skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you know your target market (and you should), and you have direct access to them, propose possible names to them and get feedback, while at the same time soliciting them for more name ideas.

We struggled with ours for a while. We had several possibilities that we liked, and started telling people we'd meet at conferences and whatnot. When we talked to them again days later, they would always remember one more than the others. We had several clever names with nice flow and alliteration, but RateMyStudentRental.com is what everyone always remembered (though for us, this is most likely due to the already-existing and popular ratemyprofessors.com).
I'm simply stating that by not being clear and decisive from the get-go, you can only expect more of same later on, possibly when it's more painful.

I didn't say anything about a 'major risk', just that it's a hint about how the guy operates. Could be he's wishy washy, or that he's playing games, it's not possible to know.
Anyone else ever have the thought cross their mind that 'Ron Conway' sounds like a porn actor name?
The point of the distributed approach is precisely that you eliminate the need for a "official" repository.

If it seems pointless, consider a scenario where you have three separate teams (A, B, C) working on a product.

In a centralized approach, you'd want to create a branch for each team, have them working on their exclusive branch and have each of them make a merge to the main branch. If you are responsible for the "main" repository, you need to make three merges, one for A, one for B, one for C. This is hard and gets even harder when the number of teams grows.

In a distributed approach, each team is able to pull stuff from the other teams any time and as they see fit. In that case, if you are the responsible for the "main" repository, you could establish a policy where you will only pull code from the C tree, and let C be responsible for pulling from B, and B from A. With this approach, each team is responsible only for one merge.
I dunno if I agree this one. Too many options is overwhelming, but it would work a lot better if the box stayed open when you clicked on it.
Interested here, as well; although my attendance is highly dependent on being accepted, as well as other factors.
It is the highest form of flattery.
Eric Allen: TipJoy Textpattern plugin
That's Linus' talk. It's fun, but for a more nuts-and-bolts approach you should perhaps start with Randal Schwartz's talk instead.

I also recommend the Peepcode screencast on git.
Real World Haskell (public beta of the upcoming O'Reilly book on Haskell)
Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement
I agree with him, but I don't think the alternatives he proposed are reasonable for most people.
Ok. Amazon Gift Cards work just fine for me :)
This business adventure seems GREAT! I totally agree that each company needs software designed to their needs not that their needs must revert to match the software.

However, Your biggest problem is going to be. Can the company truly convey their needs so that you the programmer can build an ERP system for them.

Yes a Tiger Team can aide in this process but it has been my experience that not all companies are aware of all their assets when it comes to selecting a team that can convey their needs.
How about a culture of violence and thievery? That takes decades of sustained effort to change, if not centuries. The things you've listed are merely symptoms. Saying that some 3rd world countries want to fail is like saying that endangered species want to go extinct.
Drupal 6.0 released
If I wake up by eastern light: 6-7 hours.
If I try to sleep through: 9-10 hours; sometimes more.

Sometimes I feel like I have very 'important' dreams that never resolve themselves. This keeps me in my bed for a long time.
I'm sure we'll be talking again. In the meantime, save $60 (for the time being) and get started on-line:

http://www.nakedobjects.org/book/content.html
Thank you very much for the breakdown. I still don't see the benefit, however. Saying that you don't have an official repository is just semantics, because someone will in fact be responsible for the final merge, and that's going to be the official repository, whether you call it that or not. Furthermore, the code all has to get merged in the end. How does it simplify thing to merge from C --> B --> A --> Official, rather than just have everyone merging against an official repository?

Again, I'm not trolling - I ask these questions because I'm working somewhere right now where they use Clearcase, which admittedly is a horrible, horrible, horrible tool, but which is being used in my current environment very much like a DVCS. Everyone feels "productive" because they can merge their branch into other folks' branches on an as needed basis. But the end result is freakin' chaos from the point of view of product management, because it takes - literally - weeks to get a completely merged codebase containing the entire product. How does a tool like Git help matters?
The Reduceron - An FPGA Machine for Executing Haskell
I wish it were. I'm vegetarian; most of my diet is fresh, and I still need tons of sleep.
Ok, so you're really working on the same thing as Anywhere.fm not Jukefly. Uploading works just fine too, except it's really slow to upload gigs of music. Maybe a good compromise would be to have a client on the desktop as well as upload. You can upload some songs but if you want to play some songs that aren't uploaded yet the server can communicate with the desktop and have your desktop start uploading the requested files. This would only work when and if the desktop client was running but it would be a good way to please everyone.
The comments are the article express all of my concerns the main one being the javascript and screenreader requirements. Take a look at them to see their insights into the example.
Creating Games in Ruby (Part 2)
Last year, Sam Odio set up a wiki for the event and someone also set up a Facebook group. People wrote down their contact info on the wiki, and then a bunch of us got together and ate some tacos and chatted. Then a group of us went to have drinks at some of the bars. It was pretty fun, so I think this should be done again. I'd be interested.
An early adopter of Tipjoy made this cool plugin. Go and tip him for it, and use it on your Textpattern blog.
I was with him right until he say not to travel. Travel is the single biggest step in developing a proper perspective of life in this world, and what part you'll choose to play in the future. At 25, you can tell if someone has traveled or not by having a 15 minute conversation with them.

The traveled ones are always much more rational in thought, and open in mind, and aware of the possibilities. Non traveled folk tend to be more rigid, narrow in though and unable to grasp concepts that may be foriegn to their history.

As to the rest, my biggest beef is that he assumes all people are born entrepreneurs - even if he says otherwise. One must remember that although college can be a bore for a bright individual, it can be a saving grace for a person that is, well average.
Funnels on google analytics is really easy to setup. Unfortunately, this is hard to measure for tipjoy, because you can signup in the button, and you aren't taken to a different page that G.Analytics can detect. I'm recording page views and uniques for the button, and the rate of signing up. Luckily the only errors possible are filling out an improperly formatted email or using an email already in the system.
Linux Tip: Auto Reboot after Kernel Panic
Think about what your application's supposed to do - what are its benefits for users, then come up with some metaphors for that. Should be terms that give people a general concept of what it is that you're offering. Then use the various domain search engines mentioned here until you find a free domain.
BTW, make sure you can get the .com, .net, .org, and that all the rest (.biz, .us, .eu) are free. Once you're certain you have a name you'll stay with, register a trademark ASAP.
You need to find a CEO willing to take a chance. I'd look at one who has built a smaller company from scratch, (say 250 ee's) and is now finding it difficult to expand into the leagues of the big boys. He/she is looking for an edge, and is likely to take a risk to obtain it.
And yet, even if you are antisocial, and would never dream of setting up a baroque collection of three independent teams, git is awesome.

You can have repositories all over the place. Creating or cloning them is about as hard as copying a file. You can make one for any directory in a few seconds. You can create them wherever you want on your hard drive. You can back them up by dragging and dropping.

You can create one repository for (e.g.) the official release version of Drupal, clone that to another repository that also includes some important modules, then clone that repeatedly every time you start a project. To upgrade Drupal, upgrade the first repository and then pull the changes forward to all the others.

The branching support works very well and is easy to figure out. If you touch a few files and then have second thoughts, you can stash all your changes in a branch and then go back to the original state. You can screw around with your source code with complete confidence.

Git repositories are non-magical -- each one is fully contained inside a plain-old directory. If you do somehow manage to screw one up beyond recognition, just restore an old version from backup. You won't lose anyone else's changes, because each local repository is exclusively yours. You won't run the risk of corrupting other projects, because each repository is local and includes just one project.

No server configuration, unless you really want to share with the world (and gitosis makes that easy).
I can. Of course, I have several sleep disorders (sleep apnea, DSPS, etc.)
100% bootstrapped working on NewsCred (http://www.newscred.com). We've been hacking away for 6 months now and getting ready to launch the product in a few weeks. Its fun turning an extra inch into a yard, and the lack of money or Aeron chairs keep us hungry, lean and focused. Of course, its tough on the personal situation (family, going out etc) sometimes, but that will make it all the more worthwhile when we have users who appreciate the product. What I enjoy the most? Knowing that every dollar means so much, so that every decision that we take needs to be smart, creative, efficient and generally drive us towards a better product.
That was my first thought too. Video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4d9kc_personality-mirrorin...
On a social site where you display usernames in public, I'd hesitate to make them unable to use a more private handle. Tipjoy uses an email for a "lite" signup, but certain features require activation. Things like dialing up a tip to give more.
I'd choose web development every time as the easier option.
"Are you seriously suggesting that 3 years from now, when he leaves to take a $200,000 job, that he buy private company options?"

If the company is doing well, and the strike price is favorable, then yes. You don't get a chance to buy stock in privately-held fast growers often...

Of course, the far more likely option is that the company's gone out of business or is going nowhere. But I did mention a whole bunch of conditions for seeing any sort of payoff from options, one of which was "if the company doesn't go out of business or get acquired first" (another was "and the employee exercises his options", so I don't really see the point of this comment..)

I'm not arguing that employees don't get screwed...look, I've worked at a couple of companies with stock options, and never saw a penny out of them. Last time I went jobhunting I took the one that paid the higher salary rather than the one with options for that reason. I'm saying that other things being equal, he's more likely to get screwed at the startup that won't put anything in writing than the one with a written option plan. I don't see how that's really debatable...
Hes off the mark by a long shot.

Is college right for everyone? No, and on both sides of the equation. A very small group of people are too smart for it, get too constrained by it, etc. There is a much larger group of people who are not smart enough for it, or don't work hard enough to get there. For everyone else, it makes sense. To say that you won't make up the money (and he says 200,000 - 400,000, that is a 50,000 to 100,000 a year college! There are only about dozen that expensive! I'm in one of the top 20 in the country and it would cost me 120,000 for 4 years coming from out of state, if not for a scholarship), is ludicrous. I'm going to work from the age of 25 to the age of 65 unless I do something spectacular and can retire early, which MOST PEOPLE DON'T. So for most people it is 120,000 divided by 40 years, or $3,000 a year more they would have to make in order for it to be worth it, obviously most college grads are better off money wise if they go. And staying in state is even cheaper. His point is kind of ridiculous, just because he didn't like college, doesn't mean that he should recommend against it. I sure feel bad for his kids who will be trying to make it big on their new version of MySpace when all their friends graduate and start making real money.
Wow, thanks for the reply. That's enough encouragement for me to give it a shot. Also, good point about the reliability of Amazon vs. that of a no-name hosting service. Although EC2 is still in beta and not quite the same as Amazon in general, it still gives more credibility to their service.
News Corp in deal talk with Yahoo (plans to combine Yahoo with MySpace)
I've found that college is great for the 'pluggers' in life. Those kids you remember from high school who asked question after boring question and spent hours on their home work while you spent class time hacking your graphing calculator and spent study hall exploring your high school's network.

Sure they got better grades than you, but instead of an A on your test you got a B- and worked 10x less to get it.

College is also great for the socially motivated who love to party, 'hook up' and generally spend the entire day trying to sleep the previous night's craziness off and plan for the upcoming night debauchery.
I was wondering when they would launch...
Works on social websites as well, even though there's no body language involved. There's sorta a subtle culture to each website, a combinations of norms and in-jokes and tone and wording, and if you observe for a while you can catch the "pulse" of a site and fit right in once you de-lurk. That's why people tell you to "lurk before you leap".
I recommend http://www.bustaname.com. It allows you to check the availability of websites as you type and has a word combining feature (warning: it's very easy to waste hours on that site trying out various combinations of words)
Well, in this case, Mr. Horowitz worked for Yahoo, in what was clearly a California job. The California laws would most certainly prevail.

If you work for Microsoft, in Washington, then there's likely to be a tight non-compete clause. Washington courts are very permissive toward employers regarding non-compete provisions. I can't speak to the specifics, although there was a high-profile case a year ago involving a Microsoft executive who was sued and ultimately was prohibited from working for Google.

Finally, many companies don't enforce non-compete agreements strictly unless you do something wrong, i.e. stealing information from your employer to help someone else directly compete against them.

(IANAL, and I don't even play one on TV.)
It isn't just the patriot act -- each state in the US has different requirements. That is what makes it expensive.
As soon as we close a round of venture, we will be going through the process of licensing as a money transfer service, and allowing users to cash out directly.
VC Fundraising Manual: Customer Reference Calls
When a VC conducts due diligence, he typically wants to conduct calls with current or future customers in order to understand the customers’ perspectives on your business. These calls are a critical part of the due diligence process, as VCs often won’t know your customers’ perspectives about your service as well as you do. As a result, investors will have to validate that customers actually have the perspective that you have described. For example, a VC will want to hear several customers confirm that they:

1) view the problem that you are solving a significant pain point,
2) believe that your service will be the best solution,
3) are willing to pay the prices you included in your model, and
4) intend to use your service as often as you have projected.

VCs typically only call..

More @ markpeterdavis.com
Obama gets his strategy from Guy Kawasaki and the Cluetrain Manifesto?
[Remember] Dial-Up Sound
I'm probably up for it again this year. I live in Mountain View and helped coordinate last year's dinner which Larry mentioned. There's still 2 months until the event, so there's lots of time for someone to get something together. :)
"Hardcore Erlang" is cancelled, but O'Reilly will be coming out with "Practical Erlang."
i swear on everything that is dear to me, i have never heard of Maven.
Believe it or not, you can learn, get decent grades, party and get laid, and have scholarhips all at the same time.

Those people that skip this, are soreley missing a great experience of their life.

Remember, work will be there for the rest of your life. Don't just rush into it. From 24 to 64, that's 40 years or working for most people.
you can start your startup just as well as 25, as you could at 20, but probably you would be much smarter at that age.
The man who unboiled an egg
Parsing text and binary files with Erlang
Google releases new Android SDK (screenshots)
I'm sorry but I disagree. Traveling is certainly something that is worthwhile, but it's hardly the determining factor in one's personal development that you're making it out to be.

I've been to a lot of places, and I still value things like the books that I've read, personal relationships, real experience etc etc a lot more.

Sometimes all travel contributes to is pretentiousness.
GMT - Ireland
It's hard for me to believe anything sourced through Michelle Malkin. Sorry.
I've taught myself math and computer science topics by myself from books, and I've learned math and computer science in classes, and I can say that you make much faster progress and have far fewer foggy, unclear areas if you have access to a professor.

That's assuming you really take advantage of the teaching assistants, professor, and books out there. If you just party and take sociology classes, sure, college is going to mostly be a waste.
I still have not learned a lot in college, but I leaned enough about the time-value of money to understand your analysis is deeply flawed.
I could, and did, write a book (http://www.aarongreenspan.com/authoritas.html) about this subject, namely, why the American educational system is broken. I found college to be particularly difficult, but even so, I still think that James Altucher is wrong. Not only is his analysis wrong, but his facts are wrong. Unbelievably expensive though it may be, I know of no college that costs $400,000 over four years. Students are not cleanly divided into "the well-rounded generalists" and "the focused entrepreneurs." There are considerable virtues to liberal arts education, even if Mr. Altucher is too dense and narrow-minded to appreciate them.
Yahoo! is becoming that kid in school who peed their pants in the middle of an exam and now the word is getting around town. How embarrassing for Yahoo! Are they really in such a bad shape that they must now be bought out and set straight by an outside company?

I sometimes feel that there it is a misnomer that they are Google's competitor. Yahoo! has a heavy focus on content and they happen to have a search engine which they used to replace their originally famous directory.
Ho hum. We've had this since 1996 with a custom Lotus Notes/Domino application.
Collapsing DIVs solved this problem a long time ago, and they don't break tabbing or require ugly hacks.
Bootstrapping a Startup (inspired by a ASK YC post on Hacker News)
applied to web work:

The site should mimic the user. Perhaps why yahoo is failing is because it is trying to be everyone's page .. google is winning cause it is just trying to be everyones search, (and casually everyone's everything with , reader and gmail)

Google mimics better. When im looking - Im looking for fast, streamlined experience.
And so am I :-)
Look. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to live.

People need to stop focusing on the black and white
and become aware of the greyscale.
Great piece. Helps re-encourage me that I'm not throwing my life away.
What this is going to solve? It's just less usable since you need to open the tabs to look what's inside.
I think most of the comments here are missing the key argument in this article: namely that in addition to college being a poor fit for many potential students, there are some much better, more productive ways that young people could spend the time in the years immediately following high school.

The suggestions to encourage your kid to practice one skill, or start a business, are spot-on, at least from an economic POV. Learning a trade and having some business experience are much more effective at increasing your future potential earnings than a liberal arts education.

Personally, I dropped out after my freshman year to go work for a startup I've had a great time working in IT since then, and consistently out-earned my friends who stayed in school, even now that they've had 4-6 years in the workforce to catch up on experience.

That being said, I think that there is still a strong argument to be made for people eventually attending college. I still look forward to college as something I'll do in the future as a sort of "working vacation." I.e., just like faculty take a sabbatical to focus on their research, or spend time with their family, I hope to take a couple of years off to devote myself to intense, full-time study of some subject other than computers.
Yahoo Launches JustinTV competitor?
I got 1:11 visitors to buy a pallet jack when I started (only 20-30 visits/day back then) now it has dropped more but less targeted traffic but greater sales.
Top 10 Largest Databases in the World
Maybe not. Dwight and Jim...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3SBwS8Mds&feature=relat...
The next great financial opportunity
But the search engine is where the money is.
Do you have a source for that? The logic seems backwards. Per calorie absorbed, it takes more effort to digest uncooked foods, not less. Some fresh foods, like lettuce, actually take more energy to digest than you get out of them.
$50,000 per year is not actually that high in the grand scheme of things as a total cost to attend a private college, since most undergrads depend heavily on their parents for financial support.

If you subtract a base tuition of $35,000 from that, you're left with $15,000 per year as total living expenses. That's barely over $1200, and has to cover not only rent and food, but textbooks, computers, and other costs of campus life. Even assuming your kid doesn't do much partying, or need access to a car, $15k is hardly a lavish annual budget.
5min - How to Be Creative in Advertising - Video
I just figured people would prefer the convenience of typing a short username instead of a long email address, when the time comes to log in (which unlike signup, happens repeatedly).

Also, my site is strongly related to another site (it's some sort of fansite), and that one uses a login name too.
I once read that there's a window of time between 11pm and 1am when your adrenals recharge most effectively. If you're not asleep during this window you miss the benefit and will tend to have higher levels of stress hormones. I used to have some moderate acne and I found that being in bed by 11 usually cleared it right up, which makes sense if you consider the link between hormones and acne.
Travel will expose you to new experiences. How much your learn and imbibe from those experiences, depends on individual personality.