skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd probably agree with "paid very well", "loved the team", "earned every bit", etc. The problem was that the job went from something I loved (small team, a variety of responsibilities, lots of opportunity) to something I didn't like at all (head-down coding). Which is all I really wanted to point out.
Saying that people seem like refugees is saying that they suck?

This is starting to feel like arguing with a reddit troll...
>>Anyone ever make email client?

Nope, I don't think anyone ever has. You should take that idea and run with it.
I would just like to say I feel I can relate to what pg is referring to.

Last summer I worked as an intern for a fairly well respected and very large company. I must say that I feel the experience was rewarding and that I learned quite a bit.

But I did feel a little bit like the caged animal in zoo that Paul described.

One small example: You couldn't just push your work from dev(elopment) to prod(uction) - regardless of the thoroughness of testing, we had to go through the company's bureaucratic change management system which, while I understand its purpose theoretically, in fact only wasted time. Perhaps its just that I'm still a bit young and would like the ability to roam more freely.

Getting to the other item pg mentioned, the team building excursions, I experienced that last summer in the form of a scavenger hunt. Granted this company is well respected, and that many of the students came from top colleges, I got the feeling that somehow people felt "accomplished" through their sheer acceptance to the internship program. One fellow intern commented to me as we were passing random people on the street. "We work for X. We're better than you." It sounds pretty ridiculous but he was simply voicing the same sentiment that many of the interns passively expressed through body language. There was this atmosphere of complacency (particularly outside the office) that bothered me. I think this took away from the drive to succeed. The same drive that got many of these smart students to this point.
Tuna sandwich:

Mix canned tuna, diced celery and/or onion, and mayonnaise in a bowl. Serve with sliced bread. You can store the filling in a jar in the fridge for about a week.

Corn soup:

Boil canned corns in water with your favorite broth/bouillon and diced scallion. Peas optional. Whip up an egg and mix it into the soup when almost done. Turn off the stove and mix in a tea spoon of starch powder for a thickened texture.
You could do something extremely similar with BFS 10 years ago, and that's the concept behind the long-delayed WinFS.
So...the benchmark is to rapidly switch between threads? Seems like more of a test of the system call bindings than the language speed.
You probably shouldn't use Chomsky as an example. Chomsky is the ultimate outlier. He's got a superhuman intellect and it's actually exceeded by his superhuman patience.

I will tell you a Chomsky story. One night in grad school I was wandering the library stacks looking for anything other than what I was supposed to be working on. I found myself in front of Emerson's complete works, picked out, let's say, Volume 18, and stumbled on Emerson's critique of the Mexican-American war. I noticed that he was saying exactly what Chomsky was to say about the Vietnam war 120 years later. I thought hey maybe Chomsky hasn't seen this, so I wrote him a letter: Dear Chomsky, you don't know me and I'm just a grad student in an unrelated field, but I thought you might enjoy this quote from Emerson. Love, me.

A couple weeks later, I was surprised to find that Chomsky had written me back: Dear Daniel, I wasn't aware of that quote and found it very interesting. Thanks for writing. Love, Chomsky. Well, that was nice of him. End of story.

Not quite. Two years later, I got another letter: Dear Daniel, I was at your university last week and had been looking forward to giving you a call and meeting you. Unfortunately, blah blah blah came up and there was just no way. Hopefully next time. Chomsky.

This one flabbergasted me. By that time I had learned enough about academia to realize that in the star professor system, star professors never do that. They talk to students maybe after class or if they sign up for an appointment. Other than that, they avoid you because they don't want to lose star power. One guards one's fraternizations very carefully, and there are quite fine and quite strict lines demarking the various equivalence classes. Probably most celebrity systems work that way. It's the same reason Hollywood actors date each other.

Anyway, the fact that Chomsky would write a letter like that to a nobody of a grad student, the lowliest of the low, really touched me. It also convinced me that, among star academics at least, the man really is a mutant. A decent mutant. Who would remember something like that after two years?
Freenet is a project killed by attitude problems of the creators.
Slightly crazy idea that I'm not sure is practical, but still... create a new JavaScript-like Prototype-based language with all of JS's design quirks fixed, implement it in JavaScript so it can be used widely in-browser then finally attempt to get browsers to implement it natively.
Ouch.

I guess I should say this is starting to feel like arguing with Paul Grahm?

So is everyone that got that impression from the essay a Reddit troll? If that wasn't what you wanted to communicate, was it the fault of all those people that read it for getting that impression?
i like snarky. thanks, but i meant had experience with.
great, thanks for the feedback.
"... Why is this of interest? ..."

Because it gives insight to customers. Makers who don't have an understanding of "Whole of mind" theory won't understand this. Marketers like Seth Godding do, so the line about "... Do you know what most people want? They want you to care ..." is apt.
The Bare Necessities: A Generation Tries to Imagine Life Without iPods
I was thinking the exact same thing when I first read it. There's got to be some kind of criteria in place to keep it effective and focused. Even if it's just a simple, written application stating who you are, why you want to be there, etc; at least then you can tell if you're dealing with an intelligent human being and if they're serious or not. That said, I'd be really interested in seeing a series of camps that helps those of us in the early, formative stages. It also seems like a great way to learn to develop ideas and meet potential cofounders.
From "happy hacking" to "screw you" - the story of Meraki
It tests whether or not the language has cheap/easy concurrency. C only works at the system thread level, but the languages that beat it use built-in lightweight concurrency.
Never built an email client but I used to do my email checking by telenting to port 110 logging in and retrieving the messages.

I think that'll be a great place to start. Learn the protocol and start playing with it directly instead of using an email program.
Well then, why would the recruiter even bother inviting him?...
Aim for the high end. What would a client look like that allowed you to process between 1,000 and 10,000 inbound messages a day, answering 1-10% of them, in 2-4 hours of clock time. E-Mail is not going away, but the metaphor of the inbox and folders is obsolete and needs to be rethought from the ground up. Here is one place to start: http://www.43folders.com/2008/03/12/patterns-email-conversat...

Please feel free to contact me directly if you would like to continue the conversation. I think this is one area that is overdue for a significant change in paradigm, the evidence that the current approach isn't scaling can be found in every successful blogger who can no longer find time to read and answer E-mail.
"You suck, but not because of who you are intrinsically -- only because of your environment. You must become a startup founder, or you'll probably continue to suck."

To me, this retains PG's argument but also shows why it's so easy to be offended by it.

(personally I agree with his argument -- I've been in the cage and I've been in the jungle, and I know damn well which one gives me stomach ulcers and which one helps me become a better human being.)
On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a God
exactly what i needed. thanks.
I don't think any of the common mail protocols are especially complex. If you're trying to do anything interesting with a mail client, it probably doesn't involve doing anything special with the protocols. Find a good library and tweak if you really need to.
Halfway across the visible universe, not the entire universe, which is 90+ billion light years across. Sorry to nitpick. :)
Or to remove the ingredients from the ziploc bag (at least, I hope that's how he does it!)
People are arguing about whether or not this is true, but the whole thing is laughable mainly for trying to be a justification for IP violation.

As for the "collapse"...always look to the fundamentals. Demographics, natural resources, culture. Not that that's reasurring.
I would like to see a large survey of 25 year old hackers from around the country who would like to start a startup but decided against it, or just couldn't. It is nice to believe that it's just lack of inspiration, or misconceptions about the process, but is there anything else? Maybe.

Or maybe it is because people truly do not want to work hard. Never in my life have I met someone who prioritizes hacking above all else for more than the time it would take to defeat a small video game.

One question, by "start a startup," would that refer to getting decent investment and living a quality of life overall comparable to that of one's peers, or bootstrapping and every day fighting for survival with a hope that one day the tides will turn? If the later then those outside the valley are going to be inspired with a much stronger "yearning for the sea" before they will make the jump without regret.
Who would remember something like that after two years?

I think most academics do.

My own story: When I was an undergraduate student, I wrote a paper which gave sharp bounds on the round-off errors resulting from computing FFTs using floating-point arithmetic; and I noticed that my bound was much better than the bound given by Higham in his Numerical Analysis textbook (which is, by quite a wide margin, the most widely used textbook in the field). I sent him an email -- "Dear sir, I noticed that in section X.Y of this book, you prove a bound of N sqrt(N) log(N) instead of N log(N); if you change foo to bar in your argument, you'll get the stronger bound which I prove in my paper (see attachment)" -- and he wrote back to thank me and tell me that he would make sure the improved bound was in the next edition of the textbook.

A year later, a copy of said textbook arrived in the mail, "compliments of the author".

Two years after that, when I was a graduate student at a different university, I went to a talk by Higham; and at the end when we were asked for questions, I introduced myself (by name, no mention of FFTs) and asked a question. Higham answered my question, and then went on -- in front of most of the department -- to announce that I had found an error in the first edition of his textbook, and that when I wrote to him he had assumed that I was a professor rather than an undergraduate student.

I think "star professors" are actually more likely to remember things like this, simply because someone pointing out something they didn't know, or a mistake they made, is so unusual. It's people like Chomsky, Higham, and Knuth who remember such contributions and can afford to send out free books -- or $2.56 cheques -- to those who provide them.
hm... okay i typed a few more into the same link and it picked up a couple... i just figured it was only proper nouns b/c those worked every time. thanks...
fascinating. thanks for your insight.
Well first of all - it's the same problem as using a credit card to pay for anything you can't really afford!

However it has a special "bad omen" significance in regards to running your own business because sometimes you hear stories of someone whose business is not doing well, and they won't admit it and instead ruin themselves trying to bail out the business out of personal funds, such as running up a huge credit card debt.

That's not to say that this guy is going to do that, but just that in general you cringe when you hear of someone using a credit card to fund a business.
It would be ideal if you're a serious email user or you can become one.

Whatever you do, dogfood it. Use it for your day to day email as much as possible as soon as the probability of it losing/corrupting messages is low. If you find yourself going back to your old client, write the code you need to so you don't have to.

Decide what's going to be the most important things about your app and work hard to get those right. All the "it would be cool if.." stuff can wait till later. Only focus on the essence to begin with. Then, release it and see what people think and go from there.
Sigh. I wish people would stick to arguing about what I actually said in the essay, instead of what I "implied." If I wanted to imply something, I'd say it.

If you want people to read what you say literally instead of drawing inferences, don't use metaphors.

Seeing those guys on their scavenger hunt was like seeing lions in a zoo after spending several years watching them in the wild.

Do you mean that these scavenger hunters were pacing around and growling? Of course not -- you expect us, as readers who understand the nuances of English, to understand that this is a metaphor; to think about the differences between caged and uncaged lions; and to project those differences onto humans.

Guess what? Metaphors are imprecise. Different people have different notions concerning how caged and uncaged lions differ. Different people will project these properties onto humans in different ways.

I agree entirely with what you're saying in the essay, but I think it might have been far more effective if one of your proof-readers had said "you know, this is liable to be misinterpreted, maybe you can reword it?"
Extra-fancy buckwheat soba is a bit pricier, but insanely delicious. A complex and rich taste all by itself, so you don't have to add much to it.

Soba takes eight minutes to cook, but the meal is even faster if you prep it beforehand. It's best eaten cold, so just pop it out of the fridge.

Chop other stuff to put into it. Tofu, green onions, mushrooms, peas, whatever.

Broth is awesome if you have it, but I can get by with a few dabs of soy sauce.

Add some red pepper flakes. Done.
I think dismissing the article as laughable only on the basis of the IP violation is an unnecessary insult to an otherwise well thought out article. Oppose it on the basis of what it argues for, not the (very light) rhetoric.
"... We immediately ordered 9 of the first beta units to try out. The technology was cheap ($50/unit) and it worked but what prevented us from going any further with it was the pricing model that they decided to adopt - $5/node/month for access to the "dashboard" - the real-time monitoring software that they were developing for managing the networks. ..."

One of the bits I didn't like about the Meraki model was the requirement for all traffic to go back through the Meraki "back-end" service. You might get free access but at the price of centralised control. Google & Sequoia are backing this effort so you have to figure how the "do-no-evil" bit fits in with the centralisation of "network analysis" ~ http://meraki.com/oursolution/hostedservices/

One other interesting tidbit is RM is a technical advisor ~ http://meraki.com/about/
It is impossible to know what is outside of our lightcone.
Klein Bottles - Cliff Stoll's Old School E-Commerce Site (with a cool product)
Microsoft, Intel Team on Multi-Core Research
The lottery is available to only certain countries' applicants. (Generally the countries which do not use the full quota due to lack of applicants).
But the thing Higham remembered was orders of magnitude more significant than thing I was talking about, which was genuinely trivial.

Still, I take your point that among true star professors this kind of brilliant decency isn't as uncommon as I made out. I was using the term "star professor" a little more ironically than that.

I definitely disagree with what you said about most academics, though!
They say the third time is a charm - and I am on my third application - pending for about 3 years. The previous two times (first in 2001, the company went bankrupt. The second time in about 2003, but I left the company after a couple of years).

Sometimes, it is just a matter of luck. There was one in 1998 (when suddenly everyone got "current" and could move on with life). Then, there was a period in 2000-to-mid-2001 when the whole process took less than a year (for even high-demand countries like Mexico, India and China).
There was a recent event (in July/August of 2007) - but that was only a partially-lucky event since many bad things happened after that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst#Mass_extinction...
Well yes the programmers should have used example.com instead of donotreply.com!
Actually, only the first time that you ever apply for a visa, you are fighting the quota. Then onwards, you are just reusing the same number - so no worries there. [this is good until the 6 years of eligibility of h1].

Secondly, if your application had been pending for more than year, then you can keep your h1 alive (even after 6 years), and use your pending-gc-application to get h1-renewals.

Lastly, if you get past the first two and a half stages of the greencard process and you get an EAD and you have worked 180+ days with your employer, then, as Southwest says, you are free to move about the country. :)
Oh..visit http://www.immigrationvoice.org/ - and post your exact scenario. Lots of helpful folks there. And if you search the archives, you might just find someone with your situation might've already asked the same questions.
> Extra-fancy buckwheat soba is a bit pricier, but insanely delicious. A complex and rich taste all by itself, so you don't have to add much to it.

My favorite local ramen shop (Ramen Halu in San Jose, near Saratoga Ave and 280) uses it to make Tsukemen (sort of a dipping ramen, with cold soba noodles and hot broth and dipping sauce). Amazingly good. :D
[humor] Q&A With Andrew Chen: "What fuels you?"
I regard Andrew with a high regard for the quality of his blog and the insights and analysis he shares with us all through it, so when I had the chance to participate in his Q&A system, I submitted the simple question: "What fuels you?"

His response is both genuine and humorous. Here's the YouTube link to his response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo9buo9Mtos

I'd like to think we all share similar motivations.
Explaining the existence of religion
I disagree (without the economics pedigree, so forgive me if I'm missing something). Politics and greed aren't all powerful and they certainly existed in the 30's. But I think he's exaggerating some aspects. In 1971, the US went completely off the gold standard not from bankruptcy but because it could. And it worked. In a sense it was a coup because it enabled unprecedented growth. The problem is that letting government completely control inflation (an invisible tax that rewards investment and punishes hoarding cash) is like letting the kid in the candy store -- with similar binging consequences.

In the end, I agree with the author that we'll see a downturn worse than the 30's. Most people didn't see that one coming either.
This is an interesting and insightful article, but in my experience a person's superstition leads to the exact opposite effect: it gets in the way a person deducing a correct model of a how something works on a computer. The article postulates that because the forces at work in software are unseen and made up, that a person who believes in magic will be better equipped to understand it. I counter that precisely because the mechanism is unseen, it takes a sharper scientific mind to model the hidden mechanism - which is essential to predict cause and effect for new phenomena. As a software developer I've worked very hard to make things easy in a program's interface, only to find the users perpetuating myths from trainer to trainee about very complicated things they have to do to get it to work - sequences of actions which don't have any effect but which worked once and are repeated superstitiously instead of doing things easily.

Another example of how a belief in "spirits" hobbles your ability to properly use the internet, would be my father: he consistently misspells URLs, and gets angry when it doesn't work. When I tell him they have to be typed exactly, he always dismisses it by saying "oh they'll know what I mean." No matter how hard I try, I cannot convince him that there is no THEY on the other end of the address box!! But his superstitious nature will not allow him to change his convictions that all these purely mechanical things the software does are not orchestrated by "spirits" (a.k.a. imaginary human operators).
True, but I warn you, there are no girls here. Seriously, Sillicon Valley is a big sausage fest.
This is great. Here we have it: Listen to your customers. Many of the problems he complained about were solved later by the community, businesses, or simply by technological progress. Solved profitably, I might add. Sure, one has to subtract the "disruptive silver bullet hype" from some of the issues, but then one finds a lot of real business opportunities. I love those complaints.
Your kindergarden teacher was out today, and now you trolling here?

Actually PG is very very right on that essay. No self respected matture person will participate in a stupid scavange hunt for work. Either work, or go home and work on your side-project. Stupid things like the "rope course" or anything done for "bonding" are retarded coorporate bullshit. Having gove from a 20 000+ company, to a smaller 200 people company, I can say you there is a huge difference how things work.

Unfortunately, as my current company has grown, (it had 120 people when I joined it), I keep seeing some of the same stuff that I saw happening on my old one. Kinda scary dejavu, that your company is not small anymore, but wants to be "mature".
There are certain kind of people that like this type of enviroment, where with good ass-kissing,and political games, they can move ahead on the ladder, while they would never would be able to pull it off in a small company. In small companies (i.e. startups), are the real place where you can be "all you can be". You can shine, and your work will be visible and very important to the success of the company.

Here is my other question to people in here. Sillicon Valley is the place to be if you want to work in a STARTUP. Sure, it is a expensive place, housing is insane, gas is expensive, but it is one of the few places that allows you to strike it rich. It is like the Hollywood for software engineers.
So, my questions to those people that are working in the big boring mega-coprs, "If you are not originally from the area, and not working in a startup, wtf are you doing here? Why didn't just stay home, and work at the boring mega-corps of your area, (which unless it is manhatan, it probably is a much cheaper place to live).
"those people that read it for getting that impression"

it's the attitude towards reading something that matters.

nobody will have the same attitude towards reading this, especially if they are among the caged lions!

it's obvious and expected that most people will deny their condition if they dont know anything else. if you are born in a cage how do you know how is it on the outside? hell, probably you wont even like it and if attempted to escape return back frigihtenned.

the only way to avoid this is to be precise in what you write, so not to leave any excuse for misintrepreation.

I am totally certain there are more bright programmers sitting in the cage, than a lot of the "startup founders" out there.