skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Almost without exception, all the workspaces are open-office, some more than others. I've been working this way for a decade and prefer it to a private office.

If you had your choice, would you want your own private office or would you prefer working in a larger space with several coworkers?
Military Robots Gain Advanced Sight
Amazon MP3 Store to Go Global this year
CoFounder needed
Hi,

I run few sites http://secgeeks.com and http://newskicks.com i am looking for a cofounder to work with me on these sites.we can discuss more in details.u can contact me at :- secgeek_NO_SPAM@secgeeks.com
A VC: This Time will be Different
Gamma error in picture scaling
Matching, diffing and merging XML
I like the Computer History Museum in Mountain View: http://www.computerhistory.org/

They do a very nice 2 hour tour, and have a lot of cool artifacts from the early days of computing. Anything from a panel of ENIAC to PDP's to one of the first Space Wars arcade games to CRAY 1, 2 + 3's. It's inspiring to see the fruits of all the startups that have come and gone before. Really, if you're a geek, and you're in the area, you need to go.

Yeah, there's a lot of office buildings and office parks, but you'll come across cool names that you recognize pretty frequently.

Also, perhaps check in to going to meetups. Chances are, there's a meetup for the language/technology of your choice going on. Also, there's things like Bay Piggies, which is a Python user group meeting that occurs the 2nd Thursday of every month at GOOG.

And, if you're coming in to town, post a note on Hacker news, and see if anyone wants to get together for coffee or something. You might be surprised at who takes you up.

Oh, if you do visit, get GPS. It helps a lot.
My experience is that a terrible vegetarian diet (pasta, white-rice, tomatoes, as the staple) is the cheapest method of eating. A nutritionally adequate vegetarian diet (variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole-grains, etc) costs about the same as a terrible carnivorous diet (i.e., meat + pasta, white-rice, etc), and, at the top of the price-point, is a nutritionally adequate carnivorous diet (which, incidentally, few people can afford in terms of both cost and time to prepare).

I don't know about any studies regarding which is faster, but I do know that in my personal life I've found vegetarian meals to be both easier to prepare and easier to clean (e.g., meat has to be cooked just right or it is either a) dangerous or b) tastes terrible).

> The fact is that it shows a level of dedication above and beyond what normal people exert.

Because he's targeting health, the hardest part he needs to work through is having to wait for his taste-buds (i.e. brain) to adjust to a low-salt/low-fat diet; while not an insignificant feat, his wealth does allow him to skip the practical re-education of both how to shop for food and how to cook meals.
But on a more serious note...

The difference is intent. And there is a lesson to be learnt for startups.

If you go into a meeting with a customer and he asks for something that you think you can deliver, but are not sure you answer yes. And then you go back to your office, work your ass off and hope for the best. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don't. This is not fraud, since you think (or hope...) that you can deliver - you have an intent of fulfilling your contract. It is merely pushing the envelope, which is what business people do. In a startup this is needed if you want to get ahead, the odds are stacked against you so you need every break you can get, even if that means exaggerating a bit to land the deal.

Good business people know this, as long as your intent is good this is OK. Developers often don't understand this, primarily because good business people don't bother them with how it works - just like good developers don't bother business people with what happens under the hood of their programs. As long as it works.
From http://www.paulgraham.com/america :

"US immigration policy is particularly ill-suited to startups, because it reflects a model of work from the 1970s. It assumes good technical people have college degrees, and that work means working for a big company.

If you don't have a college degree you can't get an H1B visa, the type usually issued to programmers. But a test that excludes Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell can't be a good one. Plus you can't get a visa for working on your own company, only for working as an employee of someone else's. And if you want to apply for citizenship you daren't work for a startup at all, because if your sponsor goes out of business, you have to start over."

Getting a visa isn't always something you have control over. My best friend, having found a job at a YC startup, is currently held up at the boarder. The guards didn't seem to believe it was a real company. I was rejected for my TN visa once, and had to prove that the company I was to be working for was incorporated, along with a plethora of other documentation.

I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to get a visa to work at my startup. The rules for the TN-1 visa (for Canadians, I presume the TN-2 for Mexicans work similarly) say you can't be a controlling owner of the business you'd work for. Could you then get a whole bunch of Canadians together, no one of whom would have a controlling share, and found a company in the US?

I've tried to hunt down an answer to this, but to no avail. By the letter of the law, yes, one should be able to: this means that many college educated Canadians could bypass immigration entirely. But in practice it's up to the whim of the immigration guard, and people are kept out of the US, not allowed to work for completely legit companies.
Better take care of this asap. I've got medial epicondylitis, better known as golfer's elbow from typing to much. I've tried everything to get rid of it including 4 months of PT, but it always comes back. It sucks. I'll try anything at this point.
Answer: You can't.

I have RSI flare up when I'm working particularly hard (I'm a business consultant), and it's not fun. Aside from taking NSAIDs, the only real cure that I've found is to stop typing and mousing so much. And working hard to me, means >10 hours a day, plus at least one weekend day.

If I slack off a bit, then the RSI goes away until the next timecrunch, burn, death-march, etc. ;-)

I also have a Logitech MarbleMan trackbar, and that does help, though after a mouse, the trackball is a tad annoying to use, especially one without a scrollwheel.
well i prefer working with several co workers.cause u need to learn many things and yes u can joke with anybody ;)
Definitely have a plan. As Douglas Coupland once said, SV does not really have a user interface. But if you plan ahead -- parties, open houses, visits, and other stuff I'm sure we can come up with -- you can build your own interface.
"becoming depressed by endless roads and "Office Space" sterile IT buildings (you can see I have no idea what SV is like)"

It's a lot like you're imagining. Better background scenery, and some of the buildings are nicer, but ... like, Apple, for one, has surprisingly sterile buildings. You'd think that One Infinite Loop would be an amazing art deco building or something. It's not, sadly.
I didn't know this could be as big of a deal as it is. Now I know; thanks isb.
+1 for sound advice. A few years back I could start feeling the strain in my wrists. I immediately cut back my computer usage and got myself some ergonomic gear. (specifically: natural keyboard, good mouse) The pain was very light at that stage, so it didn't take long (a few weeks max) to subside. With the ergonomic equipment, even with high usage, I don't feel a thing.
Suspend your disbelief, and irrationally accept what quantcast tells you: (http://www.quantcast.com/paulgraham.com)

African americans, latinos, and asians all outrank caucasians in pageviews on paulgraham.com. It also shares with ycombinator.com a slightly female audience, and members who visit also enjoy shopping for horses. ;-)
There's one thing you haven't mentioned, which is buy the fastest possible computer you can afford.

I find that crappy, slow, unresponsive interfaces (I looking at you Windows XP networked folders) actually make my hands hurt just by being slow.

I'm not saying that buying a faster computer will fix your wrists, but a responsive interface should be considered ergonomic.
Xerox PARC: The reality of tomorrow, yesterday!
> Really? How often will I need to make a directory structure that is several levels deep, but only one directory at each level?

Didn't take me long to find one in my scripts directory. Just imagine you're doing something similar by hand:

#!/bin/bash

# This script strips debugging symbols from programs and stores them separately.
# They will be loaded by gdb when needed but will not take up memory when
# running the program normally.

# determine where to save debugging symbols
DEBUG_PATH="/usr/lib/debug"
if [[ ${EUID} != 0 ]]; then
DEBUG_PATH="${HOME}/lib/debug";
fi

# go through list of command line arguments and split each one
for x in "$@"
do
echo "Splitting ${x}"
y="${DEBUG_PATH}${x}.debug"
mkdir -p "$(dirname $y)"
objcopy --only-keep-debug "${x}" "${y}" || continue
objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink="${y}" "${x}" || continue
chmod a-x,o-w "${y}"
strip "${x}"
done
I second the gloves. Whenever I start to get any pain, I just put on these gloves
http://www.ergomall.com/store/shop.html
and I feel fine. Just in case you are true nerd without fashion sense - don't get the teal colored ones!
I disagree. I think it has a few benefits, but more importantly, the bar is pretty high in terms of the dumbest thing people do.
That's interesting--I'd never thought of it in those terms.

I know that with video-games, the force I use to press the buttons varies _dramatically_ from game-to-game, even though the controller stays the same (depends on personal stress, responsiveness of the on-screen UI, etc).

I suppose a case could be made that unresponsive interfaces tend to make a person type/click more deliberately (i.e. forcefully) than is technically required by the input device.
Kind of?
In France, Societe Generale's rogue trader is being hailed as a hero
It's interesting that there are 7 points here, yet only one comment so far. I am Mexican, I run my own startup without any outside funding and my ethnicity has not been an issue, the value our startup adds is all that matters in our success or failure.
The guys who did Mercado Libre (like eBay, but for Latin America) were Hispanic. They did very well, to my knowledge.
David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging (Musical) Artists
in your edit screen there should be a help button...you need to indent the code portion like

this

Interesting technique in the forms - I would never thought of doing it that way. I find newforms to still not be ideal and do a fair number of my own hacks. Thanks for the response :)
The valley is huge, and many campuses while impressive in size are dull in aesthetics. That said, I think it's worth going to San Jose and driving up to San Francisco.

Paul Stamatiou made a trip to the valley last summer and shared his experience. It's worth reading each of his three posts, the last is full of pictures of headquarters for startups.

http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/06/25/california

http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/07/29/more-reasons-why-i-love-...

http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/07/21/california-hq-pics
http://www.datahand.com/
I found that the new apple keyboards really helped ease my wrists pain. They are so flat that I no longer needed a gel pad in front of my keyboard.
"None of us can predict the markets or future valuations, we all, however, can understand fundamentals. Businesses that solve real pain points with disruptive technology, a huge value/price advantage, and a scalable business model will work ".

Since when has this not been true. The only people who benefit from little gadgets that get widely used for fun are the people that get bought out early on. The only time people (as in customers) will really pay you (monthly, yearly, and so on) is when you are making them money. How do you make the customer money? Increasing the customers ability to sell or by radically streamlining there business processes.

Salesforce is a good example of this, myself I can't reach Salesforce type heights but am working on targeting a few very specific verticals with officezilla.com in a similar way to salesforce but at a much lower price point.
Less known web application framework: Divmod Nevow
1 Billion Dollar High School
What matters is how we live ...
I guess I was overly diplomatic...
I literally suggested it to my mgr.
The response was dead silence =)
Ten years ago I got pains in my hands and after various visits to my GP I was referred to a specialist. He dutifully looked at my hands and arms and asked lots of questions about where the pain is, what I do for a living, what medication I'm on, do I have any family history.

He then told me I was an idiot. He didn't understand why I thought I could type for 15 hours a day. Why I expected my tendons to put up with this kind of punishment. I got the feeling that if he could he would have kicked me in the nuts. He told me he could give me medication to reduce swelling but what would the point be. The pain is there because you are pushing yourself too far! Hmm I thought. What an idiot (with a lot of letter after his name). He told me to stop being an idiot and come back in six months if there was any pain.

I was pretty young at the time, I went to my boss and we spoke about the specialist. He told me I was an bloody idiot (I'm English so we're allowed to say these kinds of things to each other btw). He said it's "..great that you want to work for 15 hours a day but think about it. Your body is telling you something". Then he told me something that changed my perspective on coding. He said "It's not how much you type it's what you type". This single sentence made me a better, healthier, more considered and sophisticated programmer.

For the last ten years I've been a better, more productive programmer and if I ever see that specialist again I will shake his hand with my very healthy pain free hands.

Good luck
Think more, code less :)
Often I find the more time you spend thinking, the less code you need to write, because you end up with an elegant solution.
Sure sometimes you need to churn out the boring code as well...
I'd say use a laptop. I simply can't use an old style desktop keyboard - key travel is way too far.
Blog, blog, blog. We haven't fully launched yet, but we get a tremendous amount of traffic to our blog. We talk about the insides of our startup experience, but also a lot about the ideas and movements that we're passionate about. Don't forget the importance of being earnest!
I got mentioned! Yay! The real digg office is the irc channel. With remote people and weird hours, that's where most of the work (and water cooler talk) happens.
This idea makes my inner cheapskate cry: I don't want to spend the money on a Mac Pro! And, yet, your argument is compelling.

Holding my hands over the keyboard or the mouse is tiring. I've found that, when the machine is unresponsive, I spend more time with my hands hovering over the controls, because when you have to make five clicks in succession -- waiting for the machine between each click -- you don't want to have to keep reaching out, making one click, reaching back and resting, then reaching out again... that's really slow. So you hold your hand there and wait. And if you have to wait two seconds between each click...

Well, darn it, now I've got to buy an eight-core Mac Pro! For my health!
the reason I started this thread was after reading the article about NASCAR and the lack of minorities, I was sorta wondering:

Is there a high-barrier to entry that is restricting blacks or latinos from founding startups? (real or imagined) -- the same thing we see in high end sports such as NASCAR, hockey, or lacrosse that take lots of cash to participate in.
What's the barrier to entry to Digg or Twitter? Or Flickr? Investor tend to fund TEAMS and MARKETS - not products. The idea pitched in the interview (I imagine) is just to see if you've found an interesting, big, or underserved market and whether you are capable of having and recognizing good ideas.
One important point is to take breaks often - get someting like Workrave and set it to force you to stop typing for 30 second every 5 minutes and take a longer break every hour. This doesn't really affect productivity, as you can think about your code during the breaks, and in fact probably improves it.

I had mild tendonitis when I was writing up my PhD, and found that forcing myself to take breaks made a huge difference.
Hopefully in the next year or two :-]. If you want to dig even further, there aren't many of us in CS departments either. (I'm aware that not every potential startup-type studies CS)

(I'm making a generalization based on my school's CS population. I'm assuming it's similar at other institutions.)
... and also, if you have a laptop, force yourself to only use it at a desk, not on the couch or in bed.
Actually, the most responsive machine I have is my iMac 20".

The iMac is the 2.16 Core 2 version with the ATI graphics, and it wipes the floor with any other machine I've used, including my MBP and my work Dell (some kind of C2D Precision)
VC Funding Orgies, Acquisitions, of Advertising Startups This Week
"The most disruptive changes come from the high end of the low end"
But when you can sell tech companies for 10x yearly income, who's going to hold on to their successful company for that long?
Smart Glove is just $17 here:

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000NBX0PS/
you mean there are more legitimate uses to that feature than browsing pr0n?
I volunteered with my (then-) future wife to help build a big community playground.

At one point there were maybe 5 of use moving this tube slide into place. It was a very big, heavy, very twisty-shaped tubed. And we could feel it starting to slip.

We were all struggling to hold it up. It wasnt working, and there was noone else nearby to help.

Suddenly I leaped up and grabbed a hold onto an edge at the top. As I leaped I could hear and feel people being like "wha..?" because the shape was so strange, it was really hard to tell where the center of gravity was and how to adjust it.

But in that moment, all my physics and calculus classes merged with instinct like never before. I was hanging from this very counterintuitive top edge with all my weight, and it stopped it slipping. The group then had time to organize how to ease it - and me - down.

I am generally a non-athletic geek. That morning I felt like a sports star. The best part was, I needed no external validation for it. My intellect was no longer relegated to the exam halls.
I graduated from a private high school in 2004, The McCallie School, in Chattanooga, TN. I was able to go because I had attended the academic camp(I know, I know. But hey, my mother wanted to keep me busy, and it was better than Bible camp) they hosted over the summer; from spending that time with them, they apparently were interested enough to offer my mom a financial aid deal for me to attend high school there.

Before McCallie, I had always gone to public school in a tiny Georgia town(Hiawassee), so switching to McCallie was a big deal, and a big change. There were definitely some of the things the NYTimes article describes: lots of money went toward athletics and athletic facilities(the US women Olympics crew team trained there), there were children from families of the ridiculously wealthy(most of whom were very nice, polite, and never snobbish), and by the time I was graduating there was a huge new dining hall/conference facility that had been finished, and plans for a state-of-the-art dorm building underway.

But I don't think McCallie misspent their money on those things, at least not in relation to how they spent on other things. Athletics never over-shadowed academics. Most of the teachers I had at McCallie were better than most I've had in college, and I don't know of any public school where I would have been able to receive 5 semesters worth of credit for English classes my senior year. McCallie had a great music program, and didn't skimp on funding for art classes either.

While I was a student, I never thought about the size of McCallie's endowment or how it was used, possibly because I never saw any indication it was being misspent. Now, Wikipedia tells me McCallie's endowment is ~$60 million, and that 85.7% of their expenditures in 2007 went toward program expenses. That sounds pretty good to me.

More importantly, the stats on McCallie's own site confirm what I saw among the student body: http://mccallie.org/Internet/Default.aspx?pid=336
Almost 20% of students receive financial aid, and there are 55 students receiving merit scholarships this year. At a school where the total enrollment is just over 900, that's a lot of kids who would find their abilities wasted in public schools being given great opportunities.

Sure, "never let schooling get in the way of your education," and other Mark Twain wisdom. But not all prep schools are just comfy surroundings and a well-known name for rich kids to pad their college applications with. Some of them are really great tools that give, and encourage seeking out, a great education.
I'm not sure Paul Graham meant "publicly admitting to fraud" when he said "best non-computer hack."

This would make me drop you like a sack of armpit hair if I were a VC...
Another vote for the Kinesis.

Literally all there is to my job is typing, and after 4 days on a cheapo keyboard I couldn't type anymore. Switched to a Kinesis and have been fine for months.
New Trend: "Intentional Foreclosure" (one way to deal with falling real estate values)
The disturbing part here is that prep schools actually are good. If they were extravagant wastes of money, they would be irrelevant.

The reason we have public education is that we're trying to give everyone an equal footing to start out in life. This goal is unachievable, but anything that further stretches the distance between the children of the poor and the children of the rich raises alarm bells for me.

I wish I had a good suggestion as to what to do about it.
If you often bang keys for 20 seconds, then sit still thinking for 40 seconds, try adjusting that split to 30+30. You're typing slower but you're not working slower.

Variety works well for me. I had a bad pain that was triggered by depressing the left mouse button. I now alternate my mouse between hands on a roughly weekly basis. After the first few days mousing left handed, it was no longer slowing me down.

Also, I find alternating seat height, keyboard type and position, screen height, etc eases the general back and neck pains that can come with sitting in the same position for too long. Whether 3+3+3+3 hours in varied positions is better than 12 hours in the same, "optimal" position is probably something physiotherapists would never agree on.

On medication: you don't want to use painkillers to enable your pushing too hard. On the other hand, my understanding is that inflammation is a bit of a vicious circle (inflamed tissues are more easily further irritated), so anti-inflammatories are your friends. Topical medication may be more or less effective than pills, and are less likely to screw up your stomach.
I've found that resting my arms at the same height as the keyboard really helps.
Search for books, videos etc in libraries near you
Don't use Emacs.
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I would say it's not worth the trip unless you've got a plan, and already know a few people in the Valley who you can meetup with, and who can introduce you to the local scene. SV isn't particularly worth seeing as a tourist (it is basically a cultural wasteland, although Stanford is a nice campus and of course SF is a great city). The great work that is done inside the buildings isn't really apparent from the outside.

So if you decide to come, definitely plan ahead.
Entire Synthetic Genome Created