like me with quality content efficiently then you win.
Thanks jlgosse.
Editorify : search engine with only authoritative sites
>>As an American it's strange to imagine celebrating rule of force over rule of law

What about Al Capone? The guy was caught on tax evasion charges, was US government's rule of force justified in his case?