skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As an H-1B holder I see this bill doesn't adress two major concerns: 1. Fraud from certain indian sweatshop companies. 2. True mobility of the H-1B visa holder.

I cam in this country when i was 17, finished high school, college (full scholarship), and then work. I'd like to think I am an asset to this country, pretty smart, making good money (and paying lots of taxes), while my current company still can't fill some of it's positions. There is clear lack of good talent in this country. So, please don't say that I am displacing american jobs, as I clearly am not.

It was hard for me to get the H-1B, mainly b/c that year (2003) the cap was reached fast. Unfortunately a lot of indian big sweatshop companies abuse on these H-1Bs, by hiring cheap labor from home and displace local americans. I can't say these guys are good at all, or better than americans, they are just cheap.

There are few ways to prevent it, and one way would be to not to allow companies to hire more than 1/3 of their workforce in H-1B, and not allow sweatshops to use them as a form of job in-sourcing.

I'd like to have the H-1B programm to bring in the truley bright people (scientist, techies, doctors, professors), that will be an asset to this country.

2. Allow true protability. Sure, I can change my job with current rules, but if I am filing for green card I am basically slave of my company. If I do change my job I might have to restart everything from the beginning which is a huge hassle. There are plenty of people that put up with low wages, bad treatment just to get that green card.

The line is huge, and it takes a long time. Allowing people to file for a green card for themselves, and not the employeer do that, will bring a positive change. As long somebody is employed and useful, their green card application should be good. Then People wont put up with low salaries.

Ah, and the other thing that blows majorly is that if you are unemployed for more than 60 days, you are out of status (illegal) and have to leave the country. So, a lot of smart H-1Bs can not join early stage startups, or start them as the current immigration system doesn't allow that.

Even sergey brin was out of status for few months, while starting google. For him, it was a happy story at the end, but for many others might not be. If your startup doesn't go well, you might find yourself un-employable, as there will be immigration red flags.

As I say, the only americans that complain about H-1Bs taking jobs, are the ones that do low level tech support jobs, or something at some big boring corp. I don't know any good and bright programmer that is unemployed.
Gmail, Google Reader, Hacker News
Microsoft logged everyone's MSN IM conversations for a month
'Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!' - Andrew Carnegie
I've tried blogging 2 or 3 times. Right now I post on my blog every month or so. The problem with me is that I eventually run out of ideas and the blog feels more like work than a pass time.

But I think that may just be me...I'd say go for it, what do you have to lose besides a little time?
yahoo google here
So you have to make an argument instead of saying "meh, I disagree." That's a good thing. Seriously, get rid of the downmod button altogether.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost
Do, or do not. There is no try.
Regular blog postings would divert too much time from hacking.

Not posting regularly would be unfair to my readers (if I could keep any).

So I come here instead.
The inflection of the k-core graph at 20 is interesting. Rather than a fundamental property of human nature though, I'd speculate that this is the direct result of school class sizes.
"Microsoft logged everyone's MSN IM conversations for 6 months"

This title is sensationalist and inaccurate. The article says that the dataset consists of one month of logging:

"'The compressed dataset occupies 4.5 terabytes, composed from 1 billion conversations per day (150 gigabytes) over one month of logging,' according to the researchers."
Downloading YouTube videos with GNU awk
I don't want Hacker News to start having sensationalist headlines...
The biggest question I have is, could this have been done with SBCL, CLISP, or CMULisp? I'm guessing it could have.
Unzip American Sexuality and What Do You Find? Tech
+1... by Jedi Master Yoda.
Filmmakers Find Fresh Talent on MySpace
Once you incorporate, you then transfer some personal money to the Corp. as either Owner's Equity or a loan and pay your expenses out of that.
Proof of six degrees of separation
If you have two choices, choose the harder.

--Paul Graham in http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
What You Don't Know About Living in Space
Shakespeare' quote:"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt."

From: What They Don’t Tell You About Being An Entrepreneur ( http://how2livelife.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-they-dont-tell... )
"Whoever has squirreled away the most M&Ms, tortillas or coffee has the most bargaining power."

Oh, so it's just like prison. (Except escape is much harder.)
Founders aren't programmers = doomed ?
Neither my business partner nor I are coding our web application. We are paying others for programming, graphics, and server work. We both have full time jobs and more money than time. I'm an ex-programmer, and he is a product manager. There are lots of examples of successful startups where the founders were the original programmers. Can you give me some examples where that wasn't the case? Do we have a better or worse chance of making it than if we were 2 programmers?
Ask YC: How to make a blog successful?
I just started a new blog and am wondering what is required to make a blog successful?
Whether it is urban legend or not is still an open question but this ad, supposedly placed by Ernest Shackleton in London newspapers
before one of his expeditions, sums up a startup nicely:

"MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES,
BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS,
CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS."

Cheers

Jason
Erlang Criticism Not Unwarranted
The Myth of Web 2.0 Non-participation (pic)
If you are referring to colonization and how that hurt the Native American population... that is not the same of the current conditions.

America is a country of immigrants. Yet, every group of immigrants is angry when a new group comes in. Though, once the new groups come and assimilate and work and pay taxes and create a great culture... America is better for it.
Ask YC: Is web 2.0 over?
So is it?
"Almost there"
Careless Design From Google and Apple?
Ask YC: Can a startup entrepreneur not be a coder?
I am very interested in startups and business and its components (sales, marketing, finance, legal aspects, innovation) but am not into coding and hacking and so forth. So I am wondering if there is room on start ups founding teams for business people?
Hm. I tried it out, but it looks like it does not install binaries directly? I am not much of a fan of the gentoo-esque compiling; mostly because it does not help me "get things done" quickly. I am waiting forever for the ports to compile now.

Edit: and now it has failed saying some checksum mismatch for a dependency. That's what I miss about apt-get: in my two years of experience with it, it has never - not once - failed. How does one beat that?
How valid are the flesch-kincaid readability test and its variants?
Oh yeah, you need to run Windows Update to get Web 3.0 now ;)
Doomed? Of course not. Better or worse chance? Probably worse.

You can leverage your resources by paying others to do lots of stuff, but doing the core work of the business? I don't know. The reason most successful software startups are started by hackers is because they do the core work, keeping their fingers on the throttle of the business, and outsourcing that which can transparently be done by others.

You don't mention your business's the key market differentiator, but if it's tech related, you're in for a bumpy ride.

Put another way, would you start a law firm if you weren't a lawyer, a beauty salon if you didn't know how to cut hair, or a restaurant if you didn't know how to cook or serve? Probably not. Some do, but...you get the idea.

I'd give you an example of a tech firm started by 2 non-techies, but frankly, none comes to mind.
Furthmore, the data is anonymous:

"We present a study of anonymized data capturing a month of high-level communication activities within the whole of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging system."
I too do not agree that ideas are worthless. About a year ago, I posted that I was amazed at the number of idea-bashing posts that I found in the blogosphere. I have taken the following excerpt from my post:

"... whilst an idea that is not executed is not worth anything in itself, it is worth something if it sparks other ideas that do get executed, whether by the originator or someone with whom the originator shares the idea.

Another point that these idea bashers make is that a well executed poor idea is worth more than a poorly executed brilliant idea. Whilst this may be true, I contend that a good execution of a poor idea is itself a good idea that was sparked by the poor one. In other words, to execute an idea you have to come up with an idea of how to execute the idea you are trying to execute. And the idea you want to execute is what sparks your brilliant execution idea.

So to my mind, ideas rule.So people, please stop the idea bashing. Ideas rock and are the seeds of innovation, change and progress."
Define "web 2.0" and then I'll try to answer the question.
Well, he did mention that he is an ex-programmer and his partner a program manager, so the tech knowledge might be there.
It is up to your interpretation
I'm struggling to give some examples. I don't know if either of lastminute.com's founders were coders, but even that isn't a "great" example. There is no reason why your project can't be a success technology wise, I would just say it's important to at least have an understanding of the technology and the process that goes into development.
well, i think you need to look at things this way:

a) A big trend emerges, it's the cutting edge. All new. aka Web 2.0 three years ago. It brings about new philosophies, cost structures, ways to communicate,etc. An entire culture thrives around it, tons of money is poured in, and we find out what works via trial+error.
b) This trend eventually normalizes and becomes "standard". Everything we learned via this trial and error, becomes part of all products. Social networking is becoming less and less a "site" as it is becoming an integrated feature of existing properties. It's also influencing the way startups are run and built. Think about it, the trends + technology in the past 3 years, have made it possible for things like YC to exist (OS software, low cost requirements, ease of distribution, distributed teams,etc.)

So in short, not it's not over, it's just becoming assimilated into everything.
lol, no one will ever agree on a definition.
lol. i'm with you curi. this article just wasn't ostensibly boneheaded enough

in my case, my james bondian self-discipline, my exceptional always-in-flow-like concentration (nevermind when i'm actually in flow,) and my einsteinian think-in-nature cognition did nothing for school because i didn't care for it to begin with

does standing still indicate self-discipline? maybe, if the particular subject cares enough about the situation they're in. who's to say that test in the 1940's didn't result that way because of the children's obedience, making the test a poor determinant of self-discipline?

if a child is more likely to obey, they're more likely to be labeled "good executive functioning" by testers regardless of their relative self-discipline, and more likely to do good in school by that metric. hence, obedience may have just as much or more to do with school performance than actual self-discipline

i bet many children today don't even know the concept of "obedience." they obey, but it doesn't have a cultural significance for them. which would consequently mean the study done recently is freer of the effects of obedience and therefore more likely (but by how much?) to be measuring self-discipline by its lonesome. but in any case, the proposition that the difference is due to toys or playstyle doesn't seem likely to me. not as likely as obedience does :)

another sad thing in all this is that ADD often corresponds to particular personality types. i'm introverted and my mind always speeds along like it's on crack. if i was extroverted, that energy would force external motion and i would basically be some sort of technical spongebob. i'm guessing the MBTI types most often marked with ADD are ENFP and ENTP (which happens to be the prototypical entrepreneur)

why is that a problem? because personality types don't change. they're what people are. well, with chemicals they can change temporarily, which is the sad thing
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Hey Jason, let me know if you find any new bands/shows using Battle of the Bands or if you have any feedback on how we could make it better. I'm already speaking with the guys at Grooveshark but thanks for the offer.

Would anybody here be interested in accessing the Songkick Ranking data? Given it's an index of the hottest bands on the web it could be used for other purposes - for example web radio for the week's hottest artists.
Not a quote, but if you need inspiration:

http://reddit.com/r/inspirational
REST: From theory to practice
No. Our main launch (coming next week...) was scheduled around South by Southwest - it's perfect for us - a mix of live music and technology.
Cost of Living in Silicon Valley--Transportation
Really good article. The title way undersells it.
How anonymous can your own voice be? Not very much, I don't think.

A checkbox on a survey can be anonymous, but my communication with other people would be impossible to record "anonymously." Remember all that flack Netflix got for releasing its "anonymous" records of people's movie-watching habits?

Just because my name is omitted doesn't make it morally unobjectionable to release the information without my consent, but a lot of huge companies have been doing this more and more often.
I 90% agree, sanj, except I think the 5400 vs. 7200 is a big deal--that's a 33% improvement on most IO bound activities for cheap money. I generally plug the laptop in, so battery life isn't much of an issue.

Also, my current memory usage on my MBP never exceeds 1.4 gigs, so I couldn't justify the extra ram--it would sit, idle. I mainly develop in rails at the moment and sometimes use netbeans. YMMV.
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." - Confucius
Digg, I believe.
They already made an offer. Why would Norvig be interviewing him again?
Best Books For a Startup?
I think this is an interesting topic. Most likely it's been done already. Anyway, here's my list:

- Monk and the Riddle- Randy Komisar (You HAVE to read this, it puts it in the right perspective. Randy is a genius)

- Paypal Wars

- Founders at Work- Jessica Livingston
yes, if you have connections and an idea that comes from your experience which could be crucial for success, but joining an existing team maybe it's harder if there is not even a product yet...
thanks. replies like this one make me glad i posted this.
I second your observation, though my recent foray into Lucene was far simpler. I used the RAMDirectory feature to build an index in memory for a large list of names (and our queries go through a thick OR/M). The user of the application needs to be able to filter the list by keywords and doing the query each time was taking too long (2 or 3 seconds). It's now near instantaneous.

I think for 10,000 documents (two fields: name and id) it takes 20 seconds to build the index in Lucene .NET.

I had always heard of using Lucene for really large datasets and thought it might be overkill for speeding up a somewhat small part of one application dialog. In reality it took a single reference to the Lucene .NET dll and a few functions to build the documents and add them to the index.
Compete.com’s Margin of Error (traffic estimates)
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. (Winston Churchill)
Carson Systems/Carsonified
Somewhat tangential, but: I'd love to have a script that automatically downloads the FLV file for every YouTube video I've bookmarked in del.icio.us. My collection of videos is slowly leaking away due to takedown requests.
You answered your own question
The guy from the "4-hour work week" book advocates outsourcing everything you do. I wouldn't say your chances are out the window, but it would depend on what your application is. If you have a vision that can be completely laid out without getting into technical details, then you are probably ok I would guess. Whereas if your business is the technology itself, it my be harder.
Importance of Web 2.0 for non Web 2.0 Startups
1. google (gmail / search)
2. localhost:3000 (or some other port)
3. wikipedia
"... what exactly do you mean - why does that lose you? because it's asking for personal information? ..."

Hi ngrandy. Pretty much. Here's why:

- To extract information from twitter doesn't require my username + password

- Third party sites that extract usernames + passwd information expose "users" to unnecessary risk of exposing their login details

- From a development point of view using the API is not necessary if you balance the risks of user details compared to product features

The reason I bring this particular point up is that I think this product is very useful & dearly would love it to succeed. But the first time I use a suggested example (eg: 'twitter bootload today') I'm required to sign over my account details. Why? You can get my latest information via RSS without having to get twitter account details.

As a new company you have to listen to what users want and balance what you can offer them and what they need. In effect weighing up the risks of giving them power at the expense of exposing them to harm. For me the risk of handing over my details to simply search for them is not worth it. FriendFeed appears to achieve this balance using RSS, why not other companies? Some observations:

- no SSL evident on twit account gathering (that I can see) so that username + passwd is plain-text

- are twitter account details stored on a third party machine (how is it encrypted?)

- how secure are the details being sent by third parties?

I've looked at the current twitter best practice on third-party sites asking users for personal details for authentication. The result is it appears twitter does not endorse this approach and as far as I can tell until OAuth is offered [0] there is no real secure way. So why offer it? So I'll go one step further and get an official twitter response to the best practice for third party developers using the twitter API and user account info. You can follow here [1].

My twitter account is my personal information channel akin to my phone account. I don't hand it over to anyone easily. Asking these types of questions about user details & security is making a personal statement about yourself.

[0] http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/brow...

[1] http://getsatisfaction.com/people/bootload
yep. digg was outsourced.
You shouldn't expect privacy when sending information to someone else's server.

Google records your searches, pg monitors voting, and TiVo knows what you're watching on TV.

The data associated with a user is valuable in improving the product and makes for interesting research. If you want anonymity, you have to explicitly try to be discreet.
not a quote, but i like the poem "if" by rudyard kipling. it kind of describes the sort of evenness and perseverance that is required of an entrepreneur...

http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html
Define: Web 2.0?

Read about "Hype Cycles" if you are not already familiar with them:
http://www.gartner.com/pages/story.php.id.8795.s.8.jsp

As i see it, the dot com bust (or web 1.0) was just the natural "trough of disillusionment" for the hype cycle of the Interweb.

Web 2.0 is just the "slope of enlightenment" for the aforementioned Interweb (now known as the Intertubes)

M.
Coordinatr Helps You Plan Spontaneous Gatherings
http://web2.0validator.com/

(Yeah, I made that ...)
I will need to think of a better business model. I don't think you'll be able to compete will the big players.

The only way i think you will be able to compete would be to offer all the great features plus those of your own for free, and look monetize in some other form.

I think your 3 month out look is extremely optimistic.

good luck, hopes it works out.
MacPorts is more inspired of BSD-style ports than Gentoo, I think. Had problems with both, though.
You know, the best thing about having a blog is how it kind of acts like a journal (I think that Jeff Atwood of codinghorror said this).

I look back to some old stuff that I've written and I am continually mortified by either my writing style or what I thought was important.

The negative is that people will read your blog and what's that old saying, "better that people think you're dumb than you open your mouth and prove it"
I disagree. I did make an argument.
FYI, the actual animal's name is spelled auk. Only the programming language is spelled awk. Just an interesting two cents for those interested...
YC News, gmail, my blog. In that order.

What does that tell you about my life... hmm.
so am i, especially after looking into the iphone SDK
What I don't get sometimes is Americans being all like "Oh noes they'll steal our jobs for lower pay!" Well then, you should work for lower pay too, no? Competitive global market, get over it.

Then again, if you think about the country protecting the people, we'll end up weaker than countries like India and China where all the engineers and compsci majors are at...

So therein lies the problem: For the sake of the state, or for the sake of the people? Democracy vs. Whatever, at its finest.
I agree. Also, I use linux because Compiz-Fusion Effects > Vista Flip3D.
PyCon 2008: State of Django by Adrian Holovaty
“Non notationes, sed notiones” (Not Notations, but Notions)
- Carl Friedrich Gaus
Just look at how Paul does it. He calls them "Essays" of course but it seems to be a really good model. He never posts anything just to post it, and so sometimes there are large intervals between posts. Everything he does post seems very insightful and helps us understand where he and YCombinator are coming from.

I'm much more impressed by this from, even with the large interval between posts than the "today my cat hoarked on the rug again..." kind of blog.
It's definitely good. the real question can you keep up at it? Sometimes I'm too ADD to keep blogging. Twitter on the other hand, I use all the time. Much easier to get thoughts out. Right now, my personal domain just feeds in my tweets lol.
Though they didn't actually tell me that I was an "outsource" rather than a "founder" till later. In fact they never really told me that at all, just left me to read the press.
When I use MSN, I'm sending data to the other person through the Microsoft tunnel; if they clone the data while it's going through the tunnel and save it for their own use, that's kind of a breach of my trust.

I don't expect them to NOT do this, but I still believe it's uncool.

Also, there's a huge difference between recording my personal conversations and recording my movies, searches, or voting habits.
sorry, Web 3.0 isn't compatible with Vista. You'll have to wait for SP2 for the drivers to work :-P
Jeff Bezos? Mark Cuban? the guys who founded bluemountainarts, Stuart Skorman?

Though I'll admit that many of these are either online retailing enterprises or internet/media type companies.

But clearly, there are successful examples on both sides of the fence.
Hacker News, reddit, Drudge Report
Ask Guy Kawasaki.