skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When I loose all motivation I take a week off. Generally within a few days I can't wait to get back to work. But I only dabble. I spend a few hours thinking or researching a small, stimulating area of the project. After 7 days I am fully charged up. I've seen my friends. I've spoken about the project, I've got new ideas and I've had a rest.

If after a week I still can't face it... well I'm probably screwed. The idea may be fine but I've lost it. I generally soldier on for a month, take another week off and repeat. If the cycle lasts a few months and I still can't get past the pain. I think (for me at least) it's time to move on.

I can't really answer the specific questions you pose because, well if I could answer them, I'd be VC boss dude with a suit and a very fast car.

Time away from most problems seems to make them less of a problem in my experience.

good luck
I know the owner of a moving company. He has a large mansion in the hills of Santa Barbara (with fake-rock landscaped pool, etc.), plus a large ranch in Utah (which he bought after he sold his beach house).

Anecdotal, I know.
Well, that argument feels very circular to me, since I had PG's essay firmly in mind when composing my words about Facebook. :)

But PG's essay is mostly about high school and earlier, as I recall. Facebook was originally designed for college students. So I wouldn't want to suggest that the app was built around the kind of warped prison-yard junior-high-school culture described in the essay. The situation is not that bad: Facebook is an app for adults, and it remains relevant for adults. But it is primarily an app for young adults, of a certain age and social position.
Or I could add a downarrow on stories for users over a certain karma threshold.

Yes.

I would have certainly used it on that burger thing yesterday.
Yep, the comment link was fixed a week or two ago, now it seems broken again.

While we're on the subject, is it possible for HN to add the time correctly? I always get this in my RSS feed (look to the right): http://i32.tinypic.com/j0bgyc.png
The truth is rather sadder: There are lots of manic depressives among us, but people prefer not to think about them, and their condition is so stigmatized that they do not advertise it.

The only manic depressives that cannot be ignored are the famous ones.
Steve Wozniak on Apple, Steve Jobs and the Value of a Good Prank [Interview]
for some of the stories I want to follow the conversation. But I check HN quite often and it annoys me when I see the same stories in the front page that I read the day before.
Is Facebook worried more about competitors or sustainable revenues?

I don't have any friends there, so this is just speculation, but if I had to guess, I'd pick the latter.

You're right about accepting large valuation investments.

By the same token, it's hard to imagine the investor rooting for the company to fail, after having taken a stake (unless, of course, MS really has a Facebook killer waiting in the wings).
This is why resource reserves are usually accompanied by a price per unit:

http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/u/uranium-reser...

The global uranium reserves with mining costs up to US $ 80 per kilogram amount to about 2 million tonnes ... If mining costs of up to 130 $/kg are taken into consideration the global uranium reserves are increased by further 3 million tonnes.

At some price, it will become possible to extract trace uranium from ocean water, of which there is quite a bit.
In the trading game that aided the formulation of the teachers' ideas, it didn't sound like there was a way for the children to add value.

It's interesting that the article's core attitude is based on the idea that eliminating inequality is (or should be) the main concern. It would seem that socialist societies have demonstrated that when you focus on inequality, you end up stifling productivity. Maybe there should be more focus on productivity and advancement rather than inequality, although that's harder to do in the domain of Legos. When you do this, it's not about control of the raw materials as much as it's about who contributes the greatest value at their link in the chain.
If you aggregate jobs from other sources then be prepared for absolutely awful data quality. Firstly, recruiters don't understand their specialism ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=112521 ). I've lost count of adverts for "open sauce" developers and suchlike. Secondly, they brazenly lie about details. If a job is advertised with a salary between x and x*3 then the latter is very theorectical. This type of practice is encouraged because it rises to the top when you trivially aggregate.
Programming as Theory Building (by Naur of BNF)
lockpicking is a lot of fun. I haven't been practicing much recently but I own a set of picks and live to stay up to date with the latest locks and attacks. I've been meaning to master lock bumping but never got around to it.

I'm curious if more people here are into this.
Paraphrased from Full Metal Jacket:

Pvt. Joker: "Is that you, reddit? Is this me?"
I was just at the YC dinner last week and the same people were there as the week before. Lots of dudes with laptops.
I thought I was browsing Hacker News, but I guess reddit changed their layout today.
I find this "never give up" stuff ridiculous. You'd never apply it to investing money (eg/ "I bought this stock 1 year ago and I'm just going to BELIEVE it into a higher price), so why would you apply it to investing your skills and emotional commitment to some particular problem in some particular market? Things change -- your market, your problem, your competitors, and yourself -- all change. As circumstances change, so must your strategy.

Now, right until the very moment when you decide to do something else, obviously you want to be working your tail off, and you want your team to have enough confidence to be motivated. But there's a limit to the value of cheerleading; it can only go so far. The only reason cheerleaders have something to smile and dance about is because there's some hard-assed coach in the background who takes reality into account when making decisions.

There's no reward for cowardice, or giving up on a good idea before giving your best effort... but it's equally true that there's no honor in marching stridently toward failure, on a path that you should have rationally abandoned months ago.

Also, realize that there's a difference between giving up on your project, vs. giving up on your self, your team, your professional aspirations, etc... the former need not imply any of the latter.
I wouldnt say they look nothing alike, but I wasn't expecting Redhat to make a big deal about it.
My Case Against Venture Capital
I'm (slowly) reading Kurt Goedel's incompleteness theorem. In 1931, he developed his own notation and used it to concatenate strings of symbols, merely as a building block in a larger proof. This was at least 10 years before programmers would be able to instruct a running computer to concatenate strings. He'd be a frustrated genius if he had the idea today because most people still don't understand his insights.
I find responses containing the word "ridiculous" ridiculous. (Does that mean this response is ridiculous?)

Changing strategy does not equal giving up.

Giving up prematurely is the single biggest impediment to failure in any field. How do you know if it's premature? You don't. So you keep going.

FWIW, I hope my competitors think like you do. I'd be the only one left standing.
If that's the case, I would recommend changing the link in the top-left corner once you're logged in to take you somewhere other than the home page - maybe to my account or dashboard or something like that.
Open source it for non commercial use. Don't expect much benefit from open sourcing at first. It takes patience to build a decent community around an open source project.

While most open source projects never gain any traction, plenty of companies have thrived with an open source model. (Not all end up like MySQL though)
At the risk of stating the obvious, the most important factor determining the quality of stories on is how you define quality. The usual definition is to equate quality to popularity. This is problematic since the hordes of 14 year olds outnumber those of us who like the current quality. Popularity does have some nice properties, so you probably don't want to ax it completely...just give priority to the right subset of people.
Interesting scenario with student government. Remarkably similar to the content of the video, too.

I didn't find poor logic in the show per se, but in the discussion within the show -- the thinking of the participants of the meeting. The show may have done a very nuanced job of capturing that boardroom discussion true to reality and in a way that appeals to the audience... my issue with is the quality of that discussion itself, the quality of the reasoning of the participants.
In the book Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, he described his hobby of cracking combination safes.
The ancient Chinese had three symbols for power: gold, a sword, and a mirror. Wealth and military force are obviously sources of power. However the third, self-knowledge, is often overlooked.
Ascribe - A Case Study on View Specs
It is the socialism in the blend of the US economy that drags us down as well as in other blended countries such as in Europe.
I am aware of scons and cmake, but how do I distribute the code? Every single piece of Linux software I ever compiled has always been configure/make/make install.

I don't mind replacing autotools, but make seems to continue being a standard way of installing from source.

Am I wrong? Thank you.
Legacies undermine merit-based admissions
"The kids in the post add value by building more complex structures out of the raw materials, no?"

The problem with using that as a refutation is that in the market of the classroom, the lego houses are "durable capital goods". The 'right' way for the teachers to shake up the classroom is to highlight the value of other toy markets. For instance: you can create far more diverse objects with play-doh than you can with legos - in some instances, that might make play-doh more valuable.

Helping the kids understand that makes a conversation like, "I'll trade you 1/3 of my green play-doh for your lego car," possible. It also would not only -empower- the other students, it would begin teaching the kids valuable lessons in determining value and how to negotiate. Skills and insights that are far more valuable than learning how to say, "But you should give x to me because you have more."
I wonder if lock bumping really works. I've also got a set of Auto Jigglers (btw, the police get really pissed if you have these things, so don't carry them around in public), but they don't work at all. At least, I've had no success starting or opening my own Toyota Camry.
Remove the middle man and bring more value to your customers. What a concept.
Thanks! I expressed my concerns regarding scons a few posts above. Another question: is there a place where Linux C programmers hang out? In case I need to ask a similar question in the future.

Thank you again.
Actually, I was sure it was Hacker News as soon as I read the whine comparing it to reddit.
There have been several posts lately about "stupid" or "unlikely" ideas that make money. I could see this falling into that category. It's an interesting attempt, if not singularly creative.
Is this useful for hacking or for writing mail?

I type slowly, but this gives me time to think about what I type. Can you produce code at touch typing speed?
Pentaho's Mondrian datacube solution is quite nice, especially so if you like Java and XML. Unfortunately, it may have a limited market because, in many cases, a bespoke solution requires equal or less effort and gives more control.
Cringely: Sometimes going green hurts more than it helps
With jigglers it seems to be all about probability. IIRC they only worked for american cars (and even then it might have been only older models).

Bumping OTOH seems pretty reliable. Just that I'm afraid to try it on my front door for fear of ruining the lock.
My idea... an old west shoot out. You're in the saloon, peering out the window with a rifle. You can duck out of sight behind the television just like you could with a real window. You could also limit your exposure to different baddies by changing you angle of attack.

The directional pad or keyboard could switch between windows, doors, newly created holes, etc.

It's not immediately obvious how this will revolutionize all shooters, but for the shooting gallery type this should be included in all of them starting now.
How is it, I wonder, that so many people get bent around the idea of making an economic analysis out of this? We're talking here about a playroom, the very nature and substance of which means that the teachers should be primarily concerned with making sure everyone has equitable access to the "resources" -- i.e. the toys.

I think one can argue whether or not the teachers are doing that in an effective and appropriate way, certainly. But I believe that this one underlying fact is nonnegotiable.

Personally, and as a parent, I find the repeated and forceful attempts to turn this into some kind of capitalist vs. socialist laboratory are both ill-conceived and ill-advised. Whatever else may be true of the situation, I believe it is certainly no place to institute a Lego-fied re-enactment of Lord of the Flies.
It's interesting that the article's core attitude is based on the idea that eliminating inequality is (or should be) the main concern.

It would be appropriate at this point to zoom out a bit and remind everyone that we're talking about a playroom full of kids ranging from roughly kindergarten to third grade. Of course eliminating inequality (insofar as access to toys and play equipment is concered) is the point! As I stated in a previous comment, you can argue whether the teachers picked the best way to do it, but that argument does not change the underlying premise.
Please cite your evidence for how we are being "dragged down," and please cite a purely capitalist society that rivals our own (or those of Western Europe). I'm willing to consider evidence, but not an unfounded assertion like this.
I can completely understand what you're talking about. We learned the bitter lesson between trendspotting and trendsetting (Sam Altman's comments have credence here too), and are almost back to square one. It hurts quite a lot because we think of the time we wasted, and at times, I personally look back wondering if we just didn't execute correctly instead of there not being a market.

1) When things are going terribly? Dig down and talk with your partners in the trenches. Get motivated (see other posts). Remember your users because they are the ones who give the best advice about your product. At the earliest stage, I think your community of users, fellow hackers, and partners are your best way to respond. Know to admit that you don't know and you need guidance from others.
2) Usually PG's comments about iterating apply here. You will always be changing because your users will tell you to. Whatever is hindering make smart and rapid changes to your product should obviously be changed. Nevertheless, maybe you just haven't made the right product for a growing market or your competition beat you, then...
3) Quit... I honestly don't know when though. For us, it was when we I realized I had become Ahab. Except instead of a great white whale, my partners pointed out it was a small beluga. The market was not there for political gaming (outside of the slow-growth educational sector) and if we wanted to really compete, we would need to be a media company or provide a utility to gov professionals (e.g. vertical gov search or customized gov aggregation). My partners and I talked over it and they really never liked politics as a vertical (but they thought Moby Dick was somewhere out there). One of my partners bristles at the mention of politics and he sort of outright dismisses politics even as a backup for our YC app.

Sometimes the backlash to failure is hard to handle, so it's important that everyone tries to focus on what's best for the company. We're still in it because we dream of electric sheep and we really want to create value in the world (even though we're still the quintessential guys in a house).

We now are back to square one, with no experience with the new bad-ass idea, and we're in the middle of tying things up with our previous contracts and licenses (which keeps us from just diving in), but it'll be okay even if you do quit. The good thing is that since you're bootstrapped you didn't waste a significant amount of money from someone else.
Imagine you form a team of 5 people to build a new product -- for the sake of argument, let's say you've decided to try to build a prototype of a Gubmarine, a submarine made out of an advanced form of bubble-gum that can allow a torpedo to pass right through you, and then instantly re-seal up.

Let's say that after 1 year, given changing competitive dynamics, it is the rational conclusion of the team's leader that continuing to build that product is no longer worth the opportunity cost of those 5 people's time based on an up-to-date risk/reward calculation (perhaps Wrigley's has just produced a prototype of their own Gubmarine that is 1.4 times better than yours and will be ready for market 5 months sooner than you can hope to be, and they already have a major advantage when it comes to distribution, which makes puts you at a considerable disadvantage). Is it then not plausible that ceasing work on your project is a good idea?

This stuff happens in big companies all the time -- they try something new, and it doesn't work, so they cease efforts and try something else. That's a "change in strategy," not "quitting," because the company as a whole continues. But in a startup, it sometimes is called "quitting," because you often only have one product, and your team is specially designed just for that one product (and incidentally, that what made you so efficient)... but it also means that you can't just shuffle those people around to different positions in the company; instead, sometimes, unfortunately, you quit. You die.

Same people, same product, same/similar change in capital allocation -- but for the big-company it's a "change in strategy," while for a startup, it's "quitting."

Isn't this how startups work? What's wrong with condemning projects that aren't earning their keep?

I am fully cognizant of the importance of having strong motivation and not giving up when it's too soon, and how difficult it is to know when it's ready to quit. And as long as I'm leading a project that's been decided to continue, I'll have my eyes facing forward and I'll raise all the hell I can muster to make things work, let me tell you. But the idea that it is never good to quit is, in my mind, still worth of the word "ridiculous," even if using that word makes me sound impolite or foolish.

FWIW, I won't particularly mind if all my contemporaries think like you do -- that way many of them will never become my competitors, as they'll be too busy working on that great idea they had 3 years ago to notice that the world changed in the meantime, and that they'd be better off giving up and starting something different.

(Or maybe I hope they think like I do, but they'll misjudge and quit too early. That's also a possibility. We're dealing in grays here, not B&W).

-- Update --

Important to note, belatedly, that my talk about "giving up" etc. was in response to the comment I replied to, not the original questioner (who doesn't seem to be in such dire straits as someone who needs to hear what I've written).
Valuation is not the same thing as revenues per year. Or profit per year.

an easy example: if facebook made 15B per year with 5B in profit, they could distribute dividends of the 5B each year to stockholders. In only 3 years, your original investment would be paid back and it would be all profit (to the investor) from that point on.

Would you think that was a good deal? I would! So good that it'd get bid up on the open market way past 15B.
It's difficult to keep motivated when working on back-end improvements that nobody will notice.

I'm always re-motivated by improving the UI. It makes a huge difference when you can see the benefits of your work.
I've heard that about auto jigglers only working on older model cars. The set I have advertises that they work on both foreign and domestic. I think my camry is a 2002. Anything post 2000 is a dicey proposition. And obviously, they won't work on cars that have the computer chip embedded in the key. I have no idea how you'd pick one of those.

There was a woman on Click & Clack last weekend who was looking at a $2000 key replacement from Saab for her key with an embedded chip.
Lock picking and safe cracking are pretty much wet equivalents to computer cracking. It's a very hackerish hobby as long as it's done in a mature, non-destructive way.

I don't put a lot of money into it, but working on new locks is a nice way to kill time and relax my mind.
interesting article, i think it makes a good outline of what is at a play.
Excellent point. This is an excellent lead-in to teach kids that the value they place on things is not intrinsic. Once they start thinking this way, they will discover that by changing the value they assign to things, they can manipulate their amount of satisfaction and even the amount of power they possess.

Ironically, this comes full-circle to the article's mention of stepping outside rules that are bad. The kids can now say, "I don't have to assign more value to green legos just because your game assigns more points to them." Some things still do have a certain degree of intrinsic value, so this won't always work. But they have been empowered to the extent allowed by the value assignments of which that they have control.

BTW, startup founders use this type of understanding to prioritize ideas that have a better chance of success.
Just because a problem is important, doesn't imply that your team is properly positioned to succeed in the market. If you don't have a good chance of succeeding due to changing circumstances, there's no reason to assume that it's worth the time and capital to continue.

These are really tough decisions. You can look at every successful company and, thanks to the hindsight bias, see that success is almost always born through persistence through difficulty. But there are plenty of examples where fighting a losing battle wasn't worth it. Or of people who tried, failed, quit at the right time, tried something else, and then succeeded.
Top Health Apps
Bumping does work, but not on automotive locks, as they have a different internal structure. Most lock manufacturers have come up with bump-proof or bump-resistant locks now that bumping has become more known.

That said: bumping is cheating :D
Maybe the underlying premise is flawed. Maybe it would be better to focus on teaching the children the fact that in this world inequality is unavoidable and how best to deal with it. After all, it's clear from the article that the teachers are going after something bigger than plain equitable distribution of the toys.
PG answered this in a post that I cannot find, but they don't share info between companies and they generally don't fund companies that do EXACTLY what someone else before did (e.g. Weebly again).

Applying is okay though.
A colleague of mine confessed to unlocking bike locks for fun during his student years.
From the article: "just the cost of changing to lead-free solder stands right now at $280 BILLION and climbing. That cost is borne by all of us."

Suddenly, getting 20, end of line, lead solder, crystal oscillators for 4.5 pence each doesn't seem like such a bargain.

Surely, adequate ventilation would have been sufficient? Something like a chemistry extraction chamber?
I'm sitting in SFO waiting on a four hour delay to JFK. That page made me laugh really, really hard.
The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally: US $134 Billion Annually