skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It is possible today to create airplanes that use less energy per mile than a good car, traveling at higher speeds. I think PG's comment about government involvement is very relevant here - the reason such airplanes aren't the norm is bureaucracy, politics and law. Intellectual inertia.

The problem regarding personal air travel is almost purely political. The only real technical hurdle I can see is the problem of getting them into and out of the air: we haven't yet created airplanes that both are energy-efficient in the air and land or take off vertically. Tilt-rotor designs are the most promising candidate I can see for this (you need wings to travel cheaply), but they would have to be under computer control unless we want reckless pilots to die in droves while landing. The efficient planes I am talking about here don't need a mile of runway - 500 meters is plenty.

In case my first sentence draws criticism off the bat, please consider that there are four-seater, canard airplane designs that cruise at 170 mph at 5 gallons/hour = 34 MPG. And this is with today's airplane engine technology, which hasn't changed since the 1960s. The problems which then remain are infrastructure, training and inertia, which are purely political. I have confidence that we will eventually have personal flying vehicles ("flying cars"), but this shows that the problems faced are anything but technological in nature. People ridiculing the old notion of a near-term "flying car" are bashing the wrong people. Why do the scientists always get the blame when it's just cultural inertia that is the problem?
"Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet."

Not really much excuse for the diet part of this one going so far wrong is there.
The car szstem also enjoys huge government financing. Or who builds the streets in your country?
The economy is not a zero sum game.
Does a boomerang thrown in space return to its pitcher?
I'm doing the same thing, on pretty much the same time budget.
The desirability of knowing the father's identity is a point against promiscuity, not polygamy. And indeed, people are less promiscuous in polygamous societies (that I know of), so it should be the other way around. No?
I'd give it 25 years. The tech is mostly there, agreed.

Too much social upheaval to happen very soon. My guess is that you will see incremental robot cars. First we'll have "smart cruise control" that will pace with the cars in front of you. Then we'll have "smart obstacle detection" to prevent you from backing over stuff you can't see. Then "auto parallel parking", then something like "interstate cruise" where the vehicle stays on an interstate from the on-ramp to the off-ramp (no pedestrians and little distractions. Then something like "last mile cruise" where the car learns how you get that last mile home, including working the garage opener and stopping for the mail.

We've already got the first few of these, albeit in different vehicles. What car makers need to do is not deploy robot trucking, but deploy incremental features that people will go "Wow! Gotta have one of those!" without doing so much that it sounds threatening. I know I'd snap up something like interstate cruise in a heartbeat.

Also don't count out the impact of the military: if DoD has auto vehicles (and that cool 4-legged robot) as part of it's daily operations, people are going to want the same at home.
Time for the Blog Portal?
Don't forget to Remember The Milk
A best case example of how to do things right.
> What do you think could possibly prevent this from working?

One possibility springs to mind. What if someone was to comment on an article by PG, but without reading the article itself? Someone could say bad things about you without listening to what you have to say, you'd have no chance to change their mind.
I haven't used Mercurial, but I highly recommend darcs over git. The only advantage git has (which may be important to you) is it is much faster. Interactive recording on darcs is a joy to use.
Wow. %%%king unbelievable ending. I would have punched that guy in the face.
Interview With Ash Damle of MEDgle.com (they built a useful health information site)
You do realize that this is the antithesis of the core reason of why startups work, yes?

What's fundamental is that it is those few abnormal people who change the world 1000x more than the regular person. When you have near infinite money like Google, I'd be very afraid of missing out on those few people who are going to carry the company.
Justin.tv: One Year Old And Still Full Of Illegal Content
The conversational style where you take bits of personal experience and elevate them to Universal Truths (or at least leave people with the perception that that's what you're doing) is one that attracts a lot of attention and I assume you know this and think that is a good thing. The miraculous effect here is _not_ the amount of negative attention you get, but the fact that this is attention is so polarized across sites. I suspect reddit is not actually the odd one out here, but rather that the crowd you gathered here at ycombinator are already well into your 'cult of personality' and more accepting of your contraversial approach.

What's important is that you keep the conversation going. If you're going to say stuff that rubs people the wrong way (like your "anyone who didn't found a startup is a caged animal" did), you should either anticipate people's knee-jerk reactions within the piece, or engage them as they come up. If you don't, you risk that people start writing you off as a blow-hard.
I maintain that being able to implement a sorting algorithm from memory is a cheap trick, and has no correlation with programming ability. I've written maybe one sorting routine since leaving college. Being able to pick the correct one for a certain situation is important, sure, but there are battle-tested implementations available for nearly every algorithm in nearly every standard library.

I'd settle for the interviewee understanding big-Oh notation and being able to explain the complexity of an algorithm, given an implementation in a language they understand. If they can do that, it means they have the skill you're really looking for: that they can detect an unnecessarily expensive algorithm. (Isn't that really what the sorting algorithm questions are all about anyway?)
You're right. I'll do this as soon as I figure out how to!
Medgle is an intereresting startup that I hadn't heard about... they haven't had a lot of publicity, but they built something useful.
Well, the idea now is just to describe it. Later we'll make it more imagey, with a video tour and all that on the front page
Munger's psychological insight is fantastic. Curiously, reality distortion (or misjudgement) he talks about in its extreme is one of the symptoms of psychosis. Essentially, he explains the causes of "mild" psychoses we all may have from time to time: incentives, doubt avoidance, inconsistency avoidance, etc.

Sorry, Marc Andreessen, but what do startups have to do with all this? If this man is a billionaire it doesn't mean whatever he says is about making money. I'm sorry, but your article is ridiculous.
"I like big butts and I can not lie;
You other brothers can't deny.."

C'mon, everybody join in...

....oh, wait, they were talking about food...damn it!
Yes, I probably should preload all the answers for the questions. However, we store the mistakes the user does, so the server has to be contacted each time anyways. And sending back to the server will be useful for later when we mix in sentences and all that.
In search of inbox 2.0
let's check numbers: "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" got 652 up, 248 down, 72% up.

Atwood's "Paul Graham's Participatory Narcissism": 438 up, 322 down, 57% up.

"The Cliffs Notes": 255 up, 201 down. 56% up.

i do not see any signigicant bias here. opinion definitely not "pretty unanimous".

you were mistaken.
I recently forwarded your essay ("You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss") to a friend and his reply was:

"I can't be reading that right now!"

I figure the reason for this is because you compel people to take more risks. Most people know what they have to do to get what they want but most people don't do it because it is a risk. Your upsetting people's sense of security and feeling alright in the world.

Keep it up.

I heard somewhere once that a group of people in their prime were asked if they could have changed anything in their life what would of it been. The majority of people responded that they would have taken more risks.
Hmmm. I don't think it takes brain surgery to figure out people are happier when they own a piece of the pie (landowners vs owning land, Voltaire, etc) - and obviously this means more when you are working in a small group that can see results or achieve goals creatively and together. This article really only address three divisions of labor - internet software service, defense providers and investment banks. Which, at last check, combined employeed only 20% of the entire US workforce. To get into a larger, meaninigful discussion on a subject that is studied across the world, you would have to understand the dynamics of laborers, unions, operations and management. It's not as simple as saying "If you build it, they will come". And, it's real hard to feel sorry for white collar employees working for eBay, Google and Microsoft when 10% of our country struggles to stay relevant at the poverty line. It should be noted, that I've been both a successful start-up founder and a big business employee.

I cite the comment above mine, haven't we all written a term paper like this in college, titled "Utopia in the Workplace?". Paul, you should tour the John Deere manufacturing plant in Illinois to see a large company, with the "old school" top down management style - and try to figure out why that place is thriving. Or the Kitchen Works in Elmira. Or the Soy Convertors in Iowa. On and on.
The "elite" (politicians, rock / sports / business stars...) are indeed known for either fucking their secretaries / fans / interns / homosexual toilet mates, or divorcing every couple of years, depending on their professional constraints. OTOH, people who don't want to dedicate all of their resources to their libido tend to settle for a safer and simpler monogamy.

This is more of an additional argument to PG's thesis than a parody, actually.
My example was obviously a gross simplification, but not all disagreement stems from contradiction. Worse, sometimes when people agree on many points they are in inreconcilable disagreement with each other on others. If we were to consider that both groups have held their position for many years, it should be immediately apparent that it would be impossible for either to change their mind. Time calcifies opinion.
Your startup depends almost entirely on the thinking and behavior of people: you, the people in your company, and the people outside your company (who are the reason your company exists).

According to Marc and Munger et al, understanding what makes those people 'tick' just might be important for your startup.
Thanks for the criticism. Well, just try it out. 30 words is just two lessons a day - I think people underestimate the power of repetition in learning. 30 words is easy if you do two lessons a day. Yes, the text stuff is not completely done yet, it still references parts that are not online yet. That's why we have the 404s still.
High Scalability - Building bigger, faster, more reliable websites
Paul, this is really paranoid. I use reddit because of familiarity and the number of people on it.
BTW, if your intent was to switch everyone to News.YC I think it's sort of mean, considering your relationship with its founders. Did they leave a shitbag on your lawn or something?
Sign Up Forms Must Die
This is right up there in my own "top 7 influential books"...

Last year I put all Munger's "mental models"/biases/etc. (and a bunch of my own) on index cards. Every now and then when I want a fresh perspective on something, I scatter out the cards and line up things that seem to make interesting/useful connections.

Another book worth checking out is "Influence" by Robert Cialdini (I read it a few years ago, and now my copy has been lent out to so many of my friends it's in tattered shards already). When Munger read it, he was so impressed that he gave Cialdini a class-A share of Berkshire Hathaway for his 'service to humanity' in writing that book.
SXSWi2008: Schwag as far as the eye can see
The Myth of the Startup Miracle
From South Asia to iTunes
I've made this mandatory reading for the entire leadership team at my company. Great writing.

Rick Bullotta/CTO/Wonderware
> you could "raise" more than twice as much money as a YC "round" by consulting for a month

However, you'd be one month behind in development. For a start-up, that could be critical.
I'm currently considering switching from Darcs to Mercurial or possibly Git. I've had problems with Darcs taking vast amounts of time to commit larger files and I'm assuming that both Merurial and Git (especially) will be much better at that.

I'm leaning more towards Mercurial at the moment because while I don't use Windows much myself I do want to be able to work with people who do.

Any thoughts would be appreciated....
My good deed done for Mike Arrington
ASK HN: Going around a tech recruiter
Applied for a job at a startup that could potentially make me the 4th employee.It ended up being a headhunter firm that I applied through and now their all over me.

I searched based on the title of the job posting and found not only the name of the startup but also that they have the same posting on their page.

So should I do them a favor and stop talking to the headhunter and apply to them directly?
Controversial Game Encourages Cosmetic Surgery And Anorexia
You're right, I do need to do design work. But it's tough to be good at programming and at design too!
Well, we don't have any italian guy to help us!
It's different. Ingolingo concentrates on words, Rosetta teaches you how to use sentences in situations. They complement each other.
> Your startup depends almost entirely on the thinking and
> behavior of people

You startup depends almost entirely on personalities of its founders and also professional skills of all employees.

Making psychology a cornerstone in building up a company is a wrong idea: I've seen how psychology-driven corporate HRs ruined companies. Startups, I think, are even more vulnerable in this regard.

Would you, for example, fire a good hacker who made significant contributions and turned out to be a psychotic, biased person? If your answer is Yes, then as a boss you'd probably fire such people like Linus Torvalds and Bjarne Stroustrup.
Perhaps not for equality, but at least a healthy baseline. Everyone deserves to live
Reminds me a little of the metaphor that starting a business is like jumping out of an airplane with the materials needed to build a parachute.
Designer Today Graphics Forums Launch Today
It's interesting to see that the 4-hour workweek was proposed as early as 1932: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
An open source Ruby on Rails Social Network and it's pretty damn cool.
Too late. That would be unethical. You'd be branded as someone who does unethical things. Not worth it.
All things being equal, I'd apply to the next one. Do you really want to put this off for 6 months just to be somewhere different?
Implications Of How A VC Is Funded: Diverse Limited Partners
No. That's one of the all-time big no-nos in recruitment. You're stuck with the recruiter, even if they hinder the process. Also, dumb as it may seem (most recruiters don't have a clue about technology) many companies have good reasons to use them, and probably don't want you subverting that process.

Good luck with the job anyway :)
Build a positive relationship with the headhunter. If you leave the startup, they can help you find a new job. If you stay and the startup succeeds, they can help you recruit new teammates.
Customization: curse or blessing?
Social Apps Set Free: Ringside Networks to Port Facebook Apps to Web
I liked that quote, too, but at the same time I was wondering if it isn't complete bullshit. In the real world, the guy would simply have drowned.

Maybe it was just another brainwashing attempt by Hollywood (American values bla bla yadda yadda).
Robot reports for security duty in Atlanta
I can't find the original source now, but the best summary/parody of the original article I read was roughly: "I'm wonderful because I founded a company and made a lot of money. Oh, you haven't founded a company? You suck."
Imeem Launches Developer Platform for Music Social Networking
Open Source Software Made Developers Cool. Now It Can Make Them Rich
Engineers Test Highly Accurate Face Recognition
It's got all the neat features of a social network, now if only they add twitter type feature into the mix, wow, it's gonna get interesting....
Loren Feldman is hilarious but cruel at the same time
Quote: In my view, entrepreneurial judgment is the ability to tell the difference between a situation that's not working but persistence and iteration will ultimately prove it out, versus a situation that's not working and additional effort is a destructive waste of time and radical change is necessary.

I don't believe there are any good rules for being able to tell the difference between the two. Which is one of the main reasons starting a company is so hard.

I asked almost exactly this question here on news.yc. PG was kind enough to post some advice that I've taken to heart: Your existing users are the place to start. There must be something they like about whatever you have, or you wouldn't be there. So you just have to learn to understand them well enough to turn that like into love. In the process you may appeal to a broader set of users, and as you iterate the "typical" user you focus on can move.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116383
So what is the issue if they are all over you?

A good, effective recruiter can be of HUGE value when you're looking for a job. They can help you better gauge salary range (and likelihood of the company extended the pay scale if you're top-notch but otherwise "unaffordable").

While many companies will post jobs on their website as well, not many hiring managers actually like to screen through resumes.

What you mostly have to determine though is if you're working with a quality head-hunter, or just someone who tries to find random personnel matches for random companies.

Some questions to ask this, or any other recruiter:
Are they retained/exclusive for the search on this position? For the company overall or at some level (all development jobs, etc)?

How do you compare to other candidates they have submitted for the position?

What kind of feedback have the other candidates received so far?

Who else have they placed at the current company (I know you said this is a 3-person company)?

Who else at the company have they placed in the past in other positions?

Who do they know on the management team, and what is their relationship with those people?

What can they tell you about the company beyond what is on the "About Us" page?
I once was going through a headhunter -- a rather pushy and 'slick' one -- for a gig at IBM. During the initial phone interview with the hiring manager, it became clear that the position was not as described, and I wasn't a good fit for that piece of the project.

As she described the scenario, it turned out she had a gap in a related position that was much more suited to my skillset. I told her so and she indicated interest.

A few days later, the phone rang, and I picked it up to a torrent of profanity from the headhunter, who was accusing me of 'backdooring' him and swearing up a storm, promising I'd never work in this industry again and calling me all sorts of four-letter things.

I was taken aback, and set him straight on what I had intended, not to mention how I did and didn't expect to be spoken to by a headhunter.

The phonecall wrapped up with him unctuously promising to find me a 'real nice position' somewhere... but judging by the treatment I had gotten from him, I'd have to be retarded to have any further dealings with him.
Any Hackers in Charlotte, NC?
I have an excellent location if you guys would like to meet up for beers, gaming, and coding.
The irony is you have to sign up to leave a comment on that article.
lol.. that's classic
Watch "pumping Iron" - an old documentary following Arnold Schwarzenegger on his quest to become Mr. Universe. Besides the absolute hilarity of seeing a young Arnold pumping his muscles you get a glimpse of why he won mr. universe 6 times, became one of the greatest actors of Hollywood despite the obvious lack of talent, and is now Governor of California.

He is so determined that you won't believe it. So he wins.
Funny thing is: people who live in countries with higher levels of equality (think Japan, Finland) are the very same countries with high suicide rates.

Not saying that correlation implies causation, just to show that perhaps this ideal equality is not so fundamental to our overall happiness.

Also, I'd like to know how we can strive for clean water and food for 7 billion people (9 billion until 2050) while keeping civil liberties to people along the process.
Great. We agree on that. But how do we achieve that? Taking from the rich and giving to the poor? Never in history this worked.

On the other hand, whenever you have an environment where those who produced wealth were allowed to keep it, you'll see general prosperity.
I'd rather get warmed up in a wading pool (day job) and then go for broke.
Yes, just like manufacturing facilities and call centres, health care is moving offshore.
"And what kind of people still bother to submit content when that happens?"

Entrepreneurs.

This forum is a metaphor for a startup itself. You have good days and you have other days. So what do you do? You KEEP ON SUBMITTING. You perservere.

Personally, I have reached "Hacker News Addiction, Phase II". Every time I read something somewhere else, I want to know what you guys think. So I submit it. And usually, no one comments. But I also understand that I don't really have much control over this, so I just keep submitting. And keep voting. And you should, too. Don't let the "lamemakers" take over your site. Just keep doing your thing and they'll be moving along soon enough.
I was in the same boat and hired somebody. It wasn't cheap for me, but now that the dollar has fallen it might be cheap for you to hire someone in the U.S.

http://ourdoings.com/2008-02-12
So when are we going to see a user generated directory for medical tourism.
If a technical error occurs during playback, does an animation of the tape unspooling appear?
Then submit it again. Maybe the people that would have been interested in that story were too busy working to visit the "new" page during the 4 hours it was there.
you can see others in your area at http://www.hackrtrackr.com
Use OpenID, perhaps? Add a ClickPass widget?
If the gradual engagement includes a reasonably complex operation, like writing an article and then creating an account to post it, does this obviate the need for a CAPTCHA?

I'm curious, because I hate CAPTCHAs, but only slightly less than I hate being used as a splog.

I think it might, so I'm feeling happy.