skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree. I don't like how the links open over HN, so I always open the outgoing links in new tabs.

Feature request: Could the links to outside sites open in new tabs/windows by default, so that we don't navigate away from HN when we actually use this site?
xeyes web 2.0 edition.
maybe incestdating.com ?
I've got some ideas around the eInk type displays. Every now and then I send an email to the eInk guys trying to get some bulk rate pricing on their displays - 3 months now and no response. I've got no idea if my ideas for the displays are marketable as I don't know the display costs. These types of problems usher me toward software time and time again...
Obituary: Baba Amte
This article reminds me that if I really, truly want to "help people" in this world, I have to put my hands in the gutter and not on a nice, clean computer keyboard.

Anything else is just trying to put a shiny halo on a moneymaking scheme.
The arguments against TVs are very similar to the older arguments made against letting children have books.
This article reminds me that if I really, truly want to "help people" in this world, I have to put my hands in the gutter and not on a nice, clean computer keyboard.

Anything else is just trying to put a shiny halo on a moneymaking scheme.
I'm pretty sure PG could build such a thing. You have my blessing. If it works out for you guys you can make even by hooking me up with some programmers.
From the blog, here's a link to the full post:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5878.html

Much more valuable info to be had there.
Isn't this evidence that Spain is growing very fast?
I'm not so sure he supported his family on donations for very long. BitTorrent turned into a pretty well funded venture (of which he is chief scientist) a while ago.
Given the way I surf hacker news, I'd get annoyed with that. I only open up new tabs when it takes a long time to load.
How Presidential Candidates Would Help Entrepreneurs
Good skeptical analysis:

http://reason.com/blog/show/125292.html

"Giedd suggests a thought experiment: Imagine trying to assign a population of students to the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms based solely on height. As boys tend to be taller than girls, one would assign the tallest 50 percent of the students to the boys’ locker room and the shortest 50 percent of the students to the girls’ locker room. What would happen? While you’d end up with a better-than-random sort, the results would be abysmal, with unacceptably large percentages of students in the wrong place. Giedd suggests the same is true when educators use gender alone to assign educational experiences for kids. Yes, you’ll get more students who favor cooperative learning in the girls’ room, and more students who enjoy competitive learning in the boys’, but you won’t do very well. Says Giedd, “There are just too many exceptions to the rule.”"

Of course, given that public schools often use the “one size fits all” criteria to sort educational experiences, perhaps gender sorting is a step up (and one that bureaucracies can understand).
Yes, yagibear at gmail dot con
I posted this before, but I can't find the link in YC...

If time is critical, then I figure you'll want screencasts for the language/framework you need to use.

I don't know of any that exist for any other language/framework, but Ruby on Rails has really excellent ones at:

http://peepcode.com - not free but no one else compresses an entire Rails book in 5 hours of video

http://railscasts.com - 5 to 15 min useful segments related to ruby on rails

Once you feel a little more comfortable after viewing the videos, the Pragmatic Programmer Series and Oreilly books are a good place to continue.

Almost forgot - you can test out all you learned at (YC startup) http://heroku.com (nothing to install on your computer - easy to start)
Not anymore. It's a stop on the way to becoming a project manager.
Indeed, it's the discovery problem that all of social media is trying to solve. The web it good at finding something you're looking for, not so great at finding stuff you would like if you knew it existed. Lots of bucks to the people that figure it out (last.fm'a acquisition is a good example of that)
Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Larry Ellison, and lots of other people known for using their charisma to motivate other seem to be doing ok despite their, "empty fuel tank."
Nice. I'd love to go there to work! (note: that wasn't sarcastic)
But the Big 4 are also notorious for very high fees. I'm guessing it's someone who is affordable enough for a startup, but who has the clout, capacity and expertise to help ensure a successful acquisition or IPO.
Just please, please, don't make it a hard sort - offer different teaching/learning styles and let kids switch or sample. Some girls would benefit from being taught "like boys" and some boys would benefit from being taught "like girls." All kids could benefit from being taught better.
As an "anomalous male" according to that definition, I'm pretty sure that would have made me hate everything and go on a killing spree. Certainly wouldn't have helped me learn.
I'm not one to tell anyone how to raise their children (see arguements below about spanking, yikes). This is just my experience... take it or leave it YMMV. My son is only two, and we find that if we let him watch too much TV his behavior takes a dive... more tantrums, less respect/listening to me and mom. As an experiment, we unplugged the TV for several days and the results were immediate and dramatic. Since then, we try to limit his TV time even more so than before. The danger is that he enjoys it, and us parents enjoy the opportunity to take care of other projects around the house without interruption. So if we find the family slipping into TV reliance, we pull the plug for a couple days. Sometimes he's upset at first when he realizes it doesn't work, but he's over it in SECONDS and moves on to something else. I'm not going to bother guessing why this is the case, but our experience is very clear to us.

My personal philosophy is all things in moderation. So if it makes him happy to watch the Wiggles or some old-school Fraggle Rock on DVD, he gets to. But it's the responsiblity of me and mom to keep it reasonable and keep the house a happy place for everyone.
// ==UserScript==
// @name	news.yc open in new tab
// @namespace	http://joshwand.com/
// @description	opens links on news.yc's list pages in new tabs/windows
// @include	http://news.ycombinator.com/
// @include	http://news.ycombinator.com/news
// @include	http://news.ycombinator.com/newest
// @include	http://news.ycombinator.com/x?*

// ==/UserScript==

var a, links, thisdomain;
thisdomain = window.location.host;

links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
a = links[i];
if (a.host && (a.host != thisdomain || String(a).match(/item\?id=/))) {
a.target = "_blank";
}
}
He is rewriting the site. Why? Because he wants to add a bunch of new features that would take longer to hack into the old system then to rewrite an entire new system. He is open to learning some new things, hence the language switch.

He isn't switching for the sake of redesigning, I don't know how you got that impression.

Maintenance time is a key factor here - he rarely looks at the code, so PHP-spaghetti (we are talking '99 PHP, pre-OO and basically impossible to not create spaghetti) is getting unbearable.
Yep, I open tons of tabs from the main screen, then I might not even look at it for 15, 30 minutes, then scan it for 10 seconds and kill it. 30 min + 10 sec doesn't indicate interest in my case.
I think the amount and frequency of comments should play a role as well. Even if a user doesn't particularly like a link (as evidenced by a down vote) if the article is generating comments and discussion (vs. a preset benchmark) it shows that it's at least interesting and notable in some way.
just the color change
"If you want to first learn the fundamentals, PHP/MySQL is a good place to start."

Why, given the existence of Rails, Django, TurboGears, Ramaze, Merb, etc.?
"Scalpels so easy, anyone can operate!"

"Ingredients so good, anyone can cook!"

Imagine how pissed the writer of this article would be if someone ran around talking about a notebook so powerful that anyone could be a journalist.
Interesting how so many of them in this list share the characteristic of being fired from one job or another. Most innovative types don't seem to work so well in stringent environments, or what I like to think of as the SJ mentality of "management by suffocation."
Those dead eyes freaked me out.
On the other hand, i certainly know of businesses using open source projects that would happily pay someone external to fix a bug or add a feature to a given project. Why they wouldn't just assign one of their own developers is a mystery, but that's the way it is.
I just added my contact info to my profile, so e-mail me and I'll tell you more. :)

Be forewarned, though, that the person who takes this role will be working for equity/deferred compensation like everyone else, so it may not be the right gig for you if you need to replace a 9-to-5.
Don't give me too much credit, I wasn't the original creator of kegbot, I merely implemented my own version of the idea.

Mike Wakerly deserves that credit: http://hoho.com/mike/

http://kegbot.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://kegbot.org/project/index.php.html
Must... resist... Ghostbusters... joke...

But seriously, caching is so Web 1.0. These days it's much cooler to make each request as slow as possible and buy more servers to compensate.
My philosophy is more like "all things thoughtfully". We should care about why TV seems to cause various effects, and what effects unplugging it may have.

For example, suppose a child wants to read a good book, you take it away, and he "gets over it in seconds". Does that mean all is right with the world? No. Whether or not he remains upset about the book, he's still missing out on a wonderful book that could have benefitted him.

One also ought to think about how to correct errors. For example, pulling the plug on the TV avoids any input from someone who might know something you don't (like, your child might know more about how important it is to him to see a particular show). Wouldn't it be better to reach an agreement? The more right you are, the easier that will be, won't it? But if you have made a mistake one time, then getting others to agree will be harder, so you get an opportunity to avoid that error.
I think people like clicking on the arrows to make them feel like they're having a say, without actually having to put in (much) effort.

In all honesty, the churn is so high on most sites that the bias is heavily skewed towards "current", not "me" so it might not feel as "smart" without the arrows.

But hey, what do I know. Sounds interesting enough to try as a quick hack of news.arc at the very least.
Arduino is also based on Atmel microcontrollers (kind of like BASIC Stamps are based on PICs)
From the AIR tools page (http://www.adobe.com/products/air/tools/)

"Download the software, SDKs, extensions, and frameworks you need to build, package, and deploy Adobe AIR applications in your preferred development environment."

Well, that would be Kubuntu.

So let's go ...

http://get.adobe.com/air/

"Download the latest version of Adobe AIR

A version of Adobe AIR is not available for this configuration."

At least actual Web apps are really multi-platform.
I agree! It's interesting but he doesn't seem to realize what his alternative in this thought experiment is. It's a co-ed locker room!
The Sun is going to shine on Python
- Introduction to Algorithms (MIT Press). This is the only one of my computer science textbooks that I consistently refer back to. It's elegant and timeless and covers a lot of ground.

- Design Patterns. Dry, boring, useful. You can skim it and get most of the ideas. The best part about it is building up a vocabulary for discussing common patterns with other software engineers.

- Programming Perl. Ah, the camel book. It's possibly the only written-by-the-language-designer reference that's fun to read. Regardless of what your favorite scripting language is, you have to love Larry Wall.

- The Mythical Man Month. Another classic. Easy to read. Stuff people should know, but don't.

- The Design of Everyday Things. Not really a programming book strictly, but a nice introduction to the principles of usability. If you can get over the slight smugness, it can shake up the way you think a bit.
OSAF & Chandler Transition
>what is purpose of that exactly?

I'll bet anything that the porn industry would have no difficulty to find it a purpose.
That's just a semi-public form of greylisting. Greylisting works fine, but a large number of spammers have definitely figured out how to get around it at this point.
"85% of the contexts where something is called 'powerful', it really means 'useless and dangerous'."
That seems a little bit illogical. Why does clicking a link equal up-votes? If you really want to factor in link clicks, then maybe a counter of the times the link has been clicked displayed alongside the votes would be interesting.

But making me come back to down-vote a crappy story/link is really kind of irritating.
So, you're basically proposing that people voluntarily opt-in to a world-wide database of email address/topic-of-interest pairs?

No way. Absolutely, no f-ing way would I ever let my address get in there, and I would strongly advise against any of the users I support ever volunteering such information either.

If you're truly seeking interested parties to email about a topic, a few minutes spent on Google should let you find folks who blog, post to public mailing lists, or otherwise mark themselves online as interetsed in that area.

The only value to a fully machine-readable database of the sort you describe would be for lazy cold-calling salespeople and spammers/phishers...though the separation is really only one of degrees.
I intend to do one someday. I have a design for a dishwasher and an interesting take on electric motors.

Aren't hackers just frustrated inventors anyway?
When you're viewing a story from here, how often do you click anything else on the site? I don't click other links very often, even if I really enjoyed or benefited from the linked article. So, in the end you'll get different numbers, but they'd be no more complete or accurate than what you already have.

This idea would only seem to encourage more sites to spread a simple article across too many pages so that they could better count and track the visitors. But then as a referrer, you still couldn't do much to get access to those numbers.
Obama's Web marketing triumph
There are plenty of businesses that do pay people to work on various open source projects. Google, Apple, IBM, possibly even Microsoft.
It takes a lot to be a successful entrepreneur. The article focuses on perseverance whereas the original comment mentions charisma. And there are many more, including availability of money.

My experience is that charismatic entrepreneur can accomplish a lot with very little money (hence empty gas tank) if he/she has the right vision and the ability to organize and motivate (hence fume which by the way is incredibly combustible).
Why not just scrap the anti-virus software?
Combine this with that guy's Wii head tracking project and it would be really creepy.
Ok, it's not as good, but scroll down to the very bottom of this page:

http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/

It was done 10 years ago, though... (requires java).
Denny K Miu: What I Learned From My Dad
Monzy performs 'kill -9' at Stanford
or manufactured some?
I don't know enough about the others to say, really.
Heh. Fair. I guess I did overreact a bit to your comment. :)
Another criticism of the article:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005422.h...

The Language Log tends to be a little scathing, but this is a bit more restrained.
Considering that all of these came up after YC, I'm not sure we can even assume these companies would exist without YC having first been created.

Granted I'm fairly certain someone would've conceived the YC model eventually.
But if the headline, description, and picture were enough to get you to read the link then it should get a bump. Most people go read the story and never come back, even if they liked it, to up vote. I do that all the time here.
Oh man, if they could pull this off, that would be so great. It causes me physical pain to have to shell out $100's to VeriSign for certs.
I think I agree with you on most counts. Although I'm a little confused by your proposal about the importance of reaching a consensus with the child. Are you refering to older children? As I'm sure you're aware, a child under 2-3 (depending on the child) doesn't have the vocabulary to reach a complex agreement with anyone.
The article uses the term "true believer", and he is - he's very much a zealot. Truth first, then find evidence to support it.
Not even remotely similar. :)
What the heck is a math trade?
Man that's creepy! She's the first creepy east asian I have ever seen. And I always fall in love with east asian women.

Man she's creepy! Mommy ...
IBM building Blue Brain (full brain neuron simulator)
A good use of layered action. A bunch of simple loops layered on top of each other to create a more complex emergent behavior.

Still deeply creepy! The smile loop was just wrong and they eyes were too simple. Real eyes focus and refocus hundreds of times per minute, these, even though they moved stayed dead and locked on one focus.

We've got a long way to go!
Purpose. Both in the job and in the company. What are we there for? Where will we be next year? What's the success threshold? Is the point of failure defined?
Why We’re Not In A Startup Bubble
Web 2.0 experts share startup lessons
I would prefer the loop this way:

for each(a in links)
if (a.host && (a.host!=thisdomain || String(a).match(/item\?id=/)))
a.target = "_blank";
AllPeers Closes - What Happened to the Glorious Future of P2P?
I've been using DNS Made Easy for a while. I find the prices are very good if you have a bunch of domains to host. I'm using five nameservers for each domain and that seems like plenty of redundancy.
a) Your error messages are not noticeable enough - they're way too far from the register/login area.

b) Why not let people use e-mail address as username (aka why limit usernames)?
The less a child knows, the easier it is to reach a (simple) agreement. Objecting requires having ideas, not ignorance. I don't think there's usually any reason for a very young child to disagree with his parent frequently since he generally won't have any better ideas than they do. But there are sometimes cases of serious disagreement and it's important not to gloss those over.
Have a look at http://wiki.python.org/moin/FreeHosts
For a website only, that's not a big deal. However if you also have email for that domain, mail will immediately start bouncing when DNS goes down.
"Of course, given that public schools often use the “one size fits all” criteria to sort educational experiences, perhaps gender sorting is a step up (and one that bureaucracies can understand)."

s/gender/sex/
"... I've heard PG say one key element of Viaweb getting acquired was that they had a top brand accounting firm which gave great credibility to their books. ..."

Where did you 'hear' that? Have you mixed this up with Viaweb engaging a top "PR" firm [0] to get better exposure? [1] It's still a good question though.

[0] "... When we started our startup in 1995, the first three were our biggest expenses. We had to pay $5000 for the Netscape Commerce Server, the only software that then supported secure http connections. We paid $3000 for a server with a 90 MHz processor and 32 meg of memory. And we paid a PR firm about $30,000 to promote our launch. ..." ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/vcsqueeze.html

[1] "... Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month ...
Our PR firm was one of the best in the business. In 18 months, they got press hits in over 60 different publications" ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
"Code is also always data! Does it mean that data is also always code? As crazy as this sounds this very well might be the case."

My programming languages professor (a Scheme fanatic) expressed a similar sentiment. I recall, however, someone posting this "programmer hierarchy" recently:

http://bc.tech.coop/blog/061226.html

I find it funny that the hierarchy has "Lisp programmers" at the top and "people who insist on calling HTML a programming language" on the bottom, yet the people I've seen arguing for the programming language status of HTML are predominantly Lisp programmers.
"Great Failures" would be an interesting book or article.

There are a lot more inventors and entrepreneurs who struggled for years, successfully produced great things, and then failed to make a dime or achieve any notoriety. They should get more mention. Philo Farnsworth? John Fitch? These guys invested huge chunks of their lives but got nothing.

I suspect detailing what failure looks like is probably more inspiring than all this focus on the payoff. Everyone already knows the "happily ever after" ending. It's the less explored unhappy ending that that holds people back.
There's a lot of interesting graph theory there. Check out more about kidney matching here: http://blog.sciencenews.org/mathtrek/2007/08/kidney_matchmak...

If anyone is really interested in this kind of stuff, shoot me an email. I'm working on a couple research projects in this area.
As an advertiser or investor I'd be much much more concerned that 6% of the online population generates 50% of the clicks:
http://www.smvgroup.com/news_popup_flash.asp?pr=1643
> Most innovative types don't seem to work so well in stringent environments

Or perhaps people who don't work well in stringent environments are denied safer high income jobs and so are forced to innovative entrepreneurship.
You missed on: None (they're all in the wrong place)

I don't actually know that of the last two, as I've never heard of them...but if you're not in Silicon Valley, you're probably in the wrong place for starting a tech startup that needs to raise money (and maybe the wrong place for any kind of tech startup...though there are other places where good tech talent is widely available, though maybe not as many willing to take a chance on working on equity-based compensation in a startup).

I actually think this applies to YC in Boston, as well. All of the startups that have started in Boston who wanted to continue have moved to the valley after the program.
This is amazing - a complete simulation of a section of cortical column. And by complete, it's 400 subsimulations per neuron. Outstanding! Thanks IBM!
How could they not talk more about the 100 chicken nuggets in one sitting?
Most of the other ones are incubators that deal in YC-magnitude investments, rather than YC which is explicitly not an incubator.
Valley's Young Guns- Behind the Scenes- Myths, Fears, and Hopes
Really great look into venture capital, the mythos of entrepreneurs, and is generally a great article.
As someone who has failed spectacularly in my previous startups, I can say with authority that failure sucks. There is nothing inspiring about failure (by itself).

However, I think what is inspiring is how entrepreneurs who have failed managed to get themselves off the floor and eventually achieve success. And I do agree we don't talk enough about recovery from failures.
It's an eye pod ... wink, wink
1. Programming Pearls & More Programming Pearls, Jon Bentley.

2. SICP and The Litle Schemer.

3. K&R

4. Find the Bug by Adam Barr (I read it after reading a Guy Steele recommendation for this one and it's awesome. Author is a cool hacker, writer and a PM at Microsoft (his other book Serving my corporate Masters was available online. Not sure about now):-)

5. Hackers Delight