skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find I need some sort of plan for all but the simplest of projects. I've even found it valuable to return to the diagrams (class only, the others don't work for me) to try to remember what the heck I did a few months back.
Does showing up the most on FriendFeed mean "winning"?

I use Pandora even more than I use Twitter -- I have it open all day long on many days. But I have a few stations I'm pretty happy with, and I don't update it much anymore, so it barely registers on my FriendFeed.

Trick question: does the fact that Digg registers more comments than Reddit mean it's better?
I should have qualified extremely fast: From what I hear, it can make compiling go faster than the MBP, despite the slower processor, solely because disk reading is so much faster. With a large project and lots of small files, disk access adds up.
"Closer to the truth than you realize."

Apparently so - I wrote the initial comment based on my loose recollection of reading the book a few years ago. Looking up the big speech the Galt character gives in Atlas Shrugged, it's amazing how much of it relates. This paragraph in particular reads like it could have been pg's battle cry against soul-sucking faceless corporations that demand all of your creativity and trust none of your judgement:

"While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem — I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality — mine. It is mine that they chose to follow."

http://compuball.com/Inquisition/AynRand/galtspeech_pmark_br...

For the less literary-minded, Fight Club has also been inspiration for a few of my friends in a similar way.
True-Color GIF Example
But some things are hard or impossible to achieve alone, so teaming up with others might be necessary.
A lesson in marketing. Timely + hilarious.
How would the CPU and disk performance of the MBA compare to a Powerbook G4? That's what I use now.
Gmail's Quota Secrets (slideshow)
The best way I ever heard it phrased was, "Not everyone gets a home run, but sooner or later you're bound to get hit by a ball and walked."
It only makes you uneasy because it's written about you rather than something abstract like your core values, although that would be just as true. I'm sure Sam is equally uncomfortable with your description of him, even if he agrees with your assessment of what qualities you're looking for in a startup founder.
Occasionally I work with someone who uses it (in which case I'll play along for a little while) but otherwise no.
because you have to realize that no matter where you go or who you talk to, the depression is in yourself, not out there. If I were you, I'd focus on what to do right now with your feelings, not the next big thing quite yet.

Very well said.

This is worth reading: http://shadow.wordpress.com/2006/06/28/297/
Thanks - sounds like a good idea.
"in an ideal world, requirements would be stable before coding starts"

It is and they are.

I think the common misconception is that requirements change during the project. My experience is that this is a rarity

What really happens is that OUR VIEW of the requirements changes during the project. The business rules didn't just suddenly change because we are building something. We NEVER NAILED THEM DOWN in the first place. This isn't hard to comprehend; analysis is a lost art and probably the most fragile link in the SDLC chain.

"What do you mean, when we file the record, a traveler should print out next to the supervisor's desk? Who told you that?"

"Joe did."

"What did Mary say?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask her."

"Ask her. Once you get her answer, change the specs."

(A silly little example, but is I had a nickel for every time that happened...)
"It seems to be bad when it's indeterminate who is the father of a child."

Bonobo females use an interesting strategy that disagrees with this. When in estrus they mate with as many males in the group as possible to confuse the paternity. That way they get support from the entire troupe of males in rearing the young.
Wow, wallflower, you got me to reply twice to the same post. Good job!

"you can't impact/maximize one of those three without affecting the others"

As soon as someone finishes saying "can't", I start looking for the business opportunity.
Database Gurus Say: Don’t Tase Me Bro!
>> "this community" has no consensus on the issue.

A community doesn't have to agree to be a community. The very fact that we all gather similar info from a singular source is enough to define a community, however niche it may be.

But I am completely with you on the latter point: if we start talking about who can link to what we get into rather murky terrain.

TC: link to what you want. You don't need our approval.
Finally, Sync Any Calendar to Any Calendar
This is really disappointing... I was looking forward to the Zap-X, even though it did sound too good to be true, given Tesla Motors' troubles.
Does anyone think that this new Mobile Device unit will be able to innovate and focus following this move?
I used DC-area Mac BBS and something called the General Electric Network Information Exchange (GENIE). Way, way back '85-86.
Ask YC: StreamFocus launching Limited Beta March 31st
I have never been impressed with the analysis on 24/7 Wall Street. They tend to be either unoriginal or wrong -- this piece is the latter: these blogs should be valued as if 80% of them will be marginalized or shut down over the next ten years. That might value them at something closer to 3X-4X operating profits.

Of course, one of the big problems with valuing blogs based on operating profits is that the business profits are a small fraction of the blogger's compensation; I got my current job because of my blog, but the blog doesn't generate any revenue. Its value to me is quite high, but I probably couldn't sell it for more than $50.

I'm not sure what use McIntyre's valuation is supposed to be. Is this something young bloggers could aspire to -- to sell their online property for $10 million in a few years? I don't see that as a viable business plan. One possibility is to consider a blog that gets bought out by a larger media company -- but in that case, the buyer is looking for the writer's talents, not the URL and archived posts, so the best way to value a blog is to compare it to the cost of a journalism degree and a lunch appointment with an editor at the _New York Times_.
Acid3: Opera hits 98/100
I've found the pexpect[1] module often works better than subprocess module.

pexpect.spawn() also provides a trivial way for the caller of a long running process to periodically regain control and see what's going on via the timeout parameter and the TIMEOUT exception.

[1] - http://pexpect.sourceforge.net/pexpect.html
I found this book to be a rich source on how to get value out of this kind of painful experience.

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Higher-Success-Vernon-Howard/d...
I like that idea, pg and friends would be the founders of the community and would moderate it simply by voting on submissions.

Maybe such a system could also give people the ability to "found" new communities within some sub-domain and have all the posts from the main site submitted to their site but ranked differently based on different voting weights.
After over a year of coding, we are finally launching Streamfocus.com - an integrated project, workflow & action managment sysem with a whole new way to collaborate on projects (between your company, other companies and customers). Our new website includes screenshots, features, key concepts and pricing.

HN has helped us along the way, from critiquing our early website to helping with thoughts on our logo. We'd love to hear any feedback, good or bad, about what we're up to. Please let us know if you want to join the limited beta group while we still have openings.
Mathematica is a great tool for math hackers. The only problem is that these kinds of problems are addictive, and take time away from what I "should" be doing.

But often I learn something by allowing myself to play "just a little..."
Legal battle over Warcraft 'bot'
If you're the sort that gets into backpacking, that's what I always tend to use as a mental reset. It's a mix of getting to be challenged by a new set of problems and putting yourself in a social situation where you can reinvent yourself. Leave the laptop at home. :-)

I ran into Adam last year in a $3-a-night hostel in Egypt. He's got some decent tips for nerds wanting to get out for a bit:

http://geekeasy.com/travel/articles.html
Thank you for the excellent suggestions! I've been working on bigger DoD contracts at my current job, so I'm pretty oblivious to the small company/university grant process.

Since I'm entering Stanford with the intent to obtain a terminal Master's, I'm not sure how much research I'll be allowed or encouraged to participate in. Continuing for my Doctorate is certainly still an option, but I think I'm leaning towards getting my Master's and finding/founding some small company to work with.

Any other insight you have into my situation would be appreciated!
I tend to recall Kipling's poem If, crucially:

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;"

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
MySQL and Sun - Oportunity for smaller companies?
Take a break.

Then, whenever you're ready, come back here and talk about it. That's what we're here for. Even though you're only 2 hours old here, you're already a veteran. Share your lessons with us and take what you need. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how you'll feel then.
No and no.

I'll address your questions in reverse order.

2) My biggest complaint about UML is that it gets out of sync with the code, unless you honestly take the time to outline every little change in the UML docs alongside the code changes. (Which is great in an idealized world, but when I'm in the zone on something, I don't want to pull away to update the docs right that moment, so I'm bound to forget something when I do it later.)

Most IDEs have an 'outline' view, which will show roughly the same information pulled directly from the code. Short of that, you can just use the languages reflection features or docs to get a current view of what's available to a class, etc.

1) As for actually using it to design things, I think it just generally goes against my style of coding. I do things one tiny feature at a time, and refactor when I find myself doing the same thing twice. If I took the time to plan every method signature and relationship between classes in advance, I'd most likely be wrong, and it would take the fun out of coding. Once you have already gone to the trouble of thinking out every detail, actually coding it is going to seem boring.
Ask YC: How do you defend the downmodded?
I'm confused about how to defend unfairly or inexplicably downmodded comments (which I feel like I'm seeing more of lately).

My instinct is to vote them up, but I'm not sure the system properly calculates what I'm trying to say.

Because votes are permanent they seem equivalent to absolute statements. What I'm trying to do is make a relative statement (i.e, "This comment is better than its current score indicates.").

I would just vote up, but often I don't even agree with the comment. But it's polite and reasonable, so I don't see why it should be punished.

Also, I remember PG talking about weighting accounts based on whether they vote up good or bad material. And if I vote up mediocre comments all the time I wonder if I'll be punished in that system.

What does everyone else do?
http://twitter.com/zealog
http://twitter.com/aaronh
Sounds great... will the earlier registrants get an invite, or should they register again?
I wrote about my own experience in recovering from a failed startup. It is sort of like forcing yourself to get up after falling off a bike. It just needs to get done. Hope it helps.

http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/riding-a-bike.html
Nice overview for a first timer, but please tell me the designer is sending PNGs and not JPGs of a mockup.
Thanks :) The early registrants don't need to register again - they are at the top of our list. We will be using the system to collaborate with all our customers. When you log in, you'll see a streamfocus project where you can ask for features, report bugs, give us your feed back, and watch how your feature/bug reports move through our development system.

This is the new project paradigm we are using: the customer actually owns the project, and we work with others within that project to provide the value the customer is looking for.

Also extremely helpful is that you can create critical path links across projects. For example, you can manage your cash flow by linking between Accounts receivable and Accounts payable projects, and the link from Accounts payable to customer projects constraining work on that project until payment is received, etc. The system allows for a fully integrated value focused approach to doing business.
Indeed, indeed.
any links to a non subscription version?
As ericb says, congratulations! I would have to seond ericb. First, relax, take some time off. Make a trip, call some of those friends you might have ignored while working on the startup, read a good book.

I have said this before, and I will say it again, in conjunction with some of the other people's advice of some exercise, try some meditation. It helps you relax, and at the same time, allows your mind to both calm down and reflect at the same time. You will feel more confident and composed, and if you keep the practice up it will help you in your next endeavor.

The link above is a good read. Doing something (Deliberately) without measurement essentially means that you are doing it in vain. It has been a philosophy of mine that if you watch (measure or log) something, it will grow in the direction you want it to. Look back at your time with your startup and try and assess where you could have done more, or less (invariably you spend time doing things that you are not good at, which means you spend an exponential amount of time and effort trying to accomplish it). Take notes, makes index cards, whatever works for you. Don't try and do it all at once, rather let it marinate for some time in your head, constantly jotting down anything that comes to mind. Talk to people who were involved or were somehow affected by your startup work. Ask them for advice, sometimes people notice a whole lot more than they give you credit for. For example, I tend to be very agitated and quickly irritated when I am trying to put the finishing touches on anything. The very last details (like lining up elements in the UI to the last pixel) tend to get me antsy. I think they are important, thats why I do it, but on the flip side, I tend to be very good starter and executor, but a poorer finisher. Ironically it was a project mate who mentioned it to me for me to realize it. There are several books on the topic, like "Now Discover your Strengths" that can also give you some insight.

Again, Congratulations! I wish you well.
You are in mourning. Emotionally it is similar to experiencing a death or divorce. Give yourself a little time to mourn in whatever way is good for you: have a good cry, get really drunk, beat the shit out of a wall, whatever. Failure sucks, now get over it. Your company's failure was not your failure. Learn from it, you are not invincible, now move on.

To use the old cliche: what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
this guy got some skills.
Go with your gut and do what you think is the right thing. Let the chips fall where they may. If everyone did this, we would never have any more of these "how to make HN better" threads.
Graham: Creativeness, Roles and Companies
>If there was an good enough reason for a business undergrad to pursue a masters in CS or engineering, you'd probably see more of it.

It's a cost-benefit tradeoff and you're only considering the benefits while treating the costs equal.

I surmise it's easier for a person without a business background to pick up an MBA than it is for a non-CS/Math/Eng person to pick up a Masters in any of those fields. The learning curves and requirements are different.
I do a little of both; I'll spend a little if I think someone is taking an unreasonable hit (I didn't think much about it, honestly, until it happened to me).

But these days I'm trying to spend more upmodding really good, pertinent submissions rather than comments. I want to see HN quickly return to being the resource I came to use so much for hacking, well, news. I'm finding the return on (time) invested here has fallen recently, and I want it back!
Erik Naggum on reading vs writing and programming
Reddit River - Mobile Version of Reddit.com
The File Header Tax
Motorola to Split handset business from other operations
> But the underlying psychological framework is really a fear of irrelevancy. If you make things too simple my expertise will be less important. I will be less important.

Not necessarily. People generally become experts in technology x because it helps them solve problems they need to solve. For people whose problems are consistently solved by relational databases, a new technology that is simpler but less powerful (whether this is true of graph databases or not is worth debating, of course) is irrelevant to solving their problems, because easier to use is pointless if you're already an expert in the older approach.

When you see professional photographers shrug off point and shoot cameras, it need not be because of malice or "fear of irrelvancy", but because point and shoot cameras are intended for someone else entirely and are worthless to them.
If it wasn't for the introduction you gave here I wouldn't know what the site was about.

When I visited the site I had no idea who I am rating the shows for; one person or a group of people or whom? In addition maybe you could provide the YC users with a (demo account) user name and password to test the system? Oh and I tried to rate a show but I got a server error...

Side Note: When I go to the sign up page and I try to go back to the main page by clicking on the logo it stays on the sign up page.
I'll vote up anything that I either agree with, or that I think conveys a defensible non-trolling statement, even if I don't necessarily agree with it.

Also, FWIW, I don't generally bother to down-mod anything that is already negative. There isn't much point to it, unless you feel the poster is clearly trolling (IMO).
Top 10 lessons in e-commerce, by the CEO of Zappos.com
Let's not forget about IBM's strategic hire of Damien Katz, the creator of CouchDB.
Do as Ev Says, and as Ev Does
The Death of the Relational Database
Make new comments stand out (comments made since you last read the post). Makes it easier to revisit a discussion and see what's been added.
Play.
This may sound like completely ludicrous, but it is what helped me. I loved the startup I was with. Amazing people, neat technology and an overall spectacular environment. The only defect was that the customers weren't there. So I left and right afterwards, I felt horrible. Eventually, I found myself also in a cloudy dysfunctional haze. So I decided to 'play.' For me that meant going back to school to learn random things that interested me (from linguistics, to art, music, architecture, Greek mythology, puzzles, maps, ornithology, hang gliding, etc.). While things didn't get better right away, they did improve significantly over time.

Take heart; this too shall pass.
Screenshot - AdWords Text Ads with Video on Google Homepage
Open source is slow and unsafe: let's fork and close
User Experience - Homer Simpson Style
Please cull this list. New suggestions are drowned in stuff that's already been implemented (sometimes years ago!).
The CPU will be faster, and the disk will be faster if your PB also has a 48k RPM drive (higher data-density at the same RPM == more bytes read per rotation). Otherwise you'd actually have to look at the transfer and seek rates of the drive
I failed at two startups before my current one, which is close to launch. After each failure I took a break, feeling weak and like failure just like you are. But time heals all wounds. Before too much time had passed (a couple years) the excitement (and finances) had returned, and I jumped back in the game. I feel much, much stronger for the experience of those 2 failed startups. I don't regret them one bit. Sooner or later you'll probably feel grateful and happy for the experience you had, failure or no. Why not start now?
Social Networks still looking for money
Vertical Ad Networks Work! Or do they?
I'm amazed that more of these are not posted to Hacker News. The solution of math problems seems to forecast innovation:

ie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_coloring_conjecture

was just recently solved.
Ask YC: Is there a Submissions/Comments cap?
I was browsing http://news.ycombinator.org/threads?id=nickb
and his comments/submissions are available for only 41 days whereas my own limited postings are available in whole. Can someone explain if there is a cap or other system in place for users with massive karma?

The cap seems to be at 180 submits (I've checked maybe 4 users with 2000+ karma) and variable comments.
If you think you can solve the classic "Good/Fast/Cheap - pick two" conundrum in a way that is ethical and sustainable, then go for it. That's the grail in more fields than just software.
A quietly profitable domain trading business is apt to be an unreliable source of headlines for TechCrunch.
so who does the hacking?
Here is one project which does a cloud view of top news in reddit.
The author has a python and a lisp version. http://nearfar.org/git.html
But I can't get the url to the actual cloud view page.
Why Cable And WiMax Shouldn’t Mix
You mean this one? :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=142085
Quality Social Network Application Metrics
As a developer of SocNet apps I'm looking past simply launching the services and trying now to understand best practices of tracking and valuing user interaction with the apps. Thoughts?
I have been there, and you will only get better from here on. Let go of the emotions. Put the thoughts on hold.

Stay away from your machine. Go somewhere for a couple of weeks. Exercise. Eat well. Sleep well. Drink a bit of wine even. Have sex. Be human.

No guilt.

No regrets.

You'll be fine.
Interesting, but not working for me.

I imported a calender from another Webs which seemed to go fine.

But when I try to embed the FuseCal calender on my site, nothing appears.

On my FuseCal calender list page, it tells me, "Error processing this URL", but no details on just what this error might be, or what can be done about it.
Even though it didnt make me rich, I consider my first startup to be successful because I took it from idea to revenue.
I think the startup mindset is to find a way to get all 3 for your customer.

The example I always like to use (dated, but classic):

In 1950, travel from NY to LA:

- most comfortable: train

- cheapest: car

- fastest: plane

In 2000, travel from NY to LA:

- most comfortable, fastest, and cheapest: plane

Thank you, technology. How can we do the same thing today with bits and bytes?
The Architect Role
>> (and finances)

I've always wondered -- how does one recover from the financial setback of the initial failure? In good times, this may be easier if one either has savings or can quickly find a job to fall back on. But in times where jobs may be more scarce, how does one get through this?

Also, do the subsequent funding rounds get easier or harder? Do subsequent startup funds lean more towards VC or angel sources, assuming that one cannot save as much for the next rounds for a self-bootstrap?

I completely understand that the emotional roller-coaster must be difficult to overcome after the first setback, with a similar toll for a spouse/partner and family. How do people also overcome the financial setbacks?
Debugging Heisenbugs
The Worthlessness of Code - O'Reilly ONLamp Blog
Ha! I should of known!! :)