skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> This is such a bogus comparison.

Actually, it resonated quite well with my experiences in public school. Though it would make a better essay targeted towards parents, who actually have a say in where their kids go to school.
Sorry, couldn't resist :)

More seriously, if you're looking to invent a better UI for an email client, you might find it easier to build it first as an add-on for Thunderbird. This would get you a working prototype without having to worry about the nuts-and-bolts problems that you'll face if you start from scratch. You could use this to hammer the kinks out of your concept with reasonably little coding effort. Even if you don't want to use Thunderbird in the end, it would help you find out whether your idea will work and if it is worth the effort of reading all those bloody RFCs.
I agree that everything he'll need can be found in a library but I believe that you always should get to know the internals of stuff, especially when it is as accessible and easy to learn as SMTP/POP/IMAP are.

That is half of what being a hacker means, striving to understand and tinker with the world&technology around us. It's why most of us took apart watches, radios & computers as young kids.
> So is everyone that got that impression from the essay a Reddit troll?

I think he called you out on it because you persisted in reading things into his essay that aren't there, and demanding he defend statements he didn't make.

Here's how to do it next time:

pg: Blah blah blah minor aside blah blah blah

you: Aha! You mean MAJOR VARIANT of minor aside!

pg: No, I didn't say that.

you: Oh, sorry. My bad.

pg: No problemo, cdr-erino!

See? Easy! :-)
The thing is you can implement lightweight concurrency in C too and get the same/better results check out the Cheap Threads library

http://freshmeat.net/projects/cheapthreads/
haha the office (us), when they drive into the lake...
Just add the option to make the link nofollow so blogs that don't want to squander their PageRank prowess can keep the linking for links they actually want to approve manually.

Another thing you might want to add is to build a wikipedia based spell checker for the plugin for misspelled names etc.
Paul says: "I had no idea the Zenters used to leave our meetings disagreeing with all my suggestions". That's "not pushing back", and of course that regards something more or less technical where they could have, pretty easily. But what I think I'm trying to get at is a general world view that really has nothing to do with YC. It's easy in SV to get kind of lost in the region's distorted reality field, and it's healthy to get out and see something else once in a while.

I certainly don't know PG well enough to know what he does and what he thinks... but while I did like the recent jobs essay, I agree that there's a hint of getting a bit wrapped up in the startup world.

But then again, it would be pretty boring to read about "different kinds of jobs are good, and so you should choose the job best for you", wouldn't it.
Intuitive user interfaces are always a plus, but there are many great uses of UI's with low "affordance" that aren't immediately obvious, like drag and drop. This is the perfect scenario for tool tips and other features that can explain usage.
If it taints anyone it will be their traders and their executives, I doubt their programming staff will get any bad rep.
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. [pdf]
"At this writing Cheap Threads is beta software. I am releasing it without having yet used it in a real application, beyond the artificial drivers used for testing and development."

This is not a compelling alternative to what Erlang has to offer.

Supposing you do get cheap concurrency in place, you still have to implement the logic for your application, and you're going to do that in C. If you're writing something roughly as low-level as a kernel or a device driver, super. If it's a business application with rapidly changing requirements, good luck.
No, we totally appreciate your input here, and I think that you'll find that being Digg's first technical guy carries a lot of street cred. Your insight is appreciated. And, even though things may not be looking great for you now, I wouldn't be suprised if you did better for yourself the second time around.

Although on a cautionary note, I'd be careful what I post here, because it does tend to get picked up. Comments I've made got picked up by ValleyWag, and that's almost never a good thing.
The metaphor has nothing to do with what people say the essay implies.
Q&A with Marc Benioff
I live around the corner from there. I can't eat there because they don't do vegetarian though. Still that's the way with anything authentic.
Well, now you're making a different argument. You've gone from "Erlang beats the crap out of C/C++ on a benchmark", to "Erlang beats the crap out of C/C++ in this particular circumstance, unless, of course, you happen to make a fair comparison to C/C++, but that would be hard, therefore Erlang is better."

To which I say: thppt.
Building a temperature probe for the OLPC XO-1
"self-respecting mature people" might do a lot of things they don't like in order to, say, feed their families.

This is getting silly though. Who can really disagree that people are likely to be happier with a big say in what's happening at work? That can happen to a few people at BigCorps, but not many. Startups are a pretty good way of getting that kind of involvement.
Zen Camcorder has 13% of the market
commented on jeff atwood's blog in regards to this - i think he misinterpreted the point of your article to some minor extent (and so did I since I read the quotes only at that stage). he seems to have homed in on a few particular points (which may have admitedly been too much of a generalization on your part - everything is open to interpretation), but I loved your discussion of the tree concept.

hoping this doesn't put you off (I'd imagine it bought a lot more attention to your site and let you tighten up anything that could have been mis-interpreted), keep up the great writing.
I'm a great fan of mesh networks, but...

How using 802.11a/g to build mesh networks of tens or houndreds of nodes is going to scale in a few years, when more people will need e.g. a 10Mbps+ access to Internet? I know - in developing countries there is no Internet access at all, so any is better than nothing, but I wonder what will happen with all the deployed gear in US in a few years.

The radio has to be software-defined and flexible enough to improve it without replacing the whole gear, IMHO. We have to free the air to let such projects like Meraki build the Internet which won't suck in just a few years.
Thanks for saving me the effort to write a reply
I agree with the quoted guy in many ways. Perhaps we should congratulate him on how well he foresaw the difficulty in adapting these services to the web.

And the internet has made physical shopping obsolete? Not April 1st yet... I'm sure this idea would cause my girlfriend to burst into laughter.
No self respected matture person will participate in a stupid scavange hunt for work.

The company my girlfriend works for recently sent her and the department she manages off to play laser tag. The company paid for this because they considered it to be a valuable team building exercise. The staff turned up because it was fun and the company was paying for it. The employees don't care about "bonding" or "team building" -- they just want to have fun.

Now, I'm sure some people would say "screw this 'having fun' idea, I want to get things done" -- for that matter, I could imagine myself saying that. But people who work at startups have an uncommonly strong work ethic and desire for accomplishment... most people simply aren't like us.
An open letter on language choice and developer salaries
What Software Development can learn from Formula One
Three problems:

1) Wikipedia has far more information than a normal human, thus it would surpass human-level AI.

2) Compressing wikipedia into one persons mind would create a schizophrenic AI that's likely to kill people or die in a fit as its brain has an edit war.

3) It would take a human-level AI to first understand the information and then discard the useless crap and junk people post on wikipedia. I mean can you imagine asking an android what they think about Pamela Anderson's next divorce and having them randomly say "teh big boobs WOOT!1!11!"

Besides, information is redundant in intelligence. A cro-magnon would understand particle physics just as good as any one of us if they knew the information because they're intelligent.
Your criticism of PG's metaphor applies to all metaphors.

P.S.: The role of metaphor isn't to build an argument. It's to make it more vivid and easier to understand. (Bad writers use metaphors to try to build arguments, but PG didn't in this essay.) So even if the lion metaphor was a bad one (according to whatever criteria), that doesn't justify misinterpretation of the actual argument.
What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong
And working for Yahoo/Google/Facebook in SV is truly a huge waste of your life.

Oh, come on. Wasting your life == working as a Blockbuster video clerk, assuming that you don't have an art career or something else on the side.

Also, I take it you don't live in SV? 99% of the startup activity around here is downright moronic. Stupid money chasing stupid ideas.

Yes, you might walk with that startup swagger. I happened to be in South Park on Friday around lunchtime, and watched all the cool kids strutting in the sunny afternoon. I work for a megacorp, and it's hard not to envy them.

I'm not arguing that megacorps are better for everyone, but it's nowhere near a waste of your life. They operate on a scale that most startups can barely comprehend. The stuff you can learn and do there is serious business.
Winner of the Stanford E-Week Challenge
Your criticism of PG's metaphor applies to all metaphors.

Absolutely. If you want people to take you literally, don't use metaphors.

If, however, you want people to think about what you're saying and draw inferences... well, go ahead and use metaphors, but be prepared to deal with people misunderstanding what you intended to say (and have someone read over what you've written to look for anything which could be particularly badly misinterpreted).
Self-healing artificial muscle can charge an iPhone
Headed to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco
I edited my post without realizing you had already replied. See above.
Hierarchy is probably necessary for any society. Tree structures are efficient.

But tyranny is inefficient. It's all about ruining the bonds of trust that hold society and the economy together, just to benefit a small number of people.

All your examples are tyrannies. There is a word for people who invoke naive Darwinism to justify tyranny, but it escapes me at the moment.
Right, that assumes the proceeds of the loan are redeposited into the banking system. If instead the money remains in circulation or is otherwise kept in physical form, the multiplication stops.
Bids in 700MHz spectrum leaves Verizon and ATT big winners
...maybe it's just the price and size. I'm sure people wouldn't stop buying it if it got more features.
Overview Of Fundraising Stages
Typically a company raises numerous rounds of capital through its lifetime. While there are not rigid rules about the fundraising stages, I have attempted to characterize these stages below. Note that these stages reflect the IT space and can differ greatly in other sectors.

Friends and Family: F&F capital is the starting point of the company that is often used for basic administrative details including corporate formation, market research and the creation of a business plan.

Typical Round Size: F&F rounds can be as small as $5K and as large as $100K.
Investment Structure: Convertible note or common stock.
Hurdle For Next Stage: Business plan; management team.
Seed: Seed investments are typically provided to companies that have a business plan and a management team, but do not have a product. At this point, companies are raising money based upon an idea and a team.

Typical Round Size: These are typically $100-500K but can be as large as $1M.
Investment Structure: Convertible note or common stock.
Hurdle For Next Stage: Product.
Series A: The word “Series” implies institutional money (money invested by a VC). The letter “A” means that it is the first institutional round. By the series A most companies have a product that is ready (or close to ready) to take to market.

Typical Round Size: These are typically $2-5M but can be as little as $1M and as large as $10M.
Investment Structure: Participating preferred stock.
Hurdle For Next Stage: Market adoption.
Series B: Typically in order to raise a Series B the company needs to have demonstrated market traction, further developed the business and recruited a more robust management team.

Typical Round Size: These are typically $5-10M but can be as little as $5M and as large as $20M.
Investment Structure: Participating preferred stock.
Hurdle For Next Stage: Growth.
Series B and beyond: After the Series B round the required achievements more frequently vary by company. Some companies are nowhere near profitability and need more capital to stay alive and others are profitable but need capital in order to accelerate growth.

More @ www.markpeterdavis.com
I believe the lack of extraneous features is the appeal; the Flip is successful because the user accomplishes their goal with only the most minimal effort.
Hire a Startup Marketing company :)

We work with Australian Web 2.0 startups to help them grow traffic, conversions and customers.

It seems in most scenarios the skillset needed to build a great web service, and the skillset required to market, promote and sell that service are be totally different.

Something to be wary of tho, the majority of PR/Marketing/Advertising companies really dont get startups at all, and can be a very fast way to drain your scare capital without offering measurable results.

Any questions, happy to help out.

http://www.ShiftedPixels.com.au
Not very dissimilar?
3 big reasons why something so simple gets blown out of proportion so often:

1. "I have a blog. I have to blog everyday. I have nothing to say today. I'll find something to say anyway."

2. "You said something on-line and I didn't have an opportunity to see your body movements or hear your voice tonality. So I misinterpreted it."

3. "I have to show everyone how much smarter I am than everyone else. So I'll disagree with something someone smart has said. That'll show'em."
probably should have been "Similiar to running a Startup"
Too bad they are not selling it outside the US.
Macintosh Developers Video [video]
Very interesting distinction between phatic and referential language. Thanks from me, too, for these terms.

You say phatic language is about maintaining the connection. If I understand this correctly then there's a role for it also with people one does know well. If you prefer referential conversation and meet someone who's completely restricted to that part of language, you may initially enjoy the conversations a lot. But, after some time (this could be months or years), despite their referential content they may appear increasingly "empty": you realise you're still completely replaceable as a conversation partner by a random new person.
This won't work! It's a stupid idea! Whereever did these guys get the idea that the principal task of the human brain consists of compressing information about our environment? Even if this succeeds, all they will end up with is a very good compression algorithm for text. This is typical of research on AGI, just grabbing at straws with no idea of what's going to work. The field is not scientific.

If history is any guide, though, a lot of trying and failing like this is necessary before we figure out what's important to work on. I still think they should instad use their 50000€ on paying food and rent for a young, inspired researcher in the field to try out as many crazy ideas as possible.
Is Star Trek a Fascist Society?
It's said the one of the HP co-founders always preferred to hire married men for obvious reasons (mature, more responsible, financial dependence and etc).
You find restaurants similar to tech startups?
I was struck by this comment: "We work for X. We're better than you." Forget lions and zoos; that's the real difference between people who make good employees and those who don't. I know people I was at school with who wanted to work (for example) for IBM (because their dad did), achieved their ambition and are still there over 20 years later. I've had literally a dozen jobs in the same time. Whenever I've worked for companies like IBM or KPMG, etc, I got bored pretty damned fast, and soon left for more interesting work. But if you feel validated by your employer's credentials, you're probably never going to move on, and you'll put up with masses of crap in the meantime. We're all wired up different.
Just trying to speculate as to what the most important aspects were. History is too often rewritten later by writers who didn't understand why something was popular at the time that it was actually taking off. So they just pick whatever glamorous reason sounds the most revolutionary.

He may be right though.
Overrated...pod
Word of mouth.

My mom was showing me her Flip Video about three months ago. I'd never heard of it and she was like "what? You have to see it" She pulled out the unassuming little brick videocorder and with enthusiasm demonstrated it. It makes cute Tivo'esque sounds when you press a button. She is not very technically savvy yet she has used it to shoot video and share video (via USB copying, not YouTube) with friends and family (baby videos mostly). The video quality is decent and it fits in her purse (important). She has shipped at least one FlipVideo overseas.
"There are all kinds of reasons people might work at a big company besides cowardice. They might need the health insurance, or to pay off their student loans. They might want to focus on other things besides work."

But what if it is just cowardice?

Just because it's ok to make fun of people for their religion and not their race doesn't mean that people will be less upset if you make fun of their religion. If anything, they will be more upset since the fact that they chose it freely makes it more personal. Sure, in some cases it wasn't their choice, but in most cases it was. And surely if you have freedom of choice, and make the wrong decision, then that must reflect poorly on you. I mean I almost can't think of a better working-definition of intelligence, or lack thereof.

Anyway I enjoyed the essay, but just sayin'
New York Times: The Royalty Scam
With a steamer you're still working with water so some aromatics will probably get lost. A better alternative to microwaving would be stir-frying as you coat your vegetables in oil so no aromatics would leak out.
"News of my death have been greatly exaggerated" -Mark Twain

[I live in the USA. All clear and normal so far. Just a couple of yuppies making less money than they have grown used to.]
Programming Language vs Foreign Language
The absolute key concept is "Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving."

It's from RFC 1958: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1958.html

Everything else will fall into place.
Paul used the caged lion metaphor to illustrate differences in freedom in a vivid way. That's it. This freedom disparity is a fact. Don't try to say that "less freedom" implies "sucks" just because the vividness offended your sensibilities.
As another Eco Major I think I agree with you. The problem is that runs on banks are like a giant prisoner's dilemma. Everyone is better off getting out if there is a problem, and no worse off if there is not. What he is talking about is similar, and even if the politicians from the other countries realize what is happenning, they will probably be more likely to do what the people want so they can an keep there jobs and be on top during the depression than to try and save the world economy and end up out of office.
On board the world's first 'gigayacht'
I'd say that the breast cancer foundation was creating most of the value... 2nd, I don't see how you can call this innovative since there are a million things you can buy for which the proceeds go to charity.

But if you want to give it to them just for having a good heart then I guess that's alright.
Some basic features wouldn't hurt, such as an optical zoom. Otherwise, I would consider buying one.
Install OpenWRT, Chillispot, FreeRadius Based Managed Hotspot(s) Including PayPal Payment Gateway
For desktop (Windows): yes. I've used Delphi + Indy components
this has been my only problem with hn.
good links. great discussion. can't get more links w/out going back to the top
10 Important Differences Between Brains and Computers
I don't think it bodes well for the clarity of your essay that you're using the beginning of your last paragraph to defend your thesis.

Atwood admits that your, "essay does contain some fair points," but he also indicates that he, along with others, had trouble getting through it because of the distasteful metaphor you lead with. In light of this, I am sure you can understand them not spotting the thesis in your last paragraph.

Finally, perhaps someone with a "conscientiously broadened mind," as you so describe yourself, could fathom a working environment unlike the one you describe? I imagine that new-hires at 37signals, or Fog Creek, would not feel they are missing out because they are not currently heading a start-up. Quite the opposite, I would think they are grateful for the opportunity, the environment and the benefits. Not all successful companies treat their developers like animals. And the ones that don't tend to inspire loyalty. Can you really not see how you may have offended some of these people?
Rails Powered by the GlassFish Application Server
Using JPA with Rails on GlassFish and MySQL
I think what our correspondent is trying to say is "tech startups and restaurants are similar, because the secret to success in both is 'customers, customers, customers'".

The message is not that tech startups are capital intensive businesses, with ingredients that have short half-lives and brutal margins and customers who have absolutely zero lock-in. They're not. :)
A Simple Path to Success
GM Roars Forward Into Digital Ad Channels
Fund.com sold for $10 Million?
I'm not opposing it. It's just that articles like this are a dime-a-dozen lately. It sounded like any other, with the main distinction being a comical "This is what the pirate party is all about" line tacked on.
"Your chances of getting tenure at the end of this are quite a bit lower than the chance that your startup will succeed, given equal intelligence and effort."

You are way off! Just count the number of multimillionaire founders vs. tenured professors.
A lot have actually come out of large corporate research labs, and then been commercialized by startups when the big companies ignored them. Xerox gave us the mouse, the laptop, the GUI, color graphics, Smalltalk, the WYSIWYG word processor, Ethernet, and PostScript. Bell Labs gave us the transistor, sound in movies, six-sigma, the television, photovoltaics, algorithmic information theory, UNIX, C, C++, and plan9 (which is full of innovations that haven't yet been commercialized). IBM gave us the relational database. Microsoft is funding much of the work on functional programming.

You really need both. Startups are an essential part of the economy, but they're not the only part of the economy, and many brilliant inventions have been discovered by researchers working 9-5 at a big company.
"I didn't mean to make the book controversial. I was trying to make it efficient. I didn't want to waste people's time telling them things they already knew. It's more efficient just to give them the diffs. But I suppose that's bound to yield an alarming book."

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html