skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Eileen Powers' Wool Trade in English Medieval History, Geary's Before France and Germany, Dorrie's 100 Great Problems of Elementary Mathematics, Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza, and a terrible book on Klee that I bought for the illustrations.

If you want to understand Silicon Valley, I would not recommend Saxenian's book. Lecuyer's seems better.
Ask YC: Anybody knows of any college/institution where they have online courses on GNU Radio?
I am working on creating a course on GNU Radio for a university which will be taught next year.
I was looking for anything that could help me in that process. Also does anyone know of some good online meduim size open-source projects done with the gnu radio?
I'm currently on a break from school while I move and get settled with a new job (software developer at a near-Silicon Valley startup). I'm going back this fall to work on my BS in Comp Sci at CSU Fresno.
I'm 3/4 of the way through my Bachelor of Computing degree at the University of Guelph. Taking some time off right now to work on my start-up.
How'd you end up writing a programming language?
It's training to compete with VallyWag. Snarky comments auto-generated to tear apart the day's news. It should be too hard to write better than them. Eliza?
Ask YC: Do entrepreneurs have business or compsci degrees?
As a high schooler nearing that college level, my question is whether people who create startups (generally I'm talking about web startups) should go for business or for programming in college? Perhaps a mix of both?
You seem to be getting a lot of technical and user oriented feedback, so I won't bother you with even more of this. From a marketing standpoint however, I feel I can provide some advice.

The benefit of your service is the unique compromise between site design and monetization. The current solution (adsense et all) detracts from the design of the site and is an unfortunate compromise that site admins must make in order to be profitable. Your product gives me, and all prospective customers a beautiful site without ugly ads carved out of the site's design. Quite simply, we can have our cake and eat it too, or translated: we can have a beautiful site and still run ads.

Most of the literature on your site refers to running ads in the "emtpy space" on a prospective user's site. It took me about 5-10 minutes to figure out the true value of the site, the "Hey! Now I know what this could do for me!" and I come from a more technical background. Other bloggers and site owners may barely have a working knowledge of their site, and to them, I would think that the message they would perceive is "Fill up all the empty space in your website!" which hides your true value.

"Have your cake and eat it too!" - I think stressing this point in your site's literature will serve you much better than "Monetize your website's empty space"
Start with Squeak, and grab one of the pre-packaged images from http://www.seaside.st/. These just require that you start the image and point a web browser at the host and port that's usually been left in a message on the transcript before the image was saved. VisualWorks is arguably more powerful, but it's harder to get going.

There's a good tutorial at http://www.swa.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/seaside/tutorial/, with lots of useful snippets. If you're new to Squeak and Smalltalk, 'Squeak by Example' is available as a free PDF (although you can buy a printed copy if you're so inclined): it's an excellent book.

In terms of the framework, I found that it got much easier to use with the switch to the canvas renderer (now the default). The only hiccup was that you have to roll your own solution for persistence, which can range from Oracle or GemStone right through to just periodically saving a copy of the image with your objects in it!
Thanks for the feedback tyohn. Flash ads are an interesting format and I'll definitely add it to Trac as a future release. We'd like to support all manners of ads to allow you, the website owner to customize the ads to your needs.
Computer Engineer degree from the University of Ottawa
I'm actually reading his book right now....

Yes he definitely gets it.
AA Liberal Arts!

Applied for it after I had started programming professionally. (Already had the credits, so why not? ;-)
Thanks for the feedback kashif. Can you please elaborate what you mean by "sticky"?
You can't be in this business without being passionate about it. Well...I guess you can, but I think everyone on this site falls into the 'passionate' category. And with that comes the ability to pick things up on your own, which is in any case pretty much a necessity for this field, as many aspects of it change frequently.

One of the wonderful things about this field is how much is possible to do on your own, if you have a computer a decent internet connection.

In terms of Hecl itself, taken from (http://www.hecl.org/docs/j2me.html#javame_tutorial)

"I became interested in writing cell phone applications several years ago, after a rainy day high in the Italian Dolomites near Cortina d'Ampezzo - my old phone ended up in a mud puddle and died, leading me to purchase a new phone with J2ME (Java) capabilities. Writing applications in Java was okay, but I thought to myself that it would be an interesting experiment to try and create a scripting language that runs on top of the J2ME (now known as Java Micro Edition or Java ME) environment."
I like cards that serve multiple roles.

I want something that will convey essential contact info, express core traits of my business, and have enough white space such that I can use it to jot notes down to give to people (or allow people to add their own notes).
"are such animals that, on their territory, no one could compete"

"people I'd never want to have as competitors"

Wow, what great feedback.

Can you be a little more specific? Maybe 5 or so bullets. What kinds of things should the rest of us be focusing on to be more "Wufoo like competitors". I'd love to be so good that pg would never want to have me as a competitor.
Great comment. The ads we show on your site are ones we pick but as the website owner you get to control what's inside the ads that appear on your site. For the purposes of a preview, I had to pick some types and styles of ads, and unfortunately, not everyone will like them :P.
Beyond the Actor model in erlang, it's got lots of neat tid-bits, especially when you start working with OTP. You can actually have a pool of generic servers waiting to be transformed to any type of server you may happen to need at any one moment. I found that to be an odd thing at first, as it sounds like an invitation to a 'server pool manager', and all its hassles. But neat nonetheless.
... and FTP to transfer their cave paintings? ;-)
I'm pretty sure both Wee and IOWA, two Ruby Web frameworks (and each about 5 years old) can do this out of the box.

(Wee was more a prof-of-concept. IOWA is still under active development)
B.S. Computer Science, University of Akron (Ohio). Software Architect at a small (25 people) consulting firm.
Ok, here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
I grew up bilingual German/English pretty much from birth. (my mother is Austrian, my father British) There is an (awful) home video of me in which I speak both languages fluently, roughly age 2. Comparing the way you think to other people's thought processes is not so easy, putting differences down to some particular influence is impossible, especially as there's no before & after to compare.

That said, I don't generally think in terms of words unless I'm actively trying to express a thought. I don't know whether this is why I'm very quick to pick up new concepts in maths and computing, of if those observations are unrelated.

Interestingly, I did have a noticeable Germanic accent when speaking English as I lived in Austria for the first 18 years of my life. I then went to study and work in England, and within less than 3 years my accent had disappeared sufficiently for strangers to be unable to distinguish me from natives. Kids learn English at school in most of Europe from about age 9 - I knew some German students at university and their accent stuck, even after 4 years. That head start of a few years obviously makes a hell of a difference.

Learning French (at age 14) and Spanish (at age 16) was still hard for me. Not in terms of grammar however, which is what most people struggle with most.

YMMV.
How do you know it's not already self-aware and posting here? How do you know I'm not the AI?

* suspense
BS Comp Sci, USC - 1 more year to go
I like it. The idea has some good potential. Odd timing, I just read this on Mashable. Looks like a potential competitor with a slightly different take:

http://mashable.com/2008/02/07/adcamo/
The sort of disadvantages you list can be avoided by self-discipline. The disadvantages of being in other places mostly can't be. Since successful founders have lots of self-discipline, it's a net win for them to be in the Valley.
People who think computers of sufficient power will just become self aware, don't really understand computers. If intelligent machines arise (and I think they will), it'll be because someone worked very very hard to make it so. Btw, it's arrogant to assume we're the best evolution has offered since you're defining best in human terms.
Interview with Technorati founder David Sifry
Repairs under way; explanation elusive on cable failures
BS Computer information systems, University of Chihuahua (in Mexico); MS Computer information science, University of Michigan.
Meh. Now this is a hot business card: http://www.singulier.com/boutique_us/fiche_produit.cfm?type=...
Thanks for the feedback nkohari. I'm happy to hear about AdCamo, it means that the space I've gone into is valid (with the entrance of competitors).
BA in Mathematics and Computation and then a DPhil in Computer Security. Oxford University.
Thanks for your feedback dkokelley. I'll see if I can incorporate the message of not having to sacrifice your site's beautiful design to run emptyspaceads.
Who was the email from? Perhaps it may have not been worth replying to.
> libraries so powerful, apparently, that it's cheating to compare Arc to other languages using a problem that requires saving a string on the server

It is kind of a straw man though, but he also got a point. Clearly the use of continuations allows very compact descriptions of multi-page control flow. The only languages that can match the succinctness of Arc in the Arc-challenge are other lisps, Ruby and Smalltalk/Seaside, which all of them also uses continuations. Python which is otherwise known for succinctness but which doesn't expose continuations, does not allow such compact code.

On the other hand it is a straw man because you would not use continuation for navigation in real-world production web sites. You would have to store a continuation for every hit on the site forever, which is clearly not scalable. Therefore it is obvious that serious web frameworks uses other approaches more in line with the stateless nature of HTTP, even if it leads to more verbose code.

I still think the arc-challenge is fun (and I agree that brevity is very desirable), but I think it would be more "fair" if it was framed with real world requirements (scalable, pages bookmarkable etc.) rather than random constraints (the user input must not be exposed in the URL) which only serves to disqualify some non-continuation-based frameworks.

Continuation-based web frameworks suffers IMHO from the same mistake as ASP.NET - trying to make web development look like traditional application code. ASP.NET tries to make it look like event-based desktop GUI app development, Arc tries to make it look like a long-running interactive app written in a function style.

What web-frameworks are really trying to, is to create a new kind of DSL which embraces the spirit and constraints of the web rather than try to hide it. We are not there yet, and such a holy-grail web app DSL might very well be written in Arc one day. It would probably be very short then.
Going swimming.

Sitting on Place St. Georges people watching.
BSc Computing Science. Simon Fraser University.
Sophomore undergrad at Carnegie Mellon University. No desire/plan for grad school...I'm thrilled that I'll be done in a little over a year.
BS, Finance - run and hack in a small software firm.
hey a Tcl'er :)

Tcl is the best lisp tell them the truth, enlighten their braces crippled souls
:PpP

But seriously, Tcl is a very smart language, one can only wish it was used more.
I think it does. I am divorced, therefore I still have to compete for the babes. As a result, I am in better shape than most guys my age. I also must be (somewhat) successful. The most successful you are the better babes you can get. I know is a somewhat cynical position but I think sex is an important motivator.
Microsoft Buys Caligari To Pimp Up Virtual Earth
BS, CompSci, University of Memphis
BA in Management Information System, MBA sorbonne/dauphine (mbaip.com)

Programmer ... hmmm ... someday I will!
yeah the simplicity of trying it out on any site via your demo is really great. I think your conversion rate of people checking out your site will be a lot higher than for places like Text-Link-Ads, good luck
I wouldn't let something like not wanting to disappoint keep you from pursuing an opportunity that could change your life (I think someone already mentioned opportunity cost).

That being said, if you know anyone else you know and trust, and whom you would vouch for, given the skills required for the internship and who would take the internship, then I'd recommend him to the employer if they still need someone to fill the position.

This is a practice I learned from being in a band. Booking agents hate when you cancel, but love you for it if you provide another band to play in your stead. Granted, I know this is much easier to do with a band than with an internship.
Always find a way to go outside at least once daily.

Start going to the gym, go for runs, pick up fresh groceries for dinner, do some light work at cafes.
I personally think that founders have a more sentimental value. These are the people that strongly believe in the vision of the company. They will be their working with you when the cash has dried up (or even before you have funding). If the people that are working with you where to stop getting paid (in cash), would they still be their? If not, I would consider them to be employees, not founders.
BA UC Berkeley in Mathematics '93, MBA NYU Stern '06, run a small startup and still get to hack
BA English, UC San Diego
BA Math, UC Santa Cruz (strange case, they let me finish the double English/Math major at a different university - I did about half of the Math at UCSD and the other half at UCSC)
MS Industrial Engineering and Operations Research - UC Berkeley

Still learning, of course...
Go for programming. Hard skills are much more valuable than soft ones in the early days of your company. You'll need the soft skills eventually, if you get big & political, but in order to get to that stage you need to do the work yourself.

Also, business skills are often very context-dependent. What works for McKinsey probably doesn't work for Coca-Cola, which doesn't work for SAP, which doesn't work for Microsoft, which doesn't work for Apple, which doesn't work for Google. Ignoring this fact led to disasters like John Sculley and AOL/Time Warner. While if you learn to hack, you know that there's at least one path that's guaranteed to get you to working software, and then you can assess the context from there.

Stay alert to business issues though, and try to learn all you can about business on your own time. If there's an entrepreneurs' club, join it; the club itself is probably useless, but they often do practical projects that give you some real experience. If you can, start a side business like web design or software contracting or tutoring in college (I didn't, but I wish I had).
I believe the good book Allen states that your GTD system can be mobile. I think I even remember David saying he uses a mobile version with folders in his suitcase.
It distracts me more from actual content than integrated ads- the pop-up effect is horrible. Your ads care more about site owners than visitors.
Seems like requiring sellers to leave feedback first would take care of 90% of the tit-for-tat problem.
BS in CS and MS in HCI, both from Carnegie Mellon
BA English from The University of Dayton.
I have a degree in Civil Engineering. Since I was bored/nearly falling asleep in some of my structural engineering classes, I knew it probably wasn't the field. (I've always loved coding/playing with computers).

An engineering degree really emphasizes problem solving. We had homework sets where you'd be lucky to solve all of them. Spending hours on a single problem. But you learn a lot. I see software development mainly as creative problem-solving.

Getting my first job was a combination of luck and persistence.
BS Electrical Engineering & BA Philosophy, 2004, Univ. of Texas at Austin
BS in Comp Sci, St. John's University, currently a programmer at an i-bank.
B.S. in Computer Science

Guess you could call me a programmer as I wear many hats, but web developer is my prime role...
BA Philosophy & Biology - UNC Chapel Hill
MA Philosophy - University of Maryland, College Park
Influence by Robert Cialdini. This book is required reading for any entrepreneur who will eventually be a marketer (i.e. all of them)
I've been coding since the age of 8, never got a degree as I found university moved too slowly. I knew from childhood that all I wanted to do was code. Now I've been coding professionally for 13 years, and overall for 27 years. I'd thought about going back for formal education but the reality of it is that I still learn at a faster rate on my own and do take the time and effort to learn even those things that I don't think I'll need or particularly care to learn. I do feel that I missed out on some camaraderie with peers, though I have since gained that via professional and non-professional venues.
I'm about to graduate from Babson with a degree in entrepreneurship (real useful that's gonna be), and I'm working at a startup as a programmer (self-taught).
You don't have to read too many threads to get a feel for what not to say if you care about your karma score.
BS in Computer Science from Temple University. I started on a Masters, but dropped it. Now I'm taking classes at the University of Pennsylvania.
Smjörið er brætt og hveitið smátt og smátt hrært út í það, þangað til það er gengið upp í smjörið.
Thanks to a fix by Patrick Collison, utf-8 now seems to work right.
The trouble with business school is that some students mistake the classes for... well, for anything other than an opportunity to network. If you want to learn about finance, work for a fucking bank! If you want to make contacts, you could do a lot worse than a top MBA program.

An EE friend of mine (who helped me survive PChem, since I taught myself linear algebra and multivariate calculus, poorly) went back for his MBA recently. He began a standard engineering exposition of market forces in terms of structural equations and nearly the entire class glazed over. Afterwards, the professor (a former physicist) told him that, while his math was spot on, you can't use calculus in front of businesspeople and expect them to follow.

He almost cried. I laffed when he told me about this. (We both worked at JGSM and also at the supercomputing center as undergraduates -- even still, I think he was disappointed.)

Scientific programmers (what I was trained as) and everyday build-something-that-works programmers (which is more fun) are as different as FORTRAN77 and Lisp. Just an observation (related to your final sentence), not a tautology. There is, however, a divide between systems/performance-centric programming and logic-centric or symbolic programming, and the latter is more efficient in terms of man-hours IMHO.
B.S. Comp. Sci. from the University of Rhode Island

Java programmer for a Defense Contractor.
MA Mathematics from Oxford; MSc in 'Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems' from Sussex.
no degree, can't code, rejected from yc funding 3 times, and still working on my startup.
B.Sc. Computer Science; Colorado @ Boulder
I have a B.S. in computer science, with a minor in business administration. My university offered courses in entrepreneurship, so I took advantage of those for my minor electives.

Definitely go for a technical degree over business. You'll be able to learn more about business through experience than you will about software development. Just my opinion.
Now, after asking for this feature, I realized I won't even be anywhere near california on that day.

Argh.
If you are unsuccessful and the only founder it won't matter. If you are successful and there are many founders, it won't matter. Since you are paying everyone with equity only at this point (at least as I read your post and comments) it's entirely legitimate to describe everyone as founders from my perspective.
Yeah, wufoo is a different kind of product:

http://wufoo.com/gallery/
PhD in pure mathematics, University of Nottingham, UK.

Self-taught as a programmer, but it's a similar mindset.
Isn't that what reddit is?
Ask YC: Going to RailsConf 2008. How do I learn RoR by then?
Portland is one of my dream cities to live in (outdoors emphasis, small, good demographics, great farmer's market, nightlife sounds reasonable - small Salsa scene). Yeah it is overcast/raining all the time but...

When I heard about RailsConf, I thought it was a nice coincidence that it is held in Portland. I still really want to move there.

I've registered for RailsConf 2008 which is just over 3 months away. I don't know any Ruby on Rails. I want to learn enough RoR to get a working understanding for the conference. Ideally, I'd like to get the point eventually where I could see myself doing sites like twittervision.com in a weekend (David Troy did that in 4 hours?!)

How would you recommend going about learning Ruby on Rails (from scratch). In about 3 months.

My plan is to hack Ruby/RoR projects on my 1-hr train commute with an Asus EEE or equivalent. My colleague just lended me the "Agile Web Development with Rails" book. I bought "The Rails Way" but lended that to the same co-worker because that's way beyond. I hope to learn enough/dive in to be able to My background is Java. Did some Flex/AS3 for a project recently. I never excelled at Perl-type languages honestly.
The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives
Thanks; I think I may have just figured out what to talk about at startup school.
CS from RPI... programming for The Man.
WOOHOO! +1 Philosophy

BA Philosophy from Ripon College
MS Information Systems University of Maryland Baltimore County (in progress).

been a avid "hobbyist" programmer for 7-8 years now... just recently started getting paid for my programming.
Another Canuck here! I did my graduate diploma (1 yr) at SFU

I did my undergrad at Canadian Bible College - B.A. in Religious studies (with Music History and ancient Greek). Thought the subject matter doesn't help coding, I think the college work did. I'm also a "started at age 8" story.
I graduate this summer. I've got only 12 credits left out of 204 for my dual BS in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. I go to Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute).
Business Marketing from CSUN (Cal State Northridge)... in 2 more years.
I second that, although the answer is probably not what we're looking for. Probably something like "Really determined and really smart." Something that's not much help if you don't already have it.
BS and MS in Electrical Engineering-Marquette. I am not a programmer...although I read a lot about programming.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken!
Tochter aus Elysium!
I'm working in a research assistant position at my college and spend a fair bit of time wandering the campus. I know it pretty well, I've been here for 6 years ;) but it's nice to just see random people.

Also, getting on our bus line and riding it around for a loop or two is really useful.