skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How to write a 2 minute blog post
Believe it or not, you don't really need to blog on company time. Here's how to write a 2 minute blog post with a new web tool. Enjoy not getting fired for your blog.
Excellent! hmmm... version 1.0.0-beta. Am I the only one a bit nervous basing a start-up on something this fresh? I'd certainly like to contribute to open source, but in a post launch, here's a toolkit/library sort of way, not by debugging a low level database library weeks before launch or worse post-launch. I've used memcached (not db) and love it.

This new cousin would be ideal for me. Is anyone else considering it? I need a flexible object database. I've looked at CouchDB or something based off of qdbm (http://qdbm.sourceforge.net). Currently working on other parts of the system (and delaying the persistence part).
Apart from wikipedia, I'm in the U.S. so I would show:

- The American Fact Finder:
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en

- The national debt clock: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock

Just curious: anyone know of any good equivalents for other countries?
Is the "-beta" really necessary if the version is 1.0.0?
Oddly enough, the real estate guys who sell seminars and books are the first to admint that they make far more money from the seminars and books than from real estate.

Maybe that says more about their customers than their skills.
1) Almost no startups have great code. If the code doesn't solve user problems, then you should be worrying.

2) It sounds like your colleagues are not fully invested in having your project be a success. Is your project something that everyone agrees the company needs? If not you may have to fall back on your manager to explain why it is needed, or re-evaluate whether you should be doing this.

If the project is something that everyone agrees the company needs, and colleagues are still giving you the cold shoulder, something is dysfunctional here. Maybe they have a low impression of your competence -- why is that? Was there a group decision to hire you, or were you parachuted in?

Whatever you do, do NOT stop asking questions. Don't even DELAY asking them, if you really can't get what you need from the code. You stop asking questions when they threaten you with broken bottles.

3) A mistake that people fresh out of college often make: stopping dead when they don't get the resources or attention they need. In the workplace, if the problem is elsewhere and "not your fault" you still have to take steps to fix it.
Yeah. Time of death, 8:48 EST Tuesday. Good chat, though.
A written plan will help you communicate goals and tasks but until you get to the point where you have to manage other people, I'd say don't make planning a seperate thing.

Instead keep a document with the details you think need more planning and maintain it as you go about the actual work. Refer back to this document whenever you need to as you interact with people and revise accordingly.
I'm not sure if they've publicly launched yet but I'd have to say Qtoro.com!

Besides the fact that Altay is a great guy, you can't help but love a startup that's all about trivia!
US Judge censors WikiLeaks.org by ordering DNS records removed
Hackers able to reroute Net traffic / Rogue servers orchestrate attacks
This is the power of PR.
All your family's blogs, and picassa and flickr pages, how to use bookmarks and how to make a page a desktop shortcut.

After that, I'd send her straight to PGs tutorial on arc, I mean, it's a logical next step ;)
Hmm.. I bet a suitably enhanced version of this would make a good YC startup.
Review: Floating world comes into closer focus
Are there any folks using RSS for Hacker News out there? I'm surprised there isn't more demand for displaying the points in the RSS feed.
1. Grab a pencil and paper and lay things out until it's time to stop laying things out and see what they'll look like.

2. Code until you realize you need to slow down and think about things a little more.

3. Go to Step 1.
A couple of thoughts -

> Don't patch bugs out, rewrite them out.

I like this one. But it's only really possible to do that with a fully unit tested application. And when rewriting it out, you'll need a test in place to reproduce the error before actually fixing it.

> If something is worth doing once, it's worth building a tool to do it.

People I work with find me odd for doing little tools that automate things. I find this to be an excellent indicator of how good a developer is and how much I can trust them to develop something for me.

> It is not enough to do your best: you must know what to do, and THEN do your best.

Sage advice. Never thought of it like that, but very insightful.

> when the cart stops
> do you whip the cart
> or whip the ox?

Don't get it. To place in coding analog, does this mean that people would whip the code rather than the developers of said code? If so, then that doesn't make sense. developers will tend to bear the brunt of any failures of the code they produce. Don't they?
I'm currently saving for my flight trip to come from France to the US and now that I read this kind of thing I wonder if my objective of moving to the SV is not just plain foolish.

I was born in L.A but I was raised in France, I learned my english mainly from video games and the internet. Now I'm 26 and I want to come back to my home country, hit the reset button and start a new game.

For some reason I have a strong appeal to the west coast, but since I'm the kind of person that has to save for a flight trip, maybe SV is not for me. I'll be coming in about 3 months, should I land in L.A rather than S.F ? My initial objective was to meet interesting people around the start-up world and try to infiltrate the place this way. Maybe it's the wrong approach.

Maybe the question should be : where is the best place to struggle at first ?
Rackspace Offers Cloud Computing with Mosso
The first one's always free...
Now that a comments link exists. It would be nice to have points displayed also:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=118589
Mozilla Messaging Launches To Fix Email - Will It Be Enough?
SV has a lot going for it, and isn't a bad place to go at all. Go for it!

My main objection is that it's a place for people like you to go, try, see how they do, and then most likely move on. Most people move on because if you're not rich, it's a bad place to try and raise a family and be part of a community with some permanence to it. And even if you're rich, stuck in traffic on 101 is stuck on traffic on 101, no matter how many millions you have in the bank.

If settling down and raising a family isn't in your immediate future, then, absolutely, go there and have a great time! You'll learn a lot and probably have a great time.
Yeah, I'd have to run it internally for a while before unleashing it in the wild. Definitely not something I'd want to do while building a new business.

As for alternatives, have a look at thrudb. It's new too but is being used in production by a few decent sized sites.
Toshiba Exits HD DVD Business, Ceding Market to Sony's Blu-ray
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes
You might want to set up some sort of vesting schedule to achieve this. See http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2005/05/term_sheet_-_ve.ht...
Sounds like a business model for justin.tv
Pretty typical paul graham post. He doesn't provide any evidence and he shows very little understanding of the problem. He doesn't even understand he is being trolled because he is wrong. No one cares about 4000 lines of macros for PLT Scheme. All of his arc hype led to some dumb macros. We listened to years of essays about how to program and what makes productive programmers only to find he takes R5RS and adds some macros. Wow. Amazing LISP revolution.

Paul you are being "trolled" because people disagree with you. You haven't seen real trolls.
Word of mouth
This is similar to my first Java position. It wasn't a start-up, but it was a small downtown consulting company. It took me a while to do anything simple and my boss seemed to recoil in horror whenever I asked a dumb question. I ended up lasting 6 months there. This was after moving to a new town to take the position and signing a year long lease.

It turned out to be a good thing, though. Two weeks later, I ended up getting a job paying $5k more. It motivated me to get better, and now I am fairly competent at back end development. Don't sweat it, things will work out for the best. Sure it sucks to go through. I was afraid of getting fired, and I did. But for me, it was something akin to a refiner's fire. Either way, you'll become better because of it, as long as you don't take anything personally.
Startup mistakes - (This site is one of them)
Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds)
6 mistakes MicroISVs make.
Kaufman confuses me...

You never know where the line is between him joking and him being serious. Most people make what I think is the wrong assumption, that he was never serious.
But what would be a good starting point? I looked at hotsheet, but at first glance it sucks. Who needs a category "search engines" prominently among the picks, for example?
First I have to get my family started on blogging ;-)
It's called a "heel".
I've never had any of the issues you describe.
I'd like to add my own: Software can be developed - it can't be engineered (in the manner of bridges, tunnels, and chemical plants)
Does anyone else think YouNoodle is a name that is almost a prank?
The article/title is slightly misleading... This isn't about re-routing traffic, but about DNS poisoning.
Joao Magueijo has an interesting look into this problem (specifically referring to Nature, too) in his book Faster than the Speed of Light. I read it when I was studying physics and it really intrigued me to see how difficult it is to challenge the status quo in a science that is defined by its fundamental revolutions.
Google’s annual report by the charts
The Analog Cellphone Timeline
Scientists point out our flock mentality
What happens now the next-gen DVD format war is won?
Programming languages evolution tree [picture]
Computer software terms 'unfair'
Retrieve a Remote File via Email
Toshiba to quit HD DVDs, ends format war
Doesn't say when he posted, but his idea sounds a lot like celestia
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Microsoft targets Web with Yahoo or alone: Gates
15 Things Men Say But Dont Really Mean
Fidel Castro retires
BBC TV programmes put on iTunes
Internet sex auction sparks paternity row
Important world news, which is why it's on cnn.com and pretty much every other news site out there. Pretty much irrelevant to hackers.
If they take digital photos it's easy to get them started on blogging. Just have them upload photos of their doings to http://ourdoings.com/ where they'll be automatically organized by date. They click on a date, click Edit, and type something about that day's doings. Instant photo blog.
Like a lot of good advice that seems to be obvious or simple: it's the condensed result of subject mastery.

You're right: it's aimed at beginners. It's also aimed everyone else.
"Abraham Lincoln reportedly said that, given eight hours to chop down a tree, he'd spend six sharpening his axe."

I always thought that I was wasting time until I read this one a few years ago.
First step in building a successful ANYTHING: make sure your product works! They are claiming to possess algorithms that are able to predict the success of a given startup. I'm curious to know how many startups they have successfully invested in that they have developed algorithms against.

I would imagine PG would be in a better position on MANY levels to write something like this, if possible. Indeed if such a thing were possible, I would imagine there would be some serious PhD research in this area.

I find it funny that this got as much initial positive press as it did whereas programs that can predict the stock market reliably (a much simpler problem given the relatively controlled/closed system of any given market compared to the virtual chaotic environment of a startup in the wild) are often passed off as snake oil in many circles. Taking this problem alone (automated trading programs) there are multi-billion dollar investment firms that spend millions on teams of developers and PhD working out formulas and algorithms to crack this problem; I know from personal experience that these systems are only good for a few months and are constantly changing. This fact alone diminishes the predictive value of whatever algorithms they have developed over time...

If two 20 somethings have something that groundbreaking that does NOT require constant tweaking (unlikely) then they must have discovered some new mathematical property governing human decision making at a large scale (even more unlikely).
Deep or wide? You decide. (how to present)
"Who needs a category "search engines" prominently among the picks, for example?"

A newbie. You and I already know what's good and bad on hotsheet. But she doesn't. Let her find out for herself.

Also, a lot of newbies have no idea what's possible on-line outside of email. Hotsheet has a lot of variety on one page that Granny might find easy to use. Things will probably be different for her in a month or two.

Edit: I just realized that I'm replying to the OP. Tichy, one of the surest ways to reduce responses to your questions is to say that they suck.
I know. I thought long and hard about posting this on here. I'm a long time reddit reader who's gotten disgusted with reddit. But seriously, this is one of the funniest things I've seen on the Web. Thanks for your input.
The Subprime Loan Machine: Software to Screen Home Buyers
I bought my tickets too.
Good point. I admire what Jobs has done with OSX in making it easy for developers to create first class software. Perhaps Xobni is exemplary of this model for Microsoft. An acquisition of Xobni might not benefit Microsoft as much as seeing Xobni flourish independently and be an example of grassroots development that is so prevalent in the OSX community.

If Microsoft has realized that they have cannibalized a large segment of developers (think plankton in an ecosystem analogy) then they might realize that it's better to have more diversity and encourage independent developers to create quality software such as Xobni.
This reminds me a little bit of what the younoodle guys are trying to do, but applied to a different domain.
When You Should Ignore Code Metrics
I've come to think of him as the Fool in Lear: he is always serious.
They're just now doing this?
The article is trying to give the impression of a vanishing middle class, but the data really don't seem to back it up. It defines "middle-wage jobs" as people earning between $30K and $80K, and notes that the proportion of these has dropped from 52% to 46% in the last few years. But with the exception of students, there's virtually nobody in Silicon Valley earning less than $30K anyway, so I suspect what this really means is that more and more people are earning over $80K, while the number of full-time workers earning less than $30K has remained close to zero.

Good news spun as bad?
Hello, I am a Pythonista and a Rubyist.  Both of my languages suck.
Which Litman book?
Probably http://8aweek.com given how much time it's already saved me. They probably deserve some equity in my company at this point. ;)
419eater.com
Good. I look forward to meeting you there. Hopefully in the auditorium, and not in the parking lot ;)
1) Almost no startups have great code.

.....True or not, I find that strangely reassuring
"Confucius says, 'Of course, you want to be rich and famous,'" Leonard said. "'It's natural. Wealth and fame are what every man desires.'" But Confucius understood there is a moral decision too, and sooner or later an accounting begins.

"'The question,' Confucius said, 'is what are you willing to trade for it?'"

(From a great NG article about Silicon Valley during the DotCom boom that captures the energy and excitement of SV - http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/12/01/html/f...)
I might get laughed at here, but here goes....

1) Find out what she already does with her spare time. Her hobbies and interests in particular.

2) See in what areas she wants to grow. One thing older people tend to do is become set in their ways. You need to show her how the internet will bring value to her current interests instead of turning her on to things that younger people find cool. It MIGHT alienate her from the internet if she sees too many 2girls1cup reaction videos (sorry, I couldn't resist!!) on YouTube.

3) Show her some sites that are small enough that she doesn't get overwhelmed with information. I think the overwhelming factor is something that turns seniors off.

Depending on your granny's sensitivities, I would recommend putting a "safe browsing" application on your computer. You tend to forget how easy it was to stumble onto a site with flashing banner advertisements for Viagra during the late 90s.

I think as a first application, Google Earth (as you said a no-brainer) would be the place to start. The level of control over her own experience she would have as far as how much information she would access depends on her level of comfort; and hopefully over the course of a few days this should increase such that she is more comfortable absorbing new information. The metaphor of exploring the world in a virtual sense might help ease the transition to exploring the internet directly through a browser. Also, the gliding effect is calming in the sense that it's not a sudden jump: there are nice transitions between flying from one place to another and zooming in and out. The one problem you might face, however, is convincing her to use Google Earth over and over again; one way to do this is to provide her with a "travel itinerary" such that she can visit famous places to which she has never been.

I would recommend familiarizing her with one application per month.
Wordpress.com Down
Satisfaction is the Message   People are the Medium
Free Software Development Tools From Microsoft
The Psychology of the Salad Bar
Most Common Entrepreneurial Myths
It's a story of how the mortgage industry took to computer models over time (and how they were abused in the subprime mess).
The 4-Stages of Testing Your Web Product
I call bullshit. A lot of his arguments perhaps make sense for early versions of Office, but for '97 and later? It didn't occur to anyone on the Word or Excel teams in 1997 that maybe interoperability would be an issue?

I really enjoy Joel's blog, but sometimes I can't stand the clubbish-ness of the old-school Microsoft brigade. "We were a bunch of geniuses, doing the best we could..." Yeah, well, the software is usable, but it kinda sucks. Don't be surprised if the people MS victimized for a decade sound critical now that we can all see how the sausage gets made.
www.twittervision.com
I saw this on Metafilter. I am not a member but I enjoy almost daily reading on the site. I would offer than you have an unaddressed aspect in regard to those than are called trolls. Specifically Forum members who try to end a debate by labeling someone a troll. I am a member of Syracuse.com and DailyKos. I started posting maybe 7 years ago on Syracuse,com after RWers brought God to the defense an UNJUST war. I am a Catholic who marched against the Vietnam War and for black rights and anti-poverty programs. Since I started posting I have tried to distinguish between what Jesus would support in the positions of the Republicans and the Democrats. To the Right Wingers on Syracuse.com I am a troll because I call them to account concerning unjust wars, the death penalty and their continuing efforts to strangle social programs in a bathtub. On Daily Kos I am called a troll for not supporting "gay rights" or abortion. My views are consistent with my religion. Moreover when I was younger I developed a great appreciation for the Amish and Mennonites who view things in a similar manner but maybe to a greater extent and with greater consistency than the Catholics, I am civil and stay well within the site posting rules. I have had my posts and user name constantly deleted on Syracuse.com and that is fairly easily done there by any poster hitting the "Inappropriate Post" button. The modest size gay friendly community within DailyKos are very hostile to any posts that are in opposition to their goals.
Google 10K: Warns On Near-Term Revenue
Great! Last time I felt like a loser roaming around - where everybody was talking to everybody else and I was looking in all possible general directions - like having a bad day at a night club.
"If you simply have to produce tabular data for use in Excel, consider CSV."

That's what most of us have been doing for years, simply to avoid the mess discussed in this article.

After reading the article, I, for one, will keep on doing it.
"Even if you're rich, stuck in traffic on 101 is stuck on traffic on 101, no matter how many millions you have in the bank."

Wise words.
http://octopart.com
Fitting Leopard's Spaces to a "Task Partitioning" Usage Pattern Rather Than an "App Partitioning" One
If it matters than it isn't irrelevant. No one is forcing you to vote for it.
Sure, they realized interoperability would be important. But by 1995 customers were already whining about how often the file format changed. Nobody would buy Office (n+1) if it would start writing documents in a format that Office (n) didn't understand, because interoperability means precisely that you can't get everyone to upgrade at the same time. So they did a remarkably good job of holding the file formats stable and backwards and forwards compatible for about ten years. Look in the Excel spec and you'll see how much work when into allowing old verisons of Excel to preserve and roundtrip future features they don't understand.
This is a more "real" application of the technology then YouNoodle. Although on the abstract it is the same idea.
My apologies, I didn't mean it as a personal thing. I am genuinely interested in finding good pages to start out with.
This sounds like a good opportunity for a startup. You wouldn't even need to establish a counter at the airport. As a customer, you just check-in via Blackberry, iPhone, or even text message. The shuttle bus swings by to pick you up and you're off.
I think it greatly depends on the market rather or not influencer's have an impact. The average person isn't buying toothpaste becuase someone famous is, but they do drive escalades and hummers because they saw it done by "influencer's"
Netcat Intro
How many times did you come across a blog/post that calls netcat a “swiss army knife”? Netcat is probablly a swiss army knife, but on steroids. It is a must have tool in your personal toolkit. If you haven’t had your first joy ride with netcat, read on, this post is for you.
He doesn't really confuse me, I just never really thought that he was funny. For instance, I really don't find a man wrestling a woman to be that funny. From that era (or a little later) I'd much rather watch watch Bill Murray, George Carlin, Richard Pryor or John Belushi.
I know that feeling well. Like what am I doing here? Why does everyone know everyone here? Where the pain of going up to a group outweighs the possible benefit of networking..

I used to use the advanced wallflower technique - e.g. stand close but not too close to a group to make it seem like you belong - if the group moves on, go to the next group.

Don't get it as much now. Practice. And there are several simple and/or silly techniques that make a huge difference. Silly or simple as they may be. Here's one: talk to people who are standing by themselves, chat and then (this is key) tell them 'i'd like to go meet that group over there. let's go"
MSFT is releasing specs only after the EU is basically forcing them to, and in the year 2008. Please don't try to tell me their formats are not deliberately obfuscated.

If a format's goal truly was to maintain forward/backward compatibility while remaining friendly toward low-end hardware, then it wouldn't be so hard to reverse engineer.
Exactly! Please share the techniques. If you are uncomfortable mentioning them here, I am kirubakaran->gmail.