skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Complex and emergent systems. Certain systems can have only local interactions but have global effects. Some effects in nature are not the result of a single cause, but from the interactions of many local parts. One can design robust behavior (though not necessarily optimal) in the global system through only defining local interactions. Many biological systems have this architecture, such as ant colonies, immune systems, and neural networks, and flocks. So do non-biological ones, such as capitalistic economies, traffic jams, and choosing neighbors. The Atlantic's "Seeing around corners" is a good intro to the topic, as well as "The computational beauty of nature"

Sexual selection is the second child of Darwin that people haven't paid as much attention to, but he spent a significant amount of time devoting study to it. It poses interesting questions on the canonical natural selection mechanisms, when mate selection is factored in. When you look at the mating systems of other animals, there's a wide wide variety. From males that care for the young, polygamy being the norm in birds, homosexuality not all that uncommon in the animal kingdom, and factors that affect male:female size ratio. After learning about it, you dismiss arguments people make about how this or that aspect of nature is 'unnatural'. Chances are, they've never looked, and think all mating systems are like human ones.

Quitting the for-loop through functional programming styles. Hello map, inject, and each. Understanding the power of Lisp, and why it has parens everywhere. Understanding continuations are functions that don't return, and you merely chain them together. Still working on monads though.
I did not intend the term to reference venture as in venture capital, but a venture regarding a hazardous attempt. Perhaps "Startup Expediter" is less misleading to those who see the word venture not in its original sense, but as related to capital.
"He" would be Michael Arrington, the person who put it on the front page of TC. If he's an actual community member here, then he should have realized that was a stupid thing to do, for the sake of the news and comment quality on Hacker News, and not to have done it.
CastTV - Hiring Hackers: Fascinated by machine learning, web crawling, and search?
Differential equations. That the world could be described by calculus was a revelation to me.
Behind the Scenes at Xobni
Google shares could fall another 20%? $350?
I'll try to answer my own question. I think it's about riskiness from the point of view of investors. The thing is, I think the wisdom is oft repeated as risky for the founders (though perhaps not in this essay), which is what I'm objecting to.
Euler's equation.

That conservation laws follow from deeper symmetry principles (Noether's theorem). Symmetry under translation corresponds to conservation of momentum, symmetry under rotation to conservation of angular momentum, symmetry in time to conservation of energy!

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NoethersSymmetryTheorem.html
"Open in TextMate" from Leopard Finder
I've heard a few people recommend "Getting To Yes", but I haven't read it myself.
Chutes & Ladders
I didn't go to MIT, but I feel I would have gotten in if I had applied. Other factors were more important to me, though, like being the right distance from home (about 3 hours driving) and going to a big enough school that I would be able to take a wide variety of classes and change majors if necessary (I did, three times). I think I also had the (somewhat accurate) feeling that the college I chose would not make all that much difference. We can argue that point all you want, but I'm still quite confident in my future in spite of growing up "poor" and not going to MIT.
I think it might be useful to add a tagging/category feature. I don't know if that was mentioned before or not.

It would help separate posts into categories once there are a lot of posts.

Unfortunately, eventually this system will probably turn into digg. I stopped using digg once it got too big.
Ask: what the hell is service-oriented architecture?
Here is the back cover blurb for a book on "service-oriented modeling" and service-oriented architecture.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the hottest topic in the IT arena. Providing a comprehensive plan to interrelate business with technology, SOA combines the talents and skills of an entire organization, with its requisite needs and computing know-how. Presenting the necessary tools—processes, best practices, and standards—for developing a sound SOA, Service-Oriented Modeling: Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture introduces a service-oriented modeling framework that employs an agile and universal business and technology language to facilitate analysis, design, and architecture initiatives.

I have no clue what that means. I wonder: precisely what is that in terms of actual programs, bits, and bytes? Is it simple, flexible web services? Exposing programs as web services? Web services as a loose coupling technique of disparate systems? Throw me a bone here.
Usually, if we've got a question we'd like ask other Hacker News readers, we preface it with "Ask YC: " or "Ask HN:" That helps us distinguish between articles and discussions, thanks.

That said, we usually ask questions that you can't google.
Microsoft’s New Play for Linux Lovers
>First, the [...]

It has reversed before, why does it seem unlikely now?
Focus on creating value for your customers. Startups are inherently risky, but more mistakes are made when times are good than otherwise because teams are more careless. A downturn is a great time to start a software company that provides value to its customers.
Bughouse!
A link to these guidelines should be added to the http://news.ycombinator.com/submit page.
Scoble Interviews Scribd CEO
You may like Dice Wars if you like Risk: http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html
Seaside (http://seaside.st), which powers dabbledb (http://dabbledb.com/).
I'm not ready to pull a chicken little. I came over here from reddit after seeing pg's post on trolls on the reddit front page. Some of the earliest comments and/or posts I saw were of the "oh man, we're screwed now" type. Obviously I can't speak from experience, but I have a hard time believing the reddit crowd did HN a disservice. HN is just too darn... smart for the majority of people. On the rare occasion when some stupid POS makes it to the front page, the comment section more than makes up for it.

The community is too good to suffer fools gladly. And fools get bored easily.
Beautiful presentation for the main app, although I don't like the way two tabs are laid out for choosing whether you want to create a new question or make a quiz for your blog on the "Write" page. Addictive app, though. How are you guys planning to monetize this?
Software bugtraps
You work smarter, and cut out the fat of what you do. Then you abolish the Federal Reserve.
A suggestion I heard was to get offers from other companies for yours. If you can get a bidding war going on then you are in good shape otherwise you either have to take what they give you or chance it on your own.
"As it is, he's a market manipulator who tweaks price signals so people produce more of what they don't want. This is shameful."

What, exactly, is he manipulating the price of? Poverty isn't an industry and philanthropy is not the subsidizing of flagging companies.

This man made a ton of wealth in his day. And now he's redistributing it. It's axiomatically accepted by most people on News.YC that wealth is not a zero-sum commodity so his giving it away isn't depriving anyone of wealth.

This is besides the fact that not everything is a market and treating poverty and philanthropy like they are puts me in mind of a certain saying about people whose toolbox only contains a hammer.
Since the stake in Facebook was sold as part of a conditional advertising agreement, it shouldn't count as a "closing price".
Real-Time Raytracing
We had a (passingly) similar situation at my office recently: a line of boxes that had been humming along happily for as long as I've been at the company. Someone (certainly not me, oh heavens no) needed a network connection and asked around "is this box hosting anyone's project"? Getting nos all around, I (er, I mean, someone) snagged that box's cable.

Turns out it wasn't hosting anyone's project, but it WAS acting as the gateway into our network that my boss used on a daily basis.
HTTP, the protocol that most (web) frameworks try to pretend doesn’t exist.
"We can implant entirely false memories"[1]

I also remember being really suprised when I first learned the Central Limit Theorem[2] a long time ago.

That said, Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach"[3] probably had the biggest impact on me.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/dec/04/science.resear...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach
Fun question. First thoughts: logo (the computer language), the proof of the infinitude of primes, calculus and Newtonian mechanics, general relativity, the idea that thinking is a learnable skill.

It's interesting to me what I've learnt but which didn't make my list: most things related to programming, mathematics, and physics, including quantum mechanics. Generally speaking, most of that knowledge was more incremental.
RIP, Mr. Gygax, thou original roller of natural 20s. My group and I will have a 21d6 salute in your honor . . .
Why web frameworks are a bad thing, part 1: MVC
startup trebuchet
It's risky in the sense that you might fail, and not get paid (enough) for your efforts. I calculated my last startup to have paid me about $3/hour (not discounting the time factor) after all was said and done.
"For the moment, I will address this with the following observation: at Pivotal we have many developers who know Ruby and Java and the same developers are several times more productive in Ruby. In this comparison, my money is more on Ruby compared to Python than Rails compared to Django; I can't see how we can be as productive with Python as we are with Ruby."

So they know Java and Ruby, and thus Ruby is more productive than Python?

It makes no sense.
Social psychology was a big one for me too. Cialdini's book Influence gave me a lot to think about.

The role that biases play in my own thinking. Charlie Munger's speech that was on this site a while ago articulates a lot of things I was beginning to realize (http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html)

I struggled for a long time with procrastination and low productivity. When I realized that abandoning the parts of my life that were not deeply fulfilling (browsing the web aimlessly, refreshing RSS feeds, wasting time in forums, watching tv etc) would not actually be as painful as I thought it would, it changed how I live and work in a very fundamental way.
At the risk of sounding glib, I've found that asking people with the right skillset who happen to be of the female persuasion works pretty well. I got the 33% of our team (1/3) to join by saying "So, Meagan, interested in helping Mike and I start a company?"
Quite a long list actually and hard to put in words.... Functional programming in general..especially its roots( halting problem, church's thesisetc...),reading about ENIAC .... small-world problem(miligram) and modelling such networks,beauty of primes and number theoretic algorithms,quantum mechanics. Several books have also influenced deeply...textbooks/sci-fi/cyberpunk...works of hofstadter,stephenson etc....
The Selfish Gene.
Ask YC: What is your favourite paradox?
Mine has to be Olber's Paradox which asks 'Why is it dark at night?' Possible answers to this question are profound: the universe is of finite size or has a finite age.
I think you should choose based on what the function of the add-on is.

I'm not sure if your options cover this, but some add-ons would be a centralized service (Google Analytics) which you may want to consider as well.
Fantastic and concise. Out of curiosity, is there a link to that anywhere on the News.YC website? Perhaps I'm blind, but I don't see one anywhere. I looked for a page like that when I joined and, after not finding one, just jumped into the fray.

It's a great resource for newbies like myself. Perhaps it deserves more prominent billing?
http://einfall.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/outliers-why-the-cen...
Should I open up alpha or wait until full(er)-featured beta?
I am the solo (so far) founder of a startup; working on a web app that is very nearly ready for people to play around with. However, it still lacks some features that would make it complete on a minimal level. Should I announce it once the alpha is complete, or wait until I write the features that are still lacking?

Update: By lacking features, I mean those that would fundamentally change they way the app would be used, once they're written. Also, the app would depend heavily on user-generated content; this makes me think I should release earlier rather than later.
startup blowdart

A few puffs of air in the right direction?
Godel's incompleteness theorems.
Diagonalization. Undecidability. Arrow's Theorem.
Odd Behavior And Creativity May Go Hand-in-hand
"... What have you learned that rocked your world? ..."

Mostly about empirical observations about the natural world. One very simple idea while in High School studying physics & chemistry that "the iron in your blood flowing through your arteries is composed of left over bits of exploded starts (Iron)". Another is how little we really observe and notice things. Every week I make a habit of exploring & looking for new things mostly flora or fauna [0] in the bush. It sharpens your observation skills and keeps you fit at the same time. It never ceases to amaze me finding a new variety of insect. [1] Last weeks was a huge fly. [2] Never seen them before. I'm still hunting after a huge flying insect approx: 4-5cm in diameter that I've only seen around 500+m elevation.

[0] http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600203012569/ and http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195813933/

[1] http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195955778/

[2] http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2294889518
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxical_combinator
Perhaps I haven't had sufficient experience with Digg, Techcrunch, etc., but it seems a touch elitist to me to denigrate someone based solely on the sites which they choose to frequent.

Example: I browse youtube. A lot. I sometimes comment on videos. Now, read the comments on any substantially popular youtube video. A lot of noise, yes? So does that automatically make me an idiot or a bigot or illiterate? No, not necessarily. A similar argument can be made for TechCrunch, Digg, or any other website. The problem is the site, not the users.

In a sense, this is a fallacy of division: Digg is a noisy site with little, if any meaningful discourse. Therefore none of its users are capable of meaningful discourse.
That is a great name, but alas there is already a venturecatapult.com.
Linus has addressed this:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643...
Girls like sex too.
The TC front-paging: A clever Arc stress-test organized by Paul Graham? Investigative report at 11...
I would like MightyQuiz more, if I hadn't after 80 questions found, I think, four or five that had incorrect 'right answers'.

It'd be better if they had some kind of way to prune these out.
Our goal is definitely to get startups that could benefit from VC closer to it. 9 of 59 startups prior to this winter have raised money from VC funds so far.

More generally our goal is to get startups closer to later stage investors, whether angels or VCs. Pretty near 100% of startups are looking for at least some additional investment.
I simply mean there is a high risk of failure.
While you're asking about tools, I gotta link to these guys:

http://www.commoncraft.com/

They do some pretty kickass "screencasts". ;-)
I found PBEM too draining. While a game was going (and it can take months or years, e.g. atlas@USTR), it's something I couldn't take a rest from, at least not often enough. Even when I was not compulsively checking my mail or looking at a map, I would keep a background process munching my tactical and, especially, my diplomatic situation.

I left the hobby altogether because of that (and the fact that I can't find other 6 players for a live game [1]).

I plan to some day [2] implement a client/server to play remotely but in real time, with good communication interfaces [3]. So you can set apart an afternoon every other weekend or so, play a game for a few hours, and then the game ends no matter what and you're done with it.

[1] There are some variants with more or less than 7 players, though. I found Iberian (5 players) to be enjoyable, and Hundred3 is quite playable if you can only find 3. If you want to lose your life, try World2, played by 17 (!) players on a wraparound world map.

[2] And seeing so many upvotes to Diplomacy comments around here, that day might come sooner!

[3] There's RTDip, a community for realtime mail games, but communication is forbidden in those games, so it's not nearly the same.
Darwinism, Evolution and survival of the fittest. Such a simple idea that has such broad implications.
They've gotten noticeably more amicable in their responses recently.
I think golf is a good social hack when it allows people to conduct legitimate business "work" and get some good exercise in a nice setting at the same time.
Russell's paradox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox
MFS = Minimum feature set: what's the minmum set of features that would make your product useful enough so people will bother to sign up for it? Is it stable enough?

I know we have the mantra "release early and often", but if you release something way too early, people will look at it, close the browser and move on. Maybe have friends or other people you know take a look at it, before releasing it as a beta?

Depending on the audience of your product, you can have even family try it out. If it is something for general public, you would get a lot of feedback from sisters/brothers close friends about usability.

My benchmark are my sister and brother in law. They are both pretty smart (one a financial analyst, and the other the lawyer), competent in computers, but definetly not techies. if something in navigation doesn't make sense to them, then the general public will have even more trouble figuring it out.
I still recall playing Global Wars (risk clone) on a local BBS back in the day. One move a day, and it was still a lot of fun.
Rather a self-refuting comment...
See if they still really exist. They haven't updated their website in a year.
Zeno's paradox, which proves that motion is an illusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes

Those ancient Greeks knew their shit.
You should get someone to test it that would fit in the user set.
Mark Cuban's rules for startups
This really could be cut down to a few paragraphs (the ones under the heading, "The Southwest Airlines Parallel").

Now if you value simplicity, why write 1000 words of preamble?
this is a repost http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133489
I have a love/hate relationship with Condorcet's paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet's_paradox):

love: it illustrates a fundamental limitation of democratic processes

hate: it's the main reason the IMO best known voting method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method) is difficult to explain/advocate for...
I really dig the time-stamp color-changing idea. It would be a really easy way to see what is new and probably not too hard to implement. A demo of it would probably be a pretty good decider though. Maybe all those green and red "1 hour" "1 day" ago things would be distracting on a page with only black and grey text.
Good and bad unpredictable things happen in Diplomacy too, with the advantage that its randomness generator is entirely carbon based ;). After the powers are adjudicated, there is absolutely no dice rolling, and still you are on your toes until the last minute, and every game is different and surprising at some point. That is beauty.
high bandwidth warning

... ever since scoble switched from text I can't get scoble-tv. mainly due to what-ever video format they are using [0]. Anyone care to summarise the highlights (plz) ?

[0] 64 bit systems do not seem to be a priority, maybe this one will work ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133436
Here's an excerpt from a discussion on ACM Queue[1] between Jim Gray and Werner Vogels on this:

We went through a period of serious introspection and concluded that a service-oriented architecture would give us the level of isolation that would allow us to build many software components rapidly and independently. By the way, this was way before service-oriented was a buzzword. For us service orientation means encapsulating the data with the business logic that operates on the data, with the only access through a published service interface. No direct database access is allowed from outside the service, and there's no data sharing among the services.

[1] - http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=show...
Levy wrote Hackers and Crypto. He also introduced me to a whole bunch of neat Apple II video games via his writings in the 1984 Whole Earth Software Catalog. He's awesome.
The risk is that if your startup fails, you've traded what probably would have been a great salary at a larger company, so essentially you gave up that guaranteed income for the more risky startup.
The Kindle is roughly the size of a paperback, and comes with a nice leather case so it's not awkward to carry. But it's the integration with Amazon that really does it for me. You can select books online, and have them sent to the Kindle. You can also browse a Kindle-only Amazon site directly from the Kindle over the wireless.

With any book, you can download the first 5 chapters or so as a free sample. I have about 30 samples on the Kindle right now that I browse through when I'm ready for my next book. Plus, about 80% of new books I'm interested in have Kindle versions. I expect that number will be 100% soon.
Here is a sample configuration that we use for RescueTime, it's fairly InnoDB centric. http://www.joehruska.com/?p=7
Like Twitter, Chatterous offers instant chat
I recently had to answer this question when my girlfriend's mom friended me. I waited a while, but in the end I thought, what the heck, I don't have anything in there that's a secret. I'm sure that decision will haunt me.
I'd echo what martianpenguin said.

Open it up to a few people (People from news.yc would be a good choice) who can both test it out, and offer constructive criticism on flaws, bugs, whathaveyou.

And then, you can work towards an alpha/beta
Recommendations for email programs
i'm using godaddy email and it is -- well -- horrible. i was thinking of going to gmail because i really like the search and tagging functionality, and speed. (btw, i left yahoo mail -- way too slow). but, on techcrunch today, people really downed gmail. does anyone have suggestions for a useful alternative?
I think sites like this would work better if everyone chose one and stuck with it.
In that same article you linked it explains why those paradoxes don't prove shit.
Raising Obama: Politics & Power
The 20 Eye: http://www.zappos.com/images/725/7257495/5089-291353-d.jpg
me three. it is so easy to announce -- you just tell people. it is more difficult to deliver. so, sharing with a close group of friends is not only what i recommmend but also the way i plan to go, too, in deciding whether to make it public.

but, i'm with you -- it is so tempting when you work alone to get feedback. so getting feedback from people that are close as ardit points out is the way to go.
Much as there's been confusion about 1024 vs. 1000, creating another set of types like "KiB and MiB" just makes things worse, not better! I really hope the "KiB" ridiculousness goes away eventually.
Should You Hire Workaholics For Your Startup?