skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They're comparable enough that the individual programmer matters much more.

I say pick one, learn it as well as you can, don't worry that you picked "the wrong framework", and go with it.
The Perils of the Anonymous User
URLs do not belong in the Views
Investors don't invest in a good product, they invest in great people

How are they quantifying great people if they are new? School? GPA? Fraternity? What is this VC metric based upon?

How can you not judge a founder based upon the product of their efforts if it is not good?
Crackr.com - A little Web 2.0 satire
Here's an entry from my comedy blog's archives that I thought some people here might enjoy... loosely based on a founder I used to work for :)...
FriendFeed API: Extend and improve FriendFeed
"I suspect that will be a lot easier than it will be for you to reproduce all of our back-end work."

If you're my competitor, that's exactly what I want you to think.
You made me feel bad for LOLing at the article. :(

Regardless of his feelings on solutions and causes, it's not like an Internet rant is going to change post-industrial work relations in developed countries. Certainly the people at fault will never read it.
How can you create a useful product if you haven't identified the use?
Someone (aswanson?) posted a question I thought was really good, and was replying to with the following. But when I hit "Add Comment", it seemed the post was deleted in the meantime. I'm going to put my reply up anyway 'cause I spent 5 minutes writing it :)

The question was: how did the situation get this way, with creative and knowledgeable people being told what to do by often clueless managers and MBAs, who have no particular expertise? It seems irrational and it's not obvious why the world would work this way.

Jerry Weinberg, who was one of the first few computer programmers in the world and later became famous as a writer, was asked this once. He said that the first few generations of programmers (up to 1970 or so) were arrogant towards customers, businesspeople, and managers. Programmers were so scarce, and computing itself so unfamiliar and scary, that programmers expected and were given a kind of godlike deference, which they abused. After a while, customers got angry about the fact that they didn't have a say, were treated like idiots, and given stuff that didn't work very well. Eventually, Weinberg said, this led to a backlash whereby managerial control was imposed on programmers. The effects of this backlash persist today.

I don't claim that this is the only answer to the question, but it sounds like a piece of the puzzle, at least in the software business. The thing about the backlash is that it also failed, leading to the irrational situation the original questioner described.

Perhaps the current generation of entrepreneur hackers can be seen in this context, as programmers who have creative control, but also really care about building what customers want.
you should check this out http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=carpal. clearly carpal has some issues other than business guys. imo he needs attention sooo bad that 80% of his posts are somehow about someone attacking a product or a group of people. carpal get a life man and please if you cannot add to our intelligence do not take away from our precious and scarce time. and yes i am a business guy with 0 programming skills and i would never want to work with you even if that meant my startup would never come to life and you were paying me to work on it.
from what I gather you seem to be saying is that great product people aren't as great as great marketers / biz people and that great product ppl/devs can't simultaneously have great marketing and biz skills too
I agree that a lot of their success has to do with great marketing, and I've never said that marketing isn't important. I believe, however, that 37Signals did very little market research when they started. They made products and then figured out how to get users, not the other way around. Now they're successful and can use that success to grow even faster.

You bootstrap with great products, not great marketing.
The new wave of mobile web surfing
Four Futures for China Inc.
Yeah, simple trust metric would be very nice here. Give more weight to people who vote like you and everything will be ranked as if you did it.
Slicehost site redesigned
True, but there is a huge difference. They are paying taxes as for "capital gains", which means they get taxed only 15%, instead of a normal income ( which is over 30%). This is the same thing that Buffet was saying that the rich people are getting taxed a lot less (percentage wise) then their secretaries.
This is an interesting question that I would love to see some answers to. Locating a co-founder at a later time doesn't seem to be a bad idea.
make it so I can forward an evite email to you, and you'll follow the link for me, and do the processing. when done, send me an email giving me a simple way to pick and choose which events to add. If I had already set it up, it'll auto pick and add events to my calendar.
MySQL 6.0 vs 5.1 in TPC-H queries
Perhaps new accounts shouldn't be able to vote stories up (only comment, and vote on comments). Through usage, the account would then earn the right to vote -- the hope being that they would have enough time to learn the culture.
Okay, real-world use case: I click through to read this. Tim plugs Rescuetime. I think "crap, I need to check out my Rescuetime numbers!" So I click through and start measuring my productivity instead of reading news.yc. It's a win!

So what I need is a program that randomly sprinkles links marked "Rescuetime" throughout all the web pages that I read for fun. :)

I'm not sure I'm kidding. What Rescuetime needs is a feature where it gradually starts to play faintly annoying music, or dripping faucet sounds, or something after I've spent too much time doing something unproductive. Obviously you would not want that feature turned on by default for new users. But I would try it.
> I'm not saying it's a problem that these guys have great fortunes, but it seems a bit cowardly for them to pretend that they are actually quite frugal.

I don't know where you got the idea that they are "pretending to be frugal", or how that is somehow cowardly. They just take most of their compensation in the form of stock options/grants. Big deal.
You could consider TC a blog in their target market/ of relevance, in this case.
FriendFeed API Documentation
But with Reddit you have to triage the comments, because there are always some intelligent ones. I think 4chan might be the best choice. I've heard it described as "where smart people go to be stupid", and I think that's reasonably accurate. ICHC would be good too if you ran it through a LOLspeak -> English translator first.
OK -- this still sounds a little too fishy for me.

What you're describing is essentially paid advertising.
Some nice observations; I just think NYC and suburban Chicago are apples and oranges.

I would have really enjoyed this author's treatment of the 2 elephants in the room: energy and demographics. The suburbs were a response to 28 cent per gallon gas and 100 million children born after WWII. Now that gas is approaching $4 per gallon and those 100 million people have trouble driving at night, what happens next?
Really? Stuff that requires a Facebook login to access is front-page material?

You can go take your data roach motels and cram 'em up your ass.
Unicode domain names could be implemented with a one way hash function with ascii output. That would solve the length problem. Depending on the hash algorithm, collisions would be extremely rare, and i doubt many domain names are already registered that are equivalent to the output of most hashes.

I guess it would be similar in a way to tinyurl.com

This obviously would only be a good option if the hash didn't need to be reversible. And I don't really see why it would be, since the dns system itself isn't perfectly reversible.
luck in combination with the Max Strategy (continually trying different things all the time):

a lot of products did not identify their use before hand, or their real use was discovered accidentally after they were made.

post it notes - started as a failed adhesive. a coworker found that it worked well using it with paper and a gospel hymn book

snood - (a very popular puzzle bobble variant) the programmer made it because he was bored in grad school

linux - started as a hobby by a bored phd candidate

silly putty - a failed rubber substitute designed for WWII use

the list goes on...
"People with cash will be in a much stronger position in 12 months than those without"

People with CUSTOMERS will be in a much stronger position in 12 months than those without
You two should work together, maybe. It's usually pretty hard to say, 'hey I need a co founder' when there isn't even a shared interest.
BREAKING NEWS: Apple NYC Stores Out of iPhones!
you mean like 37Signals? ok, they're in chicago, not iowa (same thing, right?) But they didn't have connections until they created bitchin products. The connections are the easy part.
Great point. Your comment reminds me of a story we had here about a week ago:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136087
Microsoft's "Semantic Computing" Flavored Repositories
Oh yeah, downloading the latest shareware games (Wacky Wheels, Duke Nukem, Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit, etc.) and playing Barren Realms Elite, Falcon Eye, L.O.R.D., and TradeWars.

Was a member of several BBSes in the 703 area code. The BizZ BuzZ and R/C Connection are where I spent most of my time.
Google, Yahoo, MySpace team up on OpenSocial
FriendFeed Launches API - It's About to Get Very Interesting
We homeschool because our daughter does very well with it but if we could afford a good private school (I've been to bad ones), we would probably consider it.

I once hired a private tutor to help me fill in some gaps (see lame private school comment above!) After I had caught up (in a couple of months), we spent about 95% of the time learning random things rather than anything I was doing in univ (he hated computer science - not a real science he said!) I think he enjoyed our sessions as much as I did. From time to time, he helped me on hard problems I would do outside of the university curriculum but by and large we were just learning. This is the way we run our homeschooling. Just learning.

Ah brings back memories. He used to complain about all the other students and how they never do their work!
I'd say don't even worry about Google, because, frankly, Google could build a spaceship if it wanted to...who could stop it? Any company that can tell the U.S. government "no" has some power...so focus on what you can effect...your cutting-edge product
Hah.. I ran a Renegade board for a short period of time called NexxusOne in Toronto
I never expected it to get this high. The post was a rant and, as most rants do, turned out to be a bad idea.

I've temporarily replaced the rant with my more complete and restrained thoughts on the subject.
The top execs taking no salary is definitely a signal, but it's not solidarity with the other employees. Taking your pay all in equity means you're pegging your future wealth entirely on the performance of the company. Having executives aligned so heavily on real-world success (as opposed to just maximizing their yearly bonus) is pretty much all a stockholder--employees included--can ask for.
not true. apple may not have low end models and prices but their midrange and highend machines are comparable to their pc counterparts with price. they start at 799...

not to mention that apple machines are both stable, secure, and easy to use. windows can only claim easy to use (i grew up on it) while most unix distros can't claim to be easy

" Early iPods had terrible battery life and sound quality"

that is no longer the case and they were still better than anything out on the market when they first came out

btw - clever name... reminds me of nsx2
What can't rails do? When is it the right language?
I can hack together some php, but I'm no pro. I'd like to advance my skills and dive into a new learning project, but the question I can't answer is what language should I devote some time to? RoR has a lot of hype and Django sounds like a possible contender for the new hip framework. Or I could just continue to work with php. I've read a lot of debate over why one language is better and the most diplomatic answer is that all languages have there strengths and weaknesses and it just depends on what you are trying to do.

So here is my next question. What does that really mean to me? What is rails intended to do better than anything else? What is really difficult to do? What can't it do?

I understand the ideological explanation that it forces you to write good code, but that's not unique to rails anyways. I'm trying to figure out the real practical benefit ... the bottom line.

BTW .. sorry if I couldn't find the thread that already covered this because I'm sure it's out there.
Oh, the days of a good tribbs board and L.O.R.D.

I frequented the Vagabond's Oasis and Galaxy BBS here in the Alabama, US. Also, I ran a small friend/family bbs, The Dismal Light, after 11:00pm on my families second line.

I kinda miss the days of the BBS and door games. I also remember the excitement associated with the prospect of the Internet coming to town - with pictures and everything!!!
The problem is: who's producing wealth? In Brazil, you can argue that a factory pipeline worker is the one producing the wealth, yet he's able to keep but a very small percentage of what he produces.

Arbitrarily taking wealth from one and giving it to other's is not really good idea, I agree with you. The "how" is the whole problem. In my opinion it's the biggest open problem of human kind.
Really neat. While not as technical, on Shacknews they just posted the HD feed of the Epic Games presentation on the engine enhancements that they've done for Gears of War 2. Looking good: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51906
There's no single motivation for this. But I think the motivation we can derive using mostly just logic is that it'll benefit all the human race, including ourselves (who are not the ones starving). After all, less people starving means more people producing, creating theories, etc.
This worked well grabbing toronto concert events from http://www.rotate.com/tickets.php

I had problems importing into Google Calendar though. It worked, but it imported 4 calendars, and eventually timed out and showed a FuseCal.com error page.

Other than that - great service, although it seems limited for a startup unless you add some widgets.
When the Bully Sits in the Next Cubicle
Analyze your daily workload with RescueTime
I've noticed this too since moving to Japan a month ago.

You could probably take it even one step further - replace search boxes and URLs with QR codes(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code).

They're everywhere in Japan now.

You just scan the code with your (5.1 MP) mobile camera and it loads the URL directly in your mobile browser.
3 Theories That Might Blow Up the Big Bang
Ask YC: Any resources on the complexity of built in type methods in Python?
I'd like to know the complexity of functions on built in types in Python. O() notation is perfect.

Empirical tests would also be good.

This came up recently in a Twitter conversation (I'm @tipjoy) about eliminating duplicates in a list. I like using dictionaries:

def dupe(aList):
d={}
for x in aList:
d[x] = True
# or to count: d[x] = d.get(x,0) + 1
return d.keys()

Compare this to an alternative using the list count method:

def dupe(aList):
f=[]
for x in aList:
if not f.count(x):
f.append(x)
ret f

I think N hash lookups are probably faster than N calls to count, but I don't actually know. The difference could be small enough that doing what you think looks better is all that matters.

Anyone know a good resource?
What about for other languages?
Can I pay with karma?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144580
I rather liked the old design.
that's what sets are for.

>>> list(set(['1', '2', '3', '1']))

['1', '3', '2']
Amazon's cloud computing service fuels startup's launch
Its a Facebook event. Welcome to the Internet
"Pamela Johnston is an associate professor of English studies at Texas Lutheran University, where she teaches creative writing and American literature."

Supply and Demand. There you go.
Perhaps better stated that a lot of products did not identify their eventual use beforehand. For your list the seed product had some utility:

* adhesive gives rise to postit
* rubber alternative gives rise to silly putty
* pedagogic device gives rise to game, kernel
How about list(set(aList)) ? Anyway, to answer your question, look in the Python FAQ at http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general/

But really, you shouldn't care about this sort of thing, until it actually matters.
Cool

More often than not, I do want the count though.

I would be surprised if a set didn't use the exact same hashing subroutines that a dict uses. Am I wrong?
I was thinking the same thing.

If you want to know why university professors are paid so little, simply count the number of underemployed PhDs who would kill for their jobs.
The current link asks me to download a binary file when I click it in FF 2.0. Whats up with that?
You're right, don't do this till it matters. But even in profiling and optimizing, the first steps are algorithmic. If you can't change the "outer loop" algorithm, you'll probably look into things like this.
Yes, but as gp said, don't bother yourself with these details.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/?SlowDownToSpeedUp

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SharpenTheSaw

BTW, this'll be familiar to anyone that's learned a musical instrument. The way you get speed in music is to slow down the tempo until it's at a level where you can easily play the piece (with a new piece, this is often 1/4 or less of actual speed). Then you work on control and rhythm only, until you've got it perfect. Then gradually bump up the tempo for as long as you can maintain control. If you start getting sloppy, slow it down and practice more at the lesser tempo. Eventually, you'll be able to play it perfectly at tempo, with a good reserve if you wanna speed it up for effect.
What I'm saying is that we should all try to get along and try to respect each others skills.

That's all :-)
It had to do with the weird way I switched out the post. It should be fixed now.
Hopefully cutting edge :-)
Apparently the feature has been dubbed AwesomeBar. I've found the results counterintuitive until >3 characters have been typed (B4).
I like the concept. In addition to all of the other excellent suggestions below, you really should tackle speed when processing the calendar - it is too slow.

I would think not just about end-to-end latency: which you should think about, but also progress indication so the user has an idea of how things are going.
give it time, this will be the norm everywhere. regular users don't like urls, their just used to them.
Didn't see any mention of the "Law of Optical Volumes"

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/04/the_math_behind.html
Is this getting voted up for the content or the excellent title?
:) I think the original had the ah-good-they-are-concentrating-on-the-important-stuff vibe. Not necessarily a bad thing. Especially for a tech service.
update: Im now at about 300Kwh/month for a bill of $35...
Thanks so much, folks... this has already been way more helpful than I was expecting!

I'm planning to get back to each of you very soon, but in the meanwhile, let's keep these awesome suggestions coming!
Just give it a go, it'll never hurt to learn something new.

Coming from PHP, you'll probably see some benefits right away.
For a quick switch your replacement text seems much better thought out!
The Mullet Strategy
One of the main strengths of Rails is that it allows you to get up and running quickly while still guiding you towards modular, reasonably maintainable code. You can very quickly spike (prototype) new approaches and modules and focus on your business logic rather than all of the scaffolding attendant to it.

I've personally found it invaluable and I'd highly recommend the framework to anyone looking to learn a new tool for building web applications.
Tail Report: first real survey of web revenue
The text is so big it hurts. Still, nice implementation.
Wufoo : A UI that Really Cares
Ha! I saw "one click" shopping in there. Eat your heart out amazon.
Man, it's like 1995 all over again, with AOL Keywords.
I tried a MySpace band page (hoping it would import tour info) and instead got all the comments as "events". Oops. Perhaps you should consider the domain name, it can indicate certain kinds of calendars worth importing.

It's really slow, unless it's also overloaded right now.

This is a hard problem though, and you deserve credit for attempting it.
Nothing like a rave review to help smooth over.. anything.
"the seed product had some utility"

for some of the seed products their makers intended for them to have utility, but they didn't - that's why they were initial failures...
a businessman plots to kill a rival in a Minority Report esque future where "peepers" (people with esp) are used to prevent crime.

it draws some interesting conclusions on the subject of this thread.
I went to the screencast first, and the audio quality struck me as well. You're too close to the mic. Gotta back up (physically) and keep your record levels near the top of the green. As you speak, try to modulate your voice. If you're not recording in a studio, a simple trick is to put a blanket behind the mic. This will let you back up from the mic and raise your levels without catching reverb or background noise.
not a Japan exclusive: I saw a TV ad just last night on some local channel in San Francisco, that ended with a partial but branded Yahoo Search screen-shot, complete with the query pre-filled and a "Go" button, and a voice-over saying something along the lines of "the best to get in touch: search for [can't for the life of me remember the brand/product] on the web!"
Yahoo and MySpace join with Google
I remember the fun days of CMBBS, C-Base, and later everyone making some nice BBS systems, it was cool to see what you could do with the Commodore Basic, BLITZing it up and hosting it. Some of the older BBS systems rival the features provided by communities today greatly. Then there was the continuous dialing up other regional boards over and over again until you got an answer.

There were some really nice games in the limited way of BBSing, a premonition of MMORPG's and other network strategy games that addict people today.
Tagging posts with a profile works like Branding in commerce. It's a signal that:

A) you put some effort into the site

B) you worry about negatively impacting your karma

So, any rational reader should choose to follow a user with a profile versus an anonymous one, ceteris paribus.

What Paul seems to not grok is the usefulness of these signals. While he may find it annoying, we like being able to tell at a glance who has a higher probability of not posting junk.

On the other hand, improving user distinction beyond up/down voting seems a wide open field....
Reiser Delivers on 'Geek Defense,' But Is It Enough?
Hahahaha, yes indeed. Cracked a number of games removing copy protection, phreaked for some long-distance pickups & drops, ran wildcat, hotline, etc...

The good old days...
"The nature of programming work is not so far removed from what a corporate lawyer or financial analyst does. Yet programmers have a much different public image"

Unfortunately I think this also has to do with the way Western culture views the foundation of programming (math, science, ...). Unlike in say Asia, math and science are looked down upon by main stream culture; since they are considered "nerdy". Maybe that's why we are on our way to producing a lot more lawyers than programmers and engineers (at least for our part of the world)...