skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even if it wasn't all within the software (which I would strongly doubt), the problem with safety and of complex systems is that the safer you try to make it, the more complex the system becomes and that in itself reduces the reliability and safety of the system.

If you add a monitor to check to see if a critical piece is running, then you need another to check if that is running, etc... This applies to both hardware and software. Then you layer on top of all the features of the system layers of process like CMMI, ISO whatever, etc. and designs are reviewed by committee after committee and eventually the design has to be approved and the cost keeps skyrocketing.
Cross Site Printing
my cousin married
Quater-imaginary base (base 2i)
I met Chris McKinstry in Winnipeg, Canada in 1995. I was not very impressed - he wanted to start a course on linux sysadmin or something... - with me doing pretty well everything except collecting the money... and he couldn't even organize it properly. He struck me as a scammer, though obviously it's only a thin line between that and "Internet entrepreneur."
It might be just me, but the name leads me to believe that these guys are just a bunch of stoners. "Hey, what if we call our company 'Hashrocket'?" [takes, another hit off of the bong/pipe/spliff] "Great idea, man...."
Google Experimental Search
Apple crippled DTrace on MacOS X
Business Growth Accelerators
I haven't ever actually, but I may have to start now.
Worked on my startup. Finished a whole Javascript UI widget.
Dangerous Knowledge (documentary): Cantor, Boltzmann, Godel and Turing, genius and insanity
there are tons of startup video game companies that you would probably be interested in
I like your design, but the logo is kind of weak.

As for the concept, I can see the appeal of going to the site to make money from answering questions, but I don't think many people are going to pay to have their questions answered.

Maybe you could just keep asking your own questions and if monthly ad revenue > what you pay out for questions. You profit!
Is there anyone reading this who has not read The Huff? You should!

And do not miss the link at the bottom of the parent article. Darrell Huff sounds like a fun guy. I may have to dig out his other books.
I was at a financial software firm that was doing half of that. We were basically analyzing what the "dumb" black boxes were doing, but instead of trying to do the opposite, we just compared it with some well-known benchmarks so firms could see if their algorithms were actually doing well. At the moment, nobody actually knows what these black boxes are doing or whether they're actually performing better than the market as a whole.

While I was there, I thought about doing a product that'd try to predict the algorithms other people were using and profit off them, but you run into some really thorny epistemological problems. For starters, you generally can't find out which firms are making which trades, unless you're the firm itself (that's how our analysis product worked; it was for firms to evaluate their own performance, not their competitors). Most buy-side firms aggregate their orders through a few brokers, which keep their clientns' identities confidential. So you see "A sell order for 100 shares of MSFT at $33.01 came through Morgan Stanley", but you have no idea which fund placed the order or what other trades came from them. The signal gets lost in the statistical noise of all the other trades.

There's also no absolute standard of value in finance. Sure, you can benchmark values against discounted cash flow (assuming that you can even predict the cash flows, which is far from certain for most companies), but it may take years for a stock to revert to fair value as measured by discounted cash flow. Many of these automated trading systems operate over minutes or seconds, and don't care that the stock will eventually crash in 2-3 years.
thank you all. i end up having a menage a trois with |the big switch| (just how i like them) and |nescafe|.
Maybe I'm not good at finding startups.
Everybody in the industry thought that their black-boxes were uncorrelated and independent. That was part of the appeal of them (and also why it's so difficult to sell algorithmic trading products - most firms want to develop them in-house). Problem was that they had no idea what everyone else was doing, and so most of them independently invented algorithms that behave fairly similarly.

It's like the thousands of entrepreneurs that saw Friendster and said "Oh look, only one competitor in the market, I'll build myself a social network and get rich!" Or the thousands of entrepreneurs that saw Reddit and Digg and said "Oh look, only two competitors in the market, I'll build myself a social bookmarking site and get rich!" Or the thousands of entrepreneurs that saw YouTube and said "Oh look, only one competitor in the market, I'll build myself a video sharing site and get rich!"

The only way to get rich is to build things where there are zero popular competitors in the market, or where there are 1-2 competitors and everyone believes it's fruitless to compete with them. Otherwise, you can bet that thousands of people you haven't heard of are doing the same thing, and by the time you get a product out they'll be getting a product out too.

(Incidentally, the first few quant hedge funds, like Renaissance or D.E. Shaw, made out like bandits.)
some of the wits among his teen-age friends now address him as Master Master Fischer

No, I think that's wrong. That degree of sparkling wit could only have originated in the brain of a New Yorker columnist.
The only problem is that these funds don't start out trying to be correlated with each other--the most successful strategies are those that no one else is doing, since you, tautologically, get the best prices on broadly undervalued assets. They don't want to hold all the same things, but finance is a small world at people catch on to successful strategies pretty quickly. It just pans out that way since they are built on analyzing historical relationships between assets and what has worked in the past, e.g., buy refiners when the crack spread widens, or high p/e/g ratio stocks. To be independent you'd have to either find that relationship no one knows about, or pick a strategy that hasn't worked in the past.

To put it in web terms, it's almost like these quant funds are just adapting to industry best practices. We see that people like social networking, crowdsourcing, "web 2.0" page layouts, etc., so we see lots of sites racing to add these features--because hey, that's what works, that's what users want. But what happens if people get sick of one of those features (or any other you pick)? The relationship between the market and that feature breaks down. All those sites who counted on that strategy will all fail (or adapt) at around the same time, and many will rush into the next hot area (Pointcast-style "push" technology, anyone?).

Quant funds are basically just advanced machine-learners; you could implement a black box-of-sorts on your website by looking at Comscore numbers/trends for different sites and plotting that out against the features/layouts/topics they use, and instantly adding some new widget to your sidebar or something when you see a positive relationship with traffic generation. (Techmeme is a great example of a web black box, BTW, always on the hottest tech trend.)
Recursion and Generators in Python
Ugh, not this tired old trope again! Cantor was a troubled man, but he solved the fucking problem, ok? Pitying him because infinity "drove him insane" is like pitying St George's loss to the dragon. It's not just wrong, it's insulting.
Nah, thats my great-grandmom's mom
Importance of Body Language
Music: a Mathematical Offering
Drawing Lessons for Hackers and Painters
Handsfree emacs
Not all internet startups are web startups. In my case, I'm working on online backup, and every single line of code I've written for it has been in C.

I'm not going to suggest that you should get into the same field and start competing with me, but there are many options under the umbrella of "infrastructure services" which all require highly efficient coding.
"Everybody in the industry thought that their black-boxes were uncorrelated and independent."

I'm not so sure. I interviewed at a Wall Street company that was programming data channels headed into the black-boxes. They boasted that 30% of trades were dealt with by computers. I mentioned that that should probably be enough to drive some pretty serious feedback effects. I asked: in principle, if these black-boxes handled all the trades, where would the decision to trade or not come from.

Instead of a blank stare, I was presented a cold, nervous look. He said "basically all these algorithms have been worked out in the 70's and 80's, in Academia. Nobody really knows what they're doing, or why they're doing it. But they are trying to compete by getting more data faster than the next guy. If everyone trades the same, as long as you trade faster, you'll win."

I asked if it was moral to play such a risky game with the economy.

I didn't get the job.
"Zed Shaw thinks he's cool, and that's all the credibility I need."

This is a very dangerous way of thinking. You should judge people by more than "X says ..." . There are any number of competent people who think Obie is mostly blowing smoke and leaching off rails's popularity.

Obie essentially gave Zed a job when he needed one. You will never catch Zed say Obie isn't cool after that.

If you know someone at Thoughtworks, where people actually worked with him (and from where Obie left under a cloud ), talk to them to get a different opinion.

of course, the best way to judge someone is to look at their code/work with them for a while than "X says Y". You can get people saying anything about other people if you look hard enough. I wouldn't want to bet my company (or 30,000 $ for that matter) on such flimsy evidence.

And even if Zed really means it when he says "Obie is cool" , that doesn't make it right for your to bet your company on him. Quotes are no substitute for doing your own research.
Great read.
I believe this sort of thing was originated by Speed Seduction (http://www.speedseduction.net/) which is is based on NLP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming).

edit: no it wasn't: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_community
The comments links in your RSS feeds appear to be broken.

http://news.ycombinator.comitem?id=101047
one thing i don't understand is how can you make money by trading every couple minutes? because aren't there fees for every trade.
If true, this Slashdot comment is also telling:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=424396&cid=22117930
Why Projects Fail [pdf]
Please next time insert something like [PDF] in title.
If you are interested in game development, go to the GDC in February this year: http://www.gdconf.com/ There'll be job boots and all that, and also you can get to know people who's doing game startups at the event place itself. If you find the expo to be too expensive, you can volunteer for helping in some simple tasks, and in such case you get a full access to all the event (http://www.gdconf.com/volunteers/caregistration.php).
Reality looks staged
Social News Transparency - Collective Wisdom vs Mob Mentality
The web is just the most convenient place to deliver software.

Justin.tv has a huge* amount of highly concurrent, high performance Python code that delivers our video. That video is still delivered via the web, though.

Speaking of which, we're hiring...

* It's not actually that many lines of code, but it's comparable to our web codebase.
Great stuff. I'd buy the e-book except I hate e-books. Wonder if there is a real book available?
Oops, good point, done.
Windows Vista: Past Its Due Date Already (dBASE IV and Vista comparison)
I disagree. Like, this is a good strat for times when the outcome is based on how hard you try; but, in my experience, and more relevantly, from what I've read about evolutionary biology, there is such a thing as trying too hard. Plus, if you are really going for one girl, you might get messed up emotionally.
TechStars 2008 Applications Now Open
Major layoffs at yahoo (20%)?
Went out with some guests from Italy. Still angry that Austria hasn't followed the rest of Europe and banned smoking, at the very least in restaurants.
How Email Brings You Closer to the Guy in the Next Cubicle
17 Ways You Can Use Twitter
Teaching My Daughter To Code
Amazon's free shipping costing EUR1,000 per day in France
U.S. venture funding up nearly 11 percent in 2007
Excellent article. I think he hit the nail pretty much on the head with the Ashton Tate comparison. Interestingly the problem doesn't stem from one person, or group of people - rather it is a direct consequence of size, marketshare, and success. This means that noone is responsible for the current sad status quo at Microsoft, it just happened.

To get out of their quagmire they need someone that sees the problem for what it is, and responds vigilantly to drive the company out of the mud and back to innovation and great products. It is a really hard job, and I think the only one at Microsoft that could make it succeed is Ray Ozzie.

It isn't impossible, IBM suffered the exact same problems in the late 80's and they came back. It is just very very hard.
This is one of the reasons why when my time to ditch Windows has come, I opted for Linux on a ThinkPad instead of OS X on MacBook Pro.
Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s
http://www.neuric.com

These guys are in Austin and they're building some cool AI technology. I have seen the demo and it was very, very impressive (their AI has emotions, so it can be pissed at you, etc). I suppose I cannot disclose much more, even though I do not work for them, but they do not use JavaScript for that.

BTW: There are other startup hubs, besides SV, in US. Austin is one of them, and I would say that most companies here do not do dot-coms, often it's hardware+software combos. Recently I bumped into another local startup that does some cool stuff with visualization - they've been hiring some C/Linux hackers (don't recall their name).

I suggest you burn a custom RSS feed for jobs@craigslist with certain keywords, like "startup", "software", etc.
Was Cloverfield any good?
...and an even thinner line between scammer and AI guru. At least in web startups your popularity will decide whether you are doing something worthwhile or not. In academia, promises that "it will work tomorrow, I swear!" has historically worked very well while providing few results.
Their site doesn't render properly @ 1280X800 either. Also, the rendering is inconsistent - if I refresh the site, it will render with "Building a success web application is rocket science" over "our products"... hit refresh and it renders correctly... hmmm...
Also, you would think that for 30 grand you'd get to pick the language of your choice?
I have an 16 month old ultra-portable that maxes at 1024x768... If I happen to be a person who:

A) Doesn't maximize my browser
B) uses the bookmarks pane in my browser
C) uses the history pane in my browser
D) uses Flock ( http://www.flock.com/ )

then my viewing area would be in the 800x600 neighborhood.
Seesmic Sunday: One Minute Elevator Pitch
No idea. Some commentator.
The majority of people today are mostly concerned with subsistence too.
> "When they talk about things that are new, the list is almost laughable, consisting of "Tablet PC versions"

I think this author overlooks some of the newer features of vista. there actually have been a lot of kernel improvements, especially in memory management and scheduling, as well as lots of security and UI improvements.

> "They're adding, but they're not removing."

True for vista, but I believe Microsoft is trying to simplify the dependency structure of the next version with minwin.
So he didn't do this to produce a viable embryo, but rather to harvest stem cells... and this is cloning, how?

In fact, according to my biology/genetics major girlfriend, this procedure isn't even necessary anymore. There's a process now for turning his epidermal cells directly into stem cells.
Cool article. I'm still not sure if his definition of what the best numeric base would be is valid. My hunch is that ternary will probably work great in reality, but a larger base should be used for humans. Maybe senary (base 6), because that's about as many objects as a person can eyeball.

Thankfully, it's things like these that promise economic growth for centuries to come. After all, if your growth rate is 0, you can switch everyone over to a different number system, and if it really is better, you'll get a return on investment for society no matter what the switching cost is (mostly because the divisor in the ROI equation would be 0).
MS releases source code of .NET libraries
I can't educate my guesses that much. Like you, I'm not in a position where betting 30K on some dude I read about makes any sense. However, some people are in that position. Big companies regularly pay consulting companies like McKinsey hundreds of thousands and even millions for projects. The pay hundreds of dollars an hour for IBM coders. People who pay these prices may well be better served with a 30G project from Obie and a 14G website from Electric Pulp than with whatever IBM and McKinsey charge.

NB: I don't know the numbers. However, I recall the ballpark as being around 300 dollars an hour for a software engineer, and 400K for a study on the return on investment of a marketing campaign for a retailer. The first number is according to Joel Spolsky, and the second is according to Steve Levitt. I'm aware I'm risking arguments from authority here, too.
I would think that there are a decent number of non-web tech startups, but not as many straight-up software startups. Oftentimes, small non-web software companies will get acquired as soon as they come out with something useful, and their ideas are integrated into the larger companies' products. My suggestion would be to do the big company thing for a few years, and then once you have the experience/contacts, you'll be in more of a position to find a fledgling startup or form your own.
Excess bias on the analytical, thinking, and "doing" sides of a human life purges out the practical, hands-on, "not-doing" side that's deeply rooted to nature and connects you to reality. You need to spend time in the nature doing nothing to realize where you come from and that you're not in hurry to anywhere and to balance, you also need to exercise your brain and thinking to break the limits of what you can, thus redefining yourself as you go by life.
20% is a lot of layoffs. However, I don't view them with the same stigma of VCs firing founders. Firing is a part of business.

Firing people doesn't necessarily make you evil. Especially if you aim at marketing. If you cut down on the HR when you're done with the layoffs, you get extra points.
Also, you would think that for 30 grand you'd get to pick the language of your choice?

That is actually the problem with many companies. The programmers are not the ones that decide which language to use. They're forced to use Java or .NET because the higher-ups want them to.

Why would you try and limit the productivity of a programming team by forcing them to use tools they may not like or tools that are weak.
Interesting to see their stats. 8 out of 10 from last summer are funded. Of course, the proof will be when and if any of them have an exit (and how good the founders make out in the exit).

Some offhand differences I see from YC are:

-3 weekly events with TS versus 1-3 with YC.
- TS is more of an incubator. They provide office space. I tend to think this isn't good-- creates less of a sense of ownership for the founders, IMO.
- Boulder, CO ... Not the best hub in the world. On the surface it doesn't seem to be impeding funding, but what about acquisition?
- TS companies have less competition... ~300 applications, 10 accepted.
- TS has a LOT more mentors, on the surface... No idea how engaged they are.
- And the biggie-- The YC/PG brand clobbers TechStars...
"CEO Jerry Yang will reportedly make the decision to go forward with these layoffs--or not--next week."

English usage question: could that be reworded as "CEO Jerry Yang will decide whether to make these layoffs next week"?
Specs for Lenovo Macbook Air competitor leaked
Here he is writing the story of stealing the shotgun at the sports store: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/21/23239/2881 , I remember this story vividly.

EDIT: oh, they link to that later.
Seven Things Every Software Project Needs to Know
Thanks for pointing that out, Emmett, we are indeed hiring! Both our chat server and Video cluster are written in Python's Twisted framework. We're always looking for smart hackers who want to help us make our systems better. Everyone at JTV is tossed in the deep end (Bill, who found us through news.yc, learned Twisted, wrote and deployed our chat server in his first two weeks here). Find out more here: http://blog.justin.tv/2007/07/justintv-is-hiring.html

Or email justin at justin.tv
Free Git hosting for open source projects
Rubular: a sweet web-based Ruby regular expression editor
You're talking about young 20-somethings. But consider older people with children. These Gulf countries are (and have always been, but moreso now) willing to pay a lot of money (tax free) along with a boatload of benefits to experienced westerners who would work with them. It's hard to turn that down when you have children who one day will go to private American universities, etc.
Study: Brain connections strengthen during waking hours, weaken during sleep
Math Models Snowflakes
<snark>

Yes, it's true: You will probably never have to worry about whether or not DTrace is compatible with the Linux version of iTunes. That is one problem you will never have.

You may also never have to use DTrace with the Linux versions of 1Password, Adium, Audio Hijack, Automator, Colloquy, GarageBand, Handbrake, Path Finder, Pixelmator, Quicksilver, NetNewsWire, Snapz Pro, Textmate, Transmit, Twitterific, VisualHub, or xScope. To say nothing of Photoshop or Logic Pro. Just think of all the bugs you will never have to find.

Of course, based on a quick Google search for "dtrace Linux", you don't seem to be able to run DTrace on Linux at all. But, if you could, I'm sure it would be perfect!

</snark>

Mind you, I love Linux and I use it all the time. Just not on my desktop.
:) My son is 10. I really don't know (can't make a decision) which language to teach him.
This is a quick fix to address short term profitability and stock price. If I were a stockholder, I'd be asking the bigger questions like what markets will yahoo be in in 5 years. The battle lines are being drawn now. What will differentiate yahoo from the googles, microsofts, amazons, and ebays of the world? I wish I knew.
LinkedIn founder sees gold in connections
Java. Dear god. Must the joy be sucked out of her young life so soon?

Quick, turn on the _Why signal! http://hacketyhack.net/

Or Squeak. Anything. Perhaps we can put together a nifty hacking platform in Arc once it finally comes out.
Facebook Application 'Scrabulous' debate may rewrite the rules of the game
Ask YC: What Bank account and accounting software are LLC startups using?
What kind of bank account? Something from Chase? (http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/753-ask-37signals-how-do-you-process-credit-cards)

For the accounting software, something from Quicken, a simple spreadsheet? Something homegrown? Nothing at all?
I really want to like Apple, but shit like this bothers me.

One of the commenters on that post said:

They're more concerned with their image than doing the right thing. That is the essence of evil.

Sounds about right.
LMAO: RIAA Website Wiped Clean by "Hackers"
Pocketguitar: Virtual Guitar for iPhone and iPod touch
Conice 6x18 Zoom Attachment for iPhone | Hey, no one ever said stalking was going to be easy.
I heard a rumor that one guy who made money in August was Steve Cohen at SAC Capital -- he told his traders to run the model and do the opposite.