skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
SQL is a language that will take you half a day to learn and you will use it for the rest of your life. Since it varies from platform to platform you better pick the one you are going to use (Postgres, mySQL, etc.) -- Don't fall into those ORM which hides the database behind a "nice" api. for programming I would suggest you Python.
The best place to start is by looking at http://webpy.org which is a compact yet robust web framework in Python.

good-luck
The star now links to http://tipjoy.com

We're debating making things more explicit. Hopefully the copy text is enough for most people "Like this? Leave a tip: [tip this]"

We're going to make that customizable soon.
On a tangent here guys. I am currently cloning the EBS (Evidence Based Scheduling) part of FogBugz 6. Do you think it would be a good idea to open source this? How would you feel about it as a Trac plugin? What do you think about EBS?
this is funny, i read the other post and clicked through to see the last name maroon naming convention and I immediately thought of matt maroon, then he commented on it.

hope you take over the world. should have included cloning myspace.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Maroon Demo</title>
<script src="jquery-1.2.3.pack.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){$("#ebay").text("Shop Victoriously!");});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="ebay"></div>
</body>
</html>

Let me know what your paypal address is so I can request money :)
HTML >> Flash.

Personally, I absolutely LOATHE flash/flex only sites. They behave horribly on the usability side, lack simple stuff like 'back button' and text sizing, and they task/heat up the CPU like you wouldn't believe (especially on a Mac).

Flash has a purpose on the web... you can use it for various widgets that are impossible to do in HTML (say, recording and playing video and playing back animations and audio). But I'd never use it as a general presentation layer.
That's pathetic. Waiting for the other guys to stumble you can take the lead. Is building a better product such an impossible dream?
Rails could. It gives you an api for free and there are plugins/gems that you could modify to fit into the semantic web.

BUT, I don't think this 'semantic web' is ever going to be achieved. Most of the big players want you to give the information to them. Sure they give you an API, but it's against the terms of service to take your data out(Youtube,Facebook). I think when those barriers break we could get closer to it, but how are they going to make money?

Maybe I am wrong.
Billable for mac. http://www.clickablebliss.com/billable

I like it. I have read problems about it being slow for some people with 200 clients and blah blah, but I have no problems with it.
These tips work for me: http://zenhabits.net/2008/02/7-food-hacks-to-stay-alert-with...
Are you working on a computational biotech startup? Do you know of any examples. I have only found a few that I am interested in, but they are out of Montreal and Budapest.
After reading your comment, I agree.
I had to look that up--you're implying Candian content? :)
Why the Obama "Brand" Is Working (From Logo to Font)
The craftsman in us all
Okay, so far, we have ClickableBliss' Billable, FreshBooks, SlimTimer and Rescue time. Only Billable is stand-alone, the others are services that require working Internet.

But even then, this shows me four I've never heard of before. :)
Genius.com -> SalesGenius product. Can use as a straight web app or even integrate with Outlook. Also - cheap!
Re-using opn source code
I like this comment from zerofactorial on /.:

"This is like Satan trying to appeal to Christians."
I'm referring to the last bit of his post. I assumed I didn't understand something about the arithmetic.
I can see why he cried, every now and then I catch a new feature on Google Maps and go "whoa."
Japan seeking to govern top news Web sites
Sun Microsystems' StorageTek 5800 System open sourced
EU fine sends message to Microsoft and others
No, I mean it's pointless because I think there are very few use cases for it. You're pretty much limited to libraries which do not rely on any OS-specific calls or which only do very generic OS-calls like file I/O.

FWIW, I'm the author of GCC-CIL, which provides a backend to GCC to emit .NET bytecode, and I still don't see the point. I mean, what are you going to recompile for flash or .NET? BLAS and LINPACK? :P At least with .NET you have access to libc and other native code libraries via P/Invoke, but you don't even get that from flash...
Too bad you haven't gotten any bidders like this:

"Hi. I can do this for you next week, when I plan on taking a break from a nonotech based / atomic fission driven search engine thats going to make larry page wet his pants. 6 days to code, 1 to rest. It will be written from scratch and completely original in design, so don't worry about copyright bs. I plan to write the entire OS in C, and blindfolded, if its all the same to you. 100% secure will not be a problem either...In fact the OS will be designed to leverage jedi mind tricks to kill anyone that even thinks about breaking in. (i was thinking maybe make them chop off their feet and jump up and down until their empty would be fair). Anyways, I'm gonna smoke some more crack, maybe you should do the same. Thanks!"

Which came in reply to "I need someone to program me a new OS (Operasting System)" on getacoder.com: http://www.getacoder.com/projects/operating_system_42879.htm...
Yes, it is similar to caffeine, but no jittery side effects. The focus-increasing/anti-ADHD aura of kratom is decidedly better than caffeine but less than amphetamine.

When consumed for stimulation, it is best drunk continuously as slowly as possible throughout a day. Caffeine works best like this also, but most people drink their cups quickly at certain times of the day.
I tend to do a lot of things from the terminal these days. Maybe I wouldn't if they'd FTFF.
No, alas, no blog because blogging is against my code of ethics; I believe the phattic communication tendencies of modern society will soon cause it to be so distracted that all work will come to a grinding stop and collapse civilization.

Plus I have no friends so I can't imagine how I'd ever launch a blog.

But -- if you hook me up with some folks who can help me put together a demo for some investors I know, I promise you I'll start a blog just to entertain you :)
Turns out there is a compileall.py script in the standard distribution that does the trick; there is also the py_compile module and the 'compile' function (though it takes a string).
Does the tip get debited only after the intended recipient receives it?
Cool, allowing tips to be used inside the system to fund other tips is a good touch that also have the side effect of encouraging even more generosity.
No, when the tipper gives it. Also, someone only receives the money into their account when the tip is paid, but they are shown the level of unpaid tips.

I expect a number of blog posts of people saying "hey folks, pay your tips!". We're deploying some friendly ways of encouraging it too.
Perhaps you'd like Microsoft's PowerShell if you have to use Windows. Microsoft is slowly realizing that many people like to use command line tools, especially for managing servers.
Do you add an NPV to account for not getting the return until some date in the future? I.e., a 10000 pts/hr task might be better prioritized after a 100 pts/hr task if the duration of the first is two years and the duration of the second is two days.

(Yes, these are silly and inflated and completely hypothetical. I'm interested in how you solve them within your structure, as I'm a huge ROI fan.)
Just combine freemium (where 1% of users generate 100% of revenue) with ads to produce a model where only 1% of users need to click on ads. Thus it doesn't matter if, say, 50% of users are blocking ads. Whether this model can work is another story.
[SF] Reble.FM is hiring. Looking for Ninjas. Pirates Acceptable.
RSS saves lines.
2nd on the weather. I'm living somewhere else for the first time (Portland) and I just experienced my first ever autumn and winter.

I understand to the OP these responses might seem a little dismal, but SD really does have a stagnant feel to it imho.
Wow, a Semantic Web article that focuses on the real issue (convincing sites to share their data), debunks the "it's about marking up HTML" myth, and doesn't make any ridiculous claims for or against it.

I'm impressed.
Plenty of people don't believe in free-will; in fact as computer scientists, many times with interests in AI, I'd suspect the majority of us are complete mechanists.
streamfocus.com
Public failure as a motivation
We use salesforce.com for one person. That way we don't have to pay anything and it is all that we need.
Highrise?
He cried on seeing a Google Sky rip off?
I actually know someone very well who knows him very well. Maybe I'll do that.
$1,000 for 2% implies a $49k pre-money valuation. Either way, Matt's math is off.
Kurzweil: 'Exponential' Change Ahead for Games, People
Yeah... while I don't believe in free-will, belief in fate is not a life philosophy. It's the kind of thing you want to ignore and pretend doesn't actually exist because it is not a happy conclusion.
That's true, but my thought here is that if something like Rails automatically generated semantic web structure when it serves the pages then as people build web apps we get the semantic stuff for free.

Think if Scribd had something like that when they built their site. Then all of those documents could have extra data, pulled from the database and the document itself, embedded in the page.

I guess what I'm thinking of is an extension to something like ActiveRecord that pulls that information out of your models and database to embed in your pages.
I must admit, I would have really liked to have seen the John McCarthy ask the question.
OfficeZilla.com. It rocks... but I am biased!
I've figured it out. Most of those things will fall by the wayside anyway as people realize that they offer no tangible advantage in life and take up a lot of time.

If you can get me peeps to build it, I can even get the money for it.
MacArthur Grant Supports Princeton Laptop Orchestra Initiatives
Teaching a Computer to Appreciate Art
It might be 100 years, but in the long term I think the wealth transfer mechanism will be in delivered energy. Barrels of oil work well for now, maybe we'll switch to Joules eventually.
Windows Server 2008 to have command line only version
There are lots of industries that don't make their money by controlling access to data.

Pretty much anybody selling you something can gain by making it easier for you to find the product you want. I'm sure eg. realtors would be happy to publish their listings in a machine-readable format if they thought anybody cared.

Lots of government data too, explicitly open data like Wikipedia, and things that aren't worth the trouble to try to lock up and monetize.
You can sign up to be on the waiting list. I got an invite after 2 days.
Great idea, it's just potentially very embarrasing.
So when we eventually crack fusion, we'll all be millionaires!
Or, if they REALLY want to appeal to the unix crowd, they could stop charging $500 for their "Ultimate SuperDuper Awesome Smashing Ballmerastic Organicasmic Edition" of Windows... Perhaps making it free? Yes, I think that would fit the bill.
The description of DRBD as software RAID is a bit misleading, since in most deployment scenarios, only the "primary" node of the pair can actually write data to the replicated volume.

It's real use is in building high-availability services -- since the "mirrored" disks aren't in the same box, you can have an up-to-the-second copy of the data there. The two systems don't even have to be in the rack next to each other, which is a tough trick to pull off with normal hardware RAID.

As I said in my other comment, though, it is a lot slower than native disk writes.
Let me ask you the following re-factored version of your question and see if it illustrates the value of DRBD:

> What is the advantage of "network I/O" over I/O? It seems to me that file copying is best left below the OS.

Basically, DRBD gives you RAID-like replication of data across multiple physical hosts. This makes deployment of high-availability services stupidly easy, if sometimes less efficient than applicaiton-level replication protocols.

For mail spools, NFS shares, or other simple file-based systems, though, it works pretty well.
Well at least theres no default friend named "Tom"

...

At least, I hope not.
not every country with a capitalistic leaning economy has the debt our country has - many are in the black...

"sigh. I envy the gleam in your eyes. No offense to Paul Graham, but I'd like to see his effort duplicated now ... same with Yang"

they weren't the first and they probably won't be the last - history will repeat itself. that's like saying everything that's been invented has already been invented.

"Sam walton succeeded because of a one-time massive systematic non-repeatable even (globalization). You think anything that massive is just around the corner for you to exploit"

change is the only thing that's constant. if I don't take advantage of it, someone else will and the guard changes again...

"last time I checked China was a carefully micro-managed mixed economy"

yes but it's a big change from am almost pure centralized socialist leaning economy. a lot of individuals have already benefited from the change. u can't tell me it's not a big change from what they had in say the 60's

"Tell me, have you ever travelled much across this country?"

I have, and I beg to differ especially when I can compare with a lot of 3rd world countries I've been to. can you do the same?

"Because my startup is based on this reality and trying to find a solution to it"

based on everything you just wrote, the logical option would be to move to some EU nation with a more socialist leaning economic system and just relax. lookin at your arguments it doesn't make sense to stay and start a capitalistic venture within a capitalistic leaning economy since the Microsofts and Exxons of the world will just smash it. If you're just preparing "for a change in perception of reality" and u don't care about "surrounding yourself with lots of trinkets", u don't need a startup; a non-profit will do just fine.

"Silicon Valley is amagical, artificial dream world that represents reality about as much as a commercial for a luxury resort."

that's a little strange to say considering in your past posts it seems like you lament not being in SV since "it's the startup hub". I guess you being here would do wonders for your startup "based on this reality"
$1000 = $50000 * 2%
Exactly. My point is that energy is the only thing we have that is scarce. There's water, perhaps, but we can convert salt water to potable water with enough energy. Why abstract away energy with bills or metals?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
Who would come to collect this when you're dead?
I'd disagree for someone unfamiliar with programming as the author seems to be. Ruby isn't a good starter language, IMO. It has a bit too much magic for beginners for my taste. It's absorbed a bit too much from Perl in that it's a lot easier to write than to read. When people are first learning a language, I'd suggest a language that has a little more structure to it than Ruby. That's why I suggested Python and Django.

I really don't have anything against Ruby and Rails. I really like the Rails framework and there's a lot of great stuff there. I just don't think that Ruby is a best first language to learn.
I know. That'd give a post-money valuation of $51k, though, giving you a little less than 2% of the company in the end.
Defining Success For a Bootstrapper
SugarCRM. The bastards removed half of the Project Management functionality in 5.0 but now they are promising to bring it back.
If the IP laws on the books were followed by everyone, it would be a disaster. Any sufficiently large piece of software violates patents, so our “knowledge economy” would grind to a halt.

To me, the definition of a bad law is one where society prospers only because it is violated en masse.
I was at GDC and saw this keynote. I'm not sure why it was a GDC keynote. The talk was barely even tangentially related to game development.

The talk was similar to his TED talk but an hour long rather than 20 minutes.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38
"He clicked a button and we saw a completely different view of the same colliding galaxies."

Although I haven't seen what Microsoft did, I can understand his reaction. I reacted in a similar way when I've been at Futuroscope (it's in France).(http://www.futuroscope.com/eng/attraction-cosmos.php)

The screen is a huge shpere taking you through a journey in cosmos. It's really really breathtaking.

Imagine experiencing what Microsoft did with a set of VR glasses and especially if what they did was in true 3D.

Watch the video, maybe it could set you in the mood to understand

http://www.futuroscope.com/eng/video.php?video=destination_c...
Surfer-Physicist's Unified Theory Leads to Fame, Backlash
Why $20 for a paper?
Or book stores next to libraries.
I don't think he is going to fail. A marathon is an achievable goal if you have a training program and apply it. If the NYTimes is smart, they'll get the a good coach to help him. It's a lot harder to fail if you have a good coach.
Ask YC: Best Micropayment Solution?
I am looking for something to facilitate user to user payments. Has anyone used Amazon FPS or something similar? Thought/opinions. thx
I really dislike the thesis of this article. It implies that upper management SHOULD make decisions about technical matters based upon what someone wears. This is almost a guarantee of wrong decisions. When I see someone dressed non-traditionally in that sort of environment I think there's a guy who expects to be judged on the merits of his vision, knowledge and skills. This article should have lectured non-technical managers about what to expect of their most valuable people and not the other way around.
Robot wars 'will be a reality within 10 years'
I already have a language like that, but instead of just text it takes in text and money and turns it into code. It's also pretty slow for a language, taking up to several months depending on the complexity of the problem.
"Surfing is simply the most fun I know how to have on this planet. And physics, and science in general, is the best way of understanding how everything works. So this is what I spend my time doing. I do what I love, and follow my interests. Shouldn't everyone?"

Now that is truly insightful.
Create your own world
Every startup dreams of being the next google, the next microsoft, or kill google, kill microsoft. Well, I have two words for you: be yourself. That's why you start a statup; to solve a personal problem, not google's problems, nor microsoft's. Stop following what google or microsoft are doing. In fact, if you want to be the next goog, or msft, you will get your wish. You will be goog#2, or msft#2. In this competitive world, #2 is an ugly place to be. It's either you're first or last; there's no #2; #2 means last. You're either be google(first), or yahoo(last); facebook(first), or myspace(last). Don't get me wrong, yahoo and myspace are valuable; according to alexa.com, they are #1 and #2 most visited sites in the world. But who cares; yahoo is a confuse conpany; today they decide to be a media company; next month they want to be a search engine company; a few days later, they're angry, and want to fire 10% of their workforce. For myspace, what can I say? Last time I went there, I thought it was a daycare center; a whole bunch of 4 year old.
Facebook Hollywood gimmick features
Perfection is the Enemy
Does he really claim to have a complete unified theory of physics, or is that just media hype?
No argument that design is an essential element in marketing, branding, and useability.

But that's quite a leap to say that if it's not policy differences, it must be the font.

Another classic case of confusing correlation with causation.
Games debatably present the best opportunities for deployed AI. The alternatives are backend servers or aggregate knowledge across the web.

Games are the most consumer facing.
Yeh, that's an awesome idea - let's get rid of the insights Ford gained from the assembly line and toss out about a century's worth of industrial progress and all drop what we're doing and waste time re-inventing each other's wheels. That will really help bring thing about much more efficiently. Tell me, once you're done with your product, do you see yourself going to a VC for funding only to have the VC tell you in return, "You want money from me? Well, I don't know - if you're willing to spend years learning how to raise money from institutional investors all over the world, I might be willing to look at your proposal, otherwise, well, it's not worth it for me."

Maybe you need a CEO with relevant experience. I hope the people who you approach turn around and tell you, "Gee, you're a noob when it comes to building/growing/managing a business - tell you what, why don't you first invest some time and become an executive at a Fortune 500 company like me, then I'll consider helping you out by adding my credibility to your "startup" which is basically just a bunch of code. Call me in 10 years when you're the EVP of a company whose products I use."

This is why we need "big idea business people." Leave it up to you guys and your "prove your worthiness to me first" approach to life and the world would fall apart.

Geesh - imagine going to a doctor or surgeon only to have them tell you, "Well, tell you what - if you're willing to go to med school, I might operate on you. Otherwise, you're not worthy of my effort."
I think it could happen either way, but it's certainly best for the team to structure itself to the project.
FreeBSD 7.0 Released
Now, if Amazon would have an option to run BSD on EC2, I would be a very happy boy.
Give George Carlin The Asshole Theory(~):

"The amount of an asshole a person is is directly proportional to the distance they are away from you at the time you discover this fault. Someone on TV is REALLY AN ASSHOLE! Someone in the car next to you is Pretty Much of an Asshole. A guy standing next to you on line: <whispers> 'this guy's a real asshole here'"
$50,000 doesn't sound as humorous in context as $48,000. I realized the numbers were a tad off.
Design Decisions: Calendar picker for Backpack Reminders
themaroon hotmail.com. Send me $100 so that I know it's you and can reply.
Underestimating "the other's value" is a sign of immaturity and lack of experience. The more I learn about life, the more I appreciate everyone around me more. I'm sure lots of people underestimate civil engineers, car designers, pilots, surgeons, micro-biologists, etc. because life is complex and we have no idea how challenging people's contributions are and how they affect us. Having said that, IMHO it's usually hackers who underestimate everyone else's contributions ... until they get to the point where nobody's signing up for their "thing" or they have people sign up, but nobody's willing to pay them for it. THEN the value of business models, marketing expertise, sales techniques, etc. come into perspective, when they realize all the tweaking in the world doesn't necessarily translate into the handing over of the cash from paying customers.
Googirl - Marissa Mayer
First thoughts on the Evernote Web public beta and the incredible search technology
Haven't, would like it (I'm using git too) but it wasn't a showstopper.
You do realize that people have weddings in exotic locations, which = travel ... and then right AFTER the wedding they go on these things called "Honeymoons" which involve travel, right? So then, yeh, weddings and niche travel would tend to complement each other perfectly for a business like this.